User profile: PHJ

One of the blackest features of the cold war was the rise of the professional union-buster. Three-quarters of employers hire these consultants when faced with a union organizing campaign. As one of them admitted: "The only way to bust a union is to lie, distort, manipulate, threaten, and always, always attack." (Martin Jay Levitt, 1993, Confessions of a Union Buster). Take a careful look at the arguments on this page. Blaming workers for employers' decisions is not just illogical, it's a deeply conditioned response. The poor employers had to move offshore because of greedy workers. Please! Were their profits down? No - quite the opposite. Check the facts. Were wages increasing? No - quite the opposite. Check the facts. We have been lied to. It's been happening on this page and it's been happening at work. Well as the ordinary people of this country are showing, you can't fool all the people all the time.

"Unionization kills, but not before the industry and their union workers suffer mightly."
Sounds like you've had some personally embittering experiences, and I sympathise, but where are the auto-industry employers in your model? Who is it that shifts production offshore? Because they have to? No - because their peers force them to. Who brings the downwards pressure to bear on wages? According to the last BCG Global Wealth report, the world's total wealth increased by 7.5% last year. Did you get yours? Not me. In fact taken across the board NONE of this extra wealth found its way into the pockets of the "non-wealthy". We haven't had an increase in wealth at that level since 2001. Over the same period those with assets over $100,000 saw a healthy rise of 64%, amounting to $84.5 trillion. (The report covers 62 countries, and accounts for 96% of global GDP: see www.newunionism.net). Please, set your ideology aside and take an honest and fair look at the economy today. It's not a time for ideological positions. Who's suffering most? Who's working to protect them? And how can YOU become involved?

The argument that unions are somehow bad for the economy is an ideological one. See www.newunionism.net. This year's Global Competitiveness Index shows the same result as last year: high levels of unionism correlate positively with improved competitive performance. The top 5 countries for 2008 have an average union membership of 41.8%. The top 10 have an average of 37.6%. The top 20 have an average of 37.0%. The top 30 have an average of 32.9%. The top 40 have an average of 29.0%, and the top 50 have an average of 28.2%. That's right, the further down the scale you go, the lower the rate of unionism you're likely to find. The same pattern holds with the United Nations Human Development Index (again, see www.newunionism.net). More to the point, if unions help economies compete, think how they could help them if the model were based around cooperation!