The Right to Work

This year, on the occasion of the World Day of Peace, Pope Benedict XVI’s message focused in part on economics. I thought I would highlight parts of that message over the next two or three weeks. The designation of January 1 as the World Day of Peace began in 1968 under Pope Paul VI. Herewith some thoughts on the right to work. The full message is accessible here.

Peacemakers must also bear in mind that, in growing sectors of public opinion, the ideologies of radical liberalism and technocracy are spreading the conviction that economic growth should be pursued even to the detriment of the state’s social responsibilities and civil society’s networks of solidarity, together with social rights and duties. It should be remembered that these rights and duties are fundamental for the full realization of other rights and duties, starting with those which are civil and political. 

One of the social rights and duties most under threat today is the right to work. The reason for this is that labor and the rightful recognition of workers’ juridical status are increasingly undervalued, since economic development is thought to depend principally on completely free markets. Labor is thus regarded as a variable dependent on economic and financial mechanisms. In this regard, I would reaffirm that human dignity and economic, social and political factors, demand that we continue “to prioritize the goal of access to steady employment for everyone.” If this ambitious goal is to be realized, one prior condition is a fresh outlook on work, based on ethical principles and spiritual values that reinforce the notion of work as a fundamental good for the individual, for the family, and for society. Corresponding to this good are a duty and a right that demand courageous new policies of universal employment.
     [Pope Benedict XVI’s Message for World Day of Peace 2013]

Right to Work, as a political slogan in the United States, has a very different meaning. It is aimed at union-busting. Now it might be thought that unionization is a kind of class warfare, labor rising to confront management. But the union movement  was a reaction to injustice—a failure of society to heed the higher message that is still being offered by the Church today.

St. Patrick's Day

By coincidence I began this second edition of LaMarotte on St. Patrick’s Day last year. The coincidence serves to remind me today that this is an anniversary. Since then I’ve made 209 posts. The favorites include posts on what might be called the subject of infrastructure. Top ranked was an entry on hydro and nuclear energy the world over, fourth ranked a post on electric power in the United States. Most read posts are shown in the left column. More tellingly, perhaps the three other posts that make up the top five are about math or measurement, thus perennial subjects rather than the flow, as it were, of generally very mixed news about the U.S. economy.

My basic interest is in economic fundamentals, something best measured in jobs. Employment trends, therefore, are a central focus here. My other focus tends to be on energy—arising from the conviction that humanity is passing through a unique and time-bounded period, the Fossil Age. The conventional economic focus is on money and on growth. But real wealth is rooted in nature and in labor. The fundamental growth-figure, therefore, is that of the population; economic growth should reflect population growth, but not much more than that. The vast growth in economic well-being since the nineteenth century has been due to the discovery of coal, oil, and gas—their sum a diminishing resource. Their exploitation through technology and automation is increasingly depriving the people of jobs. Our time horizons are short. We don’t collectively internalize what this sort of process means in the long run—assuming, as we must, that the Fossil Age will end, probably before this century is over.

Contemplating this picture—and the collective disregard of the vectors that are becoming visible—is at best sobering. I wish more people would do it. By way of diversion I turn my attention here to such fun topics as math or science or technology. Technology is particularly interesting. The modern attitude is firmly anchored in the belief that technology will save us—but ignoring the obvious fact that without free energy, which is what the fossil fuels really represent, our technological civilization is actually doomed. And the great faith in the solar solution? Well, my view is that humanity lived on solar energy exclusively from the very dawn of time to the discovery of the steam engine, which suddenly made coal “interesting.”

Unions: A Slow Fade

I bring you today a graphic I think of as old and familiar. We published it at ECDI back a ways when the most current data were for the year 2000. This chart is brought up to speed now showing union membership from 1964 to 2011. Data for the period 2000-2011 are available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (link); the earlier data are preserved in Social Trends & Indicators USA, Volume 1—or if you need them, send me an e-mail. Those data are also originally from the BLS.

In this period unionized labor has shifted from the private to the public sector. In 1983, for instance 67.6 percent of union members worked in the private and 32.4 percent in the public sector.  The situation in 2011 was 48.8 percent of union members were in the private and 51.2 percent in the public.

Perhaps because employment dropped steeply in 2008—but public employment was, then anyway, less affected, the percent of union members and of those covered by union increases slightly in 2008 and then continues its downward drift the following year. The decline of unionization in the United States represents the weakening of the working population—of which union members are an elite. Do I hear a great sucking sound up there in the stratosphere where the 1 percent live?