The Munk Debates Podcast - Be it Resolved, workers of the world, unite!

Episode Date: May 17, 2022

Unions are making a comeback. Frustrated with pay, benefits, job security, and working conditions, Amazon workers in Staten Island and Starbucks employees across New York have opted to join unions and initiate collective bargaining with their employers, inspiring a wave of pro-union discussions and meetings among big retail workers across Canada and the US. Many believe that America's dwindling union membership – down to 11.2% of the workforce compared a near 30% high in the 1950's – is to blame for rising income inequality and wage stagnation. Organized labour, they argue, is an important tool in fighting corporate influence. They also strengthen workers' rights, increase private and public sector employee bargaining power, and prevent companies from making low-income jobs obsolete via automation or offshore employment. In short, fewer unions mean lower pay for everybody. Other economists argue that unions are not the answer to our current economic woes. Organized labour, they maintain, inflates the wages of a privilege few, while reducing economic output by tying job security and pay to seniority instead of productivity and skill, thereby punishing high-value workers. The 21st century, rather, demands a workforce that champions flexibility, individual bargaining power, and risk-taking on behalf of its workers. The answer to income inequality is to do away with unions and put more power back into the hand of the individual worker. Arguing for the motion is Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, former Chief Economist to the U.S. Secretary of Labor Arguing against the motion is Arthur Laffer, founder and chairman of Laffer Associates, member of Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board (1981–1989), and former economic advisor to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign HEIDI SHIERHOLZ: “Unions reduce the wage suppressing effects of corporate power by providing countervailing power to workers” ARTHUR LAFFER: “Inequality is exacerbated by unions. And the reason people move to non-union states is because they get better jobs and they don't have to pay union dues.” Sources:  MSNBC, ABC, AP   The host of the Munk Debates is Rudyard Griffiths - @rudyardg.   Tweet your comments about this episode to @munkdebate or comment on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/munkdebates/ To sign up for a weekly email reminder for this podcast, send an email to [e-mail].   To support civil and substantive debate on the big questions of the day, consider becoming a Munk Member at https://munkdebates.com/membership Members receive access to our 10+ year library of great debates in HD video, a free Munk Debates book, newsletter and ticketing privileges at our live events.This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue - https://munkdebates.com/ Senior Producer: Ricki Gurwitz Editor: Adam Karch  Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

These statues have to come down. It's always been a pandemic of the unvaccinated. The problem now is it's a pandemic of the willfully unvaccinated. Falling birth rates are good. They're good for our planet. They're good for our societies. We're not responsible for the escalation with Russia. We're not the ones who invaded Ukraine.

I don't think it's fair to portray people of color as victims. It is a very dangerous time in American politics. Welcome to the Monk Debates. Every episode we provide you with a civil and substantive debate on the big issue of the day to arm you, the listener, with enough information to make up your own mind. Today's debate, be it resolved. Workers of the World unite. Today, Amazon workers at a Staten Island warehouse successfully voted to unionize.

That is the first time that has ever happened at any of the company's U.S. facility. History made in Buffalo, New York, Starbucks workers at the Elmwood Avenue location, voted to unionize. It's significant because that is the first Starbucks to form a union at a company-operated store ever in America. Employees at the Cumberland Mall's Apple store in Atlanta made history as the first retail store to file for a union election in the Apple universe. We want every other industry, every other business to know that things are changed. We're going, we're going to unionize. We're not going to quit our jobs anymore. And, you know, this is a prime example of what the power that people have when they come together.

