Counterpunch
May 13, 2008
Are Labor Unions Too Powerful
The Myth That Won't Die
By DAVID MACARAY
“The greatest anti-poverty program ever invented was the labor union.”
--George Meany
Even on the face of it, the notion that American labor unions are “too powerful” is silly. In fact, it’s more than silly; it’s pathetic, really. Pathetic because there are people out there who still embrace this notion, still cling to it the way they cling to Kennedy assassination theories and the belief that something selling for $19.99 is cheaper than something selling for $20, cling to it despite staggering evidence to the contrary.
For openers, consider: There are millions of union members who don’t even have the right to strike, who don’t have the bedrock union right of withholding their labor as a “last resort” means of protesting an unacceptable contract. Who are these union members? Federal, state, county and municipal workers. They’re forbidden to strike. It’s illegal. How’s that for union “power”?
Or consider this: The U.S. has no laws against management hiring permanent replacement workers. How about that as evidence organized labor is running roughshod over the economy? A big, bad union member goes on strike, and when he returns to work, he finds that he no longer has a job. Given Brandeis’s view of the sanctity of strikes, we can only imagine what he would think of the predicament where striking is tantamount to “quitting” one’s job.
Then there’s that other screwball myth about unions—namely, that unions are so “powerful,” it’s practically impossible for a union member to get fired. That characterization is not only inaccurate, it’s an outright lie, one that’s been propagated by managers too lazy or dimwitted to figure out what to do with a bad employee. The union makes a convenient scapegoat.
Call unions what you like. Call them predictable, stubborn, unimaginative, clumsy, etc. Call them dumb, if you like. But for crying out loud, let’s not embarrass ourselves by calling them “too powerful.”
Please read the entire article at:
http://www.counterpunch.org/macaray05132008.htmlThe writer could have added that both Democratic and Republican controlled Congresses have passed special legislation prohibiting strikes by workers in the railroad and other "important" industries and that the anti-labor Taft-Hartley law has been used to prohibit strikes by coal miners, port workers and many others.
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