There have been a few states pass right-to-work laws recently. As you can imagine, it’s lit a firestorm of debate between both conservatives and liberals over the nature of the relationship among employers, unions, and government.
What should a government do? Should it regulate the relationships between employer and employee? Should it prevent unions from making exclusive deals with businesses? Should it make sure that someone who doesn’t want to work in a union is allowed it?
Nothing. No. No. No.
Those are the answers to the questions.
Believe me when I tell you that I am not a union guy by any stretch of the imagination. If the choice were left up to me, I’d never join one. If I ever own a business, I would not allow my workers to unionize. But that’s me. There are plenty of people out there who want union representation or want a union workforce. So who am I to tell those people they can’t have unions?
If someone doesn’t want to join a union, he should have every right to refuse membership. That, however, does not mean you can transfer that right to other people’s property (i.e., business).
What makes an agreement between an employee and his workers regarding unionization different from any other sort of arrangement? If an employer, who owns the business, wants to have a union workforce, he has the right to determine how he runs his business. We can argue all we want about whether or not a union workforce will harm his business, but that’s completely immaterial here.
Union representation could be just another requirement for employment like certifications, degrees, passage of drug tests, etc. Most conservatives don’t complain about that, so what’s the difference with unionization?
It’s immensely frustrating for me when right-to-work supporters talk about freedom of association to back their arguments up. How do you support freedom of association when you don’t allow businesses to freely associate with the workers they hire?
On the flip side, it’s also clearly wrong for unions to cuddle up with the government in order to write laws that force employers to use unions. I also take serious issue with the government preventing businesses from opening because they don’t plan on using union labor. If someone posts jobs and people are willing to take them without organized representation, what need is there for the government to step in and regulate the voluntary transactions?
For both liberals and conservatives, it’s time to put your money where your mouth is. If you think that unions are crushing the economy, then let businesses freely choose if they want unions working for them. If they are terrible, union companies will lag behind. If you believe that unions are important for the protection of the middle class and economic progress, then people should freely want to organize and businesses will be required to use unions to get the best workers.
Government is never the answer. Right-to-work laws are just another way for government to stick its nose where it shouldn’t be.
Right-to-work laws are just another way for Big Government to politicize a private business issue and co-opt unions to win elections. Union leaders have no place shaping elections or policy for that matter. But that’s what people like Richard Trumpka are doing every day. I’ve never belonged to a union, but if my dues were being used to contribute to political campaigns or draft legislation, that would be a deal breaker for me.
To the best of my meagre understanding, before the union in the NHL, players, like cattle, were owned by a team for their entire career. Players made about the same as a factory worker, had to have a summer job, and if they were injured on the job, were cut loose with no recourse or compensation. If they were killed on the job, their families got nothing. Just like the silver mines in Arizona, the meat packing in Chicago, the Canadian National Railway, and every Mexican hacienda still.
Y’all are free to hope that people are generally decent and would normally take care of those around them, but history says the exact opposite is the only outcome of every situation where companies are entirely free of government control. Yucatan plantations still employ the situation where kids are responsible for their parent’s debts to the company store, the company does all the accounting, and the courts are owned by the industry directly. Generations of involuntary peonage continue to this day.
And this says nothing about the environment. Check out what happened with the smelters along the Columbia river circa 1950. On the Canadian side they dumped mercury cadmium and lead, on the US side the native’s rate of cancer went up over 1000x. Think the copper barons did anything for the natives ever? Not a single thing still.
If you were to read Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”, and after doing so had even a sense that society is in any way better off without unions, for a month I will wear a Flyer’s sweater blazing the name of Ed Snider with a couple bold $$ below.
My beliefs on unions are hardly based in some PollyAnna-ish notion about people being decent. The fact of the matter is that unions once served a great purpose in protecting workers from unfair labor practices. And Rollo did not argue against unionization. He and I are opposed to government intervening in private industray and forcing businesses to employ union workers. Employers should be free to make that decision for themselves. It would be the same as a government mandate that employers provide a 401(K) plan and pension for every worker. These are tools that businesses use at their own option to attract the best and brightest workers possible. If a business believes that workers will perform at a higher level if they are permitted to unionize, they will freely elect to higher these indidviduals. However, this should be at the business’ discretion instead of at the tip of the government’s sword.
If anything, I would say that supporting government legislation for unions is misguided and quixotic. Politicians do not seek to promote unions in order to protect workers. The relationship is simply a quid pro quo in which elected officials push legislation in support of unions as long as those unions, in turn, provide financial and ground support for the subsequent election cycle. This is cronyism in its purest form and that is what I whole-heartedly oppose.
A few final thoughts on your referencing “The Jungle” to support your argument. You are using a 1906 novel to make your point. American labor practices have vastly improved over the past ONE HUNDRED YEARS. Women and children aren’t toiling away in dark sweat shops for less than a dollar per day. If the most recent example you can find about unfair labor practices in this country is over a century old, I think you would be well-served to reconsider your absolute support of the almighty union. In specific circumstances, unions are good for workers. But when you examine them on a macro-level and look at organizaitons like the ACLU and SEIU, they are a huge detriment for workers and America at-large. Why don’t you ask the 18,500 laid-off workers at Hostess or the school kids in Chicago how they feel about unions. And remember, these are just 2 examples I can cite that occurred in this millenium. Food for thought Lance.
P.S.- I read “The Jungle” and found it out-dated when considering unions in today’s economy. You don’t have to wear to Flyers jersey, but I wouldn’t be opposed to a 2000 Eastern Conference Finals Scott Stevens replica jersey. He really laid out Eric Lindros.
[…] first comment comes from the Right-to-Work […]
Yeah, the Jungle is pretty old, but then, that is kind of the last time the US lived without unions. In a sense, its the most recent example.
In Tucson, the city is broke. Pima county is not broke. All government workers in Tucson are required to be part of the union, in Pima County, there is no union.
In 1990 GM was forced to pay its workers $35 per hour plus about $20/hr in benefits. It had no chance to compete with Honda or Toyota.
I will be the last to say that unions are a blessing all around, there is no silver bullet, there is no easy answer.
My primary fear is that the bankers union collectively agrees to flatten the US economy by restricting lending thus leaving about 99.5% of people without a dime in their jeans. Without unions, we may see the value of labour drop back down to $1 per hour while the cost of living climbs. No one wants to see Oliver Twist II, and while I can whole heartedly agree that unions have been the cause of much trouble, I can also say that without unions, it could very well revert back to the situation of Steinbeck’s world and there is no good in that.
Donald Fehr is not what the world needs, but neither does the world need the 1934 Canadiens.
Do not use The Jungle as a source of reliable information. It was a work of *fiction* written by an author who admitted that he would not have written it had he not been a socialist.
For more on the insanity behind The Jungle and the meatpacking affair, see
https://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Meat_packing
Lastly, nice article! Libertarians definitely should oppose both initiations of violence.