Is collective bargaining by unions a better way to improve workplace safety and health than pervasive government regulation? Law professor Thomas Kohler thinks so. Despite the pervasiveness of anti-union attitudes and low union membership, Kohler argues we need unions in a time when wage and earnings distribution has become increasingly unequal and the middle class has shrunk. He writes:

Along with these developments has come a significant loosening of the employment bond. Socalled contingent employment arrangements—part-time, temporary and contract arrangements

—are on the rise, and many analysts expect the number of part-time employees to double in the next few years. These “just-in-time” employees typically have at best highly restricted claims to pension, health and other benefits incident to employment….

[He looks, as well, at developments on the international level:]

… [T]he remarkable transformation of what used to be called the Easternbloc was spearheaded by an independent trade-union movement, which improbably survived despite the forces arrayed against it. Nor were the Poles left to go it alone. At a time when our own government took a wait-and-see attitude, the AFL-CIO and other unaffiliated American unions supported Solidarity from the first with funds, equipment and expertise. American unions also lobbied Western governments on Solidarity’s behalf, and worked to keep the Polish situation before the public’s eye….

There is also a pronounced tendency today to overlook, or to be absolutely unaware of, the domestic contributions made by the union movement. The support of unions, for example, was crucial to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Unions also have been in the forefront of efforts to improve workplace safety and public health and to ensure pay equality for the sexes….

Kohler speculates that unions might be more valued if people better understood the importance of collective bargaining. It is, he argues, a system of “private-law making.” This is important because:

Individuals and societies alike become and remain self-governing only by repeatedly and regularly engaging in acts of self-government. It is the habit that sustains the condition…. [I]t is through their involvement in the collective bargaining process that average citizens can take part in deciding the law that most directly determines the details of their daily lives.13 Internet Assignment

(a) Find the most recent annual report, Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect, posted each April on the AFL-CIO’s Web site . What do you learn about the current status of occupational health and safety in your state?

(b) Find out what other unions are doing today to support safe and healthy workplaces in the United States and abroad.