Thursday letters: Unions help all workers

All that is required to make unions necessary is for the general public to believe that they are not. Public opinion being contrary to unions is a symptom of a lack of understanding of the inevitable tensions between the interests of capital and labor.

It is generally in the interests of the owners and managers of for-profit organizations to keep costs down. It is in the interests of workers to have high wages and benefits such as health insurance and pensions. It is in the interests of society to have the high demand for goods and services that can be brought about by workers having both high wages and job security. The recent failure of wages to rise as the economy has improved can be traced in part to the continuing decline of unions.

In the days of a strong union presence across major industries, the unions not only increased the pay of their own members, but also set a standard of wages and benefits across non-union workplaces. Individual workers have little ability to bargain for a higher wage, no protection against arbitrary treatment and no chance of influencing benefits such as health insurance and pensions. In solidarity, they can be strong.

West Columbia

This story was originally published April 22, 2015 at 7:30 PM with the headline "Thursday letters: Unions help all workers."