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About The OSEA news. (Salem, Oregon) 1970-1981 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 1, 1981)
February 1981 Page 9 Myths about unions explored A re you a labor illite ra te ? Editor's note: The following article appeared originally in Canadian Labour. The piece was written by Ed Finn. In a preface to the article, Finn wrote: "M ost Canadians are labour illiterates," and that surely applies to most Americans as well. "They accept as truth numerous lies and distortions about unions that have no more factual basis than those superstitions o f the past that they now ridicule." We are indebted to the Mon tana Public Employee for finding this article. Union-won wage increases are the chief cause of inflation, so controls on wage increases will keep down the cost of living. If this myth hasn’t been permanently punctured by our experience with wage controls (1975-1978), i t never w ill be. During that period, average wage settlements were reduced to less than one-third their pre controls level. I f wages really are the chief factor in inflation, that should have produced a sharp drop in prices. But it d id n ’ t. P rices kept sky rocketing, forcing most work ers to take cuts in their real income. H ie truth is that wage increases do not cause price increases. Wages go up as a response to rising prices. That has been the finding of every objective, s c ie n tific s tu d y . M o s t economists would agree with economic co lu m n ist Dian Cohen’s statement: “ There has not been a shred of evidence. . . th a t wages have added anything to the Canadian rate of inflation.” Over the past 50 years, total labor income, as a percentage of the Gross National Product, has fluc tuated only a few percentage points — proving that rising wages and salaries have simply maintained their usual share of a growing GNP. Wages are continually sub ject to restraint through the m achinery of co lle ctive bargaining, compulsory con ciliation, and real restrictions on the right to strike. Unlike other forms of income — profits, stock dividends, rents, professional fees — wage levels m u s t be set th r o u g h negotiations with employers. The only fa ir (and effective) form of wage control is price control. If lim its were enforced on price increases, it would automatically lower workers’ needs and expectations, and they would gladly settle for correspondingly lower wage hikes. Labor-management conflict can and should be replaced by labor-management co-opera tion. As an ideal, this is quite ac ceptable. But unfortunately we live in a society that is based on competition, not cooperation: a society in which we are all supposed to compete with one another for our respective shares of the national income. That’s the underlying principle of private enterprise. No doubt the jungle, too, would be a much better place if the animals would stop hunt ing and killing one another. Given their nature, however, the suggestion that the lion and lamb lie down together is not very practical. P articularly not for the lamb. The world of industry and employment is also a jungle, a world in which the strong prosper and the weak languish. Many persons in both unions and companies wish it were otherwise. But they are trapped in the present system. They know that it w ill take a com plete reversal of basic beliefs, and the abandonment of our entire economic philosophy, before a change to labor- management co-operation can take place. Conflict is built into the present system, and strikes are sim ply one of its m ani festations. As long as the relationship between man agement and labor is based on their respective power, the extent of that power w ill oc casionally be tested — if only because so many employers refuse to take workers' requests for better pay and working conditions seriously unless they are w illing to strike for them. Unions don’t need, and 3S l shouldn't be given the right to strike. Although i t ’s not generally realized, the right to strike is a fundamental right no less important than freedom of speech or freedom of the press. Why? Simply because it is a vital part of die collective bargaining process. Free collective bargaining is the only instrum ent that workers have to protect and promote their interests in our economic system. Without the ultimate right to withdraw their labor, they would have no strength to bargain, and would have to accept whatever wages and working conditions their em ployer decided to impose on them. The only thing workers have to bargain with is their skill or their labor. Denied the rig h t to withhold it as a last resort, they become powerless. The strike is therefore not a breakdown of collective bargaining, it is the indispensable cornerstone of that process. Unions are always making “ un reasonable" wage demands. What is “ reasonable” wage demand? One that meets the workers’ needs? One based on the em ployers’ ability to pay? One that’s tied to productivity? The fact is that nobody has yet devised a workable formula for determining wage increases that would be considered reasonable by the workers, by their employer, by the public, the press and the government. Besides, most employers — except occasionally when in genuine financial stress—still refuse to open their books to union negotiators. Unions are thus denied access to the data on profits, productivity and labor costs that they must have in o rd e r to fo r m u la te “ reasonable” demands. The only alternative in our private enterprise society is to go for as much as they think their members are entitled to get. The right to strike should be replaced by compulsory ar bitration. Compulsory arbitration has n e v e r w o rk e d in any democratic country where it has been tried. I t has been a dismal failure in Australia, where the incidence of annual strikes is three to five times the Canadian average. I t has flopped in both B ritain and the United States as well. When British Columbia in troduced com pulsory a r bitration of labor disputes in 1968, the number of mandays lost through strike s and lockouts in that province quadrupled in the next two years. The B.C. experiment fizzled out shortly afterward. The Canadian Federal Task Force on Labour Relations ruled out compulsory a r bitration as an acceptable alternative to the right to strike. “ The inconvenience caused by strikes,” said the Commission in its historic report, “ is a small price to pay for the main tenance of the present collec tive bargaining system and the basic human rights on which it is founded.” In any event, a ban on strikes is impossible to enforce in a free society. Only in a police state can workers be forced to work against their w ill. In a free society, compulsory arbitration doesn’t eliminate strikes; it merely makes them illegal. Strikes are the main cause of low p ro d u c tiv ity and do irre p a ra b le h a rm to the economy. The cost of strikes are greatly exaggerated, amounting on average to the loss of only one- half worker-day per year for each employee in Canada. As the Federal Task Force on Labour Relations pointed out, this is only a small fraction of the time lost through illness, accidents and unemployment. An effective and anti-flu vaccine would save fa r more working time than the most repressive anti-strike law. Most companies can now completely offset the loss of production during a strike by stockpiling beforehand and using excess capacity and overtime afterward. Most of the business allegedly lost during the strikes is merely deferred. This is borne out by strike studies showing that most business firm s affected by strikes have been able to m a in t a in th e ir a n n u a l production norms. There is no reliable standard for assessing the effects of a strike or the damage ( if any) it causes.