Hello, I'm your moderator, Rudyard Griffiths. I'm frustrated with low pay, minimal benefits, lack of job security, dangerous working conditions. Many workers at big retailers across the United States have opted in recent months and years to join unions and initiate collective bargaining with their employers. Many believe that the dwindling union membership in advanced economies around the world is to blame for a whole host of societal problems well beyond the workplace, including income inequality and wage stagnation. The truth of the matter is we would not have a middle class in this country today without the trade

union movement. And what's happened over many years as a result of terrible trade policies, as a result of not raising the minimum wage, as a result of anti-union activity, making it so hard for workers to form unions, wages. today are stagnant. Organized labor, proponents of unions argue, is an important tool in fighting corporate power, strengthening workers' rights, increasing public and private sector employee bargaining power, and preventing companies from making low-income jobs obsolete via automation. In short, fewer unions means lower pay and worse work conditions for everyone.

Others argue that unions are not the answer to our current economic challenges. Organized labor inflates the wages of a privileged few, the lucky members of mainly public sector unions, while reducing economic output by tying job security and pay seniority to longevity of union membership instead of real outcomes that advance our collective wealth like increased productivity and greater economic output. On this installment of the monk debates, we challenge the essence of these arguments by debating the motion, be it resolved. Workers of the world unite. Arguing for the motion is Heidi Scherholtz, president of the Economic Policy Institute and the former chief economist to the U.S. Secretary of Labor. Arguing against the motion is Arthur

Laffer, the founder and chairman of Laffer Associates, a member of President Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board and a former economic advisor to Donald Trump in his 2016 presidential campaign. Heidi, Arthur, welcome to the Monk Debates. Thank you so much for having us. I'm delighted to be here. Me too. I'm very pleased to be here. Thank you. I love the Monk debates. Well, I'm looking forward to this conversation today, too. It's such an important topic. Economies around the developed world are struggling to recover from COVID. One of the big impacts of this pandemic has been on the economy, on our jobs.

This return to work that we're all going through, just an incredible. disruption of the labor force. So we're asking ourselves today, what is the role of unions in this fast and quick-changing landscape of work, past, present, and future? We're going to dig into that today with a simple motion. To the point, let's have a little fun with it. Be it resolved, workers of the world unite. Heidi, you're speaking in favor of the motion. Let's put three minutes on our debate clock and get your opening statement, please. I think it's. It's a lot of useful to just to to start with the all right we know that we have a huge problem in our economy so the four decades pre-COVID were marked by dramatically rising inequality and stagnant wages for working

people for most of that period and I think one key thing there is that that was not inevitable That dynamic, it's not just sort of the natural outcome of a modern economy. The fact that that happened was the result of the policy choices we made that shifted power away from workers and two corporations. And a big example of that, and like, obviously our topic for this conversation is the decline of unionizations. Unions wouldn't have declined over this period. if we had made different policy choices.

And I hope that we can sort of dig in on some of the specifics about that. But I want to, in this opening, just really dig in on what it is about unions that has meant that their decline has been a major contributor to rising inequality. And here's what it is in a nutshell. So people in unions make more than similar people who are. are not in unions. So when you do the sort of quote unquote controlling for what industry people are in, their occupation, where they live, their demographics, people who are in unions make about 10% more right now than similar people who aren't in unions. And that's that's non-trivial. That's a big effect. And then the other one other key thing is that people in unions also have substantially

better benefits than similar people who aren't in union. So union workers are more likely to have employer provided health insurance, employer provided retirement plans, or more likely have paid time off, sort of an on and on. What that means is that total compensation is much higher for union workers than their non-union counterparts. And then another key factor that I think is sometimes ignored in these conversations is that unions actually also increase the wages of workers who are not in unions. And the way that happens is that when unions are strong, they essentially set standards that non-union employers have to follow in order to attract and keep the workers that they need. So like if I'm a non-union employer and I want to, I know that workers that I want to,

could go around the corner to a union employer and get the better, you know, wages and benefits there, I actually have to pay those better wages and benefits in order to get and keep the workers that I need. So that's how that functions. And when you put those two dynamics together, like, you know, the combination of the direct effect of unions on people who are covered by a collective bargaining agreement, and then this indirect effect on non-union workers, that's sometimes called the spillover effect of unions. That together means that deunionization over the last four decades explains about one-third of the growth in inequality between regular workers and the highest-paid workers over that period. So what the research shows is that de-unionization explains a very large

