Open Question about Libertarians and Unions
Dec 09, 05 | 9:39 am by Joshua HolmesWhat do libertarians have against labour unions? This question struck me the other day (because it was better than studying for Business Associations) and I wondered why libertarians have so much bile for labour unions. This piece from Prof. Reisman on MI’s website is par for the course. I’ve heard several reasons why unions are evil from free marketers, but I don’t find them particularly convincing.
Reason 1: Unions wouldn’t exist in a free market.
Answer 1: Why wouldn’t they? Perhaps they would actually be the dominant system for large-scale production enterprises.
Answer 2: Neither would the water department. How much bile do you have against public water?
Reason 2: Unions get government protection.
Answer: Sure, who doesn’t? The corporations whose products libertarians enjoy and often lionise enjoy government protection themselves. Direct subsidies, research grants, uneven tax laws, transport subsidies, bureaucratic regulation, etc. all contribute to the success of numerous corporations. Libertarians seem less bothered by this than with (admittedly unjust) laws such as the prohibition on firing striking workers.
Reason 3: Unions attempt to raise wages above the market rate.
Answer 1: In other words, unions attempt to get more for workers. So what?
Answer 2: The market rate, if I understand it, is what buyers and sellers are willing to bear. There is no objectively correct wage for labour - it is the result of the interplay of market actors. Workers will, of course, push for higher wages, just as management will push for higher profits.
Reason 4: Unions are just using workers.
Answer: This is the analogue of the Marxist argument that capitalists are exploiting workers. It deserves the same respect (i.e. none).
Reason 5: Unions support big government.
Answer 1: Did you miss the last election, where tens of millions of adult Americans expressed the same desire?
Answer 2: Most businesses support big government, themselves. Corporations are beginning to push for nationalised health care as a competitive advantage.
Most people I meet in my daily life know I’m a libertarian, and they find it surprising when I express pro-union sentiments. What do anti-union free marketers know about unions that I’m missing?
December 9th, 2005 at Dec 09, 05 | 10:02 am
Only two guesses come to mind:
1) This is a problem with semantics. When discussing “labor unions”, the connotation o f unsavory political association and thinly-veiled organized violence are stronger than would be with, say, the words “corporation” or “management”. For example, in that article he says “Union leaders and their academic and political cohorts are incredibly ignorant of how real wages actually increase.” (bolding mine)
2) This is a problem with psychology. As Roderick Long has argued, government regulations have helped encourage the growth of large hierarchical firms and consequently lessened the bargaining power of the sellers (”workers”) in the labor market. Thus when people think of free enterprise, they think of this modified scenario where bosses get to pay their employees pennies, instead of an actual free market, so they’re surprised that as a “free marketer” you aren’t OK with that state of affairs.
December 9th, 2005 at Dec 09, 05 | 11:08 am
I had forgotten about the violence dimension. But that seems relatively minor in the scheme of things. And although beating on scabs with your fists is nasty stuff, supporting a coercive regulatory state is much worse. Bruises heal, regulatory agencies never go away.
The second point is probably true (although it doesn’t refer to libertarians but ordinary people). Most people probably think of big business as the friend of free markets. They then assume that I must prefer management to labour since I am a friend of free markets.
December 9th, 2005 at Dec 09, 05 | 12:51 pm
Compulsion, perhaps? Labor union officials have won from government the power to “represent” all the employees in a bargaining unit in collective bargaining (monopoly bargaining is a more accurate term). Then, because they’ve been “forced” to bear the weight of all these “free riders,” they demand the power to extract forced dues from employees who didn’t choose to join the union in the first place.
I don’t look at it as a labor-versus-business issue, with government properly on one side or the other. In most cases, it’s business, union bosses, and government all ganging up against rank-and-file employees.
December 9th, 2005 at Dec 09, 05 | 2:06 pm
For the sake of honesty, I will say that I am head of security for a unionized business. That puts me in an adversarial position with them quite a bit, so I am biased right off the bat. I am also somewhere between a libertarian and an anarchist, on the political spectrum. I gotta pay the bills though.
