This House prefers occupation unionism to sector unionism

Melbourne ABPDC 2023 : Room Old Arts 103

Round 5

OO | LO 

83

Jack Story

Economics

Info Slide: For the purposes of this debate, "occupation unionism" refers to labour unions that represent specific jobs (e.g. teachers' union, writers' union). "Sector unionism" refers to labour unions that represent industrial sectors (e.g. construction workers, media workers).

Starting my speech in three, two, one.

Three arguments in this speech: first, on why sector-wide unions are better at campaigning for rights; second, how this empowers and allows redistribution to the more vulnerable and less well-funded occupations who, under that side, would be left alone to form their own unions that lack resources; third, why large unions are more diverse and more accountable.

First, on why sector-wide unions are better at campaigning for rights:

There are four parts to this argument.

The first is that they are better at doing large-scale actions—things like strikes, negotiations, or enterprise bargaining agreements. There are two premises I want you to note at the start of this argument.

First, these sector-wide unions are going to be extremely large for three reasons:

1. Empirically, they have a lot of people. There are vastly more numbers of people when you bring together multiple occupations.

2. Companies tend to employ both groups of people. That is, they don’t just import electricians; they often employ electricians and plumbers in one large umbrella firm. For example, Foxconn does not just employ the people that put together iPhones; they also involve people doing things like technical design and sourcing resources from the ground. It’s easy to recruit people because they know each other and because you can campaign in the same workplace.

3. There just tends to be more interaction. People in the same sector, but in different occupations, often spend lots of time together, making it easier for one person to recruit many members from different occupations.

Second, note that the problems unions face—or rather, the problems sectors face—tend to be common, rather than specific problems faced by one industry or one occupation. These are issues faced by everyone in the sector. Why? Four reasons:

1. I make the empirical observation that you rarely read about, say, an electrician-specific problem. You read about things like enterprise bargaining agreements, award wage changes, injury compensation, or pay reform—those things affect entire sectors as a whole.

2. The world is very globalized, which explains that exogenous shocks hurting specific industries are rare. Most of the time, these shocks hurt all sectors at once.

3. There’s more government involvement in unions these days. Governments do things like set accords or award wages, meaning unions or sectors collectively fight against government action.

4. Companies tend to be very large and cover multiple parts of supply chains, which explains why common problems arise. A struggle against one individual company is likely to involve struggles by multiple people in different occupations.

Given these two premises, why do we get better at campaigning large-scale actions? Three reasons:

1. You have more numbers—more people at the picket line, more strength and will. If you  threaten to withdraw from negotiations, that means far more damage to the company.

2. You can cripple companies. Often, companies can replace one part of their supply chain. That is that they can get one set of manufacturers to come and get scabbed for. Or do things like import from another company, maybe at a higher expense. However, if everyone in your company is striking or if multiple different sectors of your supply chain have broken down at once, you probably don’t have the capital buffers to deal with that. You don’t have the time to quote litigations, which explains why you have more power over companies.

3. More powerful unions, as I’ll expand on more later, will ally with less powerful unions. That is that the less powerful occupations—those with fewer resources or less unionization—are able to be supported by those that are more unionized or have more powerful people in them. So large-scale actions are far better under side Opp.

Second, service provision is better:
There are two broad reasons for this.

1. As a quality of having more members, there’s more funding for resources.

2. Economies of scale—most of the time, things that you need to provide services for on a day to day are things like lawyers or therapists, and all those kinds of suppport aren’t specialized that you need occupations. For example, a principal’s therapist doesn’t need to differ from a teacher’s therapist.Obviously when you have economies of scale, you can hire better professionals, hire more of them, give them more resources, and more ways to look at every single person’s contract. That is obviously incredibly meaningful. Improve contract evaluations.

Third, better institutional knowledge:
This takes two forms:

1. You know how to fight and support one another. That is one union that has had a particularly successful strike campaign can pass institutional knowledge on. Note, they can even be on the strike line with the other occupation.

2. Multiple parts of the supply chain are reflected in one union which is really important. Because often, companies cover parts of the supply chain, so knowing how they work—from the top to the bottom— from the most influential people to the least influential people is really important.
   -Advocacy for better workers’ rights require understanding the inner workings of the hierarchy of the entire company (CEOs to managers) instead of limited scope available in GOV(hierarchies between different workers in the same occupation i.e senior teacher vs a newcomer).
   -Could’ve talked about how it’s easier to convince people in higher positions/senior roles join the union if everyone else is involved

Finally, unions can allocate time more efficiently. If sectors do have unique problems, say for e.g they’re fruit pickers and there's seasonal effects on how much fruit picking happens, they can devote more time to that occupation when that occupation needs it, and when it needs less time maybe when the season has changed, you can spend more time somewhere else that needs help. You can allocate. You can allocate resources better, you have more allocative efficiency.

Before I move on, I’ll take opening or closing.

POI
“If it’s the case that unions are occupation-based, wouldn’t it be symmetrically beneficial for writers to strike with directors since they need to coexist so they strike together?”

Response:  Couple things to say. Firstly, this symmetrizes the debate massively. If you stand by these unions working together and striking simultaneously, you presumably support them sharing institutional frameworks—why not combine them into one? Secondly, as I’ll explain in my next argument, you have far more solidarity between unions at the point where you can combine them into the same institutional frameworks. When the same people are working for them, when the same union reps are representing both groups of people. When you have things like day to day interactions over the union coffeehouse which allows you to do things like get close to your fellow workers even though they might be actors and you are writers. Obviously, those kinds of cross class, cross-occupation happen far better when you’re working together. 

2nd Argument
So Second argument: This empowers the most vulnerable occupations. This is directly responsive at their attempt at preemptive mitigation in their PM

Why are there a set of unions that have less power? Number of reasons.

• They could be less well-paid.

• They could be for e.g less unionized. Some occupations just have more unions.

• They might have less support(resources) or have marginalized workers.

Why do those unions get redistributed to, from the more powerful unions when they’re in sector unions? For the reason that…Four reasons actually:

1. The Union staff tend to be shared. So the union staff might not necessarily correspond to one occupation each. They can share their resources, they’re likely to force redistribution.

2. Shared time and energy, like being on the picket line or in break rooms, builds solidarity.

3. You have an incentive to make your union stronger, so more people join it. Which is why you’re going to support the weakest parts of your union with more resources.

4. You just have legal responsibilities which compel unions to represent all workers.

Final argument: Why larger unions are more diverse and accountable:

1. Larger unions have stronger institutional frameworks, enabling cooperation and detection of corruption.

2. Different power groups within the union hold each other accountable.

3. Larger unions gain more public and political support due to their security and stability.

That explains that you get redistribution, from the more powerful occupations to the less powerful ones under opposition.

Final argument,  very intuitively- why unions are more diverse and more accountable.
1.Firstly, you have more institutional frameworks. That is, you have a more hierarchical established system. Which means you can do things like facilitate cooperation when corruption happens.
2.Second insofar as there are different Power groups within the union, they hold one another accountable. They call one another out when they do bad things. That allows them to keep each other accountable.
3.Third, because you are bigger there's more security that explains that unions are far more accountable under side Opp. That means you do things like get more support from the public, from politicians.

Finally, more diversity. The observation that I'll make here is very simple. Which is that some occupations within a sector are extremely male dominated others are extremely female dominated - look at the way the textile industry works. If you're only one woman in the male dominated part of the textile industry, it is important that your union also has women in it. Perhaps there are women from other occupations but your struggle is the same, you can share and collaborate resources together that is obviously incredibly important.