The Big Squeeze

I have been reading The Big Squeeze by Steven Greenhouse. Steven is a labor writer for the New York Times, and this book is about how the American worker is being squeezed dry by corporations looking to maximize profits at the expense of labor. That is why we need strong unions. Greenhouse notes that FDR wrote that labor unions are an important tool for lifting workers out of poverty and building a prosperous economy. Union workers make, on average, 20 percent higher wages than non-union workers. Union members are 28 percent more likely to have employer-provided health insurance and 54 percent more likely to have employer-provided pensions. The plus for employers is that unionized plants have greater productivity per worker than non-union plants. The positives that unions provide for workers are many. But the section of the book that was really illuminating for me was a section about the problems that have hurt unions over the years. Besides the corruption that has affected some unions, I found this paragraph really hit home:

“At many unions, the notion of union democracy became an oxymoron. Many union presidents saw themselves as presidents-for-life. Too often they surrounded themselves with yes-men who were scared to challenge them or raise fresh ideas. And too often union leaders deliberately kept the rank and file uninvolved and in the dark, usually because they knew that an informed, invigorated rank and file could someday rise up against them on anything from bloated leader salaries to terrible contracts. A movement that was once inspiring became a champion of the status quo. It had lost its vigor, its vision and its way.”

I have read this paragraph to several members of my union and the response is inevitably the same, “I thought we were the only union to have this problem!”