How Do You Improve Worker Pay? Licensing Reforms, Not Unions.
James Sherk / Astrid Gonzalez /
What do today’s workers need? The White House appears to believe the answer is “a union.” At a summit Wednesday, the administration plans to showcase workers unions have helped. That is fair enough, but most workers don’t find unions relevant to their working lives. A much greater problem is the barriers the government itself erects.
Unions exist to protect workers from bad employers. Union membership has fallen because most employers—thankfully—no longer fit that bill. Over three-quarters of Americans tell Gallup they are satisfied with the recognition they receive at work. Almost five in six say they are satisfied with their bosses. Similar proportions are satisfied with their job security and workplace flexibility. Though plenty of bad apples exist, most employees see little need to purchase union protection from their bosses. Rasmussen polling finds that just a tenth of non-union workers want to unionize.
Indeed, union members often find they need protection from their unions. Many unions prove more concerned with collecting dues than representing their members. The day before the White House event, the Heritage Foundation is hosting a workers’ summit. Many workers coming to that summit found that unionizing left them worse off.
For example, Karen Cox is a lift-truck operator from Illinois. Unions organized her workplace without an election. She found that this representation did not improve her working conditions. When she petitioned for a secret ballot vote, her own union began harassing and pressuring her.
Silvia Lopez works on a California farm. The United Farm Workers organized her farm and took 3 percent of her wages as mandatory dues. The union did not raise her pay. So she organized a decertification drive to remove it as her representative. Instead of respecting Silvia’s vote, the UFW sued to stop it from getting counted.
Workers have the right to unionize if they want to. Many don’t think that would improve their lives. Excessive occupational licensing represents a much bigger real-world problem for many workers.
Workers must have government licenses to hold one-third of the jobs in the economy. This makes sense for many jobs, like pharmacists and surgeons. But many jobs with no health or safety concerns also require licenses. Florists in Louisiana, interior designers in Florida, and barbers in every state need government permission to work.
These requirements make it harder to enter a profession: workers must first obtain enough practice and training and pay hefty fees. Sometimes this training has no bearing on their ultimate work. It simply makes it harder to enter a field, reducing competition for those who jump through the government’s hoops. This bars access to much of the economy—especially those without the time or means to obtain a license.
Consider Isis Brantley, who will be speaking at Heritage’s workers summit. This mother of five was working as a hair braider in Dallas, Texas, when the police arrested her. Her crime? Braiding hair without studying 1,500 hours for a cosmetology license. Almost none of that training had any relevance to hair braiding. But the government left her homeless and unemployed lacking it.
The White House wants to empower workers on the job. So do conservatives. The administration would do better to focus its attention on excessive licensing requirements. They wall off workers from accessing one-third of jobs in the economy.