Why conservatives should embrace labor unions to reduce economic inequality.

It is no coincidence that America has grown more unequal as its labor movement has lost power.

Economists since Adam Smith have recognized that, without organizing, workers cannot negotiate on equal terms with an employer — much less a large corporation.

In theory, workers individually negotiate their wages and benefits. In practice, they are presented a take-it-or-leave-it offer. Organized labor affords workers representation in the workplace and a more equal footing in negotiation, securing higher wages (up to 25 percent higher) and greater access to basic benefits like retirement, health and life insurance as well as paid leave.

In the American labor movement’s postwar heyday, one in three private-sector workers belonged to a union. Collective bargaining was a key driver of equality, winning better wages and terms of employment  —particularly for less-skilled workers.

But today barely one in 20 private-sector workers has a union card. As they lost their power to bargain collectively, workers’ wages stagnated, even as corporate profits skyrocketed. Low- and middle-income households saw their share of the nation’s income fall, and the wealth gap between the nation’s richest and poorest families more than doubled.

The steady erosion of unions over the past 50 years has been responsible for as much as one-third of the rise in inequality among men and one-fifth among women.

Inequality is not only about incomes. Representation is vital to securing respect in the workplace and opportunities for training and advancement. Union involvement in worker training produces superior training and better outcomes in the workplace. Union members also report greater input in and earlier notice of their work schedules than their non-union counterparts. They have more stable hours and are less likely to quit their jobs.

The wages, benefits and stability of union jobs strengthen workers’ families and communities. They ensure that men in union jobs are more likely to get and stay married, that union workers report greater life satisfaction, and that children in communities with a greater union presence are more upwardly mobile.

Laws create disadvantages

For all these reasons, workers must have a seat at the table. But America’s dysfunctional labor laws, and the unions they support, prevent that from happening.

The American system puts unionized companies at a steep disadvantage: higher labor costs reduce hiring and lower profitability, dampening investment. They also face strikes. In the manufacturing sector, for instance, work stoppages drove the decline of employment in the Rust Belt, even as non-union manufacturing employment grew. Overall, manufacturing employment was higher in 2019 than 40 years earlier for non-union workers, but more than 80 percent lower for union workers.

Our political parties show little interest in addressing the challenge. The Democratic Party relies on unions for campaign contributions, so its labor agenda is to push more workers into a broken system. Meanwhile, the Republican Party views labor as a partisan opponent and is content to watch unions decline.

Americans support unions

The American people see things differently. Nearly two-thirds of Americans approve of labor unions and nearly half of America’s non-union workers would vote for a union if given the opportunity — but they also want major reforms.

Workers say they would prefer representation in a cooperative relationship with an employer, even if that meant no power to make decisions, over representation with real power that management opposed. They place a premium on collaboration with management and input on corporate decision-making and prefer these alternative means of worker voice to traditional but confrontational ones like strikes.

Such options exist. Americans take for granted that our labor system is normal, but in fact it is an outlier. In many European countries, for instance, workers choose to join unions because they provide benefits like unemployment insurance, and they belong to worksite organizations that collaborate with management on work-related issues.

It is also common in Europe for union contracts to cover entire industries rather than individual employers. So instead of fighting a messy campaign to negotiate a contract that makes an employer less competitive, a union representing all workers in an industry could bargain with a trade association representing all employers in that industry and the agreement they reach would apply to everyone — from the Fortune 500 to the family business. The contracts could cover many more workers and be more generous without putting any particular employer at a disadvantage.

Of course, approaches that work in other countries cannot be imported wholesale to ours. But their examples should inspire us to think more broadly about what we might attempt, and to recognize a revitalized labor movement as an opportunity that should excite both liberals and conservatives.

Rather than allow inequality to fester, or try to solve it with government regulation and redistribution, organized labor affords workers a means to achieve for themselves a full share of the nation’s prosperity.

Wells King is research director of American Compass.