That said, I have three issues with unions - the closed shop, which forces everyone to be part of a union, regardless of their personal preferences, the use of union dues to support political action that not every member agrees with, and the socialist philosophy that underlies a lot of union activity that I personally have experience with.
Not every state is a closed shop state, so if I lived in one of those places I would be able to let that one go. The union dues issue bugs me because I wouldn’t want my money to go to ANY political cause, if I were in that position, and the socialist/marxist leanings may be unique to my situation (when they picket they frequently have direct quotes from Marx on their placards)- though from what I know about the SIEU’s leadership, I suspect that socialism plays a large part in their worldview.
I suppose the solution there is for me to simply not take a job in a union shop, though. Just because I find it distasteful doesn’t mean that I should stop others from doing it.
I could also relate a number of stories about how the laws seem to be written to favor the unions, but - again - I think my solution is unique because I work for a locally owned and relatively small business (500 or so employees) and the union is the ILWU, one of the giants of the labor world, so I understand that the laws were intended to put labor on an even footing with large companies like GM/Boeing, etc, and not intended for the unionization of smaller companies.
Ultimately, it seems like if government got out of the way, and let business and labor work it out, there would be fewer legal clubs for both sides to bludgeon each other with and both sides could get to the business of business, but I wonder if, without government to set the ground rules, it wouldn’t simply degenerate into violence, as it did in the past.
I suspect, though I cannot back it up with anything, that without government interference in markets and business there would be less of a disparity between the two groups and their relationship wouldn’t need to be so adversarial.
Sorry about the long post, but I have devoted a good bit of thought on the matter.
December 9th, 2005 at Dec 09, 05 | 2:10 pm
Joshua: “Most people I meet in my daily life know I’m a libertarian, and they find it surprising when I express pro-union sentiments.”
The only pro-union sentiments you expressed above, that I see, is that unions attempt to “get more” for workers. This is not the case. Unions attempt to raise the wages of some workers by restricting entry into a field and thus make labor in their field more scarce and as a result, more valuable. That can hardly be portrayed as a concern for workers in general. All they are doing is pushing down the wages on some workers so they can raise the wages of other workers.
And to accomplish this, they use violence. Without the violence unions would be ineffectual for they would find themselves on the losing side of a prisoner’s dilemma, where individual union members could make themselves better off by not following the dictates of the union. With non-union workers joined together with union workers who’s self-interest convinces them to defy union policy, the union would be ineffective at implementing union policies.
I don’t know of any reason to be pro union even in a free market scenerio where unions have no legal means of using violence to acheive their goals. What service would they provide to their members to justify their dues?
Also, I would not trivialize union violence. It’s not just about “beating scabs”, it’s about murder, and other forms of extreme violence, intimidation, and property damage.
In one sense the issue is somewhat trivial because union power seems to be on the wane (except for government employee unions.) With only a small percentage of the private workforce unionized, I don’t think unions are that big of a concern, especially compared to other politically well-organized groups that pose a threat to individualists.
December 9th, 2005 at Dec 09, 05 | 4:26 pm
“It cannot be stressed enough that the coercion which unions have been permitted to exercise contrary to all principles of freedom under the law is primarily the coercion of fellow workers.” — FA Hayek
December 9th, 2005 at Dec 09, 05 | 7:06 pm
I once worked for a unionized company even though I didn’t belong to the union(I live in a so-called “right to work” state). When contract renewal time came around many of my fellow employees begin to grumble about a strike. When asked whether I would participate in a strike I unwisely said that I would not. I was then told by a union rep that “In the old days we used to take your kind out back”.
I don’t like unions because:
In some states there are entire industries that you can’t get into unless you join the union(and shell out part of your paycheck for dues).
If labor wants to band together to get a better deal thats fine. But when the State tells business that they must bargain then it amounts to coercion. The State itself seems to recognize this, remember what Reagan did to the air traffic controllers?
