Non-Industrial Unions

One of the common threads I hear in conversations with friends, even pro-labor friends, is that they don't understand so-called professional unions, white collar unions, or unions for jobs outside the blue collar world.

This reasoning has always struck me as a bit off, if for no other reason than that the underlying issues of corporate v. employee power don't change simply because of what the work-a-day task is. In fact, in many ways, the service economy is the area most in need of unionization.

To realize that, you needn't look much further than a blog post by a college student in my homestate of Montana. James Greer, the author of the post, is currently juggling three jobs to pay for school. At one of these jobs, he is subjected to minimum wage pay and hate speech from his boss. If this story doesn't, in three lines, encapsulate what is wrong with our economy in many ways, I'm not sure what would.

And that's what is important to realize about James' story. Workers in non-union service industries are often left as alone and intimidated as non-union industrial workers. Two years ago, I worked in a kitchen were my boss would refer to women who had abortions as evil, while women were in the room. I don't know whether any of those women had ever had abortions. I do know that the manager was out-of-line for the workplace. I also know that employees aren't exactly going to pick a fight over being called evil or immoral when the other option is being empty-walleted and hungry.

Unions aren't fundamentally in place to protect those who engage in back-breaking physical labor. They're in place to restore a semblance of balance between employer and employee. That's a balance as necessary in the store room, stock room, class room or kitchen as it is on the assembly line.

--Matt Singer

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