Jobs and the Employee Free Choice Act

by Brad Peck

The Wisconsin Rapid Tribune asks "Have you heard of the Employee Free Choice Act?"

If not, it is a unique way by unions to take away the freedom of the employee vote...unions have proposed that if they turn in 50 percent of the cards from the eligible employees, there would be no election. As a former union organizer who never lost an election, but organized the old fashioned way with hard work, this is a joke...I think true Employee Free Choice is found in the secret ballot and that unions can win elections, just like in the past, by providing good, quality representation. However, therein lies the problem. You see, providing quality representation means having high ideals and a lot of hard work. It means taking the time to listen to union members, understanding their issues and looking for workable solutions; but also filing grievances and pursuing them to arbitration when members are treated unfairly. Now, even here in our own community, some unions are taking the easy road and simply collecting union dues, but doing everything they can to not represent their members.

Which is a big reason why:

The bottom fell out of labor union membership rosters during the past quarter-century - and West Virginia went right along with the rest of the nation. That should tell our elected representatives something...Reasons for the decline can be debated, of course. Here in West Virginia, it has been speculated that layoffs in industries such as steel, aluminum, chemicals and glass bear some responsibility for the decrease. That certainly is true, as we in the Ohio Valley recognize. At the same time, many working men and women have come to understand that unions contributed to the decline in some industries. Outlandish work rules and exorbitant pay and pension demands simply priced some U.S. companies out of business.

Can we get a source to confirm this? Perhaps from Labor or the Administration?  Or both:

In 2005, even Andy Stern of the now-infamous Service Employees International Union seemed to implicitly acknowledge that unions hurt jobs when he presented statistics on a PowerPoint slide (below) indicating that manufacturing jobs that were unionized suffered a much higher loss than did overall manufacturing jobs. More relevant to Thursday's "jobs summit" is President Obama's own Larry Summers. Prior to his joining the Obama administration, Mr. Summers seemed to get it. Just a few years ago, Mr. Obama's current Director of the National Economic Council wrote that unionization is a cause of long term unemployment.

Another cause of long-term unemployment is unionization. High union wages that exceed the competitive market rate are likely to cause job losses in the unionized sector of the economy. Also, those who lose high-wage union jobs are often reluctant to accept alternative low-wage employment…There is no question that some long-term unemployment is caused by government intervention and unions that interfere with the supply of labor…

or in picture form:

Comments

[Martin Schultz]

The big 3 automakers demonstrate why union jobs have disappeared. Greedy union bosses and their members made the mistake of equating power based on numbers, with adding value. Their high wages and benefits that were not related to value added, were huge contributors to the death spiral of these manufacturers. Labor's strength lies in its ability to add value, and not in its ability to shut down plants. Skill rather than raw numbers adds value.