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The following essay is an excerpt from the book Decades Of Decadence: How Our Spoiled Elites Blew America's Inheritance of Liberty, Security, and Prosperity by Marco Rubio. Copyright © 2023 by Marco Rubio. Reprinted by permission of Broadside Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
Capitalism is one of the greatest inventions in human history. It brilliantly allocates resources toward the most efficient outcome. But the most efficient outcome is not always what is best for our country. In a business plan, "labor costs" are indistinguishable from "equipment costs," "taxes owed," or "property insurance." Each is a dollar figure that subtracts from what is deemed the most important line item of all: "profit." That may work just fine when it comes to accounting, but it is not the optimal way to run a country. To a nation, workers are not the same as equipment or insurance. Workers are fathers, mothers, neighbors, and citizens.
It is the job of policymakers to ensure that the most efficient allocation decision is also the outcome best for the nation. If it's not, we can change the rules to align the incentives of the private sector with the national good. While the free market should always be the first choice, we must be able to acknowledge when the market does not necessarily know best. But doing so requires a conception of the national good. And that, ultimately, is what our elections and our public debate need to be about.
We cannot be a strong nation without a strong workforce. Dignified work makes family and community possible. These are not financial markers, but rather the markers of a successful and enduring nation. Without dignified work, society decays. Suicides and drug overdoses soar. Values erode. There is no more important project than rebuilding our nation's workforce, and that begins with rethinking our century-old approach to organized labor.
The modern labor movement abandoned any pretense of supporting American workers two decades ago when the AFL-CIO, the nation's largest union, came out in support of amnesty for 11 million illegal immigrants. But the last few years have made clear just how out of step these organizations are with their members. Just look at what happened when the unions representing rail workers sat down with the rail companies to negotiate a new contract. The workers—everyone from traveling linemen to conductors—were desperate for some sort of paid sick leave. Labor leaders negotiated just about everything else, and then told their members to take the deal, which still did not include sick leave. Not surprisingly, the workers balked. If our system worked, the labor leaders would have gone back to the companies and restarted negotiations. Instead, the labor leaders and business executives sat down with the Biden administration to force the agreement on the workers. And Biden, along with a Democrat-controlled House and Senate, did exactly that.
I was one of the few who refused to go along with the charade. To be clear, I don't think Congress had any business involving itself in negotiations between the parties, but if the businesses and labor leaders came crying to us, you can bet I was going to side with the workers. Someone has to, because at the behest of Wall Street, rail companies had dramatically cut the number of workers over the past several years to maximize profit. Fewer workers working more hours with less time off equals more for shareholders. It is the classic example of efficient allocation of resources, except that workers are actual human beings with families. They are members of their local church. They volunteer to coach their kids' soccer and basketball teams. But in the eyes of the neoliberal elites—which includes their own union leadership—they are just an expendable resource.
It was a very clear example of the breakdown of our current labor system and how the neoliberal consensus marginalizes those who do the hard work, but it is far from the only one. Amazon, for example, has a long history of highly questionable labor practices. Just as the railways used something euphemistically called "precision scheduled railroading," Amazon uses a dystopian system called "time off task" to track nearly every minute of employees' days. It is crazy and demeaning, which is why I stood with the workers at Amazon's Bessemer, Alabama, distribution warehouse when they attempted to unionize in 2021.
While I am not a fan of our archaic labor laws, they were the only tool available to the workers in Bessemer. And, equally as important, I surely wasn't going to side with Amazon—a company that increasingly uses its market share to silence conservative voices, such as Ryan T. Anderson, the author of When Harry Became Sally, and push an insane woke agenda. It's funny; all these companies love to condemn Republicans, but as soon as they need relief from regulations or protection from unions, they come running to us. They don't get to have it both ways. If they want to call me a bigot because I believe only women should play women's sports, then they shouldn't expect me to run to their rescue, especially when their ask is to side against working-class Americans who are trying to provide for their families.
Thankfully, Republicans are increasingly skeptical of corporate America. It is an important and long-overdue shift. For the most part, the leadership of these major companies have more in common with Democratic elites than they do with the hardworking Americans on their payroll who increasingly vote Republican. But what remains to be seen is whether—and how—my party grapples with the role of organized labor. The truth is that our current system is adversarial by nature. It writes conflict and strife into our legal code. There are times, like we see with Amazon, where conflict is both necessary and inevitable. But there are also times when the current arrangement breaks down and leaves the actual workers without real representation, like it did during the rail negotiations.
We need to be open to supporting traditional organizing where it makes sense, but also to developing a new concept—a 21st-century version of labor relations. Instead of making it illegal for employees and management to work through problems together, we should allow for the creation of voluntary employee involvement organizations. The concept is widely used in Germany with great success, and would serve as an alternative to the failed status quo. There will be resistance, of course. Resistance from labor leaders. Resistance from Wall Street. And even resistance from companies. But none of that should deter us from making changes to strengthen our workforce.
Marco Rubio, a Republican, is the senior U.S. senator from Florida.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
