Letters.

Labor Lost

I enjoyed Michael McMenamin's "Labor Lost" (November), but I would be interested in further information on the tactics unions are using to gain members where they cannot win elections.

For example, in Milwaukee the group "Justice for Janitors" has given up trying to organize mostly part-time and low-wage janitorial employees and is instead trying to force building owners and managers to hire only union firms to do their cleaning. The activists chant and shout and rattle soda cans filled with stones at board meetings, award ceremonies, and other public events where targeted high-profile building owners or CEOs who use nonunion cleaners are appearing. They don't attempt to organize the workers, they just drive clients away from the nonunion companies through intimidation.

Apparently, if you're not working for a unionized firm, you don't deserve a job. What tactics are they resorting to in other cities?

Mary Jo Baas

Madison, WI

It is true that union membership is proportionally much greater in the public sector. But unions have secured the dues of civil servants through a Faustian bargain whereby they forgo their most potent weapon, the right to strike. A government bus line, for example, does not have to worry, like its private counterpart, about a possible walkout.

Government unions may pretend to be militant, but in fact they support the politicians who impose the legal prohibitions against strikes by public employees. In return, the politicians acquiesce to union demands for a union shop and the dues checkoff. It's a cozy arrangement unless you happen to be the employee.

David Kahn

Montville, NJ

I enjoyed "Labor Lost," though I would hasten to add that Mr. McMenamin's point of disagreement with my own analysis is based on a truncated summary of my argument in Labor Pains.

I argued there that three sets of considerations--the size of the stakes (the factor Mr. McMenamin discusses), the degree and nature of the unions' motivation, and the inherent magnetism of the opportunities for attack--drove the action. Indeed, in my view, it is the last of these points that is determinative in health care--the availability of dramatic and potent themes.

Jarol B. Manheim

Bethesda, MD

Michael McMenamin replies: In response to Ms. Baas, the Service Employees International Union is leading the way with comprehensive corporate campaigns against certain employers and, in some cases, certain industries. Some of the SEIU's tactics are: storming the...