Laborious Lobotomy

OK, this is more of a history discussion than a political post. Labor... For individuals, it is celebrated, man's battle against nature, taking the American frontier, building the railroads, digging the Erie Canal, clearing brush from the Crawford ranch. Now wouldn't you have people to do that?

Collectively labor is now frowned upon if not reviled by many. Yes, the bumper sticker says, the union brought you the weekend, but fewer and fewer non-government jobs are unionized and many unions are dying, faced by foreign competition, new technologies and the growth of non-union shops and small business. There was a time that a high school graduate could stay in his hometown, get a job at a factory and be set for life, those times were actually pretty short and came out of the post-WWII economic boom.


POWER IN THE UNION
You can't treat the working man this way. One day, we'll form a union and get the fair and equitable treatment we deserve! Then we'll go too far, and get corrupt and shiftless, and the Japanese will eat us alive!-The Simpsons

Unions to many, are seen as anachronistic, not needed in these modern times, with government protection and a reasonably educated working class. In fact, they are often seen as protectionist and even anti-American, big business and government alike have played this card for years. Unions fighting for decent treatment brought many of the things that we take for granted these days, fair pay, holidays, regards for safety, workman's compensation and all of that great commie crap. Gradually American manufacturing while still strong, began to whittled away by globalization and unions began to be less able to negotiate from a position of strength. Unions simultaneously began to mimics the bureaucracy of government and corporations and began to seek survival just to feed itself and not necessarily it's membership.

THE RISE OF THE INVESTOR CLASS
Along with globalization, perhaps one of the greatest changes against trade unionism is the rise of the investor class. Now, a young McDonald's employee or Wal-Mart worker can sit at a table formerly inhabited by robber barons and captains of industry. The rise of 401K's, electronic trading and relatively low brokerage fees have put the stock market in the hands of college students, retirees, daytraders and anyone who want to take a chance at the great scratch ticket of capitalism. Even my 5 year old niece and 10 year old nephew have a reason to peek at the Wall St. Journal everyday.

An investor class sees the need for corporate boards and overcompensated corporate heads to look out for it's interests and has little class consciousness when the needs of their retirement nest eggs come into question. While it's not that 401K owners sit at home twisting their mustache hoping for the demise of union labor, there is a certain sympathy for corporatism and the need for corporations to protect their personal interest. Part of the appeal of private accounts in Social Security is that workers feel a need to collect more than their T-bills and the Tech Boom of the late 90's is greatly in the minds of many people who have some amnesia of the resulting bubble bust. In the long run, it's hard to tell if middle class people would benefit more from unionism and collective bargaining than the "individual responsibility" of retirement planning, but it looks like that die is cast.

On the Public Dime
So at some points I have to be a little introspective. I am a government bureaucrat. The term bureaucrat is much maligned nowadays. The actual function of a bureaucrat is designed to prevent corruption. Provide a fair wage and benefits to take the politics and logrolling and backscratching out of the governing process. Max Weber describes bureaucracy in the most positive of terms. Many of us take public service very seriously. We appreciate the fact that we have decent compensation, great benefits including a pension, and relative job security and take pride in protecting the taxpayers' money and providing the best services that we can to our constituencies, in our case the people of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

As a modern day apparatchik, I have benefited greatly from one of the few places that unionism grows strong, government and education unions. As a union member, it can be frustrating at times to see the negotiations, negotiations that neglect career ladders, professional development, quality of life and a commitment to public service for shortsighted bargaining over welcomed, moderate but unsustainable pay raises that have no respect for job effectiveness or commitment but are based on grade and seniority.

I am unsure of what the future of government unions is. Faced with the looming costs of pension obligations and medical costs but also armed with powerful political friends it is difficult to understand this aging workforce, many of who may lack the technical, managerial or leadership skills to complete the tasks of modern governing. Surely, the one growing (both government and educational) and constant union will adapt and retrain, or whither.