Kate Bronfenbrenner’s comment on a previous post about a Wall Street Journal article seems worthy to highlight here and maybe get a discussion and/or more facts/input. The WSJ article argued that it’s getting harder for unions to get a first contract, primarily because of employer opposition.

Kate says that the data being used is flawed because it does not take into account the number of unions winning union elections outside the framework of the National Labor Relations Board. Kate, for whom I have great respect, argues that the rate of successful first contracts is much higher:

“That’s because the unions that are successful in organizing are running the kinds of campaigns that would make them more likely to win first contracts, and because we have more non-NLRB campaigns where the first contract rate is much higher, and bacause there has been an in organizing in the non-profit sector, where first contract rates are also higher.

I would like to believe that unions are doing a better job at first-contracts. I know about the rhetoric about non-NLRB organizing, but do we really know how successful it’s been in terms of where those campaigns have been run, against which employers and whether those successes have had measurable impact on the living standards of workers generally, either by industry or geographic distribution?

Even if the percentages are better, I don’t see the relevance of citing success in the non-profit sector. We could organize 100 percent of the non-profit sector AND get first-contracts immediately–and have virtually no effect on the vast majority of workers in the country. If all we are doing is counting beans–in this case, contracts–isn’t it more important to look at where contract negotiations have been successful and what it means for workers’ standards?

I share Kate’s desire to be upbeat because so much of the news in organizing is bad. But, being overly upbeat and ignoring the forest for the trees won’t help either.

I also didn’t understand Kate’s following point:

And lets keep our critical edge and remember that in terms of getting real labor law reform, the best thing we can do is build a more powerful movement not use flawed data that makes us look weaker than we actually are.

We ARE weak. Period. If we want to debate whether the current sub-8 percent representation in the private sector is better than 6 percent, I’ll pass: it’s sort of like debating whether you’d rather by a Kansas City Royals or a Pittsburgh Pirates fan–it’s ugly either way. We are essentially irrelevant in most parts of the private sector economy, and even more so if you take out industries that can’t pick up and move abroad (e.g., hospitals and casinos). We build a powerful labor movement by acknowledging that we are close to dead. Meaningful labor law reform will not happen in the near future–and I think that it is a fantasy to believe in it (certainly if we don’t stop supporting Democrats who have no interest in labor’s revival beyond rhetoric).