Unions use the dues collected to support political candidates.
Unions oppose free trade.
Unions support minimum wage increases.
Unions routinely use violence and intimidation against “scabs” ie people who have the audacity to work without the union’s permission.
I’m sure I could think of more. Corporations have much to answer for to; Wal-Mart using eminent domain to steal land, other companies making millions from government contracts etc… but you asked about unions.
Your answer “Sure who doesn’t?” in regards to government protection is bit flippant and it tantamount to the “Everyone is doing it” defense that children often employ when confronted by their mothers. Unions as we know them would and could not exist without the government intervention that prevents businessmen from laughing in their faces and telling them they are all fired. Minus the State some kind of collective bargaining would survive but it would be on a smaller scale and would be more likely to involve skilled workers and would be fair in the sense that management would always have the right to walk away from the table.
December 10th, 2005 at Dec 10, 05 | 4:38 pm
There’s nothing wrong with unions as voluntary collective organizations. Thing is that a noticeable number of libertarians, especially the Lewrockwell.com/Mises.org types, have a fetish for contrarianism. The major media’s usual bias is “business bad, unions good”, so I judge it just natural that these types take the opposite tack.
Reisman’s complaints are shallow:
Not exactly brain science, there. Work sucks, that’s why it’s called “work”. You don’t get up in the morning and say, “Well, honey, I’m off to fun”, do you? Of course most people want to do less and get paid more. Most people want to pay less money for better stuff at the store, too. In fact most people want to get more for less in general.
Attention Reisman: this is called “Human Nature”, and it’s responsible, in its usual incarnations of laziness, selfishness, and greed, for every last bit of human progress.
In fact Reisman’s complaint is just the standard Commie anti-business rhetoric turned on its head: “Business exploits the workers…”
People exploit each other all the time. This is known as “Comparative Advantage”. I just went out and paid some Mexicans forty bucks for a Christmas tree, and I exploited the hell out of them. They replaced, for me, a two hour trip into the boondocks with a five minute drive over to the ‘hood, and gave me the same damn’ tree that I would have gotten from the tree farm, and for less overall cost. They exploited me by charging every cent the market would bear and thus making far more money loading trees on cars than they ever made down in Chihuahua. “A tip for loading a tree? Fuck these gringos are stupid!” Like Humberto Fontova said, “In brief: One party sells or buys because he thinks he knows more about what that stock’s going to do than the other party; he knows its value better than the sap he’s dumping it on, or the idiot he’s stealing it from.“
Resiman’s piece is just dumb:
Is he really complaining about one party using the government to stop the other party from using the government against them? Like Ghertner noted, “It’s turtles all the way down”.
And as for his snark about ignoring history, it’s funny that he doesn’t mention little tidbits like the fact that being a union organizer back in the day could get you shot dead by the cops.
Unions are good because they attempt to get their memebers the most for the least. Businesses are good because they attempt to get their owners the most for the least. Both are bad when they resort to swinging government like a club against their opponents. That’s the only coherent libertarian position on the matter.
December 10th, 2005 at Dec 10, 05 | 5:11 pm
Personally it’s just the bad economics a lot of them are founded on - workers ‘deserve’ a living wage - workers are being exploited - so on and so forth. I see them as more a symptom of lefist collectivism rather than actually the problem. Still, so long as they’ll play by the rules of the market I’m neither for nor against them.
December 11th, 2005 at Dec 11, 05 | 9:54 am
That unions don’t benefit workers as a class is no argument against them. I don’t expect Toyota to make cars for the good of Honda.
If labor wants to band together to get a better deal thats fine. But when the State tells business that they must bargain then it amounts to coercion.
True indeed. But when businesses lobby and get favourable regulation, tax laws, direct subsidies, transport subsidies, commuication subsidies, and so on, where’s the bile for business as a group?
