The arithmetic is simple. Studies show that unionized workers earn 15 to 25 percent more than nonunion workers in comparable jobs. Even in the competitive 1980s, workers won wage gains of 3 to 4 percent after joining unions, according to Morris Kleiner of the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute. Ask the people at Boeing Co. in Seattle. Faced with ferocious foreign competition, the machinists' union agreed in 1989 that management needed flexibility to reorganize jobs and outsource work.
Similar examples abound in Minnesota.
In northeast Minneapolis, members of Teamsters Local 970 at Bemis Packaging Machinery Co. agreed to join work teams, take new skills training and accept a productivity-based pay system. They reversed a decline in orders, raised quality to world-class standards and actually brought 20 jobs in from a nonunion Bemis facility. Examples like these get much less attention than the horror stories of overpaid workers in the steel and auto industries. But they're probably more typical. In a recent study, Kleiner and Freeman examined the success and failure rate of 633 businesses over seven years and found that unionized enterprises were no more likely to fail than nonunion companies.