An alum's case against unionization of campus workers

Professor Chris Howell's essay "It's time to give student workers a collective voice: unionize" (Dec. 11, 1998) offers several examples of conclusions drawn from faulty logic. In response, I will address some of these fallacies, and intend to present a solid case against unionization based on the ideas which Howell claims to support.

In his first sentence Howell tries to support unionization in the name of "Making capitalist societies fairer, more democratic places." It would indeed be interesting to find a fairer or more democratic paradigm than capitalism, in which each individual decides for him/herself what to buy, for whom to work, what s/he wishes to do in life, and how much effort s/he wishes to put forth to reach those goals.

What a laugh: The notion that unions will help make this happen! Those same unions where 51 people can force the other 49 to act against their wishes? If Howell really does believe in individual rights (which he claims to in his second sentence), he might want to rethink his stance on unionization, which necessarily eliminates them (think of the etymology). The ability to join a union certainly constitutes an individual right at one level; however, by doing so, members of a union give up a large collection of other important individual rights at other levels (think again of the 51/49 example).

Later in the letter, Howell openly muses, "Anyone earning a wage that hovers around this country's miserable minimum wage should be entitled to more money." First there's an issue of entitlement. Excuse me if I sound a bit cynical, but who gets to decide who's entitled to what? Another issue at hand is that of the minimum wage itself. An example helps:

An employer, let's call him Matt, can spend up to $8 an hour on employees and still be profitable (it's a small business in a small town in a recession). Matt hires one employee call him Dan, at the minimum wage, $5.15. In these hard times, Dan would have been willing to work for $4 an hour, but is happy to be making the extra money. Another person, Sparky, wants a job, and is also willing to be paid only $4 an hour. Uh-oh! Because of the minimum wage, and the fact that the owner can only spend $8 an hour and still be profitable, Matt can't hire Sparky (two people at $5.15 = $10.30, which is 29 percent more an hour than the employer can afford)! So, instead of making any money, Sparky gets NO money. In this case, both people would have been willing to work for less, but instead one is unemployed. This can be one of the great tragedies of a minimum wage. To top it off, Howell claims that people are entitled to this uncaring regime!

In the third (my favorite) paragraph of his essay, Howell uses faulty logic in an anecdote which is designed to elicit sympathy. This argumentum ad misericordiam is designed to catch the reader at a weak point emotionally, thus reducing the chance the deception is noticed. In this case, he states "Much of the objection to this organizing drive appears to come from the belief that students are just playing at work." Then he tells of an advisee of his who really needs to work three jobs, and has had scheduling conflicts because of them. That is where the sympathy button gets pushed.

Now contrast the belief that students aren't "just playing at work" with Howell's following thought, "Higher wages would mean less hours worked." We are presented with a paradox. Are students playing at work or not? If they are not playing, then they must be doing something of value for the college. However, if we can feasibly have less hours worked by students, then at least some of those work hours must not be valuable.

I find it cowardly of Mr. Howell to offer no solution to the problems found on inspection of the logic of his statements. Mr. Howell should have just come out and explicitly said "We need to budget more money for student workers, this is a jobs gratia jobs program." Is there any other way to reconcile the contradictions apparent in his arguments? Mr. Howell, how do we get the extra money? Which student organization or department's funding do we cut? Politics? Oh, wait, let me guess: Economics, right? Or do we just raise tuition to cover the difference?

(On a more serious note: I understand that some students definitely do work very hard to be able to stay in school. I admire these students greatly, and am proud to come from a school where students are willing to work hard to stay. I also worked three jobs simultaneously for awhile, and more than 10 distinct jobs over my time at Oberlin, but those were just for that "little extra" that Howell says is clearly not the reason that students work, according to financial aid figures.)

I really hope that students (and faculty) do think about this "problem" from a realistic perspective. Don't blindly fall to buzz-words and sympathy stories. Think before accepting "progressive" rhetoric from this college of the sometimes too-liberal arts.

-Matt Norton graduated from Oberlin in 1998.