chunk of what is wrong with our economy and why our economy isn't delivering for everyone in it. And I'll just end by saying that we are just not going to have a robust middle class. We are not going to have an economy where the fruits of growth are not just captured by the already affluent without a strong union movement. Thank you, Heidi, for those opening remarks. a similar opportunity for you now, Arthur, to put your opening ideas on the table, so to speak, in this debate. Let's do that right now. Three minutes on the clock. I'm turning the program over to you. Thank you, Roger. Appreciate it. No, let me just say that I'm not blanket against unions by any means whatsoever.

There are certain times when unions are very, very appropriate, when it balances out power. or if you have a monopsonistic company with a lot of disparate employees, it is very reasonable that they would get together and have a union to balance out the power of the monopsonist. That makes sense. And historically, there were a lot of conditions that non-union members lived under, that unions were able to make a lot, lot better back in ancient times. But if you look at current times,

the migration of population in the United States has been away from unionized states. to non-union states. Unions since 1947, 27 states have gone from forced union states to right-to-work states. If you look at the economies of the states that are right-to-work states, you can see that they grow much, much faster than do the right-to-work states grow much faster than unionized states. If you look at a lot of things, unions do not bring higher quality to the labor force. California a lot of years and looked at the California Teachers Association. And during that time, the California Teachers Association had the highest paying school teachers in the nation and the third, fourth, or fifth worst performance rates there. So unionization there did not improve

the California quality of education. But the one area where I have a real problem with unions is in the public sector. And the reason I have such a problem with unions in the public sector is what's called the agency problem. Unions very much are trying to get their pay higher for their workers, and one of the things that makes that okay is that when they negotiate against companies, the companies have a very strong incentive to keep the pay as low as they can to make profits, etc. So it's a balance of power between companies and employees, and that balance is very healthy, very good, very competitive. But when unions operate in the public sector, the agency problem, is that the people contracting with the unions do not have the same incentive on keeping the pay

are low because they really don't care about the consequences of the negotiations. So therefore, public sector employment represented by unions has led to very, very large increases in pay because there's no counterbalancing negotiation force there. So therefore, in the public sector, I think unions should not be allowed because, because they don't have a balance, a trade-off with the employers. We're listening to a great debate on the resolution, be it resolved, workers of the world unite. Heidi, your opportunity now for rebuttal, you can react to what you've just heard from Arthur. What do you want to take exception with so far in this debate?

When you look at the public sector in particular, if you compare public sector workers to similar workers in the private sector, they are very substantially underpaid relative to what similar workers and other occupations can make. And particularly if you look at teachers, teachers are dramatically underpaid relative to similar workers

and other occupations. It is a key reason that we are seeing such massive teacher shortages. We are facing a real crisis in education that would be dramatically worse without teachers unions advocating for better pay for teachers. And all of this, like sort of getting into this question of, all right, how is it possible that, you know, we have a union come in and it advocates for higher wages, but we don't see

employment losses. We don't see the other bad things that some people sort of claim may happen in the face of unionization. And I think, and Arthur talked about this with talking about, monopsonistic firms, monopsinistic firms that, I mean, the classic case of a non-opsonistic firm is just like a company, a company town where there's just one company in the town. And so if you're a worker,

you have no choice but to be at that company. That is like an extreme case. Employers have monopsony power over workers. Any time a worker that works for them, if that employer does not pay them fairly, that that worker cannot immediately quit and immediately find another job where they are paid fairly. If that's not the case, that's the assumptions of a competitive model. If that's not the case where if you're not paid fairly that you can't immediately quit

and immediately find another job where you are paid fairly, that means that firm has monopsony power over you. And that actually characterizes most of our labor market. So employers hold a lot more power than workers in most cases. Without unions, the relationship between employers and workers is just extremely unequal in most cases. It means employers can suppress wages below market clearing or efficient levels. And what unions do is they reduce the wage suppressing effects of corporate power by providing countervailing power to workers. So I think the most simple way to say it is that unions make a more level playing field.

