UNIONS….Mark Thoma ponders the future of unions in the United States:
The union question is a hard one for me. I don’t believe that the degree of market power workers and firms bring to the bargaining table is in balance. “Superstars” at the upper end of the income distribution have too much market power, and firms have too much market power at the lower end of the income distribution, where the lower end starts at fairly high levels of income.
Unions are one potential answer for workers at the lower end of the income distribution, but is a return to unions the best solution to the market power imbalance? Should we return to the past, or should we try to use the changing political landscape as an opportunity to build better institutions for both workers and firms, institutions that offer workers the same degree of bargaining power that unions provide, and the the same degree of income, health, and retirement security, but do so more efficiently? We already know how unions work, pretty much, but can we do better?
“Better institutions” would be great. Unions are obviously a mixed blessing, and in any case the political obstacles to increased union power seem pretty insurmountable these days. But what’s the alternative? What better institutions for workers might we construct?
