The pursuit of self interest

Andrew Leigh (On Line Opinion, October 8, 2008) quite properly points to the feeling by many that unions have too much power. How many think employers have too much power?

In the end to deny the right of any group of people to “organise”, celebrated so movingly by the story of Joe Hill and many, many others, is itself an attack on human rights. To campaign against unions is utterly counter productive. When the situation is properly managed, unions’ policy development can save the management substantial time. More than that, civilised union advocacy represents a challenge necessary to the arrival at sensible decisions which is so often missing.

Many professional people believe that unions are for “workers”, that they have no need of them. They have reaped the rewards as university staff are overrun by mindless bureaucracy requiring adherence to practices irrelevant to teaching or scholarship, their class sizes and workload increased to near intolerable levels leaving no time to think; as government scientists are shoehorned into pursuit of projects of short term interest; to businesses too short-sighted to realise their responsibility to the intellectual future of the country.

Too often professionals ignore the lessons from some of their generously remunerated colleagues in the medical profession, for instance, who are able to put aside their differences, join together and with others pursue what they see as their interests.

The whole issue of industrial relations and unionism is in the end just another example of our failure in much of the western world to really think through the best way forward. Rather we have pursued our narrow self interest, at the same time ignoring the fact that Adam Smith used that term to mean self improvement for ordinary people, not a prisoner-like refusal to co-operate, not the primacy of individualism.