By Matthew Benzmiller

On August 2^nd The Washington Post published an article -- really a diatribe -- by Kimberly Phillips-Fein about the history of union culture in America. 

Ms. Phillips-Fein laments the fallen labor-union participation rates in America, and blames a selfish pro-business culture and America's notoriously stubborn individualist streak, writing, “Americans are deemed individualists, with self-interest trumping any sense of the common good.” 

This flagrant mischaracterization of the Americans who cherish traditional Western values of individualism is not only an ad-hominem attack, but also in fact completely false.  Most people who value individualism tend to lean politically to the right, and conservatives donate more to charity than those on the left.  

She expands on her mischaracterization, blaming individualism for an alleged "history of employer intransigence and hostility to [organized] labor.”

Phillips-Fein points to events from the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries as incidents of employer violence, meanwhile union-instigated violence has continued in the 21^st century, including towards conservative media figures, stabbing a worker who refused to strike in 1997, and other far more recent occasions than Phillips-Fein’s almost century old examples. 

Of course, unions have a long history of instigating and threatening violence. See, for example, the 1886, Haymarket Riot.

Phillips-Fein correctly writes:

Over time, manufacturers closed their plants in such union strongholds as Detroit and Philadelphia, Camden and Trenton, relocating first to the American South and then eventually beyond U.S. borders — to Mexico, the Caribbean and farther overseas. 

Yet she utterly fails at understanding why they made these moves from areas like Detroit. Manufacturers left Detroit because unions destroyed its economy. When unions demand wages greater than the productivity of the company can sustain, businesses risk bankruptcy (exactly what happened to General Motors). 

Unions are not exempt from the laws of supply and demand, but Dr. Phillips-Fein wrongly thinks they are. States that have a more free-market environment will attract more businesses. 

Of course, Dr. Phillips-Fein’s editorial would be incomplete without her implying that union wages are higher than non-union wages. This continues to show her fundamental misunderstanding of labor economics. As Heritage Foundation Labor Economist James

Sherk puts it:

Since 1973, employee productivity has grown 81 percent; average compensation has increased 78 percent. Economists from across the political spectrum agree that businesses pay their workers according to their productivity.

To top off her diatribe, Phillips-Fein accuses the business community of wielding political power as a means of keeping unions from forming, even though Right to Work states completely allow for the formation of unions. What is more concerning are labor unions that use their connections with governments to force involuntarily unionized workers to pay dues, and to steal from the public purse. 

A joint Heritage Foundation/Nevada Policy Research Institute study found, “Nationwide, if union membership was simply made voluntary, state and local governments would have been able to save between $127 and $164 billion in 2014 alone.”

The irony in Phillips-Fein’s editorial is apparent in its title: “How employers broke unions by creating a culture of fear.” The ones that seem to be full of fear are union advocates. They are losing the power they hold so dear state by state. In non-right-to-work states, employees may be forced into a collective bargaining agreement they did not want and did not sign up for.

By comparison, in states that have right-to-work laws, workers can choose if they want to participate in a union. Right-to-work laws do not prevent workers from unionizing in any form; it only prevents unions from forcibly extracting dues and fees from non-consenting members. 

Government sanctioned -- indeed government mandated - forced unionization is a flagrant violation of workers' First Amendment rights of speech and assembly. And it is an injustice that goes unlamented by union apologist like Phillips-Fein.  

What a shock.