December 11th, 2005 at Dec 11, 05 | 3:06 pm
Lopez: The major media’s usual bias is “business bad, unions good”, so I judge it just natural that these types take the opposite tack.
Lopez, I’m familiar with plenty of examples of major media bias against businesses as such, but I can’t think of very many examples of major media bias in favor of unions, at least in the past couple decades or so. (Actually, it’s rare enough to find any mention of unions at all, other than pro sports players’ unions.) What did you have in mind here?
December 11th, 2005 at Dec 11, 05 | 3:41 pm
Andrew Rogers: Then, because they’ve been “forced” to bear the weight of all these “free riders,” they demand the power to extract forced dues from employees who didn’t choose to join the union in the first place.
Unions do not extract forced dues from anybody. You don’t have a natural right to work in open shops. Sorry.
The legal and regulatory structure that legally forces business-owners to negotiate with NLRB-recognized unions is a form of coercion. The legal enforcement of the terms of union shop or closed shop contracts is not. (You might say that there’d be a lot fewer union shops if it weren’t for government intervention. Maybe that’s true and maybe it’s not. But if it is, so what? There’d be a lot fewer HMOs if it weren’t for government intervention, too, but that doesn’t mean that you are forced to patronize an HMO, or that the fees you pay them are “extracted” from you.) The distinction is a matter of some practical importance, since systematic attempts to blank it out are the usual justification for the so-called “right to work” (i.e., anti-union shop) laws that are on the books in many states. Those laws have absolutely no justification from a libertarian standpoint, but anti-union conservatives almost universally trot out phoney libertarian rhetoric about “forcing workers to join unions” in order to justify them.
Michael Giesbrecht: I don’t know of any reason to be pro union even in a free market scenerio where unions have no legal means of using violence to acheive their goals. What service would they provide to their members to justify their dues?
This is frankly silly. You may as well ask what services business or professional associations would provide to their members to justify their (much higher) dues, in a free market scenario where they have no legal means of using violence to achieve their goals. The answer is, all kinds of things; and what things are in question depends in part on the organization you’re thinking of.
Different kinds of unions have historically provided different kinds of services. Coordinating strikes or slow-downs with demands (for better wages and conditions, for more autonomy, or whatever), providing a forum for workers to talk with each other, providing a forum for airing grievances against management, providing representation for the worker’s interests in grievances against management, keeping and publishing information about which employers treat workers well and which treat them poorly (for example, this is one of the primary functions of unions that are uncomfortable with admitting that they’re unions, such as the AAUP), offering venues in which workers can get to know each other and socialize, providing a cooperative organization for services like education or health insurance or funeral benefits or any number of other kinds of mutual aid, providing hiring halls where new workers can find a job, or even serving as a cooperative structure for coordinating direct ownership and management of shops by the workers themselves, have all been stated goals and actual practices of historical labor unions. (Labor unions have often disagreed vigorously with one another over the best ways to achieve this — for example whether to organize by shop, by craft, by industry, or by region; whether to form unions that are racially, nationally, or gender segregated; the level of solidarity to practice with other unions; what kind of goals to set; what kind of dues to charge; how to pick people for positions of executive authority, for how long, under what conditions, and with what powers; whether to actively bargain with employers or just to set demands; who should do the bargaining if bargaining is done; etc. etc. etc. Also, not to put too fine a point on it, but whether or not to try to exercise political control through the State in order to achieve demands. Before the Wagner Act gave a massive government subsidy to one particular variety of unionism — conservative AFL-line unionism, focused on collective bargaining for wage and benefit improvements — there were many significant unions, such as the Wobblies, that spurned electioneering and lobbying in principle, and stated explicitly anarchist goals.)
December 11th, 2005 at Dec 11, 05 | 4:46 pm
I can think of a number of problems that reasonable libertarian minded people may have with unions. To begin with I think that their is a perception–probably accurate–that they are a tool of the lazy against the productive. They oppose things like merit pay and encourage fellow workers not to “work too much”. Then they turn around and support seniority and automatic raises not for productivity but for simply hanging around long enough. If this is true, then unions are a political tool for unproductive workers to punish productive workers as well as those who find their employers reasonable.