Like when workers can join together in a union, they just make it harder for employers to use their power to pay workers unfairly. I'd love to respond to some of that if I might. Let me go back in time, if I can, Heidi, when unions had a much greater dominance of the U.S. economy than they do today. For example, in the olden days, and I'm old enough to remember all these personally, we had a lot of corrupt. in the unions, Walter Ruth, the United Auto Workers, John L. Lewis, Cole, Harry Bridges, Longshoreman, Jimmy Hoffa. We all know of the corruption. This is what happens when unions get to be large. They get to be corrupt. They don't have the requisite skills to handle their funding. And so you have all sorts of this. Unions also back in the olden days had strikes all over the place when they

dominated the scene. These strikes were violent, long-lasting. The number of strikes during this recent period has dropped sharply. Even my love of love. life, Ronald Reagan, who was head of after and SAG, had a nationwide strike that was quite violent in the situation. Back in the olden days, also the unions had enormous political dominance in their areas because they were so prevalent that there was complete political dominance. This goes back to the political machines of the Midwest. I'm from Ohio, and they were very dominant there. Today, that dominance is extreme in California with the California Teachers Association. For example, that California Teachers Association from 1970 to 2012 had 170 statewide strikes against the

students for pay. I mean, goodness gracious knows what that is. And when you look at employment, Heidi, if I may, the union places that are losing their power, the states that are losing their power have much more rapid growth in employment into the states that are still total forced union states. So when you look at it, I think you're wrong on employment. I think you are correct, totally correct on wages, but I think you're also very wrong on inequality because I think inequality is a situation that is really brought about by unions. But it's the violence and corruption that when the unions controlled the world that we've all gotten away from, thank God. And the further we get away from union corruption, I think the better off the country will be.

Thank you, Arthur. Let me now come into this conversation with some questions that must be top of mind for our audience tuning into our debate today. And let me refocus our conversation around our motion. It's a bit tongue in cheek, but look, it gets at a lot of the issues, I think, that we all are struggling with when we understand how the economy works or doesn't and our role in it as employees, as people making our labor events. That motion, be it resolved workers of the world unite. Heidi, let me come to you first on the first part of that motion again, which is workers of the world uniting. What we're seeing right now in the economy is remarkable. We're seeing something in the order of two job openings for every person searching for work in the United States. That same pattern, that same dynamic, while it may not be as extreme as evident here in Canada,

where I'm recording this debate from. We also have a super hot job market. So what does this all say about the relevance of unions today? I mean, if we're in a reality where there's more job opportunities than there are laborers able to fill those opportunities, doesn't the bargaining power for higher wages for better working conditions lie with every individual in the workforce, regardless of whether they're in a union or not? Heidi, give us your sense of why unions are still necessary in 2022 in this super hot job market. Yeah, that is a really good question that I've gotten a lot.

I think it's a really smart question given the, you know, we absolutely have seen because of the extraordinary circumstances of the COVID recovery, a big shift of power towards workers. And I think there's two reasons for that. One, you know, the U.S. Congress did what it needed to do to actually spur a strong recovery. We had extraordinary relief in recovery measures. We have millions more jobs in this country than we would if we hadn't done that. So there's just more demand for workers. So that creates competition for workers, which is good for worker bargaining power. At the same time, we have fewer workers who are able to work right now because of companies.

