Self Serving Unions

A friend of mine who is - let's not beat about the bush - a far right nut job, sent me a cartoon today which criticised unions. To tell the truth I couldn't watch it all because it was so ridiculously biased and obviously political, but I think it is still worth discussing what possible validity the criticism might have anyway.

So what are the common criticisms of unions? First there is the claim that unions are run by corrupt officials who are entirely interested in advancing their own careers at whatever cost to the union members or its opponents. In other words they claim the union is good for neither the workers nor the employers.

Then there is the claim that unions protect incompetent employees and stop the reasonable process the employers might otherwise use to remove them. Again the result is claimed to be that everyone (except the allegedly incompetent employee presumably) loses.

And finally there is the idea that unions do indeed protect their members but by working against employers the economy as a whole is damaged and (yes, you guessed it) in the big picture this is not good for anyone.

So in summary it seems that the political right see no positive role for unions at all. It's an interesting idea and one which has become more common as neo-liberal economics has become more prominent, but is it true?

Well first of all anyone should be prepared to admit that there are almost certainly unions where the people in charge are corrupt to some extent. After all, is there any type of organisation where a certain percentage isn't affected by corruption? I'm sure that if you look you will find corrupt political parties, corrupt businesses, corrupt churches and corrupt organizations of every other type. I've never seen any statistics to indicate unions are any more corrupt than anything else, and statistics (and any real facts) are generally conspicuous by their absence from right wing political debate.

A similar argument applies to the claim that incompetent employees can be protected by unions. The real question is not whether this happens at all but how often it happens and to what extent. Everyone deserves the right to defend themselves against allegations of incompetence and in an uneven power situation like employee versus manager the support of a union seems perfectly fair. I'm sure there are times when someone who perhaps deserves to lose their job is kept on as a result, but I'm equally sure there are times when the opposite happens and people falsely accused of incompetence are helped.

But even if we concede the points above do unions damage the economy and therefore disadvantage everyone, including employees, as a result? Again the answer is maybe sometimes but probably not in general. Reasonable economies - and by that I mean those which make some attempt to balance factors such as simple economical outcomes, prevention of environmental damage, and some attempt at fair and equitable work conditions - should encourage balance in the power between employers and workers. If that balance swings too much in favor of the employer then sure the business involved might do very well, but often at a cost to the employee. Naturally the balance can occur too much in the opposite direction as well if unions get too strong.

So really it's all about appropriate balance. No one (or at least very few people) wants a world where unions have too much power but they should also want to avoid one where unions (or employees through other mechanisms) have too little. Whatever your opinion on where that balance is the idea that unions are inherently bad or are always corrupt or always support incompetent workers, is just stupid and ignorant and generally motivated more by far right political dogma than any genuine reflection.