On the No Raid Agreement

Yesterday, Tasini's Working Life blog broke the news that SEIU and AFSCME have reached a no raid agreement. Today the mainstream media, including the Washington Post, has picked up the story.

While some see this agreement as a sign that the recent split in the AFL-CIO will not have the negative consequence of competitive fights between unions I am not as optimistic. After all Russia and Germany agreed not to raid one another and we saw what happened there.

I am biased towards an economic analysis which would suggest that if the proper incentives are in place then unions raiding each other is a likely outcome. Even when all these unions were together in the AFL-CIO there was plenty of raiding and fighting going on, the incentive scheme hasn't changed and I would argue the recent has only increased the attractiveness of raiding. Despite whatever paper agreements are reached in the interim.

I hope I am wrong.