The greatest benefit from hooking up American unions with European counterparts amy be reaching Americans with some perspective on how unnatural it is to be a 9% unionized business country unlike 90% unionized like Europe -- something which I have only caught on to in my late 50s. Americans across the board have no idea how absolutely necessary it is to bargain collectively to get half what is coming to them. I emailed the message below to 1000 pundits, politicians and professors last week:
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Indexing federal minimum wages of past eras (in current dollars) for per-capita economic growth since, yields: *
a) 1980: $7.00 x 145% = $10/hour;
b) 1974: $7.50 x 160% = $12/hour;
c) 1968: $8.50 x 180% = $15/hour;
d) 1956: $7.00 x 235% = $16/hour;
e) 1939: $4.00 x 400% = $16/hour.

An oral surgeon extracts a tooth these days for $200+. A 1950s dentist might have charged only $5:
a) Multiplying that by 7 for inflation = $35;
b) Multiplying by 2-1/2 times for 50 years of expanding per-person, economic output = $90;
c) Multiply by whatever aptitude an oral surgeon today brings to the job that a dentist 50 years ago did not and we should probably leave a tip.

All of which is to say that labor has been taking home less and less of it's fair share of productivity over a long stretch of time -- American labor that is.

The book "The State of Working America" demonstrates that folks bringing advanced education to the stateside labor market (computer programmers, etc.) have not been running off with a disproportionate share of income. Federal stats disclose that the top 5% of earners have been scooping up a disproportionate share of -- America's -- growth: folks who bring a unique talent or product to market. European CEOs to take an example of a heavily unionized economy take home around 5% of what their American counterparts earn.

It's the "self-reliant" pioneer spirit that enfeebles American labor, stupid! If you squeeze a toothpaste tube at the bottom - where there is no back pressure -- the goo oozes through the middle - where inside and outside pressures equalize -- and flows out the top -- where nothing gets in its way.

Should America's "self-reliant majority" ever wake from their go-it-alone complacency and catch on to the decades of growth that have passed all of us by, the kindest and gentlest way to organize 90% or ourselves overnight would be to employ 51% of the vote in Congress to a mandate German style, sector wide labor agreements from sea to shining sea.

The fast food, instant on, plug and play appeal of universal unionization to hurry, hurry Americans would be bolstered by the knowledge that said system was designed by and has been operated for half a century by those moderate, methodical folks who send us VWs, BMWs and Benzs.

The moderate to conservative majority of American workers will have little wish to import Europe's wild welfare schemes (which do not produce an American-style underclass over there seemingly because people get paid enough to work over there) nor the continent's business strangling over-regulation which hinders "creative destruction". America could, very quickly, lead the world again in both wealth sharing and healthy economics if we could just get ORGANIZED.

Denis Drew
Chicago
ddrew4u@aol.com

[* www.eh.net/hmit/gdp -- Economic History Services' GDP figures use the Census's CPIU-X1 inflation measure and 1996 dollars; simple arithmetic converts these numbers to current dollars and the BLS's, roughly 25% higher, CPIU inflation rate for compatibility with my minimum wage chart.]

Dennis,

I agree with your basic view on the subject: American workers are getting screwed royally becasue we're not organized. But you have to organize people based on where they actually are, not where you want them to be. I'm not familiar with German labor law, but the likelihood of the mega-master contract law passing is just infinitessimally small. American business has hammered and hammered and hammered away at workers to persuade us that collective action is evil. Did you hear, for instance, when in last night's debate Kucinich described his Single Payer health care plan and Larry King said "Isn't that socialism?"

We've got a very, very long way to go and the history of social movements in this country is that the movement leads the law -- it was true with the Wagner Act, with Women's Suffrage, with Civil Rights. Labor is not strong enough yet in this country to force bosses to their knees in the way you're describing.

A couple of points: The percentage of European workers who belong to unions has also declined; it is about the same in France as it is here. But those unions still have a tradition of direct political action that enables them to have a greater impact on wages generally than American unions do through the filter of the market.

Second, European workers are facing the same challenges from globalization and capital flight as U.S. workers, compounded by employers' attempts to take advantage of European economic integration to undermine labor standards. Kim Moody reviews this in Workers In A Lean World: Unions In The International Economy, which is a few years old but still very informative.

That book also details the history of international labor solidarity since the end of WWII. Moody makes an important point: U.S. unions' participation in international labor bodies can be a mixed bag,since the U.S. and Japanese labor confederations usually act as a conservative weight in international bodies, particularly when they are major financial contributors.

But just as almost any collective bargaining agreement is better than no agreement at all, any real solidarity is better than none--or a simon-pure critique of what is because it isn't all it could be.

Finally, I just can't picture the toothpaste simile, even though I brush my teeth every day, Who is squeezing what, exactly?