Unions' Role

...Yet getting more money is also an expression of the collective voice, at times because workers need or want higher pay, at times because other grievances get channeled into money demands...

...They assume, like most of their professional colleagues, that the market is the perfectly efficient, rational mechanism for all allocations...

...Although Freeman and Medoff enrich the academic debate with their emphasis on the benefits of a union as a collective voice, they remain tied to the model of the union as monopoly as well (but simply argue that the bad monopoly effects are outweighed...

...But that still leaves much room for improvement...

...If giving workers a voice-including grievance procedures, protection from arbitrary decisions by way of a seniority system, and influence over work rules—increases productivity, as Freeman and Medoff demonstrate, how much more productivity would be gained with even greater worker decision-making power...

...From 1950 to 1980, there was a sixfold increase in unfair labor practice charges, and the authors calculate (in a way that understates the problem) that currently one pro-union worker in twenty is fired in organizing drives...

...Do unions do enough...

...The youngest workers and low-seniority workers gained most in wages (although older, high seniority workers more than make up the difference through nonwage benefits...

...Monopoly" is an inappropriate description...

...David Moberg (David Moberg is a senior editor of In These Times...

...There is a more fundamental objection...

...they are not cans of tomatoes or cars in a showroom...

...Freeman and Medoff tend to measure unions by the business union standard, and they find that unions deliver moderately well, as union members tend to agree...

...As a result, they are more likely to come to work (less sickness and absenteeism) and to stick with their jobs...

...This observation—which may strike some as metaphysical quibbling—also has an importance for the employer, which Freeman and Medoff obliquely note but do not pursue...

...They are not typical commodities, and economic theory misses a crucial point when it treats them as if they were...

...In showing what unions do, Freeman and Medoff slip in—quite understandably, despite their disinterested tone—many unexamined values, most of them liberal...

...Still, their empirical focus and the terms of discussion should affect academic debates, which is what the book seems designed to do...

...But there are many unemployed workers whom unions can't keep out of competition...

...But nonmembers are more likely to see unions with a suspicious, distrustful eye as "big labor...

...But these "monopoly wage gains" only cost about two-tenths of one per cent of the gross national product, or about $20-$40 per person annually, and accounted for about one-thirtieth of the inflation of the late 1970s...

...the same concessions could be seen as reversals of the minimal union defenses of the late 1970s...

...Unionization in the private sector has fallen drastically, in part because expenditures on organizing have dwindled but primarily because employer opposition has risen dramatically, Freeman and Medoff conclude...

...So did workers in smaller businesses...

...Employers may buy the worker's time for a low or high price, but in order to profit from that, the boss has to induce that employee to work...

...Unions do tend to raise wages, roughly 20 to 30 per cent above prevailing levels in comparable nonunion firms, and in the late 1970s when inflation was deeply eroding real income for many, union cost-of-living adjustment clauses protected many organized workers and widened the gap between them and nonunion workers...

...Unions give workers an alternative to quitting if they are upset...

...Yet the value questions—what unions ought to do and by what standards we praise or condemn what they do—are the thorniest issues...

...These nonunion workers benefit from unions in their wages and in general social legislation, as Freeman and Medoff show, but they do not see unions as their voice...

...That would require a different book, evaluating unions not simply by their impact on the marketplace but by their broader role in changing society...

...Having had a chance to use their voice, most union members are, however, more likely to express continued dissatisfaction with management even though they are largely satisfied with the job their unions do...

...Although Freeman and Medoff admit that it is hard to measure union monopoly power, they continue to treat unions like concentrated industries...

...they can collectively express their demands...

...But passions about unionism, pro and con, are not likely to be settled by their well-researched "facts...

...The meaning of the labor movement goes beyond the measurable results that Freeman and Medoff offer...

...When the voice gets stronger perhaps there will be questions about the goals of the firm—and of society—that workers will want to raise...

...In the United States, employers can even legally hire strikebreakers during a standard economic strike...

...That, however, is open to challenge...

...Freeman and Medoff make clear that unions do more and better than their conservative detractors believe...

...For anyone concerned about unions and people at work, this is essential reading...

...Freeman and Medoff start with a critique of a standard economist's view of unions, that they are monopolies which interfere with the rational pricing system of the marketplace...

...That, they say, is only one face of unionism...

...And to the extent that statistical analysis of data provides evidence, Harvard economics professors Richard Freeman and James Medoff do a fine job of answering the question...

...The other face of unionism they refer to as the collective voice/institutional response...

...Workers are human beings who need their jobs to live...

...It is not just higher wages that bring stability—and with it higher productivity—in unionized plants...

...They see recent givebacks as a return to a normal differential...