COVID itself. Right at the beginning of COVID, millions of workers were forced to drop out of the labor force because of health and safety concerns, because of COVID, and because of COVID-related care responsibilities. And so we still have depressed labor supply compared to where we would in normal times. So when you combine that depressed labor supply with the big demand for workers because, you know, Congress and the administration, both the Trump administration and the Biden administration really did what it need to do to spur a strong recovery, that's just created a huge amount of competition for workers. And so workers really have been able to exercise power. Like, we've seen this, you know, there's a lot of talk about the quote unquote great resignation workers

being able to quit their jobs. That's a whole different conversation. It's a little bit of a misnomer. Workers aren't quitting their jobs to drop out of the labor force. They're quitting their jobs to take better jobs. They are staying in the labor force. So that is a, but it's, you know, it's an example of workers having more power right now than they otherwise do. But to answer your question, that is not likely to last. Those dynamics that I just described are very much about the extraordinary conditions of the COVID recovery. Okay, Arthur, let me continue with you just on the topic of this remarkable economy we're in right now and a job market that is just screaming for workers. Part of that new reality of the post-COVID economy, though, is also a lot

of workers participating in what's been characterized as the great resignation, not going back into the workforce, finding ways to restructure their lives outside of formal employment. I mean, what do you think that says, Arthur, about the quality of work in America and developed economies around the world. Isn't the great resignation a bit of a public thumbs down vote in terms of the quality of jobs that people have available to them? And arguably, an argument for why you need collective bargaining rights and unions to make for better jobs, for higher paying jobs, for jobs that are going to pull people back into the workforce? Yeah, I don't know if it's so much of the quality of the jobs as it is the huge amounts of transfer payments that have been made to people who now have a lot

more wealth or assets that they had before. And if they didn't like their jobs before, they've quit them, almost all of the shrinkage in the workforce. And if I may say that total employment today is still far less than it was in February of 2020. And also, just as a matter of fact, Roger, just so we're all on the same page, is real wages for workers in the U.S. today. well, are shrinking. Inflation is way outpacing nominal wages, so therefore the real take-home pay of workers is declining, not rising. But when you look at the workers today, almost all the people getting out of the labor force and leaving it are low-wage workers in jobs that they may not like very much, but frankly that they were working there because they got paid. And that's just not

come back at all. So I don't know what to say about that, but it surely doesn't comport with what Heidi was trying to say, I think, that we've got this great labor market today. I don't think it's a great labor market. Wait, can I jump in there for a second? The thing that I think is the right characterization of what's going on now is we are in an incredibly fast recovery. We are closing that gap incredibly fast. So just to put some numbers on that, for the last 16 months, we have added more than half a million jobs on average every single month. It's just my mind. mind-bogglingly fast and sustained growth. So that gap is closing really fast. And that's what I mean when I say there's just an extreme, you know, where we're closing the gap really fast. There's a real

demand for workers. Let me answer you too, Heidi, if I may on this. And your facts are correct. The employment growth is very rapid, at least from recent to past. But what you're seeing on GDP, for example, the last quarter of GDP was down one and a quarter percent, down an annualized rate, which is now devying further away from the potential of the economy. We have stopped the real production recovery right now. It's going the other way. And the recovery is very slow, given how far down we were. We are not anywhere near the levels we were before. And if I may say one last thing, and then you come on, Heidi, all of the recovery, the primary areas of the recovery are all in those in right-to-work states and in low-tax states, which is where the recoveries are

occurring. Texas, California, Tennessee, Nevada, all of these states are where the recovery is occurring, not in union states, not in high-tax social states. I mean, it's just the complete opposite of what you're describing. I just want to be clear about is that this recovery is very, very broad. It is absolutely not restricted to union states full stop. We are seeing this in strong union states and states that don't have strong unionization and the history of states, like, particularly in the South, that are both non-union and have seen strong employment growth, you know what that's about? That's just about strong population growth in those states. Once you account for the differences in population growth that have nothing to do with unionization, those

differences go away. If I can catch up with you, Heidi, as we go, because I'm losing some of the issues that I'd love to respond to you on, population growth is very, very responsive to the right to work states and to low tax rate states, and it always has been. This is the primary focus on growth, and when you get the businesses wanting to go, like Elon Musk moving to Texas, those are very good. Then you have the population growth following, the non-union aspect of Texas, is was a very part of his. Big part of his. So I think you're totally wrong that population growth is just by luck. It's not. Population growth is to economics and also to unionization being anti-antibiric. We here in Tennessee have gotten all the auto companies that have come from the old Rust Belt.