This ties in with an apparant desire on the union to hold the fact that a company makes a profit against them.
If unions were simply a bargaining unit of self interested actors on the market, then that would be one thing. However, unions also have a more public role. Durring a strike, a union tries (sometimes violently) not only to influence scabs but also any consumer who may cross the picket line. This violence sometimes spills over into society at large. While I can understand why self interested workers may want to form unions and legitimately strike, I think that any duty of a third party not to cross a picket line is much more problematic. This is not something that union members often respect.
December 11th, 2005 at Dec 11, 05 | 8:48 pm
To begin with I think that their is a perception–probably accurate–that they are a tool of the lazy against the productive.
Okay, but what about the reverse? Why are corporate executives who are tanking their companies making off with millions of dollars in compensation? The executives aren’t lazy, but they are grossly incompetent. Libertarians don’t seem to care about this.
The striking is noted, although it’s an open question how many corporations (at least within the past 30 years or so) have acquired their land justly.
December 12th, 2005 at Dec 12, 05 | 12:57 am
Rad,
This, this, this.
I’ll grant that the bias isn’t as strong as on some other subjects, like guns or Wal-Mart, but it’s there.
December 12th, 2005 at Dec 12, 05 | 12:56 pm
I have no problem in principle with unions in a free market. In historical practice though unions have often tended to be dominated by out and out socialists.
December 13th, 2005 at Dec 13, 05 | 5:48 pm
In historical practice, how many businesses have been headed by free-market capitalists?
December 14th, 2005 at Dec 14, 05 | 12:25 am
Obviously many businessmen have had collectivist tendencies in varying degrees but they have not been full blown socialists and communists in anything like the proportions that union leaders and activists have.
Socialists have seen unions, not businesses, as stepping stones to their utopia and they’ve focused much of their energies there.
December 14th, 2005 at Dec 14, 05 | 3:24 am
Kennedy: I have no problem in principle with unions in a free market. In historical practice though unions have often tended to be dominated by out and out socialists.
What Holmes said.
Also, you need to distinguish at least three different kinds of socialists within organized labor. Early on, there were the electoral socialists (such as Eugene Debs or the ST&LA), on the one hand, and the anti-statist socialists (such as Benjamin Tucker, the International Working People’s Association, and the Wobblies), on the other. Both of them were considered the radical opposition (from different directions) of the mainline conservative unionism and “state capitalism” endorsed by Gompers and his cronies. But while it’s clear that there are objections from libertarian principle against the social democrats, it’s not nearly so clear that there are against the anarchists. (It’s also not clear that the specifically “socialist” element in statist unionism was any worse, at this point than the nativist, pro-war “state capitalist” element.)
After the Bolshevik conquest of international socialism, and the State colonization of the labor movement through the Wagner Act, the main ideological debate within leadership ended up between “anti-socialist” corporatist union bosses backed by Washington, and communist union bosses backed by Moscow. So much the worse for the labor movement, and the world, but there’s no reason to do these bandits the honor of giving them a monopoly on the names “socialism” or “unions,” any more than the rampant Mussolinism of the owning class over the past 70 years justifies giving them a monopoly on “markets” or “business.”
December 14th, 2005 at Dec 14, 05 | 5:00 am
Rad,
Stalin made it clear enough for me.
December 14th, 2005 at Dec 14, 05 | 12:56 pm
Unionism is based on violence. It’s a criminal activity, which only exists because of the State. This exists in both theory and fact. And here is the evidence:
http://www.nrtwc.org/fuva109.pdf
“At Least 203 Americans Killed Since 1975
According to the National Institute for Labor Relations Research (NILRR), more than 10,000 incidents of union violence have been reported in America’s newspapers, and on television and radio, since 1975. But media-reported union violence constitutes only the tip of the iceberg. Samplings of police and company records collected by NILRR and other scholars indicate that 80-90% of violent union incidents are never reported in the media.
