DESPERATE MEASURES
Poverty-preying unions look to organize day laborers yet fail to keep them from the poorhouse
BY DOUG FRENCH

Doug French, associate editor of Liberty Watch: The Magazine is an executive vice president of a Nevada bank. He is the 2005 recipient of the Murray N. Rothbard Award from the Center for Libertarian Studies. Other stories by Doug French

How desperate are the unions when they agree to trying to organize a network of immigrant day laborers? In an Associated Press story printed recently in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Peter Prengaman writes that the AFL-CIO has inked an agreement with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. 

Ironic, don't you think, given that unions were originally created to exclude competing immigrant and black laborers from trade jobs? But union membership, as a percentage of the workforce, has fallen dramatically. In 1948, 31.8 percent of workers were union; by 2004 the percentage had fallen to 12.5 percent. 

One only needs to read the financial section of the paper to see what unions have done to the U.S. auto and airline industries. Once a metaphor for financial power, General Motors is now trying desperately to partner up with other automakers to avoid bankruptcy. 

The agreement between the union and the day labor network "does not clear the way for day laborers to become union members," Prengaman writes, "but both sides said it could be a step in that direction." Well, of course. "The agreement is a strategic move for the AFL-CIO," says day labor expert Abel Valenzuela. "They are thinking about how to maintain and increase their ranks."

Now it's a little hard to imagine that all those guys hanging around the various Star Nursery locations could one day be Teamsters or the like. These folks seem to be the ultimate free agents. An employer pulls up, says he needs some work done, a price is agreed upon, and away they go. What's next, hookers wearing (and peeling off) the union label [insert the old joke about seniority at the union whorehouse here]? 

Prengaman's article points out that homeowners are the primary employers of day laborers. But if the average I-got-some-trees-I-need-planted homeowner is confronted with hiring someone with all the union rules attached (for instance: minimum wage requirements, mandatory breaks, minimum number of hours, job classification restrictions that would force a homeowner to hire two or more workers rather than one, etc.), the demand for these workers will fall appreciably. A few highly skilled day laborers would benefit, while lower skilled laborers would be hired less often, being priced out of the market by the union requirements.

Union membership has declined, as the author points out, due to "globalization, automation and the transition from an industrial-based economy to one that is service driven." Another way to say this is unions drive up the cost of labor to the point that it's uneconomic for a business to have a union workforce. 

But, when you can stick the taxpayer with ever-increasing union demands, well, unions can thrive. Which is why in 2004 less than 8 percent of private firm employees were union and over 36 percent of government workers were. 

Those on the left often champion the cause of unions because without them they say employers would pay workers virtually nothing. Employees would be forced to work 100 hours a week, and like it. 

Of course this is nonsense; non-union employees are paid a wage commensurate with their marginal rate of productivity. Employers don't set wages. Economist Walter Block explains that if wages are really set by employers, then "why is it that employees such as Shaquille O'Neal, Brad Pitt, Brittney Spears and Bill Gates earn mega bucks?" Their productivity is very high. 

When unions raise the wages over productivity rates, in the short term its employees benefit, but in the long term "they create business failures and rust belts," Block says. 

Industries like banking, accounting and computers are not unionized and yet wages are high. Obviously it is not unions that are keeping workers from the poorhouse. Economist Block points out that if present trends continue, private sector unions will disappear. And then all that will be left to organize are government workers. 

But, what about that argument that unions are required because greedy capitalists would abuse and exploit their workers? After all, government workers toil for enlightened public servants, right? 

"But what is crystal clear is that the existence of these labor organizations cannot be reconciled with the usual leftist rhetoric about mean-spirited private capitalists and benevolent politicians," Block writes. "Were this the case socialists would defend private unions only. However, they of course do not. This is yet one more bit of evidence attesting to their irrationality."

Unionizing day laborers will cause homeowners to save money by doing their own yard work. Unfortunately, they'll need that money to pay taxes if either Dina Titus or Jim Gibbons is able to gain the votes to unionize state workers. LW