The departure of the AFL-CIO's three largest unions has already reduced the federation's membership by a third and its income by a fourth. Other unions may head for the exit.

 All that competition for union dues is bad news for the AFL-CIO hierarchy, but not necessarily for unions in general, much less for workers in general.

 This seems an opportune time to reconsider what a trade union is, and what it can and cannot do. Any union is a nonprofit enterprise that markets services for a fee. If many existing and potential members think the services are not worth the dues, then membership should be expected to shrink. A union's offerings might include assistance with training, career counseling, help with work-family scheduling, and financial and other information services.

 Leaders of the AFL-CIO claim to represent those who pay union dues. But this introduces an "agency problem." Just as interests of corporate managers can differ from interests of corporate stockholders, the personal interests of union bosses may likewise differ from the interests of union members.

 Being in a position to spend other people's money is a great source of power and prestige, including the offer of campaign help and money to politicians. The AFL-CIO uses about 36 percent of union dues to support the leadership's personal political preferences, although some 40 percent of union members voted for President Bush. Even members who agree with the union leaders' political tastes may nonetheless regard political crusades as a huge waste of their money.

 Old guys running the "labor movement" tend to depict their efforts in quaint Marxist terms, as a contest between a huge army of wage slaves ("working Americans") against a small managerial-professional elite. In reality, there were 137.7 million Americans working in 2003, but only 72.9 million -- or 53 percent -- were still being paid by the hour, and a fourth of those were part-timers. Compare that with 47.9 million employees -- 34.8 percent -- who worked in managerial and professional positions. AFL-CIO protectionist lobbying, aiming to raise the price of imports, is an unlikely way to appeal to salaried service workers, Teamsters and others exiting the AFL-CIO.

 "Change to Win" union bosses dislike the AFL-CIO's emphasis on partisan politics. But they, too, define goals in terms of their own personal interest -- namely, presiding over bigger unions with more power, influence and money. Nobody explains how existing union members might benefit from having their dues spent on trying to recruit more union members -- a frequently futile task estimated to cost as much as $3,000 per new member.

 Although average pay is often higher for union workers, some of that gap reflects unions organizing the largest firms in the biggest cities -- those that always paid relatively high wages. Also, as Harvard economist Richard Freeman explained, "unions negotiate compensation packages that will create queues of job applicants and permit employers to cream (select) the best." In that case, we're not comparing comparable workers.

 H. Gregg Lewis famously estimated the wage gap between union and nonunion wages at just 15 percent from 1967 to 1979. In 2003, however, David Blanchflower and Alex Bryson found the wage premium was substantially lower than in the '70s.

 Labor compensation hovered around 70 percent of national income for decades, regardless of unionization. Whatever gains unions made were at the expense of other workers, consumers and taxpayers, not investors or owners.

 Organized labor can widen the gap between union and nonunion pay only by making union labor relatively scarce. Suppose some unions attain sufficient monopoly power to force wages up. Whenever the price of anything goes up, demand goes down. There must then be fewer jobs at unionized firms. And that, in turn, leaves more jobseekers displaced into the nonunion sector -- thus, depressing nonunion wages. Continued...