Abstract
Many people know that trade unions have been in dire straits for decades, plagued by an ageing membership, declining union density, and strong headwinds such as neoliberalism and conservative governments. These things have been debated for years. But David Madland’s exquisitely argued new book, Re-Union – How Bold Labor Reforms Can Repair, Revitalize, and Reunite the United States does not merely rehearse facts that we already know. Instead, it makes a bold, plausible, and sensible proposal about how to revive the fortunes of trade unions in the USA, and, in fact, globally.
David Madland’s short, sharp, intelligent, practical, and very readable book is divided into six parts. After the obligatory introduction, the first chapter is called ‘The Plan’, which lays out his ideas on how to revive trade unions. This is followed by ‘Unions as the Solution’ and ‘The Contours of a Modern Labor System’. The final three chapters are ‘Lessons from Canada, Britain, and Australia’, ‘Answering Sceptics’, and finally, ‘Creating a New System’.
The book’s central argument is that ‘stronger trade unions operating under a new type of labor system could help address the country’s underlying economic and political challenges’ (p. 1). This is true for every country, not just the USA. Despite the doom and gloom scenarios concerning trade unions, according to Madland ‘more workers went on strike in 2018 than had struck in any year since the 1980s, and a similar number went on strike in 2019’ (p. 6). The 1980s were important for the trade unions as they marked the advent of neoliberalism, when Margaret Thatcher – ideologically at least – married Ronald Reagan. Neoliberalism is an extremely anti-union doctrine.
In ‘The Plan’, Madland says that his ‘proposed system would seek to push union density higher’ (p. 9). Key to this proposal is ‘the Ghent system in which unions help deliver unemployment insurance [a system operating in] Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Iceland, and Belgium’ (p. 10). The Ghent system – in which trade unions administer welfare payments, especially unemployment benefits – is named after the Belgian city of Ghent. It ensures the institutional integration of trade unions into the state apparatus (Vandaele, 2006; Lind, 2007).
But Madland’s worthwhile suggestion might include two potential problems. First, the idea of unplugging one system from its original historical, social, political and economic environment and transferring it to another system with its own historical, social, political and economic environment might not be as easy as Madland makes it seem. Second, as Lindellee and Berglund (2022) have shown most recently, the Ghent system might not be as flawless a system as Madland makes it out to be. On the other hand, with declining unionisation and collective bargaining coverage rates, almost any good idea that may help trade union recovery is – almost by default – to be welcomed.
This system would indeed ‘formalise [the] role [of trade unions] in providing public benefits’ (p. 17). It will also do this through a ‘broad-based bargaining system’ (p. 19) that would provide additional ‘incentives for [union] membership’ (p. 24). Moreover, it would also fight inequality which in the USA ‘is most comparable to places like Saudi Arabia, Peru, Guyana, and Thailand’ (p. 38). Perhaps the Ghent system would also lessen another problem, namely ‘the share of the public trusting government most of the time or just about always fell from 77% in 1964 to just 17% in 2019’ (p. 39) in the USA.
Conceivably, the Ghent system might even change the minds of CEOs holding strong anti-union attitudes, as expressed by, for example, ‘Walmart’s former CEO [who] once said about his opposition to unions, “we like driving the car and we’re not going to give the steering wheel to anyone but us”’ (p. 64). Despite this, Madland believes that the Ghent system’s ‘most important policy [is] to maintain high and stable [union] membership [while also] boosting union density by around 20%’ (p. 72).
One of the most impressive tables in the book (p. 78) compares the Ghent systems of Belgium, Denmark, Finland and Sweden to the three master-countries of neoliberalism – Australia, the United Kingdom and the USA – as well as to Canada, Japan, Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Madland clusters these countries into three groups:
(i) countries with low union density and low collective bargaining coverage: Australia, Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom and the USA;
(ii) countries with high collective bargaining coverage, but low union density: Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland; and finally,
(iii) countries with high union density and high collective bargaining coverage: Belgium, Denmark, Finland and Sweden.
Most illuminatingly, the table shows that in groups 1 and 2, we find no traces of the Ghent system while in group 3, all countries operate the Ghent system. These are the countries with high union density, high collective bargaining coverage, and a high number of ‘employers covered by multi-employer agreements’ (p. 78).
While Madland argues that the Ghent system is ‘boosting productivity’ where it is in place we have, in recent years, seen a decoupling of productivity from wage growth, a fact noticed even by the otherwise fairly neoliberal OECD (2018), as well as the Economic Policy Institute (EPI, 2021). Perfect examples of this are the United Kingdom, Australia and the USA – as Chapter 4 shows – but there are also other countries where workers are experiencing wage stagnation and rising inequality. In Australia, for example, ‘in 1980, income inequality was so low that the bottom 99% received 95.5% of the nation’s income, almost the level [found] in Sweden, and slightly better than in Norway’ (p. 101). Since then, neoliberalism has changed that by shifting wealth upwards and camouflaging this move through the ideological hallucination of a ‘trickle-down’ economy.
Madland’s chapter on ‘answering sceptics’ (p. 109) seeks to pre-empt the naysayers in the USA. On the other hand, Madland also rejects the idea of a Universal Basic Income (Ghatak and Maniquet, 2019), arguing that, ‘even the most extreme version of [UBI] does not fully address the country’s [the USA] wage and inequality challenges, let alone do much for democracy’ (p. 133). Beyond that, the author is rather optimistic – perhaps a touch too optimistic – about getting the Ghent system into the USA when he argues that ‘a pro-union electoral majority could exist in the near future, as the public is [. . .] supportive of unions’ (p. 147).
Under ‘favourable facts’ (p. 149), Madland notes that ‘significant support from the Republican Party or business for a new labor system seems unlikely’ (p. 140). Indeed, one need only consider that the Republican Party has converted itself from the extremism of the Tea Party into the radical extremism of Trumpism. Furthermore, US businesses remain staunchly anti-union. Its bosses have done rather well under neoliberalism. And finally, there are still the imperatives of ‘Media Capitalism’ working against Madland’s Ghent system proposal (Klikauer, 2022).
Madland closes his book by saying that ‘the window of success may be wider for an incremental approach that seeks labor reform’ (p. 158). But he also believes that ‘though the Supreme Court famously upheld the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Act, the law did not even survive a few years without court decisions weakening it’ (p. 158). Given the recent stacking of the US Supreme Court with Trump appointees and its recent decisions, Madland’s inspiring optimism might turn out to be illusionary.
Despite his overenthusiasm, Madland has presented a well-thought-out and comprehensively argued book that suggests the adoption of the Ghent system as one possible remedy for union and collective bargaining decline. The book basically argues that trade unions should be incorporated into what Louis Althusser once called the ‘state apparatus’ (1984) which, to be realistic, would not automatically – and perhaps not at all – mean that trade unions will recover. In other words, trade unions should not be part of the state. On the up side, one might argue that the incorporation of trade unions into the state might stabilise them and enhance collective bargaining. But recent research on corporatism, for example, does not seem to support the inclusion of trade unions in the state apparatus (Las Heras and Ribera-Almandoz, 2017; Meardi and Tassinari, 2022).
Finally, the inclusion of trade unions in the state apparatus via the Ghent System would also ensure that more businesses (multi-employer bargaining) and workers would be included in collective bargaining. In the end, Madland’s potentially workable, seemingly plausible and well laid out proposal might even reverse the current trends of wage stagnation and rising inequality.