The Once & Future History of Unions

Back in grad school I would occasionally spend an hour puzzling through an edition of Le Monde, trying to figure out what the French Left was up to. Now you can go online and get the English edition of Le Monde Diplomatique.

These days Le Monde, like a lot of pedigreed papers, is in danger of extinction. It's amazing that it has lasted this long. I noticed this bit from The Economist.

WHEN the managers of Le Monde introduced computers to the paper's print works in the early 1990s, they hoped for greater efficiency and lower costs. But this was not the priority of the Syndicat Général du Livre et de la Communication Ecrite, a trade union which controls the printing of French national newspapers. It demanded that for each new computer, Le Monde should pay for one print worker to type on the keyboard and another simultaneously to watch the screen. It got its way.

Let us call that the parasitic tendency of unions, without comment on how pervasive a tendency of unions it is. Clearly this sort of thing represents a major obstacle to the function and survival of any industry. It also makes the product more expensive. In the case above, the union effectively cancelled much or all of the cost advantage that computers could provide. Why did the union get away with it?

The last time a paper tried to fire large numbers of Syndicat du Livre workers was in 1975, when Le Parisien Libéré, a morning daily, announced 200 layoffs. During a violent, months-long strike, Le Parisien lost half of its circulation and never got it back.

The Syndicat could impose ridiculously costly work rules so long as the public supported them. The French public did in 1975. Why that? Like a lot of Europeans, the French conceive of an income as something like a title of nobility: you can get it for all sorts of reasons, but once you do it is yours for life. Working for your income is only one way, and perhaps the least preferable way, to get it. Class and union solidarity was all about winning and protecting such titles. The result of this of course was inflexible industries and economies.

French papers are as badly bullied by print unions as British papers were until Rupert Murdoch, a media baron who has recently had other troubles, helped to break their power in the 1980s…

When Mr Murdoch (and a fellow tycoon, Eddie Shah) humbled Britain's print unions by setting up presses that shut them out, they revived the entire British newspaper industry. Papers suddenly found they could cut the cost of production, improve quality and launch new products.

Le Monde has been purchased by a trio of tycoons who will now attempt something similar. Either they will break the union or Le Monde is not long for le monde.

Something similar may be playing out in Wisconsin. The budget bill that attracted national attention has given school districts a lot more flexibility in dealing with their unionized employees. John McCormack tells the story in The Weekly Standard (the article does not seem to be available online).

[Emily Koczela, finance director for the Brown Deer school district] was able to change the teacher's benefits package to fill in the budget gap. Requiring teachers to contribute 5.8 percent of their salary toward pensions saved $600,000. Changes to their health care plansuch as a $10 office visit co-pay (up from nothing)saved $200,000.

As a result, Koczela was able to reverse a decision to lay off 27 teachers. If that turns out to be typical, it seems likely that Governor Walker's budget reform will prove to be a smashing success.

Will the voters see it that way? It's hard to tell, yet. Ann Althouse notes a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article:

The plan to eliminate most collective bargaining for public employees may be the issue that sparked this year's recall campaigns against six Republican state senators, but neither side is talking much about that issue now as the elections approach.

Althouse shrewdly comments:

So the shocking outrages the touched of the protests don't move the voters, and the recall elections are like normal elections, asking voters whether they'd like their next helping of legislation to be conservative or liberal.

Everyone wants his or her job to be insulated from economic forces. I know I do! At some point, those protections have to be paid for by sacrificing additional jobs that might be created. They can also threaten firms and governments.

Americans do not think of an income the way the French are wont to do. We think of an income as something to be had in exchange for goods and services. This will make it a little easier, I suspect, for us to adjust to the new economic reality that is now becoming visible.

ps.  When you squeeze the words together in an internet address, lemonde looks a lot like lemonade.  Just sayin'. 

Comments

[Donald Pay]

Huh? The fact that no one, especially Republicans, want to talk about collective bargaining indicates that Republicans have lost that argument. When the police and prison guard workers turn against the Republicans, there isn't any point in trying to explain away your anti-union message. Your only hope is to turn the elections away from a referendum on the hated "budget repair bill" with its attack on collective bargaining. What the Republicans didn't seem to realize is that the higher paid union workers voted Republican. Those voters have switched.

Since those days in February the Republicans have done even more damage to the state, and most of the ads (I hear a lot of them) are talking about budgets and the impacts to the middle class. Although Republicans tried to sell themselves as fiscal conservatives, the Republicans actually increased state spending. Most of that increase went to giveaways to the wealthy and corporate elite. So Republicans and the Koch funded groups are trying to change the subject with ads that show how much Republicans support public schools!!!! They are using Democrat issues to try to save their seats!!!!

