Unions Are for Fighting the Boss. Don’t Turn Them Into Toothless Guilds.
Manhattan Institute fellow Allison Schrager argues in a nationally syndicated opinion piece that unions can best serve their members by focusing on insurance schemes and cooperating to find boss-friendly solutions. That’s nonsense.
Being in a union,” Schrager complains, “costs money.” Even beyond membership dues, “unions work by compressing wages (and often the terms of advancement) in negotiations on behalf of all employees.” This, she says, hurts more “productive” workers by dragging their wages down to a level closer to that of their “unproductive” fellow workers.
Ceilings for thee but not for me. Libertarian ideology insists that there are select, exceptional people--extraordinarily innovative or productive Randian heroes--who must be rewarded limitlessly at the expense of the plebeians. Unfortunately for them, you really have to believe yourself to be one of those exceptional people to buy into that belief system, and unions by their nature are a repudiation of it.
This type of commentary is frustrating, but the labor momentum despite this "traditional wisdom" and other factors detailed in the article is a sight to behold.
Ceilings for thee but not for me. Libertarian ideology insists that there are select, exceptional people–extraordinarily innovative or productive Randian heroes–who must be rewarded limitlessly at the expense of the plebeians.
and almost invariably, the supposed gap between "productive" and "unproductive" workers is negligible anyways!
Theoretically, if you are "extra productive" at a specific thing, there is a position you can move into where you do less of the things you're less productive with and more of the thing you are productive with. And if you are "extra productive", that should mean less effort for you to put into it: your reward is now less effort at work for the same amount of time and production, and if the thing you're doing is more complex or dangerous, that slrt of position should be negotiated for better pay by the union.
Instead, the "extra productive" person gets exploited by the employer until they burn out or are Peter Principle'd.
The reward for exceptional hard work...is more work. Maybe you'll get an extra half a percent raise at the end of the year, but the increase in wages never matches inflation, even if you max out most corporate performance review scales.