They're all here because we are right to work and we also have zero taxes. It makes it very attractive. Okay, guys, I'm going to jump in here. I just want to keep us focused on our resolution today, which is be it resolved workers of the world unite because there's a couple of other big issues I want to touch on before we get to closing statements. And Heidi, let me come to you first on the topic of gig workers because that's a big part of this new economy. It's the changing relationship between labor and capital. It's no longer a relationship that plays out only on the shop floor or in the manufacturing halls of the big automakers that Arthur was just referencing. Rather, it's playing out on apps in real time.

where workers are able to offer up their services for, you know, all the different products, Uber, Lyft, skip the dishes, you name it. It leads to very flexible employment. It leads to employment where people can make decisions about whether their labor is being adequately compensated or not. And if it isn't, they open up another app. So let's get your take on the relevancy of unions in the era of gig work. It is the, you know, the promise of these, of sort of the good jobs related to these digital platform jobs. It just has not played out.

So if you look at research that compares the wages of workers who work on these, you know, digital platform jobs to service workers who are W2 employees, so basically the same work the kinds of jobs that these digital platform workers would get if they were in W2 jobs. The differences are unbelievable. So workers who are platform workers are like twice as likely to actually be facing hunger in their lives. They're twice as likely to not be able to have paid a utility bill. A huge share of them actually earn less than the, the, you know, like an effective minimum wage in their state.

Another thing that we find is on the order of 60% of these workers actually have faced earnings losses because of technical hitches with their, with their, the sort of the app that they're facing, which that, you know, you can get into conspiracy thinking with that. Workers are paying for that by huge wage cuts. by huge like that's that's what we're seeing and so actually being able to for those workers to be able to join together to unionize could you know what as we've seen in other industries would make a huge difference hi reddier griffiths here your host and moderator i have a favor to ask you please consider becoming a monk

member membership is free and you get access to a series of great benefits including a 10 plus year library of some of our best debates, dialogues, and podcasts. You also get a free monthly newsletter featuring the debates that we're watching around the world. And you get a specially curated Friday weekly monk members-only podcast that focuses on the big international events and trends shaping our world. All of that, again, free at www.munkdebates.com. I hope you'll consider joining and becoming part of our community. Now, back to our program. Well, Arthur, let's get you in on the same topic.

I want to hear your rebuttal of the arguments that Heidi has just made. This idea that, you know, technology is pushing workers further and further away from the so-called means of production. They're being in a classically Marxist sense alienated from their labor by technology. And technology is acting as a powerful intermediate. between workers and the workforce, stepping in, atomizing them, disassociating them, arguably giving more power to big corporations than ever before. I would go the other way with your opening statement, Rudyard on this question. Flexibility has removed the monopsy power of a lot of companies.

And by doing that, you can work in a company and still be 2,000 miles away just on a computer and working there and doing that. And that really increases the competitive nature of the labor force. And it takes away a lot of the need of unions to offset monopsy power by companies. But the one area where it's really, really, I don't see any argument for unionization is the only area that unions have really, really dominated, which is the public service employees. These aren't the governments of the U.S., the federal government and the state governments, are not there to exploit the employees. I don't think. This is public sector.

