I've been thinking a lot about Chris Hayes' essay on the obsession with "bad unions." Unions are, fundamentally, dumb creatures. Just as corporations seek profits, unions seek gains for their members. Within that generalization are a fair number of specific deviations, ranging from the respectful treatment of workers at Costco to the corporate alliances sought by SEIU, but it's a fairly good rule on the overall.
Now, there are times when you don't want a dumb beast pursuing its biological imperatives. When insurance companies turn profits by pricing out the sick, for instance, that's a bad thing But so much as you may want to argue against corporate excesses, most agree that you do want a critical mass of companies pursuing profit and thus experimenting, innovating, developing new products and distribution strategies.
And that's much what union supporters believe. Only, unlike in the corporate world where the critical mass is safe and the excesses need be tamed, labor has long ago lost its critical mass of unions pushing for the rights, wages, and dignity of workers. So while I agree that it's a problem when teacher's unions agitate against pay boosts for teachers working in high-poverty areas, it's not near my top concern when it comes to the state of labor relations, or what sort of commentary I should produce on union issues. The loss of bargaining and political power among the working class in this country is a major problem. But the focus that educated, well-off elites give to the small-scale excesses of individual unions, and their total inattention to the macro picture, would be astonishing, were it not so obviously self-serving. When you hear more about the health insurance of the UAW than you do about the $1.6 billion compensation given to insurance industry CEOs, something's gone terribly, terribly wrong in the commentariat.
