Unions Are Not a Special Interest Group

In this Majority Report clip, Michael Brooks talks with Eric Levitz about the importance of organized labor.

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"Individual labor unions, like any organized constituency, sometimes have interests that conflict with the greater public’s. Police unions have an interest in protecting their officers from legal liability; the public, in ensuring that those who are supposed to “serve and protect” us have ample incentive not to shoot us dead. Coal miners’ unions have an interest in perpetuating their industry; the public, in perpetuating climatic conditions conducive to human life.

But these conflicts do not render organized labor — as a whole — a “special interest group” like any other. While certain unions may be an obstacle to the greater good on discrete issues, they are collectively a uniquely effective vehicle for realizing that good on the issues that matter most to working people.

Of course, Republicans have long denied this reality, insisting that their crusades against collective bargaining are a defense of the everyman’s “right to work” — rather than the corporate sector’s right to hold down wages. But as the labor movement declined over the second half of the 20th century — and the Democrats grew more reliant on corporate financing — even some of the party’s putative progressives found it convenient to see labor as a mere interest group whose priorities did not necessarily overlap with the broader public’s any more than those of “the business community.”