These wages, as Heidi says, have gone up very high. they're much higher in the unions than they are in other jobs. And yet in these states is where the unionization now is, where the high rates wages are. And that's just the exact opposite of what we need because we don't have countervading negotiating power between the employers and the employees when it comes to governments. Excellent. Let me come back then on the final topic that I want to touch on before we get to closing statements. and it is the proverbial 850-pound gorilla in the room in our economy,

and it's that of growing economic inequality. Many people blaming this for all kinds of effects that go beyond the economy, to political polarization, to voter dissatisfaction, voter alienation. I want to hear from both of you now on your views on how unions can help solve the puzzle of economic inequality or, I guess in the case of Arthur, an argument that they're part of the problem. Heidi, you go first. This is a really good and large question. I'm going to focus on, there's sort of the broader overall inequality. And I talked about how the decline of unionization has, you know, accounts for about a third of the increase in inequality between the middle and

the top over the last four decades. But unionization is all. also directly relevant to our urgent national conversation around racial equality. And one of the things there is that black workers are more likely than white workers to be represented by a union. And black workers who are in unions get a larger boost to their wages from being in a union than white workers do. All workers get this sort of a union boost that I was talking about. But that is bigger for black workers than white white workers, likely, because unions provide the structures and transparency that makes it more difficult for employers to actually exercise, you know, act on any sort of, to discriminate on the basis of race.

By 1950, black workers were more likely to be in unions than had a larger union premium than white workers. So it's like this, that, what that means is that the institution of collective bargaining was one of the most important institutions in the country for advancing, advancing racial economic justice and the decline of unionization has been a big contributor to the increase in the black-white wage gap over this period. I think some people kind of have this idea that may not be as fast as we want it to be, but that we're sort of slowly moving towards closing the black-white wage gap. That is not true. The black-white wage gap has actually risen over the last 40 years and one key contributor to that is unionization. Is it a

decline of unionization. Can I respond a little bit, Roger? Okay, let's bring you in on Heidi's point. Yeah, let me just start off by saying those states that have the biggest income inequality are those states that are the most unionized. That's where the genie coefficients are highest. I mean, that's true of these California and New York and these states have the greatest inequality. On the black-white issue, I would say that unions have led to higher unemployment, especially since they push for higher minimum wages, which is really a guaranteed way of getting less capable workers to be unemployed where they can no longer earn the requisite skills to earn above the minimum wage.

That has happened with black unemployment and uneducated unemployment and Hispanic unemployment being very, very badly impacted by unions in the possibility. So I think it's just the opposite of what Heidi says is, you know, inequality is exacerbated by unions, number one. And the reason people move to non-union states is because they get better jobs, they get better things, and they don't have to pay union dues. And that's a big, big deal. When they eliminated union dues requirements in Wisconsin, which Heidi says is an anti-union thing, once they did that, the unions just disappeared. They no longer had the huge funds to force people to be members of the unions, and they didn't want to be members when it was their choice.

Can I react to that a little bit? So under the law, a union is required to represent all members of a collective bargaining unit. Nobody is, nobody can legally be required to be in a union, right? Like, but if you are, you cannot be required to be in a union. You cannot be required to be a union member. But if you are in a bargaining unit, whether or not you are a member, you get all the benefits of being in the union. you get the union negotiated wage increases.

You get the union negotiated benefits increases. If you're treated unfairly on the job and you want to grieve something with your employer, your union is required by law to represent you. So you get all the benefits and that's really expensive. I hear you loud and clear, Heidi, but let me, if I can just say, the one thing you're correct is a closed shop is illegal. That is very true. But union shops are not illegal.

agency shops are not illegal, open shops are not illegal. And when you look at those, these are people that have the choices. Now, if they want the union to negotiate for them, they can't have it. But they don't have to, and there's no reason why a law should require them to pay a union for representing them. When they don't want it to represent them, that just seems totally unfair to me, Heidi. And why would you require that any more than anyone else should be required to pay for someone else's negotiations? And you're totally right, to the effect of law. right to work the so-called right-to-work laws that make it so the union cannot, you know,

form an agreement with the employer that workers will pay not for the broad union membership dues, but just the quote-unquote fair share fees, just covering the benefits that the union provides them, that the union is legally required to provide them, that the right-to-work laws make it so unions and their employer can't enter into agreements where unions... They can't force them to pay them. They can't force them to pay for. And to your point, that is absolutely an attack on unions because what you see is unionization goes down following those things.

