Discussion Reset: Unions

Sometimes, American conversation takes off down a path and stays on that path indefinitely, without recognition of obvious realities that should redirect things a bit. Sometimes it's worthwhile to take a look at those realities and step away from those well-worn paths.

So it is with some of the discussion that is provoked when the subject of unions comes up. Unions get blamed for plenty of problems. The state of public education, for example. Supposedly, a big part of the problem with public schools in America is the behavior of teachers' unions: they are accused of being more concerned with protecting their jobs and making those jobs easier and more lucrative than they are with teaching children.

Unions are prime suspects when an explanation is needed for the decline of America's auto industry. They demanded fat pensions and medical benefits whose costs drag down the potential quality and value of every vehicle that rolls off a Detroit assembly line. They insisted on work rules that filled factories with unnecessary employees and kept them paid whether those factories were making cars or not.

Darts get thrown at unions even in sports discussions. They're at least partly to blame for major league baseball's steroid woes, you know. After all, baseball's owners and commissioner wanted to have a strict testing and punishment policy long before all the juicing got out of hand. The only reason they couldn't implement one is that the players' union wouldn't allow it.

So there's this general background noise that's humming the tune that unions, since they are watching out for their own interests and are unconcerned with bigger pictures and greater goods, are doing something that is somehow wrong.

And that is where some rethinking is in order.

Unions, in attempting to ensure that their members get the hugest possible money for the smallest possible effort, and that they don't have to do anything that troubles them, are not doing anything that is remotely evil.

What they are doing is exactly what unions are supposed to do. They are using the power of collective bargaining to negotiate arrangements that are best for their members. While individual members of a union may feel an obligation to interests other than their own, the unions themselves are supposed to be looking out for their members.

When the battle between union interests and employer interests produces results that are bad for third parties, that's not the fault of a union; it is the fault of the belief that unregulated combat between opposing interests necessarily produces positive results for anybody other than the winner of the battle.

If we are willing to see corporate employers attempt to make as much money as possible, it is only right that we are willing to see their employees' unions try to take as much of that money for as little work as possible. When we don't like the fallout, we shouldn't blame the unions, we should blame our trust that those struggles are going to be good for us.