[George Mason]

Donald, as usual, demonstrates how out of touch he is. The actions of the legislature last spring have narrowed the budget deficit and started an economic recovery in Wisconsin. This has created and saved jobs, to borrow a phrase from Obama. Including the jobs of the teachers in Brown Deer. I am certain those teachers appreciate it. Once again the conservative/Tea Party people have acted responsibly for the overall good of the state and been proven correct. (Perhaps the Obama campaign simply couldn't come up with enough buses last spring to provide a large enogh mob of out of state thugs.) What Walker has accomplished should be a lesson for Illinois and Minnesota. Reducing the cost of government and the cost of doing business benefits everyone.
The French newspaper unions, in the past, were largely part of the French communist party. In the 1970's they took much of their direction from Moscow which is why they were intent on doing so much harm to their employers.

[Michael (Constant Conservative)]

After reading this article, I must confess to thinking of a marvelous idea for creating millions of new jobs almost immediately. Job training would take very little time and almost anyone could do the work.

It's quite simple, really. We will legislate that truck drivers must have someone with them who does nothing but watch the line on the right side of the road to ensure that the truck is remaining where it ought. The driver would then only need to concern himself with the lines to the left. Of course, we would need to specify that drivers and liners perform different jobs and that one cannot perform the other's job--to keep trucking teams from doing without the services of professional liners. We would would need to ensure that each would be paid the same to ensure that there was no envy.

Given the roughly 3.5 million truck drivers in the US, we could knock unemployment numbers back into the middle single digits. What are we waiting for?

[duggersd]

A couple stories for Donald:
http://kaaltv.com/article/stories/S2228761.shtml?cat=10151
In this one, the opponent of the senator running in a recall says they could have saved the money if they had cooperated with the teachers. I suspect they would have if the teachers had cooperated with the school board.
http://wizbangblog.com/content/2011/07/01/end-of-collective-bargaining-saves-wi-school-district-nearly-2-million---unexpectedly.php
In this story, the main source of savings is from not having to deal with WEA Trust, the provider of health insurance as required before. Guess who owns WEA Trust! Why it is created by the Wisconsin teachers' union! No wonder the union did not want any changes! Where are they going to get all of that money for their union now? Talk about a conflict of interest!
I believe one school district was actually able to hire more teachers due to the savings. Another school district was actually able to rescind the layoff of 27 school teachers due to savings. But the union only cares about teachers' jobs, right? If so, then why do they force school districts to lay off union workers? Could it be because it is more important to have union dues taken out of their checks rather than forcing teachers to actually make their own payments? Hmmm.

[George Mason]

Michael that is brilliant! Donald and Larry will sign on to that wholeheartedly.

[Stan Gibilisco]

Michael, I'll go you one better. Here's how we can reduce unemployment to zero, no matter what the state of the economy.

Hire regulatory supervisors who ensure that government regulators are doing their jobs correctly -- one regulatory supervisor (RS) per regulator. Then hire regulatory supervisor supervisors (RS2's), one RS2 per RS. Then hire regulatory supervisor supervisor supervisors (RS3's) one RS3 per RS2. And so on and so on and so on, RS4 to RS5 to ... to RSn (where n equals some positive integer, defined by necessity) building the hierarchy as far as we need to go until every last employable person has a job.

Of course the tax burden for such a scheme might be considerable, because all these RSn's would need salaries; but it would beat sliding into another Great Depression, wouldn't it? And anyway, all those newly employed RSn's (where n equals some positive integer, defined by necessity as outlined above) would pay taxes into the system, increasing overall revenue.

[Bill Fleming]

I don't have much to add here. Just a little interlude perhaps, for those of us consumed by the "work ethic."
http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html

Excerpt:

"When I suggest that working hours should be reduced to four, I am not meaning to imply that all the remaining time should necessarily be spent in pure frivolity. I mean that four hours' work a day should entitle a man to the necessities and elementary comforts of life, and that the rest of his time should be his to use as he might see fit. It is an essential part of any such social system that education should be carried further than it usually is at present, and should aim, in part, at providing tastes which would enable a man to use leisure intelligently. I am not thinking mainly of the sort of things that would be considered 'highbrow'. Peasant dances have died out except in remote rural areas, but the impulses which caused them to be cultivated must still exist in human nature. The pleasures of urban populations have become mainly passive: seeing cinemas, watching football matches, listening to the radio, and so on. This results from the fact that their active energies are fully taken up with work; if they had more leisure, they would again enjoy pleasures in which they took an active part." — Bertrand Russell "In Praise of Idleness"

[Jimi]

Stan,

"would pay taxes into the system, increasing overall revenue."

