Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxQQea5H0-I&feature=channel_video_title
There are those who use the freedom of speech to spread hate and lies. There are those who use the freedom of the press to the same end. There are those who use the right to keep and bear arms to rob stores and banks. One cannot find a right or freedom that is never abused. Does this occasional abuse mean that every right and freedom must be gotten rid of? Of course not. Now consider this in light of an argument often made against collective bargaining rights. The allegation is made that labor unions are not what they used to be.
“Now, the union bosses are in bed with the corporate bosses.”
Hmm. So what you are saying is that this right is being abused, so we should get rid of it? This is an argument for greater transparency of both that is being presented, instead, as an argument to get rid of one of the two.
Furthermore, just as the opposite of a utopia is a dystopia, the opposite of a euphemism is a dysphemism. Clearly “union boss” is a dysphemism for “union leader.” It is a word used in this case only to evoke the connotation of a mob boss. This, while not clear enough to be necessarily misleading, is highly dishonest.
Are labor unions impervious to corruption? Probably not. Nor, for that matter, is any organization. Shall we get rid of them all?
The most effective safeguard against any organization’s corruption is transparency, which one finds much more of in the labor union than the corporation. One also finds much more of it in the Democratic Party than the GOP. The GOP, on the one hand, discloses the source of only 25% of their funding and asks us to just trust them. The Dems disclose the source of 96% of theirs. But I digress.
The people running the corporation have one motive above all others: their own personal profit. There is nothing about the profit motive which automatically backs up worker’s rights. Therefore, the corporation must be checked by an organization with such an interest as its paramount concern; an organization led by someone democratically elected by his or her fellow employees to act on their behalf. If that person is, indeed, in the pocket of the corporation, this is a reason to vote this person out and vote in someone else. It is not a reason to abolish the more transparent of the two organizations. This is how a vote works. Thus, labor unions are much more able than corporations to rid themselves of corruption.
But what about union dues?
Well, if an organization opens the door for me to make at least $300 per month more than I would make otherwise, I, for one, will be glad to kick back an extra $10 per month to that organization. Such is money well spent.
But what if it raises the overhead expenses of the company so much as to price you out of the market?
Well then the company can compensate by lowering the CEO’s salary to only $9 million dollars per year instead of 10. If any particular wealthy person in this country has to be content with only three mansions instead of four, I am confident he or she is going to survive.
If someone is so well off that he or she can afford to drop more than $20 per meal on every meal without even waiting for special occasions; if this person already has a personal entourage waiting hand and foot; if this person has gotten to the point where every exertion is optional, where one need not lift a finger, where one can, indeed, pay others to lift one’s fingers and save one the trouble, this person is well off enough.
The relationship between a corporation and a labor union seems, to me, analogous to the relationship between capitalism and democracy; two fundamentally different concepts by the way. So of course, given that capitalism and democracy are going to have occasion to conflict, by the same token, corporations and labor unions are bound to come into conflict sooner or later as well. But of course, sometimes the interests of a corporation tread on the rights of workers, and under such circumstances, conflict must be had and that’s the whole reason labor unions were invented.
The central tenet of capitalism is that profit is good. There is nothing in it that is intrinsically honest, altruistic, or reform-minded. These are concerns of democracy instead. There is nothing in capitalism which automatically pushes to abolish slavery, segregation, or apartheid, promote woman’s suffrage, or wean us of nonrenewable resources. If profit is, indeed, one’s paramount concern, one supports such efforts only insofar as they have potential to benefit one’s bottom line. If, on the other hand, they stand to detriment it instead, one can be expected to stand against them.
Ah, but if profit is good, then the workers’ profit is good.
Huge corporations rip off millions—sometimes billions—of people and the government is compelled by voters to step in and take steps to prevent this from happening again. The profit self-interest then compels the people who own these corporations to mount publicity campaigns to oppose this effort. One common buzzword in these campaigns is “big government.”
Really, though, there is no such thing as a market completely free from government influence. There cannot be. Every country which has ever existed has subjected its economy to some measure and some form of government influence. It is government influence that makes it a market. It is the government who prints the money and puts it into circulation. It is the government who collects that country’s currency in tax revenue and spends it, thus keeping it circulating. Thus, every party in a country who has occasion to deal with its government, or with other organizations that have such occasion finds their currency valuable to that end, and so trusts that currency. But I digress.
Now when it comes to the act of passing laws against collective bargaining rights, or establishing warrantless wiretapping, where does all the rhetoric against “big government” disappear to? Why is it that laws that impede the efforts of the obscenely, absurdly wealthy to become even more so constitute “big government,” but not laws that disregard the privacy of the middle class and the poor?
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