GOP Anti-Union Strategy Won’t Solve Economic Woes

by Jackie Smith

After three decades of stagnant wages, declining opportunities to join unions, and rising income inequality, American workers are being bullied into making even more sacrifices to their health and well-being so that the super-rich and corporations can continue to enjoy large profit margins.

The latest challenge to American workers is the threat to the basic right to form and join trade unions in order to bargain with their employers collectively, rather than as isolated individuals. This right is being threatened in several states and is part of a concerted national effort led by Republican officials and their corporate funders (such as the Koch brothers). State legislatures in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Indiana, among others are seeking to eliminate public workers’ rights to organize.


Republicans are arguing that the economic downturn and cuts to government budgets require that everyone scale back, and the “lavish” compensation packages of unionized public workers are a thing of the past. They have portrayed unions as inflexible and as tying the hands of government, forcing taxpayers to pay unreasonably high costs for public services.

Leaving aside the question of the value of publicly provided services such as education and health care, and the question of whether the private sector can provide these services at the same quality and costs that governments can, we should ask whether eliminating the right to organize would actually solve the problems the Republicans claim to be most concerned about.

First, they are concerned about rising public debt and argue that public workers are too expensive for these times. However, unions in the states where these new laws are being considered have already agreed to significant cuts in wages and benefits to adjust to state budgetary shortfalls. Yet, Republicans are demanding that workers give up the one bit of power they have—the right to come together to negotiate the terms of their work.

Unionized public sector workers do not make significantly more than their private sector counterparts. Their wages tend to be somewhat lower than those of the private sector, although they enjoy more favorable benefits. In fact it is typically less expensive for state and local governments to provide services directly rather than outsource to less accountable private companies. For instance, earlier this month Detroit’s Public Schools system turned down a bid from unionized maintenance and engineering workers to cut $92 million from the budget, opting instead for Sodexo’s bid, which estimated just $75 million in savings. Formerly unionized workers—who earned as little as $24,000 a year—must now reapply for their non-union jobs and will most certainly see reduced wages, benefits, work conditions, and job security.

The right to organize is a basic right enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 23). It is a right that was fought for by many Americans, from Mother Jones to Eleanor Roosevelt to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Many workers died to win and defend it. Activists across the Midwest are now rallying in the cold, sleeping in the statehouses, and making other sacrifices to protect the gains from these past human rights struggles.

Second, Republicans and Democrats are both concerned with getting our economy growing again. Republicans argue that by cutting restrictions, such as the requirement that workers in workplaces with unions automatically pay union dues, they will stimulate job growth. However, there is little evidence to back this claim. Workers in states with so-called “right to work” legislation, whether or not they’re unionized, earn an average of $1500 less per year than workers in states without such laws.

Careful research by the Economic Policy Institute and other independent scholars shows that right to work and other anti-union legislation is not linked to higher rates of economic growth or job creation, as its proponents claim (www.epi.org).

Many economists argue that getting our economy growing again means getting government to put more money into the hands of this country’s working people. This is what worked in our recovery from the last Great Depression. A return to economic growth requires effort to build consumers’ confidence that they will have sustained sources of (good) employment that will allow them to provide for their families. Unions have helped secure these basic elements of a healthy economy in the past, and they are more important than ever as we work to recover from the latest economic crisis.

We need more thoughtful and historically-informed debate on these issues, which are at the core of our democracy.