The Washington Post has long expressed outrage over the fact that unionized auto workers can get $28 an hour. Therefore it is hardly surprising to see editorial page writer Charles Lane with a column complaining that “the United Auto Workers sell out nonunion auto workers.”
The piece starts out by acknowledging that the AFL-CIO opposes tax provisions and trade agreements (wrongly called free trade agreements — apparently Lane has not heard about the increases in patent and copyright protection in these pacts) that encourage outsourcing. He could have also noted that it has argued for measures against currency management and promoted labor rights elsewhere, also measures that work against outsourcing. And it would be appropriate to note in this context its support for measures that help the workforce as a whole, like Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance and the Affordable Care Act.
But in spite of this seeming support for the workforce as a whole, Lane decides he is going to prove to his readers that the United Auto Workers supports outsourcing. His smoking gun is the argument that if the union had agreed to lower pay for its workers at the Big Three, then they might shift fewer jobs to Mexico.
Lane’s water pistol here is shooting blanks. As he himself notes in the piece, even the non-union car manufacturers are shifting jobs to Mexico. They have cheaper wages there; companies will therefore try to do this. Essentially, Lane is arguing that unions sell out non-union workers by pushing for higher wages for their workers because if unionized workers got low pay in the United States, there would be less incentive to look overseas for cheap labor. That may be compelling logic at the Washington Post, but probably not anywhere else in the world.
It is worth noting that the Washington Post has never once run either an opinion piece or news article on the protectionist measures that allow US doctors to earn on average twice as much as their counterparts in other wealthy countries. This costs the country nearly $100 billion a year in higher healthcare costs, or just under $800 a household.
It is probably also worth noting that manufacturing compensation is on average more than 30 percent higher in Germany and several other European countries than in the United States. And unions in general are associated with lower levels of inequality, according to the International Monetary Fund.
But, hey, Charles Lane and the Washington Post are outraged that auto workers can earn $28 an hour.
Economist Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. A version of this post originally appeared on CEPR’s blog Beat the Press (12/3/15).
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Ernest Martinson
The Washington Post appears to be attacking symptoms of an underlying dilemma. Unions have a legitimate purpose in seeking higher wages for members. That is part of free association and the freedom to speak and act.
What should not be legal is forced unionism against either the wishes of an employer or even one employee. That is not freedom but freeloading.
Eric
How much does Charles Lane get paid (I hesitate to say earn) per hour?
potshot
Pretty hard to amass deposits to hedge funds from pension funds to be raided from employees making more than the minimum wage.
Bob C.
If the minimum wage had kept up with inflation since its inception, it would now be approximately $21 an hour. In the grand scheme of things, a $28 an hour wage really isn’t an awful lot. Fuck Charles Lane and the Washington Post for their continued assault on blue collar workers.
Jeb Bushmeister
Jeff Bezos is ghost writing?
JohnEllis02
Ask anyone in the socialist movement and they will tell you, big unions are pure corruption and should be broken up. Just as me and I will tell you, A day after I files a safety complaint with OSHA, the United Steel Workers Union had me among the unemployed. It was 1975, a full 40 years has past and things for a laboring man have gotten ten time worse.
William Barclay
It continues to puzzle me as to why our rulers have decided that the US should become a low wage economy – of course not for them. This is not the course of policy that will build loyalty to our country or even that will produce a growing economy. Why don’t they own up and give a rationale for this decision?