Comments Elsewhere

Brandon,

I guess that explains why radical unions such as the Industrial Workers of the World made active efforts to organize all workers, and fiercely criticized folks like the American Separation of Labor for their exclusionist organizing models, right?

Or perhaps not all unions are actively described by an economic model that was designed to explain the behavior of one specific tendency within a labor movement that used to be very diverse and used to have very vigorous internal debates over tactics, strategy, vision, etc. before the government got involved.

In a free market, exclusionist unions create market opportunities for their own competitors. One source of competition is the non-unionized labor market. But another source of competition is more inclusive unions which have goals other than shoring up the collective bargaining power of the aristocracy of labor. Thus the active alliance between big business, big government, and the establishment labor unions to destroy the IWW and similar unions, especially during crises such as World War I. Sometimes by passing extensive labor regulations that favor conservative, centralized unions; sometimes by sending out the goon squad to shoot or deport them.

As far as unions acting against their own interests goes, I expect what she’s referring to is the fact that when unions act to benefit one limited sector of the working class, at the expense of the rest of the working class, they undermine the long-term interests of all workers, including their own. The idea is that short-term gains are usually bought at the expense of destroying potential allies and making the fortunes of the union dependent on appeasing the powers that be. Since destroying potential allies strengthens the hand of your establishment patrons, it’s likely that eventually they will decide they don’t need you any more.

Judging what’s happened lately to big establishment unions (take the UAW—please!) over the past 40 years or so, I’d say that that claim is probably well-supported by the empirical evidence.