When combined, reported and unreported incidents of union vandalism, assault and battery, arson, and even murder may number over 100,000! Union violence hits communities across America and wreaks a staggering toll in personal injury, property damage, lost work, and lost production. The NILRR investigation reveals that media-reported incidents alone show:
� At least 203 Americans killed since 1975;
� 5,869 incidents of personal injury involving labor unions;
� More than 6,435 incidents of vandalism and tens of millions of dollars in property damage.
As NILRR Program Director Stan Greer concluded, the past quarter-century has witnessed “an enormous amount of union-related violence.” Furthermore, Mr. Greer pointed out, the violence “can hardly be dismissed as spontaneous
or uncoordinated.” And “the failure of overwhelmed or politically neutralized [local] police and prosecutors to
enforce the law against union militants is clear.”
Violence Is a Logical Component of Compulsory Unionism
For many union officials, violence is a calling card, a logical tactic for a system which cannot tolerate dissent and ruthlessly enforces “solidarity” during strikes and labor disputes. During the 1990 New York Daily News strike, for example, then-News columnist Mike McAlary attended a union hall meeting at which a union agent gave explicit instructions on how to stop newspapers from being dropped off: “I don’t care what you do. But stop the truck. If you want to burn it, go ahead. But if you’re going to burn it, remember what the fireman over in Brooklyn told us. Keep the truck doors open. That makes it burn faster . . ..â��
While it is rare for union officials to own up publicly to
deliberate use of violence, some of their henchmen can’t resist bragging about it. In 1997, the Washington Post quoted an unnamed Culinary Workers union militant in Las Vegas, Nev., who matter-of-factly told a television reporter:
“Violence . . . is necessary [because] the only people that really don’t come back to cross the line are the people that have gotten beaten up.”
In a 540-page Wharton School of Business study of union violence, Thomas Haggard and Armand Thieblot described at length the United Mine Workers (UMW) legacy of brutality:
“Despite all the changes that have taken place through the years in the technology structure and environment of coal mining, the United Mine Workers still relies on bloodshed, dynamite, and intimidation to coerce acceptance of the union’s demands. “Not only has violence continued to be characteristic of UMW strikes and organizing efforts, its use has acquired the sanctity of tradition.”
Union Violence Goes Unpunished Due to Federal Loophole
“Violence is necessary. The only people that
really don’t come back are the people that have gotten beaten up.” Unnamed Picketer, Washington Post, February 5, 1997
Of the almost 10,000 media-reported instances of violence in NILRR files, arrests were reported in less than 22% of the cases. Less than 300 convictions were reported. That’s a conviction rate of under 3% of reported acts of violence.
December 14th, 2005 at Dec 14, 05 | 7:59 pm
Me:
Kennedy:
Kennedy, I’m no export in labor history, but the general impression that I got is that the Stalinist influence on Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926) and the ST&LA (1895-1899) was pretty minimal.
In any case, the “at this point” is a clear reference to the later paragraph in which I distinguish the period in which the dominant force among American state socialists in the labor movement were electioneering Social Democrats, and the later period in which they were Communists in the direct service of Moscow. You can complain that even “social democracy” means a steadily growing and increasingly ravenous State, and that the SDs paved the way for echt Bolshevism in the statist Left, and that’d be fair, but if you’re basing your complaints on the more resolute versions of statism that came after, then it would be just as far to cite Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, and Tojo as the end result of nativist, war-mongerng state capitalism of the sort practiced by “anti-socialist” statist labor “conservatives.”
Maybe we shouldn’t invest too much in picking sides in spats between warring statists.
REALITY CHECK:
The Knights of Labor were founded in 1869, predating the Wagner Act (1935) by six and a half decades. Given that half of organized labor’s history in the United States was carried on without any grant of government recognition or privileges, and in fact in the face of massive police and military violence against organizers, strikers, and people who just happened to be in the wrong crowd at the wrong time, I conclude that your claim that “Unionism … only exists because of the State” is what we colloquially call “making shit up.”
