Stop Picking on Scabs

UNIONS WARM many a Harvard student's heart. Mention "union" and an image of the worker getting just desserts rises up. Non-union labor? Scabs! Ignorant slobs who are unwittingly perpetuating the unjust power of exploitative capitalists!

Like The Crimson. Or James F. Hoge, a current fellow at the Institute of Politics. Both The Crimson and Mr. Hoge have been involved in protests recently: The Crimson's renovations contractor because it employed non-union labor; Hoge because he is the former publisher of The New York Daily News, infamous in liberal circles for attempting to "bust" unions at the tabloid.

But while unions may have an important role to play in protecting workers, Harvard union sympathizers should think again before yelling "scab" or "union buster." Although idealized as a force for the good of labor, there is a dark side to America's unions. And to the Daily News unions in particular.

ALTHOUGH "UNION BUSTING" is the most common claim against businesses that hire replacement workers to stay afloat, that charge should not be used lightly. Often, as in the case of The Daily News, businesses only hire replacement workers after unions have walked off the job and refused to relax ludicrously outdated union rules regarding work practices. At The Daily News, management offered wage increases in exchange for an end to expensive practices which Hoge says "systematically killed off several New York papers." Only when the offers were refused and it was clear that The Daily News would have to either close up or hire temporary workers did The Daily News employ "scabs."

From all the fuss raised in New York this past winter, one might have thought that the Tribune Company, the parent organization of The Daily News, had tried to defraud the News workers of the last 10 cents of their lawful wages. Not really. Tribune and News executives wanted to end entirely illogical make-work rules which Hoge says were costing the paper millions of dollars a year, which it could ill afford.

For example, Hoge cites union rules under which drivers of newspaper delivery trucks worked five days a week, but got paid overtime for weekends they never worked. Many of them made over $100,000 a year. Press operators had only eight prescribed actions which they could perform without being paid overtime. These took them at most an hour to complete each day, after which they either did nothing or got paid overtime to do other work.

Make-work union rules are also common in other industries. Morgan Reynolds, a labor economist at Texas A&M, notes that in the railroad business, one of the country's most heavily unionized industries, firemen are often mandatory on diesel locomotives, which do not require them. On non-union railroads, two crewmembers suffice to do the job for which union railroad must employ five. Often, union rules require that railroad workers receive a full day's pay for a few hours work.

Until 1987, some Burlington Northern employees received, again by union rules, "hazard pay" for going through "Indian Territory." No wonder railroads have been losing ground to trucking and other, cheaper methods of interstate transport. Or that giant rigs have become a nuisance problem on our nation's highways.

SUCH UNPRODUCTIVE WORK practices should surprise no one. Classical and neo-classical economists have always held that unions, because they restrict what workers can do and make it more difficult for management to fire inefficient workers, harm productivity.

Recently, however, a new body of scholarship has attempted to show that unions actually improve productivity. But Leo Troy, an economist at Rutgers, attributes these increases in productivity to management's tendency to use non-labor resources more efficiently to counteract artificial union wage increases.

Troy compares this to the phenomenon apparent when the minimum wage is increased. When that occurs, businesses tend to hold back in hiring less skilled workers and attempt to make do with those they have. This substitution translates into an apparent increase in productivity, but leaves less skilled non-union workers out in the cold. Thus, unions also can have the effect of freezing out those on the bottom rung of an industry's job ladder.

In a book published in 1987, Reynolds argued that the cost to national economy of unions in 1984 was at least $80 billion, or 2 percent of GNP. He cites the example of the coal industry, whose workers have become increasingly hostile to unions as their working conditions have improved. Although unionized mines have basically the same working conditions as non-union mines, they have a lower productivity rate.

ANOTHER HARMFUL EFFECT of unions occurs because of their "democratization" of an industry's workforce. The wage gap between skilled and less skilled union workers tends to decrease, penalizing the more productive and ambitious workers. This phenomenon wrought havoc on the Swedish economy, making any advanced training or higher education virtually useless.

Troy cites the example of the United Auto Workers, which came close to splitting into two unions in the late 1950s because of this levelling effect. Ultimately, the more skilled workers gained the right to veto power over any collective bargaining pact--a necessary, but not necessarily democratic, move if meritocracy was to remain in the auto industry.

The claim about "democratizing" the work force and giving workers greater leverage in improving working conditions does have some merit. But the most despicable management practices and workplace dangers in the United States have become less of a problem in the last 50 years, even in the non-union workplace.

Since unions are able to control industries only if they have a majority of the workers as members (that is, only if they are able to monopolize wage and hiring decisions), intimidation into joining unions is common. And while the Supreme Court ruled in 1985 that union members must be allowed to quit unions at any time, it is common practice for unions to claim, when they go out on strike, that their "rules" prohibit members from quitting in order to retain their jobs.

One such case is (surprise!) that of the Newspaper Guild in the Daily News Strike. At least 140 members of the union face heavy fines for attempting to quit during the strike, according to David Kendrick of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Fund (NRWLDF). The NRWLDF is representing eight of these workers before the National Labor Relations Board. Kendrick says that the NRWLDF is currently involved in more than 400 cases, many of them involving similar cases of union coercion.

It is practices such as these that have soured many American workers' views of unions. Violence against non-union workers is common in labor disputes, especially when unions are on strike. And the threat of violence against "scab" workers who cross picket lines necessitates the use of police to rule out such violence, costing taxpayers large amounts of money.

So the next time you see someone crossing a picket line, don't join in and yell "scabs!" The "scabs" are just trying to feed their families.