I just read this article from BusinessWeek Online. It is basically two commentaries on the Employee Free Choice Act – one anti-EFCA (from a well-known businessman, Bernie Marcus, founder of Home Depot) and one pro-EFCA (from a politician who co-sponsored the bill).
In the first place, what a mis-match of sources. On the one hand, you have a successful entrepreneur and business developer, who has had to deal with the minutia of all that impacts the profits and loss of an large business enterprise, who is focused on the impact of the bill to the overall American (and I would submit, global) economy. On the other hand, you have a career politician (first elected to office in 1974) who makes absolutely no contribution to America’s GDP (basically the definition of any politician, especially those who have made a career of becoming reelected), who has a vested interest supporting the legislation (namely, the Big Labor money behind the bill that will enable him to be continue to be reelected to his cushy, non-productive career).
Considering the sources alone should help you properly weight the “truth component” of each point of view. You can sense Bernie’s desire to allow free-market mechanisms to retain their incredible function of assigning value in the marketplace, even to unions. There has been a place and a role for unions in the past, but with the weight of government interference already imposed upon business in relation to their labor force (for good or bad), the need for unions has been greatly reduced over the years, and their declining membership reflects this in true “free-market” fashion.
On the other hand, the spurious defenses of Miller must first be recognized as an example of what is delivered by any politician – the “best possible spin” that can be made of a very controversial piece of legislation. What that means is that issues are framed in a way to position their perception in you-the-reader’s mind to get you to buy in to his frame of reference. Secondly, it means that the “facts” and “statistics” that he spouts off must be taken with a grain of salt (see my recent post on “bad math”).
And Miller’s misrepresentations only continue! Example: indicating that union worker’s wages are a certain percent higher than non-union doesn’t factor in certain other data, such as the impact to those same workers of the union dues they pay and the loss of pay incurred during strikes. Nor do they factor in the loss of jobs to the market overall due to companies not being able to compete in the global marketplace, and thus closing down US facilities to outsource the work. This is the lesson so easily illustrated by Henry Hazlitt in “Economics In One Lesson” decades ago! (As an aside – all Americans – and especially those who hold public office – would do well to read that book).
I could spend another 2000 words disecting Miller’s other misuses of data and misrepresentations of facts, but the salient fact of his position is that he is beholden to one of the richest special interest groups in this country. How could I trust a word that would fall from his lips?