And wages go down in those states where there are right to work laws because, as we know, unions increase wages. Can I ask you a question? Why should someone be required to pay a union for? negotiating for them when they don't want the union to negotiate for them. What you're pointing out is this is absolutely a tactic to starve unions. It is a tactic to say, okay, unions have to do all these things are required to do all these things, but they cannot get any money to do all those things. And it is absolutely a way to starve unions. That's what it's about. Okay, guys, I'm conscious of our time,

too. So I want us to go to closing statements. We've had such a terrific and far range conversation about the nature of work in our society today, from economic inequality to the great resignation, all these changes that are happening as a result of the COVID pandemic, to the rights of workers in a gig economy. I'm going to put three minutes on the clock for each of you for your closing statements on our resolution, be it resolved workers of the world, unite. Arthur, you're up first. What's the key pointer idea that you want to leave our listeners with in this debate? Well, the workers themselves were choosing not to be in unions, and that's their choice, I think,

except for public unions where there's a huge agency problem. They can bully the public employees because, frankly, these people aren't paying it out of their own pockets. They're paying out of the taxpayers' pockets. And if we go back to large union coverage, which is workers of the world unite, you're going to get the corruption, the violence, the really bad behavior of really less sophisticated people running these unions. pension funds and all that. But the last thing I'd like to say is the flexibility that workers have today makes the need for unions so much less than it was in the past that I really don't think there's any cause here to try to bolster unions and make them more. They've done their job.

They did a great job at one time, but the day has passed and unions are good in some small areas, but not in the overall economy. Thank you, Arthur Laffer. Okay, Heidi, your opportunity to bring this debate home for us, be it resolved, workers of the world unite. Let's get your closing argument in favor of the resolution. Okay, so we have, we, we have seen, you know, between 1979 and 2021, the decline of unionization rate from 27% to 11.6%. So we have seen this big drop, but really crucially, that decline was not because workers don't want to be in unions in those four between the late 1970s and the late 2010s, the share of non-union workers who said that they would vote to unionize if they were given an opportunity rose from one-third to nearly one-half. That huge gap between the share of workers who want a union and the share of workers who are in a union, the thing it makes clear is that our system of labor laws is not working.

totally fundamental reform is needed. So what we have seen is a big rise in inequality over the last four decades, stagnant wages for working people for most of that time, a rising black-white wage gap, a key driver of that is a decline in unionization. I hear all that stuff, and it sort of brings to mind that, you know, this, you hear public commentators in the recent years saying things like, we didn't really know we needed unions until they were gone. And I want to clarify unions aren't gone.

We have 16 million people represented by a union today, but they've been seriously weakened. The good news is that can be easily reversed with different policy choices. And I'll just end by saying, you know, if we want a robust middle class, if we want an economy where the fruits of growth are not just captured by the already affluent, if we want an economy where the black-white wage gap is shrinking, not growing, it's just absolutely crucial that we pass policies to support unionization and collective bargaining. Thank you, Heidi, and thank you, Arthur, for a terrific debate on an important subject, one, frankly, that doesn't get enough discussion. You've both given us a tour to force, so to speak,

and I've come away from our conversation enriched and informed, so mission accomplished for the monk debates. Thank you for spending some time with our community and sharing your wisdom and insights. Thank you, Roger. Thank you, Heidi. I love being with both of you. Same. Thank you so much. Thank you, Roger. Thank you, Arthur. While that wraps up today's debate, I want to thank our participants, Heidi, and Arthur, you certainly give us a lot to think about. If you have feedback or reflections on what you've just heard, please send us an email to podcast at monkdebates.com. Friendly reminder that our members-only-only podcast, weekly deep dive into the issues and ideas shaping the news, comes out every Friday and is yours free to listen to any time as part of our free complimentary monk membership available at triple w monk debates.com forward slash membership.

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Thank you again for listening.