If you listen to some people’s perceptions of organized labor lately, you’d think strikes were everywhere.
Yes, Minnesota’s two largest state employees unions say they’ll strike over unresolved issues of pay and health insurance. And yes, there was a high-profile strike by nurses at most Twin Cities hospitals earlier this summer.
However, the truth is that strikes are uncommon compared with a generation ago. And union membership levels are very low compared with most of the 20th century.
In 2000, only 13.5 percent of the U.S. employees were members of unions, according to the U.S. Department of Labor—a slight decrease from the previous year. Minnesota and Wisconsin were somewhat above the national average, with about 18 percent.
Strike activity was up sharply from 1999, but workers’ time lost to strikes was negligible, taking about one day out of each six years of work by one person. In 1970, it was five times as much, in 1959 seven times.
Thus, we’re far from a situation in which work stoppages make a significant dent in national output or income.
Why are union membership rates down by half in a generation, and why are there so few strikes? The reasons vary.
U.S. laws regarding labor organization are less favorable to unions than those in virtually every other industrialized country. It’s harder to establish a union as the bargaining agent for workers in a particular plant here than in Germany, France, Canada or the U.K., for example. And striking workers face more daunting obstacles than their counterparts in such other countries.
U.S. labor law largely consists of the National Labor Relations Act. The act established a board to rule on specific issues. Members of this board are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Those appointed from 1980 through 1992 by Presidents Reagan and Bush generally interpreted the law in a manner that’s hostile to organizing and striking.
Reagan-era decisions that effectively legalized the hiring of permanent replacement workers during strikes, and an international trade and finance environment that made it increasingly easy to shift production offshore, were major factors in reducing the power of labor unions.
Many economists would argue that the relative impotence of U.S. unions is one reason why the U.S. economy grew so much more strongly than those of E.U. members in the last 10 years.
However, it’s also clear that the decline of collective bargaining power in the U.S. is one factor in the move to sharply less equal income distribution in our country over the past two decades. And there’s ample evidence that working conditions in industries such meatpacking, that once were largely unionized but no longer are, have deteriorated.
The high levels of legal and illegal immigration that prevailed during the 1990s put pressure on unionized plants. Nonunion plants hiring recent immigrants could drive existing unionized plants out of business.
Other examples: The deregulation of trucking tilted the field strongly toward self-employed owner-operators and against unionized trucking firms. And coal mining moved from more labor-intensive shaft mining in the East to capital-intensive strip mining in Wyoming and Montana.
As a result, unionization became much more associated with the public sector.
Nearly 40 percent of government workers are members of unions, while less than 10 percent of private-sector workers are. Unionization has been growing in service-sector jobs that can’t easily be outsourced, such as nursing. But it continues to decline in traditional heavy industry and manufacturing.
How the conflict between the state of Minnesota and its employees will turn out is anyone’s guess.
Government employees always face a tough fight in terms of public perception. Going out on strike as an economy softens and unemployment rises is always harder than when the economy is booming.
But as much as the public may grumble about government workers, they can’t easily be replaced.
© 2001 Edward Lotterman
Chanarambie Consulting, Inc.