It is frequently suggested that unionization is an essentially socialist, even communist concept and that this makes it contradictory to the ideals of a free market, capitalist society. This point of view is particularly prevalent among conservative Americans and for that matter white South Africans (conservative or otherwise).
Ironically from a strictly economic point of view unions are as capitalist an idea as you’ll find. The reason people see it differently is a lie spread in the last few decades that capitalism is all about benefiting companies – this makes the best of it’s ideas sour for socialists, and ironically produces a kind of capitalism that is not only deserving of disrespect but doomed to faillure. Capitalism in essence is based on rewarding production with money. Capitalism is therefore incapable of succeeding whenever one party has too much power or control over money – as that destroys he reward system. The reason to reward production in the first place is to create a society where more people have access to more resources.
If those resources all end up in a few hands, then you’re achieving the opposite to the goal of capitalism. Capitalism is built on the idea of bargaining to set market rates – and when you have a significant power imbalance (as between employers and employees) it makes sense to use collective bargaining to restore the equilibrium.
A lot of the sour feeling among many people about striking as a concept comes from a work ethic that is genuinely uncapitalist. The ideal of work as it’s own reward. This is a very religious position – but it’s not an economic one. The realty is that labour is a market, employees are selling a resource that employers are buying. The trouble is that in the vast majority of roles it’s a buyers market – there is excessive supply compared to the demand. This is one reason for inflation and the reduction in living standards over the past 30 years (the first time since the foundation of the USA that a generation has had a reduction in living standards compared to their parents, ever, and that was already true at the height of hte 2005 boom – long before the current downturn).
The role unions play is to allow employees to bargain collectively and set a more fair market price for their product. This is in fact a very essential part of the free-market system. If you think the free market is only about producing goods and maximising corporate profits then you may think that anything that prevents salaries from being at the lowest possible level is bad for the economy (like the people who believe that unemployment rates of less than 20% is bad for the economy as well). However if you think of each member of society as being a part of the free market system then whether you’re a business owner or an employee you have to think in terms of maximising your individual profit.
Employees can do so by gaining rarer skills that have higher market value but this is not an option available to all and wouldn’t be good for the economy if it was (after all -if nobody is a factory worker anymore, then there aren’t factories). So for those in the bad end of the market, unions and collective bargaining is a powerful and much needed means of ensuring they get to sell their product (labour) for a decent price. If capitalism is working then that means EVERYTHING must be sold at a profit. In the labor market this means even the floor sweeper must be able to earn more than his expenses. Merely meeting them is not enough (and besides is indistinguishable from slavery), there must be profit – profit that can be saved, so it can be invested in new industries and the economy can keep growing.
One standard practise of unions through the years have been to picket their places of work during strikes, this too is needed. If the employers can simply replace the strikers then bargaining is impossible and your downward spiral (that can ONLY lead to economic collapse) is actually hastened rather than prevented.
Where the South African unions however are truly getting the irk of people up are in their habit of using intimidation to prevent people who do want to work from performing important tasks. This is even worse when the employer is the state – not because the state is better than a corporation or shouldn’t get the same need to bargain – but because it’s services are usually a matter of life and death.
There must be an understanding that people’s lives, and the safety of children are of higher consequence than profit. This is why for many years teachers, policemen and health professionals did not have the right to strike. The South African constitution has since 1994 changed this, granting striking as a constitutional right to all citizens (unionized or otherwise) and also removing the previous red-tape of needing permission from a court before being allowed to commence a strike action.
It was needed to provide bargaining means to these professions. Our countries history is filled with health professionals in particular working under terrible conditions for terrible pay – and not having any recourse to bargain for better. It was so bad that I’ve heard hospital administrators (the people who they bargain against) declare the need for them to have industrial action recourses. What the law lacks however, is the means to ensure that this required ability to bargain as a group does not endanger lives.
When teachers and medical professionals go on strike people’s lives are risked and children’s safety is at stake – that is not condoneable either. There was a time in the 90′s when we saw people dying in empty hospitals while their nurses and doctors Toyi-Toyi’d outside. This is a terrible situation. Things are not that bad now, as the hospitals and unions have agreed to maintain enough staff to ensure that ICU and ER’s continue to operate – shutting down only the less immediate threats during the strike. This is still an issue for people whose illness may BECOME fatal if not treated now but it’s an improvement.
There is no doubt that there have been acts of intimidation during this strike to try and prevent volunteers and other workers (union-members and otherwise) from fullfilling these critical roles during the strike. This is decidedly NOT allowed by the constitutional right to strike and must be condemned. But it’s quite wrong to focus only on those cases and then decry the entire strike.
Somebody on twitter declared the strike imorral because "you do not become a nurse or a teacher for the money". Perhaps not, but nurses and teachers also need to earn a living wage, otherwise the only people who would take these jobs are those who can’t get any others – and those are not the people we want doing them. Wage-rates are a product and the price is set by the market, strikes are a part of that process.
In short, like just about everything people have a firm and absolute opinion on – the opinions are ill-informed and wrong. The issue is complex and the balance is hard to strike (no pun intended). Without unions and industrial action – employees are at a market disadvantage that sets the price of their product lower and lower (ultimately below cost) – and that destroys economies, on the other hand – ensuring that balance cannot be done at the cost of human lives !
So is there a solution ? Well to an extent part of it must consist of preventing strike actions in the first place. It is my opinion that nurses, doctors and teachers do perhaps the most crucial work in the country and their wages must represent that. They are striking for 8% but their basic rate ought to be some 800% higher than it is. Pay them well, really well, in the first place – and the likelihood of strikes are greatly reduced.
That is of course only a partial sollution – it is no better for the economy to give the employees 100% power than it is if the employers have it. The current system is still so sided toward employers (including the state) that even if the strikers get every demand they will still have far less than what their jobs ought to have. A first step ought to be the implementation of a different payscale for these roles to put them on salaries comensurate to the importance of their work. Ironically if you do this – you remove the need for unions.
In markets where labor does earn good incomes you rarely see unionization. IT workers and stock-brokers don’t have or need unions. We don’t need them because our labor rate can be effectively bargained on an individual basis. Our employers do not have absolute power because we can always get another job (and probably a better one), but we don’t have absolute power either because if we fired our ability to do so is diminished. That is the best balance to get.
There is probably no way to ever get that for floorsweepers and tea-ladies but it is an absolute shame on our government that we don’t have it for teachers and nurses. If set up the system to do so – then we won’t have, or need, strikes. We can then actually prohibit these roles from striking – and it won’t be a travesty because once the system IS like that, it becomes almost impossible to change it.
In short, we are seeing the problems we have right now because we’ve allowed crucial roles to be sold at a major disadvantage in the market. Thus unionised action is the only way for these people to bargain about the price. If we wish to end strikes – we must correct this and make the market for these roles comensurate to the need for them.
