Local Government’s Role in Organized Labor
It’s not obvious that local government should play a role in organized labor. The relationship between employers and employees occurs in civil society. Perhaps organized labor should be left to the free assembly of social actors, not the work of government.
However, worker power becomes a matter of rights rather quickly. Let’s say that there were no Chambers of Commerce. In this world, businesses were unorganized because every entrepreneur is focused on growing her own individual business, and each is cash strapped in a way that precludes them paying dues or spending the extra resources to start a Chamber of Commerce. In this case, the local polity ought to step in for the sake of economic productivity and secure the stability of the business infrastructure by seeding the chamber of commerce. The polity has an interest in a vibrant civil society with sufficiently coordinated businesses, that’s why it provides roads and attractive downtowns. If the businesses needed a place to meet and organize in order to boost productivity and stability for the entire business community, a good use of public funds would be to provide a modest, dedicated space so that the Chamber of Commerce could form a material and cultural infrastructure to facilitate economic growth and freedom, and such work would secure everyone’s rights within civil society. This would make sense until the polity’s economy was sufficiently robust so that the Chamber of Commerce could afford to be self-sufficient in the dues of its members.
Similarly, in places where wages are depressed, wage theft is rampant, but workers are too fragile and unorganized to secure fair wages and working conditions because they are busy with individual problems, the government ought to step in as the labor organizer of last resort, including a worker center to provide a space for meetings and forums. For example, a few weeks ago, a healthcare worker asked me if I could help her figure out how to join a union. I do not have time to do the leg work for her; however, if there were a worker center with all of the information laid out, she could go, speak with a staff person who would guide her to the appropriate buffet of local unions she could think about joining.
You have a right to have a fair say in your self-determining life, including your work life, and not be shuttled from horrid work conditions to horrid work conditions. Yet individual employees cannot bargain for their conditions because of the imbalance of power between individual employees and employers, but organized laborers can bargain.
Dedicated spaces for these purposes are very important. There is a reason why we have VFW Halls. One reason is so that veterans can organize to secure their justice claims.
If we did not have libraries, do you understand how hard it would be to convince people that libraries are a necessary part of having a self-determining electorate and that the local government should pay for them? People would say, “Go to a coffee shop or a bookstore.” This is a similar situation.
We need government supported worker centers and a modest staff to manage them in order to secure labor rights, until there are enough unionized workers in the polity so that the center could sustain itself as an independent social force. It’s perfectly appropriate for the government to act as the labor organizer of last resort.
Here are examples of worker centers: