As a former journalist, I belonged to a group of skilled, articulate and relatively educated professionals who by nature also tend to be individualists, loners, skeptics and non-joiners. Accounting for some of this standoffish mien is the impossible-to-attain grail of "objectivity," a professional tenet drilled into fledgling reporters by traditionalist editors and journalism professors.
But fairness is all you really can expect from flawed, emotionally charged creatures such as ourselves, however we might aspire to be more. And fairness requires more nuance and thoughtfulness. In any event, I suspect that, as in my own case, many individualists select themselves into the noble, indispensable craft of journalism because it suits who they already are.
Sometimes, of course, journalists select themselves back out, perhaps because they've developed stronger opinions about the world based on what they've seen in their reporting, and what they perceive of the craft's limitations. Some news people like me leave the fold so they can be free to engage in progressive politics.
But there are also those in the presumed “liberal media” who choose to head off in the opposite political direction. Among those is Mike Nichols. After a tour as a reporter and columnist at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Nichols eventually became president of the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, a right-wing think tank that, in my humble opinion, is more talk than think.
I mention Nichols because in today's Journal Sentinel, he penned a guest editorial column supporting a so-called "right to work" law that Republicans are preparing to push onto Wisconsin's mostly unsuspecting labor force. In the column, Nichols recalled his experience with Local 51, the Journal Sentinel's Newspaper Guild union shop, in service to his arguments against organized labor in general, and in favor of what amounts to an "every man for himself" approach to the workplace. [How's that working out for most of you? Read any Ayn Rand lately?]
When he joined the newspaper, Nichols writes, he declined the union's invitation (overly aggressive, according to him) to become a member:
"The union, I concluded, wasn't boosting my pay. It was holding it down by repeatedly asking the company to spend whatever money was available on across-the-board salary increases rather than just merit pay; if I screwed up somehow, I wanted to speak for myself; if I was going to donate money to a cause (something reporters and columnists are normally dissuaded from doing) I didn't want that cause to be part of a national union that pushed a political agenda I disagreed with."
Now, the first thing we must do is copy-edit that last sentence. Nichols and other conservatives may keep saying it, but it ain't so:
First, it wasn't a matter of whether he would “donate” money to the union; rather, member dues were the equivalent of a fee for service, a real and arguably valuable service. That's not unique to unions. For instance, my power company now charges me a base fee even if I don't consume a single watt. In any event, Nichols was able to skip out on becoming a member and sharing in the costs -- and not just the benefits -- of the newspaper's union local.
Second and more importantly, federal law prohibits labor unions from spending member dues on political activity. Like an increasing number of private businesses, many but not all unions typically do offer members a voluntary opportunity to contribute to a political action fund, but that's an entirely free-will proposition. Dues in fact are reserved for running the union itself and on bargaining (often with expensive legal assistance) over a labor contract. So that's what Nichols objected to supporting with dues, even though the union was charged with representing him -- by a majority vote of his fellow workers.
Channeling Groucho Marx, Nichols thus effectively refuses to join any outfit that would have the likes of him as a member.
By the way, that political-contribution meme although erroneous has been a convenient, effective, continuing argument for conservatives to oppose labor unions in general. When Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and the GOP-controlled state legislature basically demolished most public employee units in Wisconsin by imposing powerful barriers against their activity, it wasn't, as Walker said, merely necessary to balance his first budget by clawing back already promised compensation to public employees; it was to destroy their political power forever, however legitimately they exercised that power, and despite the continuing desire of employees to have such representation.
Guess what? Most of those employees have gotten next to nothing in the way of raises ever since. And now Team Walker plans to foist equally onerous restraints on private-sector unions in the state. What could possibly go wrong?
Nichols' rhetoric aside, unions are among the most democratic of all American institutions. If union members don't like the decisions of their elected leaders, they can elect new leaders. Nevertheless, conservatives profess outrage that unions – just like Walker and all politicians – win a mandate to serve all by attracting a mere majority of votes in an election.
Now, unions are often required to serve all employees in the bargaining unit, regardless of whether they become members and pay the dues that keep the doors open, which requirement explains Nichols' ability to opt out. Meanwhile, in the case of Team Walker, serving the entire populace of Wisconsin means, among other things, rewarding red counties while screwing with the blue counties. Hey, guys, what's sauce for the goose.
Beyond that, the Nichols stance on union political activity is not just bogus, it's highly selective. I once worked for a large company that solicited voluntary donations from its employees, which it turned over to the firm's political action fund which then contributed to political candidates selected by management, most of whose picks I didn't like. Perhaps employees in such situations should, by the Nichols prescription, quit their employment.
Does Nichols know how many private, for-profit media companies fund PACs? Would the mere existence of such a PAC make him feel like leaving his employer's fold? Would he take into account the pressure he might feel whenever asked by his managers to contribute?
Nichols evades another, even more instructive truth: It's extremely telling when a group of journalists decides to form a labor union. Follow me below the fold for the reason why.
Organizing workers in general is difficult at best, especially given roadblocks like Walker's infamous Act 10, Republicans who habitually seek to defang the National Labor Relations Board and continuing moves by those same Republicans -- now including the cretinous band running Wisconsin government -- to impose "right to work" laws upon private-sector unions in a professed desire for "fairness." But if power is held exclusively bymanagement, employees are going to lose ground. Even Ronald Reagan, himself once a "big union boss," knew that, once.
Here's the thing: Hard as it is to organize other shops, it's even harder to organize newsrooms, inculcated as they are in that highly individualistic, skeptical, non-joiner attitude I described up top. Other than in the case of joining forces to cover a big, breaking news story, organizing a large group of journalists is like herding cats.
