An op-ed in Business Week magazine this week gets right to the point: the hostility that Big Business has towards the Employee Free Choice Act is downright short-sighted and bad for business. Two business professors - Paul Adler of USC and Donald Palmer of UC Davis - lay out why businesses should support the Employee Free Choice Act.
"...as a simple matter of ethics, businesses have an obligation to consider the interests of the various stakeholders that support them. A common view in the business community is that the only stakeholders who merit special consideration are investors, because they're the only ones who bear real risks; others--employees, customers, suppliers--are directly compensated. But this is false, especially when it comes to employees."
There's so many good points, we want to pull out a few more for you.
On sustainability and security:
And on corporate performance:"A common view in the business community is that responsibility for this social environment is government's, and that businesses' responsibility should be limited to obeying the resulting laws and regulations. But this flies in the face of two business realities...business plays an active role in shaping public policies."When the lowest-paid workers...are assured higher wage levels and greater employment security, the families of these workers--and, most important, their children--live better, more economically secure lives. Again, unions provide the most effective mechanism for protecting workers' compensation and security."
We think the message from these business professors is crystal clear. Unions are a crucial component for American businesses to be competitive in the global economy. When unions raise workers' wages, it helps increase their savings and reduces a country's income inequality - leading to greater economic growth, investment, health and even social harmony."Unions typically boost rather than hurt business productivity. [...] Higher wages translate into lower turnover, which means less waste in recruiting, selecting, and training people to replace departed workers. Lower turnover, in turn, makes it economically rational for a firm to invest in worker training, which makes the workforce more productive."Many in the business community are not blind to these benefits, but they still fear that more robust unions will cut into profits and thereby slow down investment and growth. [...] Within the U.S., there is no correlation between unionization and the probability of a firm's failure, and looking around the world, there is no correlation between the extent of unionization and aggregate rates of growth."
RSS FEEDS