The Conservative Case for Unions
There are various articles that talk about this subject that are worth reading and I've included links to a couple, but conservatism (and the country) would benefit greatly from rethinking its stance on unions. I changed my mind about unions when I saw this graph shown by a guest speaker in my corporations class at law school. Growing up I've been affected by the old cultural notion that unions are linked to communism (ironic because a union in Poland supported by anti-communist American unions was instrumental in causing the collapse of the USSR) and that unions are corrupt and result in lazy workers. Certainly, specific unions have done problematic things, but as I've researched I've come to believe that is more the result of outdated union laws than an inherent problem with unions themselves.
As I learned about this issue, I found myself agreeing with the assertion that the collapse of unions has growth of government and of the welfare state, which has stepped in to regulate workplaces and provide job security as unions have died out. As a conservative I don't like big government and I don't like the idea of Americans being forced to live on handouts. If only there was a democratic, market orientated way to deal with that without the government trying to control everything . . . oh wait yeah unions are exactly that. With unions you don't need the government controlling stuff, you don't need a large welfare state, and you have communities strengthened by a strong civic institution and the American dream is revived. It all sounds pretty conservative to me. Like a conservative dream tbh.
I think the largest impediment to conservatives embracing the idea of unions is an informative one. Conservatism by its nature moves slowly and resists change, for better or worse. I believe that many conservatives, especially older ones, are still operating under the idea that the economy-is-doing-great-there-is-no-problem-so-why-make-such-a-big-deal-out-of-this-you're-such-an-entitled-whiner. I know I was. I think the antidote to this is working to spread information like this picture below as well as statistics on how wages have stagnated for around fifty years while the cost of living has gone up. With the economy trending the way it is, it's the perfect time to do this. It will be hard but minds can be changed, we just have to remember that the real fight isn't left vs right, it's top versus bottom.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/07/the-conservative-case-for-unions/528708/https://www.wsj.com/articles/america-needs-a-conservative-labor-movement-11600379608?mg=prod/com-wsj
Posted May 4, 2022, 1:57 AM UTC