No....let's see you work through the math on that one, and let me know what you come up with!

[Stan Gibilisco]

Jimi,

Oh, I know about the math; I merely wished to express my sarcasm by appearing to fall into the black hole of absurdity so often exhibited by the Far Left. The taxpaying, unionized Rn's would be paid with their own tax dollars. Or, put in terms more appropriate to the situation, the snake would eat itself from its arse end.

I did forget about those folks who could serve in the capacity of writing the Employee Guidelines (manuals) and general regulations applicable to RSn's at each level. In that capacity I might find a job, my current writing career having been decimated by a combination of taxation, regulation, and intellectual property theft.

Oh, and the evolution of this Utopia would all, of course, be blamed on that Locus of All Blame (LOAB), the forty-third president of the United States, by those who grow to hate the New Order; for those who like it, the Master Enabler (ME) could receive the credit, the forty-fourth President.

[Donald Pay]

duggersd,
IIf you read your links all the way through you will see that the savings were available through negotiations with the unions. In fact all the supposed "savings" hyped as a result of Walker's anti-union bill were offered up by the unions in negotiations. Sorry that you can't keep up with all this. All this is pretty well known here, which is why Republicans are not advertising their union-busting as a positive to voters.

[Jimi]

Stan,

"I merely wished to express my sarcasm by appearing to fall into the black hole of absurdity so often exhibited by the Far Left."

Just making Sure! :)

[duggersd]

Donald, I did read the links. The problem with the savings available through negotiations is the union had no interest in negotiating, as I pointed out in the original post. And with the Kaukauna school district, they actually saved $2,000,000! Not through cuts offered by the unions. But cuts by having employees pay their fair share of health care and retirement benefits. And magically, WEA Trust decided after the school district was able to find another vendor, they could match that vendor's price. I think if you are honest with yourself, you can admit the teachers' union is corrupt. I really do not know the politics of WI except for what you tell us from being in there. So far, I know that we still have Senator Feingold, a new Supreme Court Judge and a Democrat Governor. Oh, wait, I guess I should not have paid attention to you after all.

[Donald Pay]

duggersd,

You really do not know what you are talking about. WEA Trust is a non-profit benefits plan administrator. It competes with other plans for school district business, and generally can outcompete the for-profit firms. That's what rankles some of WEA Trust competitors.

http://www.weatrust.com/wea/weamain.nsf/WebViewAllSelect/862573630060F0B1862578450053A6C3

[Donald Pay]

The problem, duggersd, is you don't really understand what you are talking about. Walker's union busting doesn't have anything to do with the teachers union requiring school districts to select WEA Trust. By the way, WEA Trust is a non-profit founded by a consortium of small school districts and the teachers' union.

What Walker's bill did was negate collective bargaining over health care benefits. School districts always had control over which provider it chose, but it had to bargain over some basic provisions of what the plan must include. Now the union can't bargain over whether the plan to be put out for bid would include various levels of co-pays, what the premiums will be, what should be offered in the plan, etc. All that is now left up to the school board. The school board is still required to put those plans out for competitive bid.

Here is a link that might help you understand the process.

http://www.postcrescent.com/article/20110713/APC06/107130351/Commentary-Competition-capitalism-get-results-schools?odyssey=mod%7Cnewswell%7Ctext%7CFRONTPAGE%7Cs

[Mark Anderson]

Ah, the French, I'm sure they are combing the internet looking for arguments to email about, perhaps not, perhaps they are simply out for dinner. What will any benefits that Unions have brought us, look like when unions disappear? It should be fun to see what the Eric Cantors of the world will bring to us when the Randian view prevails. I'm sure God will still be here, is Eric really religious, or just hiding his atheism? Finally we will have a thrifty working class.

[Ken Blanchard]

Again, great thread! I would only add that I am not opposed to unions or collective bargaining. I just think that such bargaining cannot forever insulate union members from economic realities.

Nor am I opposed to idleness. I just think that someone has to, you know, make stuff. A lot of grief might be avoided by reading Kipling. Here from memory is a scrap:

They do not think that their Gods will rouse them
a little before the nuts work loose
They do not think that the fates allow them
to leave their jobs when they damn well choose

[duggersd]

Donald, I am sure I do not know what I am talking about. However, here are a couple of excerpts from Byron York's article:
"The contract required the school district to purchase health insurance from a company called WEA Trust."
"The problem for Hartland-Lakeside was that WEA Trust was charging significantly higher rates than the school district could find on the open market. School officials knew that because they got a better deal from United HealthCare for coverage of nonunion employees. On more than one occasion, Superintendent Glenn Schilling asked WEA Trust why the rates were so high. "I could never get a definitive answer on that," says Schilling."
"But teachers union officials wouldn't allow it; the WEA Trust requirement was in the contract, and union leaders refused to let Hartland-Lakeside off the hook."

