Monday, September 18, 2023

Unionize America sea to shining sea -- do away with the biggest threat to democracy -- with one easy federal labor law stroke

Let’s conjure up a labor market where all businesses are family owned and family operated -- where no outside labor is hired and where prices of goods and services are set at the highest amount families (producers) can squeeze out of other families (consumers).

Let’s say that that the incomes of all families are twice what it would take to live at the merely subsistence level (leaves out a lot of complication for the simple math point made here).

With 0%, outside (non-family) labor supply – only family workers -- let's say every family worker earns 20 dollars an hour.

Then, let’s say 10% outside workers are brought in to replace family workers who emigrated, which outside workers are paid subsistence incomes (half what family workers earn).

Let’s say for every 100 workers, 10 outsiders earn only 10 dollars an hour – and the left over 100 dollars are distributed among the 90 family workers -- yielding (approx) 1.1 extra dollars an hour (100/90) for the family laborers.

For every 20 outside (non family) workers: 200 dollars are divided among 80 family workers = yielding 2.5 more dollars an hour for each family laborer.
30 outside:  300 divided among 70 = 4.2.
40 outside:  400 divided among 60 = 6.6.
50 outside:  500 divided among 50 = 10.
60 outside:  600 divided among 40 = 15.
70 outside:  700 divided among 30 = 23.
80 outside:  800 divided among 20 = 40.
90 outside:  900 divided among 10 = 90.

Ninety-four percent is the number that represents the labor union desert in the private (non gov) American labor market -- 6% labor union density, though “density” seems hardly the word.

Fifty percent of American workers say they want to be unionized.  6% are unionized (and going down).  SEIU council Andrew Strom has dreamed up a way that could spring American labor into more like universal bargaining coverage: legally mandated, periodic, cert-recert-decert union elections.  
https://onlabor.org/why-not-hold-union-representation-elections-on-a-regular-schedule/

Union bargaining power makes for a more moral market because the consumer can be forced to pay the producer as much as the consumer judges the product is really worth.  

Walmart (an admittedly extreme example) has 7% labor costs (most businesses run more like 12-15% costs – fast food, 25%).  Imagine what the Teamsters Union could do with 7% (double-triple paychecks?).  But, employees have to have a way to bring unionization to a vote.

Mandatory cert-recert-decert union elections would be the perfect issue to bring back Obama-Trump voters.  

“But pinning Mrs. Clinton’s loss on low black turnout would probably be a mistake. Mr. Obama would have easily won both his elections with this level of black turnout and support. (He would have won Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin each time even if Detroit, Cleveland and Milwaukee had been severed from their states and cast adrift into the Great Lakes.)”
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/23/upshot/how-the-obama-coalition-crumbled-leaving-an-opening-for-trump.html

So what are we waiting for?  Let’s return the American labor movement to its former, effective place – while guarding democracy against the MAGA-man – all in one federal labor law stroke.