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Perhaps there was a time when they were a necessary check against industrial abuses in an economy with few choices and little opportunity for education, but now

by pc2g4d 11y ago

Perhaps there was a time when they were a necessary check against industrial abuses in an economy with few choices and little opportunity for education, but nowadays unions seem like little but a market distortion extorting (with government support, as from the NLRB) money from the general public and transferring it to special interest groups. Rather than special privileges for unions, I would prefer that workers negotiate contracts as individuals, but that the government or private philanthropy provide a massive subsidy to workers who wish to retrain and move from lower-wage to higher-wage industries.

dalke 11y ago
The Taft–Hartley Act prohibits unions from carrying out 'jurisdictional strikes, wildcat strikes, solidarity or political strikes, secondary boycotts, secondary and mass picketing, closed shops, and monetary donations by unions to federal political campaigns' (quoting Wikipedia). This is a form of market distortion which takes money from one special interest group (labor) and moving it to another special interest group (employers). If you do not like market distorting laws then you should not like the Taft-Hartley Act, which weakens the power of the unions to maximize the market for the labor they represent. Yet somehow I think you believe that distorting the market in this fashion is correct. Regarding 'negotiate contracts as individuals', do you disagree with the concept of inequality of bargaining power? Quoting from the National Labor Relations Act, which is the relevant US law: > "The inequality of bargaining power between employees who do not possess full freedom of association or actual liberty of contract and employers who are organized in the corporate or other forms of ownership association substantially burdens and affects the flow of commerce, and tends to aggravate recurrent business depressions, by depressing wage rates and the purchasing power of wage earners in industry and by preventing the stabilization of competitive wage rates and working conditions within and between industries." If workers negotiate contracts as individuals, then they are at a disadvantage to employers who, quoting now from Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations": > ".... being fewer in number, can combine much more easily; and the law, besides, authorizes, or at least does not prohibit their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen. We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work; but many against combining to raise it. In all such disputes the masters can hold out much longer. Finally, a massive government subsidy distorts the market in order that give some special interest groups (employers) free training for their workers. It's curious that you want market distortions that favor employers, but not those which favor labor.

by pc2g4d 11y ago

dalke 11y ago

The Taft–Hartley Act prohibits unions from carrying out 'jurisdictional strikes, wildcat strikes, solidarity or political strikes, secondary boycotts, secondary and mass picketing, closed shops, and monetary donations by unions to federal political campaigns' (quoting Wikipedia). This is a form of market distortion which takes money from one special interest group (labor) and moving it to another special interest group (employers). If you do not like market distorting laws then you should not like the Taft-Hartley Act, which weakens the power of the unions to maximize the market for the labor they represent. Yet somehow I think you believe that distorting the market in this fashion is correct. Regarding 'negotiate contracts as individuals', do you disagree with the concept of inequality of bargaining power? Quoting from the National Labor Relations Act, which is the relevant US law: > "The inequality of bargaining power between employees who do not possess full freedom of association or actual liberty of contract and employers who are organized in the corporate or other forms of ownership association substantially burdens and affects the flow of commerce, and tends to aggravate recurrent business depressions, by depressing wage rates and the purchasing power of wage earners in industry and by preventing the stabilization of competitive wage rates and working conditions within and between industries." If workers negotiate contracts as individuals, then they are at a disadvantage to employers who, quoting now from Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations": > ".... being fewer in number, can combine much more easily; and the law, besides, authorizes, or at least does not prohibit their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen. We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work; but many against combining to raise it. In all such disputes the masters can hold out much longer. Finally, a massive government subsidy distorts the market in order that give some special interest groups (employers) free training for their workers. It's curious that you want market distortions that favor employers, but not those which favor labor.