Collective bargaining is the essence of democracy

Solidarity with US unions

We are one campaign

27 March 2011

As part of the TUC's support for the US trade union movement's campaign to defend collective bargaining rights for public sector workers, we are publishing information on the background to the campaign every day in the fortnight before our day of solidarity on Monday 4 April.

Today, the former Chair of the US National Labor Relations Board, and one of America's foremost industrial relations academics, Prof William B Gould IV argues that collective bargaining is 'The Essence of Democracy'. This article first appeared in The New York Times' Opinion Pages.

As the United States has argued for South Africa, Poland and now Egypt, unions are a basic part of democratic society. Yet that is the principle under attack by Governor Walker in Wisconsin now.

It is downright obscene to strip workers of unions while deficit-expanding tax breaks to the rich are being handed out as they are in Wisconsin.

It is hardly coincidental that the governor, like other Republicans, has launched an assault on collective bargaining, a process which is part of the fundamental rights supported by the International Labor Organization of which we are a member - and deeply rooted in our public policy ever since the National Labor Relations Act of 1935.

Governor Walker probably supports the principle beyond our borders. But here the labor movement is part of the political opposition - a factor which induced then Governor Schwarzenegger to unsuccessfully support statewide referendums to strip unions of basic rights in California too.

Governor Walker's policy undermines not just good labor-management relations, but the essence of democracy itself. Moreover, it is unseemly and downright obscene to strip workers of unions while deficit-expanding tax breaks are being handed out as they are in Wisconsin. Increasing inequality remains a troubling stain on our promise of fairness to all sectors.

Of course, unions in both the public and private sector are guilty of abuses. The United Auto Workers, along with other industrial unions, which brought a measure of dignity to American workers as well a good standard of living, facilitated corporate inefficiency, eroding competitiveness in the process. Faced with a doomsday - bankruptcy in the auto industry - labor backed up in search of middle ground that would save good jobs.

The public employee unions in Wisconsin and throughout the U.S. can do the same as state red ink splashes its way throughout much of the country. Governor Walker's hostility toward the public employee unions is hardly rooted in their unresponsiveness at the bargaining table. There have been no negotiations. It is rather triggered by the fact that they are part of the opposition. The labor movement - with public employee unions in the advance guard - are major contributors to the Democratic Party.

The answer is not to destroy the democratic fabric and the political opposition but rather to engage in dialogue. In California and New York, Democratic governors now approach the bargaining table with pension and health care reform demands, a tough-love version of collective bargaining.

But collective bargaining there must be - not a single-minded devotion to the interests of the most fortunate. That is why Wisconsin workers are right on the issues in Madison - and why the emulation of Governor Walker by other Republican governors is a step backward away from the civilized world. The unions have made a stand for free people.

Prof William B. Gould IV is a professor of law at Stanford University and a former chairman of the National Labor Relations Board.