Bring unions back

Posted on February 20 2015

An FT email includes the following this morning:

Bring them back! They may have been corrupt, but  trade unions were good for middle class Americans. Their obliteration is causing a bigger economic divide. A columnist makes a strong case for the return of the labour unions.

The link is to a New York Times column by Nicholas Kristof, who admits to having once held all the stereotyped concerns about unions that helped stifle them in the US, and here.

But, as he notes:

To understand the rising inequality, you have to understand the devastation in the labor movement.

And as he concludes:

This isn't something you often hear a columnist say, but I'll say it again: I was wrong. At least in the private sector, we should strengthen unions, not try to eviscerate them.

I'd broaden that a little, but wholeheartedly endorse the comment. If we want a fairer society then we need people in unions who argue their case for a bigger share of the economic benefits that their labour creates. Nothing else will do if we are to tackle the massive economic asymmetry in negotiating power in society that now exists and which has so skewed rewards towards a few at the expense of most in the UK as well as the USA.

And yes I do work for the TUC, Unite and PCS. But I do so precisely because I believe this to be true.

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7 Responses

  1. Mark C says:
    February 20 2015 at 2:30 pm

    Looking back at recent history, I’m struck by the role the Unions had in the start of their own down fall under Thatcherism.

    I actually find it very hard to like Unions because I hold them in part to blame for the opportunities they afforded Margaret Thatcher. In a way, I’ve never forgiven them. Today I find them tolerated but toothless institutions more likely to want to offer you a cheap loan or credit card than to solve any injustice at work.

    Please note that I do think that Unions need to have more power than they curently have and also need to be woven into buiness management more effctively too. The scales are now too heavily weighted on the side of the employer.

    However, I do not want to see the same pig-headedness that saw perfectly reasonable ideas like Barbara’s Castle’s ‘In Place of Strife’ just ignored and a stupid narrow minded grab for wage increases which did a lot of damage to the Labour party in the 1970’s too. Here, the Unions exacerbated the problems and as I said, hastened their own down fall.

    So yes – lets invigorate them and give them a defined role and a moidcum of power but lets also make sure thay they do not get out of control as I think that they did in the 1970s.

    I hope that they too have learnt their lessons from their time in the wilderness.

  2. linda kaucher says:
    February 21 2015 at 9:51 am

    Free trader Paul Krugman said the same as Kristof is saying here, a long time back.

    Lets hear it this side too.

    However, unions need to be straight with their members and the public. At the moment, a rather wordy and ambiguous Congress resolution opposing TTIP (the neoliberal wetdream), is being touted as straight out opposition and many main UK unions are clear on their opposition.

    But the TUC is allowing eg the Labour Party to say that TUC SUPPORTS TTIP, while the Tory line is that the TUC will be talked round when it better understands TTIP.

    The situation is worse at the European TUC level (ETUC) where, despite ‘red lines’ here and there, it does support TTIP.

    This is not a side issue and such ambiguity does not inspire confidence.

  3. linda kaucher says:
    February 22 2015 at 10:39 am

    But is allowing the LP, including Miliband’s office, to write to people saying the TUC supports TTIP, without publicly countering that.

    And allowing the ETUC to support TTIP, give or take some ‘red lines’ that are not deadline reliant.

  4. linda kaucher says:
    February 24 2015 at 3:17 pm

    I think its for the TUC, on behalf of its constituent members, to publicly refute this and to clarify its position in relation to this assertion,in the public sphere.

    Would you just leave it if there was a high profile assertion that your position was completely opposite to that which you actually held?

    Labour Party assertions that the union movement is supporting TTIP, usually put alongside the very dubious position of ‘Which?’, is a significant package of ‘unions and consumers support TTIP’.