So whenever news people -- including those at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – feel the mutual need for and actually proceed to form a union, it's fair to assume that a majority of them perceived a real problem with working conditions. Nichols fell into his newspaper's minority who self-selected out of the process, which some might regard as the most exceptional aspect of his career there. All for one, and one lone wolf for himself.
Journalism in general is not a high-paying profession. Indeed, for most news people (exceptions including some popular columnists and sculptured TV news anchors), the job is stressful, with long hours, odd shifts and relatively low pay compared to most other white-collar professions. In an era of shrinking newsrooms where the chores become ever more demanding, a union becomes even more important, although management may be prone to warn workers otherwise, even sometimes in ways the National Labor Relations Act doesn't in theory permit.
As for Nichols' arguments concerning merit pay: More nonsense. For him, like other defenders of "right to work," it all seems to be about the money. But unions negotiate over far wider issues than mere compensation: They typically seek a formal grievance procedure, specificity on work schedules, how overtime is used, health coverage particulars, sick-day, lay-off and retirement policies, expense-accounting rules, and much more. Then again, maybe we should just dispense with the input of workers and leave all those decisions up to management. [So how's that working out for you?]
Nichols' argument aside, labor agreements that set basic compensation standards for the entire shop do not necessarily preclude bonus or merit pay, just as they don't preclude profit-sharing agreements. Nor do they exclude the situation that used to pertain at the Journal Sentinel, whose parent firm for many years was employee-owned. That's right: The union shop that Nichols complains about used to be owned by those very employees, but that was before an expansionist CEO took the company's stock public and ruined that highly profitable (for the employees and the community at large) arrangement.
In other words, the Journal Sentinel's newsroom union in a sense used to bargain with itself -- or at least a Venn diagram including itself and management. But this, too, apparently failed the individualist Nichols' smell test. His colleagues may have been, as he says, "nice guys," but he didn't want them calling some of the shots, even if they were part owners of the firm. Because then he might not make as much money as he, personally, thought he deserved.
While there's nothing wrong with pay systems in principle, many of them function in ways that are not very fair. Few appear based on some concrete description of what constitutes subjective ""merit." Indeed, some studies have shown that such reward systems can end up reducing productivity, which ends up costing the organization money and leads to lower pay. Just as other studies suggest similar defects in "right to work" laws.
Occasionally, merit pay systems even encourage self-aggrandizement, in which managers give out treats in exchange for tricks. Think Pavlov, here, but don't salivate too much. Besides favoritism, merit pay can encourage "politically correct" behavior that has nothing to do with performance. Indeed, merit systems by design often are backward, not forward looking.
Even where properly structured to reward truly superior work, merit systems unfairly treat those workers who, skills aside, do not get as many opportunities to perform at that level, either because of the nature of their assignments or because managers have focused on senior staffers, or those who are most agreeable in their dealings. Perceived favoritism – irrespective of whether it's even truly meritorious -- leads to decay in morale and output.
Merit systems, however well-intentioned, thus tend to become affirmative-action programs for insiders, some senior workers and a complacent status quo. Just look at the State of Wisconsin's own merit pay system, re-instituted under Gov. Scott Walker. Based on anecdotal evidence and analysis of merit pay schedules, it appears the system depends way too much on vague and subjective criteria, is prone to favoritism and political considerations, tends to reward managers at higher levels relative to line staff, and functions with wild disparities across agencies. Then there's the sheer, wasteful redirection of energy as employees compete among themselves (and with their overseers) over, literally, an extra few pennies on the dollar.
Merit systems aren't all bad, but too often they exacerbate a defective work environment.
Michelle Smith, a fellow at Australia's Deacon University,summed this up ably:
"According to the logic of merit, a person who demonstrates the highest aptitude for a job, a spot at university, or even a place in the federal Cabinet should be selected regardless of any other factors... . It seems fair on the surface. A person who has worked hard and shown qualities superior to all other candidates should be successful... . What is problematic about the idea of merit is that it presumes all people have the same opportunity to succeed."
So in the case of merit pay systems, we're talking an affirmative action issue. Years ago, the former Milwaukee Journal regularly touted its Pulitzer-quality reporting and described itself among other local media as "First By Merit." But it was the merit of the newspaper's
collective reporting -- not individualism -- that drove the paper's success and constituted the paper's own measurement of that success.
How times change. The conservative political animus these days is to return to the good old days of the '90s -- that would be the 1890s -- when unions were barely on the map and institutional inequality, work conditions and overall pay were much worse. Which is why unions formed in the first place.
Ironically, there's nothing in the substance of "right to work" legislation, existing or proposed, that guarantees anyone's actual right to work. In right to work states, you can still be fired at will, and it remains the case that no one is obliged to hire you, either. "Right to work" is thus classic political bullshit. It describes precisely nothing about the intent of the actual legislation.
Many individuals who think like Nichols tend to prefer the idea of individual work contracts, if their employer will even entertain the notion. But if you work where individual labor contracts are unavailable and where the bosses are paying you and most everyone else too little, you can, through a union, compel a collective work contract that, to borrow John F. Kennedy's often re-purposed phrase, will lift all boats.
Star Trek's fictional Vulcan philosopher Surak had it right: "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one." Real-world human philosopher Jeremy Bentham offered up the same idea this way: "It is the greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong." Arguably, that concept drove the infant and adolescent United States of America, a principle that was soon corrupted.
But for decades now we haven't lived in what could be considered a society where the good of all -- rather than just a few powerful elites -- is truly on the political radar. Today's America isn't a very pluralistic society, it's increasingly an "I got mine, screw you" society. Unfortunately, even for many of the Nicholses in our midst, social darwinism doesn't tolerate the presence very many winners.