The Union Shop vs the Non-Union Shop

There is a lot of nonsense talked about [the union shop]. They talk about the inalienable right of a man to work; he has no such right; no one has the right to work, and the man who stands for the open shop does not care for anybody's rights to work, except for the nonunion man, and they only care for him because they can use him.

If a man has any constitutional right to work he ought to have some legal way of getting work. If the Constitution is going to guarantee the right to work, it ought to guarantee some place to work, and there is no such thing. A man can only work if there is a job; he can only work for a man who wants some man to work for him.

The workingman spends a good share of his waking moments in a shop. He does not need to invite a nonunion man into his house if he does not want to, and probably won't, and he is under no more obligation to work with him in a factory if he does not want to... Of course, a union man had a direct reason for it;

he believes and he understands and feels that the nonunion man is working against the interests of his class; that the only way a workingman can get anything is by collective bargaining, and by saying, "If you don't give us a raise, not only will I quit but we will all quit and tie up your business"; that is the only way he can do it.

One man quitting out of 50,000 is nothing or even ten men or one hundred men, but if they all quit, so they can do with the employer what the employer does with you, when he discharges you, then they can bargain and there is no other kind of bargaining but collective bargaining.

The nonunion man comes along and says, "I will take your place." He is not loyal to the union, and the union man regards him as a traitor to his class, and he won't work with him, and he has a perfect right to refuse to work with him.

There is no such thing as the open shop, really. There is a union shop and a nonunion shop. Everybody that believes in the open shop disbelieves in the union shop, whatever they say; and I do not say that unions are perfect, they are not. The people that work with them know that better than anyone else. 

They are just doing the best they can with the job they have, which is a hard one, and with the material they have, which is not perfect... [I]t is one of the necessary things in the industrial world, and the fight is between those who believe in them and those who disbelieve in them. Those who disbelieve in them say they believe in the union shop; but the union shop is simply a back door to put the union man out.

Clarence Darrow, labor and criminal lawyer, 1915,
Testimony before the U.S. Senates Commission on Industrial Relations.

Collective bargaining through the union is an attempt to extend that principle [of democracy] into the industrial community. People have rights and privileges and obligations in the community as a whole, but within industry they had no rights in the past. Collective bargaining is an attempt to establish their rights as economic citizens within the industrial community.

Obviously, in order to do that, they have to work out rules and regulations. They have to have the machinery of self-government. The union represents that kind of machinery.

The union performs some very important and essential functions. We handle grievances. we handle grievances of all the workers. We have umpire machinery. The unions pay for the umpire machinery. When he hands down a decision, all the workers get the benefit because we establish precedents; we work out basic policies.

We have a medical department. we work on health problems. We work on occupational diseases. All the workers get the benefit of these.

Since all the workers in the industrial community get the benefits of these services performed by the union, made possible by the union, we believe that since all the workers share in the services all the workers ought to share in the cost of providing those services...

..Since all the workers in the industrial community have the right to vote democratically in determining whether our union is going to be the bargaining agency, we cannot get sole bargaining rights unless a majority of the workers support us at the National Labor Relations Board.

So having gotten majority support, we then represent the machinery by which the workers in the industrial community govern themselves and have their work done. They all get the benefit of that machinery; they ought all to pay the taxes which make that machinery possible.

That is all we are asking. It seems to me that is a very sound thing.

Walter Reuther, President of the CIO and the UAW, 1953 Testimony before the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, Hearings, Taft Hartly Act Revisions (Responding to cross examination questions from Senator Barry Goldwater)