A large part of the conservative argument against the Employee Free Choice Act, now introduced in a Congress near you, has been the disingenuous but relatively effective claim that the legislation eliminates the secret ballot (it doesn't). But there is another line of rhetoric about the bill that seems ready to backfire. Here's the president of the Chamber of Commerce, Tom Donahue:
"You've got to go up and tell them what will happen [if the bill passes], that no one is going to add a single job in the United States. Will I put a job here where it'll get unionized in an illegal way? No, I'll put it somewhere else."
Mitt Romney has made similar statements, and here's the head of a communications-industry lobby arguing that the bill would "force jobs overseas."
In a climate where big business isn't exactly covered in glory and people are very concerned about job security and employment, is it a good idea for these men to argue that if they don't get the legislation they want, they're going to take their job and "put it somewhere else"? Note to Donahue, incidentally, if the law passes, it will not be illegal to organize unions by majority sign-up (nor, in fact, is it illegal now). But in any case, if you wanted to frame the argument on labor's behalf, you couldn't do much better than: Unions are offering folks higher paid jobs with better benefits and business is offering ... to outsource your job.
Of course, this isn't to deny the economic incentives behind these men's arguments. If the legislation passes, some firms are going to have to spend more on their employees, which will ideally come out of profits. But of course CEOs and investors who make millions of dollars will not want to lose any share of their profits, and some firms may try to cut costs by sending their jobs overseas. But here's the thing: Most of the workers that unions want to organize -- say, at a Wal-Mart -- don't really have jobs that can be outsourced. Many are in the service sector, the health sector, or transportation. Manufacturing, one major industry that is amenable to outsourcing, has been on the decline for years in the United States (in part because of outsourcing by corporations) and so it's hard to take seriously the threat that it will be outsourced more. The other factor to consider is that economic research suggests unions -- and a good union-management relationship -- increase worker productivity, which should improve the firm's overall financial situation and make cost-cutting less of a burden.
Ultimately, no one is "forcing" these companies to send jobs overseas, just as no one is forcing them to spend millions fighting against union organizers in Congress and in the workplace. It's wrong for them to claim otherwise in an attempt to blackmail the public.
-- Tim Fernholz
