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Unions require a moral justification for the legal protections they enjoy because they are a cartel of employees who use the threat of financial harm to prevent
by toasterlovin 7y ago
Unions require a moral justification for the legal protections they enjoy because they are a cartel of employees who use the threat of financial harm to prevent employers and individual workers from freely entering into mutually beneficial work arrangements. Generally speaking, some special justification is required to curtail the freedom of an individual or group in order to benefit some other individual or group. In the case of unions, that justification is that some employers held so much power in their relationship with employees that they were able to make the employees suffer to an extent that we find unacceptable. The justification was not merely that there was an extra 10% of salary that could be extracted from the company.
- joshuamorton 7y agoJust because some companies choose to be nice does not mean that they don't still maintain an unequal amount of power. Similarly, just because some jobs produce more value doesn't mean the companies arent otherwise misbehaving.
- toasterlovin 7y agoYou are assuming that companies somehow hold more power in negotiating with their employees. But it's not at all clear to me that that's the case. Both parties are able to walk away from negotiations and fulfill their needs with other parties. There is a symmetry there that speaks against there being any power imbalance. What is the mechanism by which you think companies wield more power than employees?