The one-day strikes of fast-food workers and the
“Black Friday” protests by Wal-Mart employees provide stark illumination to the
obscene disparity that exists between the incomes of the wealthiest few at the
top of the economic ladder―including
the Walton family―and
the ever-enlarging population at the bottom of that ladder. Although this disparity calls attention to
the familiar story of the shrinking middle class, a less-noticed story is the
decline of unions in the private sector.
A key element missing from both stories, however, is public awareness of
their tandem relationship. It should be
remembered that collective bargaining
by unions was a major factor in building a large and healthy middle class in
the middle last-half of the last century. Collective bargaining In those years was the
primary factor that set national wage patterns, and nonunion companies―rather than racing to
the bottom―generally remained
nonunion by providing wages and working conditions that were near or equivalent
to those prevailing under union contracts.
The middle class that resulted was the envy of the world.
Those conditions did not last. For various reasons, including loss of
manufacturing jobs to foreign competition, out-sourcing of many other jobs, and
failure of organized labor to recoup membership losses in the face of what had
become an unfair election process largely controlled by employers, union membership
and power declined precipitously. Union
representation became virtually unavailable to most American workers, and private-sector
union membership dropped to a low of 6.6 percent. Shrinkage of the middle class and decline in
union representation is thus closely related.
Today, with political
and media attention focused on the plight of the middle class, many peripheral
remedies have been proposed, such as raising the minimum wage, realigning
federal tax burdens, and expanding various governmental programs to alleviate hardship at the bottom of
the economic scale. Yet none of these
band-aid approaches reaches the core of the problem of inequitable income
distribution, which is simply the inadequacy of wages in most low and semi-skilled
and non-professional employment. The
decline in union membership and authority has resulted in an almost total
absence of collective bargaining in the
vast majority of American workplaces, hence an absence of any countervailing
force that might provide workers with the means to obtain their fair share of
the economic pie.
It
is thus unfortunate that little attention is being paid to finding an effective
way to increase the low wage scales that prevail in our economy―a task for
which unions are best suited, but which they can no longer adequately perform
when they represent only a small percentage of the workforce. Nevertheless, there is some light at the end
of the tunnel. Although until recently no
serious attention was being given to innovative means by which organized labor
might reverse its membership decline, there will soon be available a relatively unfamiliar non-legislative
process that can make it much easier for employees to organize and engage in collective
bargaining―a program that could reverse the downward trend of union membership,
return collective bargaining to the role that Congress intended, and therefore spur
revitalization of the middle class. That
program is pre-majority members-only
collective bargaining, which is a process that was widely used during the
first decade following passage of the National Labor Relations Act in 1935. In fact, members-only collective bargaining
contracts were the means by which the Steelworkers organized “Big Steel” and
the means the UAW used to settled its sit-down strikes and sign its first contracts
with General Motors and Chrysler. Current
conditions are again ripe for the use of this almost forgotten process. It will now be up to the National Labor
Relations Board (NLRB), with its newly confirmed five permanent members, to revive
that process.
Existing
law specifically guarantees all employees, not just majority employees, the
right to belong to unions and engage in collective bargaining. Contrary to popular misinformation, the law
does not require a union-majority as a requisite for such bargaining. The statute so states unambiguously and there
are no legal decisions to the contrary.
It is only when a union achieves majority membership that it becomes the
exclusive representative of all employees in a bargaining unit, including nonunion
employees; but the duty to bargain with a non-majority union for members only
prior to that majority/exclusivity status remains an important part of the law.
The
time has come for employees and unions to return to that earlier practice of simultaneously
organizing and bargaining exclusively for union members until majority-status
is achieved. The NLRB will soon have an opportunity
to validate that process, after which employers―including Wal-Mart and
fast-food establishments―can be required to bargain with less-than-majority
groups of employees. The resulting resurgence
of union membership and collective bargaining should help to accelerate the rebuilding
of the middle-class.
