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Unions have a necessary function; as a check and balance against corporate power. But unions acting like this are just as bad as monopoly companies. Anti-trust
by tankenmate 9y ago
Unions have a necessary function; as a check and balance against corporate power. But unions acting like this are just as bad as monopoly companies. Anti-trust legislation or similar should be brought to bear here to break the unions into smaller competing unions or place them under a consent decree. Just like a monopoly company should be broken up or placed on a consent decree (Google - search, Amazon - online shopping (although Amazon have yet to seriously part take in rent seeking), Microsoft - desktop software) so should abusive unions. Abuse of collective power; union, corporate, government should be constrained and where reasonably possible pre-empted.
- chimeracoder 9y ago> Anti-trust legislation or similar should be brought to bear here to break the unions into smaller competing unions or place them under a consent decree. We can't. US law explicitly exempts unions from the monopsony and anti-trust laws that would allow us to force them to compete with each other. Unions successfully lobbied for that special protection decades ago, and now it'd be very hard to reverse.
- tankenmate 9y agoDoesn't mean we shouldn't try. I love unions, and I love companies too. One represents the capital and the other the labour; both should be forced to compete. But of course if a company tried to deal with only one union to force the hands of the others then the one they dealt with would wound up being broken up too. So problems wouldn't go away. And employees could chose the union that represents their interests best; i.e. charges reasonable fees, negotiates reasonable wages, etc.