BY ISABELLE GIUS
The American Prospect

Our current model of collective bargaining leaves millions of workers out in the cold. Sectoral bargaining could change all that—and, just maybe, rebuild our shrunken middle class.

Sectoral bargaining also has the potential to disincentivize employer opposition to unionization. Under our current bargaining system, companies compete with each other over wages, and most managers thus believe that unionization will put them at a competitive disadvantage. Sectoral bargaining takes wages out of competition, requiring all companies in a sector to follow the same rules and adhere to the same standards, thus preventing a race to the bottom that pits workers against one another and drives down wages and living standards.

Employers then have to compete based on other factors, such as greater productivity or the quality of their product. With sectoral bargaining, as Sharon Block, executive director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, explained: “You don’t have workers bearing the full burden of the competitiveness that is inherent in capitalism.”... Read more about Thinking Sectorally