"In the health insurance talks, for example, Schilling last year began telling teachers about different insurance plans, some of which, like United HealthCare's, required a higher deductible. "We involved them, and they overwhelmingly endorsed the change to United HealthCare," he says. But even with the teachers on board, when school officials presented a change-in-coverage proposal to union officials, it was immediately rejected. The costly WEA Trust deal stayed in place."

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/2011/07/wisconsin-schools-buck-union-cut-health-costs#ixzz1UFkgGejj

I am sure I do not know what I am talking about, but I do know what I have read. Notice how the teachers' union refused to go along with something that would save money for its members. Notice the part where it says that the contract required the purchase of health insurance from WEA Trust. And I doubt it rankles competitors when they are way higher in premiums than the competitors. I suspect what rankles competitors is how they are not even allowed to compete.

[Donald Pay]

duggersd,

Again, you are really don't understand the issue. As your own source says the district board had negotiated that provision and put it in a contract. That occurs after there has been a formal or informal process to get quotes from competing insurance providers. Those quotes, though, used to have to be based on something the members of the union accept. The district was seeking to renegotiate that term of the contract regarding specifics of the health plan without making any concession elsewhere. Welching on a deal used to by something Republicans looked down on. Apparently you think it's fine to violate a contract. No sane person would put up with that sort of behavior.

[Donald Pay]

By the way, the rightie bloggers and the GOP has been set straight by a business reporter.

http://host.madison.com/ct/business/biz_beat/article_647d2994-b22b-11e0-ae21-001cc4c002e0.html

[duggersd]

Um, not exactly, Donald. If you read a little farther, it indicates that the WEA Trust has been more competitive due to having competition. Also, you might note that in one of those articles, the administration asked the teachers' union to renegotiate using the WEA Trust. The teachers were on board with it. However the UNION refused! Now the question to ask yourself is who does the union represent? In at least one case, there are 27 more teachers than would have been without the new law. That would be 27 more candidates to pay union dues. And if the school district can save, oh say, $1,000,000 by switching but the union refuses, doesn't that make you wonder if the union is representing the rank and file or the union itself who has a stake in WEA Trust? No, I do not know all that is going on in WI. I only know what I read about online and see on the news on occasion. However, I am not so sure my spy in WI knows all that much either. Why do we say Senator Johnson instead of Senator Feingold? My spy in WI told me it would be the latter......

[Donald Pay]

More nonsense from duggersd. Here's a little bit more truth that answers the GOP lies.

http://filterednews.wordpress.com/2011/07/27/a-bakers-dozen-lies-in-the-walker-was-right-viral-email/

[William]

So Donald, do I believe you, or my own experience and "lying eyes"?

I've been a member of 2 unions, one because I had to join in order to work at all, the other because it was the "bargaining unit", whether you were a member, or not.

I grew up in the heavily unionized state of IL and watched first hand the violence and thuggery of the unions during factory and truck strikes during the 60s and 70s, while the forced dues paid by members bought off the political class (and police) to ensure that no criminal charges were ever investigated.

I've watched my hometown and downstate IL bleed jobs because of the union demands that served the retain union power at the expense of employees.

The last major plant in my hometown moved out a few years ago, not over wages or benefits for the employees but for the featherbedding work rules the union insisted were critical. The union's position was that employees could only work one job (one machine type) without receiving added compensation and ALL equipment had to be "manned" every shift and benefits were offered through a "union sponsored company".

Non-union plants in the area train employees on multiple machines and shift the work load to what's needed. Non-union employees in the area also had higher pay and better benefits.

At the end of negotiations, the union employees could either apply for jobs in union plants in other states (whenever an opening occurred) or they were forced into early retirement (if eligible) or simply out of work... Now, many of the jobs are being moved overseas, so there is no choice for most employees.

That's pretty much been the case with every plant closing in the area.

All my life, I've heard how the unions and the Democrat Party "worked for the common man", yet all my life I've seen them conspire to destroy them.

I've got no links to refer you to, just my personal observation over 50+ years of union demagoguery, violence, corruption and destruction of the middle class in "middle America".

If CAT pulls out of IL, that could be the tipping point for the state to declare bankruptcy. Then what? If ADM were to re-locate its operations, the state is done, and then what? The country cannot afford to bail-out the states, unless it prints money the point that money means nothing anymore.

For global corporations, charter in the US is a matter of convenience and strategy, if it becomes to costly, they'll simply "fly another flag" and be gone...