December 14th, 2005 at Dec 14, 05 | 11:03 pm
Rad,
My only purpose here was to explain why I have a distaste for unions in general as they have evolved in historical practice, not to offer an exhaustive analysis of the history of unions.
December 15th, 2005 at Dec 15, 05 | 2:29 am
“Reality Check”, or “Ip address 65.164.xxx.xxx” (deliberately obscured), I’ve changed your nym back to the one you were assigned by Lynette. As she said, you can let an editor know (preferably in comments) and change it to something else - one time.
One poster, one nym: house rules.
December 16th, 2005 at Dec 16, 05 | 5:27 pm
Kennedy: My only purpose here was to explain why I have a distaste for unions in general as they have evolved in historical practice, not to offer an exhaustive analysis of the history of unions.
That’s fine. My purpose was to try to explain why I think you ought to take a more nuanced view of people in the labor movement who happened to use the letters S-O-C-I-A-L-I-S-M to tag the views they held.
January 10th, 2006 at Jan 10, 06 | 2:59 am
Rad:
I disagree. You have a natural right to work in any shop where the shop owner agrees with you working.
No union contract can trump the rights of individuals to contract the use of their own property.
“Right to work states” are like “free speech zones”, presenting something as a privilege granted by (and enforced by) the state, when it’s a basic right. They are negative rights falsely presented as positive rights.
I am not against unions, so long as they are governed by the unanimous consent of their members.
Rad:
The legal enforcement of contracts which contradict individuals’ rights to contract with other individuals, is coercive.
Two problems with unions: Unanimous Consent.
If I don’t agree with the union’s decision, then by the principle of unanimous consent, I’m not bound by the union’s contract and I can leave at any time. This has no effect on my right to contract with the shop owner. If the shop owner and I still want to work together, then I can work on his property.
If the shop owner’s prior contract with the union forbids him from hiring me, and he hires me, then it nullifies his prior contract with the union, and until he re-negotiates with the union, the union’s responsibilities to him are lifted. But he can still hire me.
At any time, a union is free to leave the shop and go work as a collective entity at another shop. How often do you hear of unions switching employers by unanimous consent of their members? You don’t, because 1) they aren’t usually governed by unanimous consent; and 2) they tend to stay with one employer, in order to try to exercise control over that employer’s property. If they partially own it, then they are free to leave with their partial ownership at any time (selling their company shares, leaving with their own tools, etc.). That isn’t always practical, which is why they would rather stay and renegotiate the contract.
Contracts do not trump private property rights, such as the right to sell one’s own time and body to someone else willing to buy it. If you reject union policy and work as a scab, you are exercising your own property rights. However, you are rejecting any prior contract you might have had with the union, and so may be your employer. This will undermine any civil case you or he try to bring against the union. That does not alter your right to work for an employer through unanimous consent. It’s the owner’s property and your property, and no-one else’s.
My trump suit system: Private property trumps private contracts trumps constitutions trumps statutes.
For example, “intellectual property” is a contract between a buyer and seller, and is not true property. When someone buys IP, it comes as an IP contract bundled with physical property, which is the medium it is transferred on. That physical property belongs to the buyer after the sale even if the IP contract is later nullified between the two parties, which is why copying, modifying, destroying, etc. the physical property is moral.
This message, for instance, is IP stored on a computer. I don’t own the computer, so the owner can do whatever they want with my message on their computer. My implicit contract with them is that this message be left intact and not plagiarised, but this contract shall not be enforced by statist means, nor shall it violate the property rights of anyone whose computer holds this message.
January 10th, 2006 at Jan 10, 06 | 3:14 am
Rad is talking about when the owner has freely contracted with a union to run a closed shop.
You are correct that specific performance can’t justly be compelled, but damages can justly be recovered for breach of contract.