Toward a Democratic Theory of Labor Unions

• In Event: Strikes, Labor Unions, and Political Theory

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed a resurgence of interest in capitalism within
political theory. While capitalism as a system of distribution is an important
feature of debates about justice, this new wave of work approaches capitalism
as a distinctive political order, one with its own characteristic institutions and
modes of power and agency. From this perspective, theorists have addressed
topics including, but not limited to, the distinctive nature of capitalist
domination (Bryan 2023; Cicerchia 2022; Gourevitch 2014), the politics and
philosophy of work (Anderson 2017; Weeks 2011), workplace democracy
(Frega, Herzog, and Neuhäuser 2019; Landemore and Ferreras 2016), the nature
of the corporation (Ciepley 2013; Singer 2019), the philosophy of profit (Hirsch
2022), and the relationship between paid work and care (Fraser 2016; Müller
2020). Yet peculiarly, the key institution through which those disempowered by
capitalism have asserted their rights and power—the labour union—has not
been subject to sustained analysis (for some important exceptions, see O’Neill
and White 2018; Reiff 2020).
This paper develops a general theory of labour unions as a specific form
of democratic agency within capitalism. It challenges two popular justifications
for unions—a power-balancing view and a labour rights view—in favour of a
democratic interpretation of the function and value of labour unions. According
to the rival views, labour unions are justified either to equalize the bargaining
power of workers or to protect workers’ rights in the context of underspecified
labour contracts. In both cases, the implicit rationale of unions rests on the
failure of capitalist labour markets to live up to their purported ideal of equal
exchange between workers and capitalists. Market failures are then
compensated for by creating strategic assurance mechanisms—in this case,
labour unions—that can overcome those failures through collective negotiation
and monitoring.
In contrast, my democratic interpretation of labour unions begins from a
specific analysis of capitalism as a political order. Rather than viewing
capitalism as a market order that sometimes falls short of realizing competitive
markets, the political interpretation approaches capitalism as a specific mode of
organizing political power. Firms are vested with control over decisions about
production and investment and, therefore, the power to direct labour. From this
perspective, labour unions are an inherently disruptive– and specifically, a
democratic– effort to alter who has control over production and investment
choices. This disruption can be mitigated precisely through institutional
mechanisms that instead represent unions as mechanisms for wage bargaining

and overcoming market failures. However, I argue that we should regard these
as efforts to tame the democratizing effects and character trade unions, rather
than the purpose of trade unions.

Author

• Steven Klein, King's College London