“Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.” This is Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights declared by the UN in 1948. It sounds like a pretty good right to me. I recently learned that in America, we have some states with “right-to-work” laws. That dumbfounded me. Why did unemployment exist in those states if they had a right to work?
It only took a few minutes of research to find out that the “right-to-work” laws some states have are nothing like the fundamental human right. What these laws actually do is defend a worker’s right not to be required to join a labor union to work at a company. This “right-to-work” doesn’t allow more choice, it allows less. Where’s the option to have a union that doesn’t allow freeriders? If you don’t want union benefits, you can work for a company without a union. You still have your choice, but this law has destroyed mine. These laws really promote the right to work for less money, the right to work at a business with a racist union, the right to destroy what unions could and should stand for.
Research from the Economic Policy Institute shows that states with “right-to-work” laws have hurt unionization rates, and hurt the power of unions that do exist. In such states 7% of workers are represented by a union contract, versus 17% in non “right-to-work” states. Wages are lower in states with these laws in place, which makes sense as unions allow collective bargaining for better wages. Nationally, unionized workers are making 27% more than non-unionized workers. “Right-to-work” has been a disaster for the labor movement, those who historically have won us better pay for shorter hours and better working conditions. Those who won us the weekend. Those who won women the right to vote. Those who won us the 8 hour work day.
To reinvent the labor movement we have a lot of ground to cover. One way to start would be with reimagining the “right-to-work” to be much more like the fundamental human right envisioned by the UN in 1948. This actual Right to Work, a Job Guarantee, would transform the labor market. It’d be up to communities to decide what jobs to guarantee as they see fit, but surely our communities could come up with something better than a new fast food joint. If you’re guaranteed a job serving your community, wages will go up across the board, as entry-level workers get real choice. Capitalists would be forced to make burger flipping more attractive than planting trees.
The real human right to work would mean you could quit working for your abusive boss and cross the street and get hired. We could make job guarantee jobs come with awesome benefit plans, that capitalists are forced to match. We could have contracts with our employers that require “just cause” to be fired, rather than the uneven “at-will” employment contracts we all toil under today. We could have unions that represent all of the workers in our businesses rather than just a small subset. It’s going to take a lot of work to get there, but coalescing around a shared demand, a good job for everyone, is a great start.
We can see the work that needs to be done. We need care workers to serve our aging population. We need police officers that actually serve our communities. We need solar panels harnessing the free energy of the sun. We need to capture the carbon capitalists have polluted the environment with. We need affordable housing so we don’t have people living on the streets. We need the right to build these things together, including everyone willing and able. We need to take care of those who aren’t able, for whatever reason. If we reimagine a true right to work, the unimaginable becomes possible.
“We need care workers to serve our ageing population”. Well now I’ve never ever known any unemployed person in my neighbourhood make any effort to help local pensioners with their gardens, shopping etc. Shows how keen the unemployed are on work.
Are there any incentives for them to do such work besides goodwill? The idea is to create better incentives. – Brad
The “right to work” is inherent within us all, and to suggest that this right is being denied us implies that we are being physically restrained so as to be unable to leave our homes, if not our beds! Clearly this is nonsense and the expression of “right to work” needs better clarification. We actually do all enjoy this right, but what many of us lack is the OPPORTUNITIES for finding a job or the job itself.
This constraint on us is due to a failure to provide free access to land, this latter natural resource being the second necessary factor of production (of Adam Smith). Then the logical development of this argument is to stop the withholding out of use of land, where it could become more useful were it to be properly used.
The remedy for solving this is to tax land values (LVT) and much effort has been spent in explaining this, but as we are all too well aware it is not politically viable–landlords are unlikely to agree to pay tax on what they regard as an ancestral right of ownership. But land does get bought and sold and so there is a solution associated with this aspect that governments could well adopt.
To achieve this ideal there should be introduced a gradual change in the way that land is being owned, which should be introduced by new laws. Whenever a site or prospect of land is being offered for sale (possibly with its buildings, etc.,) and whenever ownership of such a site is being transferred between family members (and on which an inheritance-tax would normally be paid), the government automatically buys the land at its current normal nominal price. This is done simultaneously as the buildings are sold or their ownership transferred. (The courts shall be empowered to settle the land-value, if/when doubt is expressed–land-value maps being publically accessible.) The previous landlords or their heirs will no longer have any political objection, since the money from the land sale will greatly exceed the subsequent annual lease-fee (see below) for access rights to this land. This change will also eliminate the (hated) inheritance-tax. It is imagined that this process of land sales and governmental purchases will be spread over at least 40 years.
Immediately when the site belongs to the government, this land must be offered for lease to the new or bequeathed owner of any buildings thereon. The lease-fee should be set according to normal amounts of rent for other similar sites, and again the courts should decide when there is disagreement.) The above “first refusal” for this leasing offer is most necessary, because any buildings of practical use and value on the site, will still be sold or bequeathed as items of durable capital goods, as before. However, access to the site and its buildings is denied until the site is leased by someone who can then (and normally would) have purchased (or been given) the building in the usual way. Taxes that are applied to subsequent building developments should be abolished at this time.
A new owner would acquire the building property more cheaply than before, because it is now without the selling price of the land under and around it. Such a buyer can then give for hire (rent-out) any building for access right and use, as if it were any other item of durable capital goods. In the unlikely event of the leaser not owning the buildings, his/her incoming land rent (from the building owner), shall not exceed the out-going lease-fees by more than 2% (say). Should nobody initially lease the site and its buildings, become of there being no interest for their use, the buildings may be pulled down by the next (eventual) leaser, who will be free to re-develop the site (and would naturally want to do so).
The government should borrow the money for site purchase, or can even offer national redeemable bonds to the past landlords for it. As the lease money begins to flow to the government, it uses this to:
a) repay part of its loan, which may be extended,
b) purchase more sites as and when they become available,
c) cover the interest on the loan and on the new bonds and their eventual redemption, and even more eventually
d) reduce other kinds of taxation.
It will be appreciated that over the long term the lease fees are equivalent to LVT but due to the greed of landlords, their income from land sales will satisfy them better than their being taxed. Nationally leased land, in countries like Hong Kong, is close to 100%. This approach is known to be most successful, for the general rate of growth of prosperity. Also when the previous landlords have more money to spend, most of it will be invested in durable capital goods, making production costs lower as obsolescent durable items are more easily replaced and so the national prosperity will grow from the government’s investment in land values. This proposal is not land nationalization (at least no more than what currently applies), since no additional regulations are placed on how the land is to be used.
Because the selling of land is a natural process which is (if anything) encouraged by the land returning to public benefit, the resulting lower priced building properties will become more easy to sell and not place such a limitation on their owners who wish to better develop the sites.
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Fabulous essay.