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Title: Beyond Unions and Collective Bargaining (Issues in Work and Human Resources (Paperback)) by Leo Troy ISBN: 0-7656-0470-1 Publisher: M. E. Sharpe Pub. Date: 01 March, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $29.95

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Average Customer Rating: 3 (1 review)

Rating: 3
Summary: Workers' rights cannot be based on free markets
Comment: The author, a noted labor expert, after three decades of union decline contends that most workers essentially have no need to be represented by unions in today's economy. He maintains that most workers "demand" an "individual representation system." But these claims can been seen as contradicting worker experiences.

US workers were finally able to overcome the array of political and economic forces stacked against them with the passage of the Wagner Act in 1935. Unions thereby interjected themselves into the governance of workplaces and forced the substitution of work rules and formal grievance procedures in place of capricious and unilateral employee relations, and in the process gained a measure of industrial justice for employees.

Now, according to Troy, workers don't need those protections. Curiously, the validity and effectiveness of Troy's individual labor relations system is based on the benign and/or self-correcting nature of markets which is a standard argument of laissez-faire capitalists. However, correctly functioning markets require participants who are relatively equal, certainly not subject to coercion like needing a regular paycheck, and can readily obtain adequate information about market workings and opportunities. That requirement is hardly met in US labor markets.

In addition, the rationality and newly found goodwill of managers are supposed to assure workers of fair dealings. Yet the huge consulting industry that guides management efforts in avoiding unionization at nearly all costs goes unmentioned by Troy. Due process in this new world of workplace harmony is the old paternalistic "open door" policy. Here the wise manager aids the employee in solving his personal "problems." This procedure is decidedly not an example of sharing workplace governance. Neutral arbitration is rejected as an unnecessary interference regardless of any enhanced justice possibilities.

Troy seems assured that a firm's investment in employees precludes unfair treatment. He neglects to indicate how wide is the stratum of employees whose value is so great as to be extended that protection. One suspects the coverage would be very narrow.

It should be noted, as the author does not, that the preamble to the Wagner Act states that individual employees are at a decided disadvantage in dealing with employers and in fact do not have actual freedom of contract. In addition a primary argument for the Wagner Act was its redistributive effects in maintaining strong economic demand. To Troy any such redistribution is unsound, whereas a distribution that rewards CEOs at rates hundreds of times greater than for workers is unquestioned as natural.

Troy's contention that workers overwhelming demand individual representation is not consistent with other contemporary literature. A recently published book, "What Workers Want," indicates that a majority of workers want actual representation in dealing with management. While they do not like the adversarialism of union-management dealings, they do not trust management to willingly surrender power in the workplace.

Professor Troy's book accurately notes that all is not well with unions. Beyond the severe decline, many unions exhibit one or more characteristics that are disturbing to workers such as distant and impenetrable bureaucracy, corruption, excessive dues and fees, ineffectiveness, etc. But, however imperfectly, unions have facilitated the voice of workers.

Professor Troy seems to accept the argument that competitiveness in markets supercedes other economic considerations such as workplace fair dealing. But there is nothing sacrosanct about the way markets favor the powerful. The NAFTA and the WTO are mechanisms that alter market balance in favor of investors and corporations. Unions are institutions that attempt to balance power relationships in workplaces as well as various markets.

It is a nineteenth century idea that laissez-faire capitalism is an optimum arrangement. America found out the hard way in the Great Depression just how dubious that idea is. Professor Troy does not make the case for substituting a rather nebulously conceived individual representation system for the collective representation of worker interests. His arguments simply fail to understand the empowerment that unions can bring to workers. Perhaps this book can be read as a reminder as to the fragility of worker rights.