Today I heard from David, a union member for 25 years. He told me that he appreciated my article "If Not Unions, Then What?" (posted below), and he asked:

However, what would your argument be in regards to our companies (allowing for higher wages, benefits, etc.) competing in a global economy? Nay sayers will contend that unions can and have rendered US companies less competitive, particularly when competing with emerging economies.


Below is my answer to David's question. Does anyone else have answers to David's important question?

You raise an important question, which has to do with profitability in a globalized economy.
I believe that history has much to teach us here.

Before the 1930s, workers and their unions were never able to achieve much lasting power. This was a period when the economy was becomeing nationalized, but much of the economic power and regulation was still at the state level.

Beginning in the 1930s and with FDR's New Deal, our nation got the first widespread national regulations of the economy. As part of that, workers won federal government backing for their unions through the Wagner Act.

From 1945 to 1973, the US economy expanded greatly - - everyone did well, employers and workers, because there was so much to go around. Unions made sure that employers shared that wealth.

After 1973 the US began to enter a globalizing economy, and global competition increased - - so there was less to go around. US employers were increasingly free to source their labor anywhere in the world. This, of course, pitted US workers against lower-wage workers around the world. Just as the economy shifted from a state-level to a national one at the turn of the 20th century, now the economy is shifting from a national to a global one at the turn of the 21st century. We are still in the middle of this shift. But, yet again, we do not have the legal structure we need to guarantee workers' rights. In this case, we now need a global legal structure.

What I have described above is not a union issue - - it's a larger economic issue. When the media and elites blame unions for driving companies overseas, in fact they are using unions as a scapegoat for much deeper economic structural issues. ALL U.S. workers have faced decreased wages and benefits in a globalized economy, even as their productivity has continued to rise. And as the US economy has globalized, workers' interests have been absent from the larger global legal framework. This is a key factor to today's shocking levels of economic inequality.

Allow me to reframe your question a bit. Perhaps the question for us as union members isn't - "how can our unionized companies compete in a globalized economy?" The question is "how can workers re-shape the global economy to meet workers' needs instead of those of corporations?" Our globe is in the early stages of building a framework for new rules to govern corporations on a world-wide scale. Right now, corporations clearly have the upper hand. We can demand a global economy which lifts all boats. However, like everything else, it won't happen unless we make it happen.

We must call on the WTO to honor workers' rights, we must insist that the US sign the UN Declaration of Human Rights (which defends' workers' freedom of association) and we must insist that all nations follow it. Meanwhile, we need to build global alliances with other workers.

I realize that these are not short-term answers. But I don't see any way for union members to win in the global marketplace under the current rules. We have to re-build power, ultimately, in new ways.