Oddly enough, I did that a few weeks ago here. r = -.659

By definition, a union rep does not have “the same kind of fear power that is considered evil when used by the employers.” Union reps can’t order you to attend a meeting or watch a movie or read a pamphlet, can’t threaten to cancel the health care plan and the pension if the union comes in, can’t threaten to shut down the plant or replace everyone with illegal immigrants or threaten to call la migra on you, can’t reassign you to the midnight shift or raise your daily quotas by 50%, can’t accuse you of stealing company property, can’t fire you for laziness/insubordination/other-excuse-of-the-week, and they can’t order supervisors to spy on you or be fired (supervisors aren’t covered under labor law, see?).

The only kinds of fear power a union rep could have are already illegal, and in any case, it’s highly counter-productive to try to sign people up using fear – sure you might get a card, but you’re not going to get a member who’ll attend meetings, who’ll maintain the provisions of the contract, who’ll walk the picket line, who’ll man phonebanks and walk precincts, etc.

Shortening the time for elections won’t solve things, because employers can just up the pressure of their tactics, spend more money in a shorter time, and because a lot of the power imbalance is quite legal – captive audience meetings, required one-on-one meetings, forcing supervisors to spy, threatening closure/cancellation of benefits, and so forth.

A recommendation suggested by a Union advocate was to keep the secret ballots but greatly shorten the time between the call for union vote and the vote itself. This limits the length of time the employer has act.

Salacious, I suspect Prof. Kenworthy’s “just society” refers to Galbraith’s “countervailing power” or similar concept, not a moral imperative.

I’m a little surprised that Prof. Kenworthy didn’t refer to the work of David Card (.pdf) and others who have published with him.

Finally, I wonder whether Prof. Kenworthy realises that Australia is closer in time to an era of greater union influence than is the US. It was only in the later phases of the Keating Govt. (from 1991) and then the Howard Govts. (from 1996) that a systematic attack on union influence (as opposed to ad hoc fulminations) became a major policy plank of Australian Govts. If Prof. Kenworthy is a little uncertain of the Australian background, he could try this paper as an introduction.

Union density refers to the proportion of the entire workforce that’s represented by unions. Now, the possibility that there are more non-union than union people being layed off is a real one, but the same statistics that give us the density rate also keep track of the whole numbers of union workers – and those went up by about 400,000.

Not necessarily. Unionization is most useful when the market clearing wage rate is much lower than the value the employee contributes to the company. For many jobs, the market clearing wage rate is already appropriate, and unions would add little. Those employment markets, already competing for scarce workers, would not suffer (except perhaps relatively, but they generally pay fairly well already).

Isn’t that one of the advantages? If employers can’t get rid of unionized workers very easily, workers are more likely to be able to hold the same job for life, with the consequent advantages for their financial security and overall happiness (and of course overall cost of decreased efficiency and overall societal wealth, but nothing comes for free…)