I was surprised to find out that Libertarians oppose unions. I do agree that Unions strip a lot of economic freedom from business’ but they are formed by people, not by the law or government. They often prevent employers being abusive, or unfair however.
It is illegal to fire an employee for joing a union, so they are protected by government. What does it mean for an employer to be abusive or unfair?
Government protected unions, yes. Voluntary Unions, no.
Is the UFT Government protected?
How is it not?
I can’t understand why liberals are crying about the low percent of unions. To me that would seem like a good thing…unions were started to hike wages and stop abusive treatment of labor. The less there are, the better the labor movement is doing right?
Obama and everyone else just want more unions for more coercive power to pass legislation that destroys businesses. Some unions seem fine like steelworkers, but a secretary’s union…you’re kidding me
Why is a steelworkers union fine?
What about how most unions violate both private property and the nonaggression axiom… the core tenants of libertarianism?
Read this
If employers are abusive, that is illegal. If employers are unfair, that is tough luck.
Unions are mechanisms of exclusion, that traditionally relied on violence to gain privilege, (violence against the firm, and non-union workers competing for jobs) and now rely on government law (violence) to excluse other workers, limit labour competition and bully employers.
Yes, people can form unions voluntarily. But a union’s bargaining power is tied to privilege which is a statist tactic, not exclusion (via property) which is a libertarian tactic.
A libertarian should be obliged to utilize Bastiat’s seen and unseen analysis regularly. We see what the unions provide for union workers. Now what are the costs? Obviously, less competition, artificially higher wages, which lead to artificially higher prices, exclusion of workers without union membership, compromising the property rights of the firm etc etc etc.
In a free market, a union serves no purpose. Wages will be bid up to their market rate. But some (incorrectly) believe that the free market can’t deal with racism, sexism or “unfairness” in general, and so we have a lot more work to do towards economic literacy, even within the ranks of libertarianism.
Don’t Unions exercise the right to assembly?
I see no problem with voluntary unions, only those protected by the government. Unions with government protection are coercive monopolies.
What is it called when the government protects Unions?
Certainly voluntarily unions are formed by people themselves.
No, they do not.
Strictly unenforced professional associations do not exist for the purpose of affecting wages and working conditions for reasons that I and others explained in the other union thread.
Yep, voluntary arrangements of people are fine. Bribing government officials for special privilege is not. I believe there is a whole chapter of Rothbard’s ME&S that is more detailed with some economic stuff, but this article I dug up seems very similar.
The issue of unions feels like a parallel to why I would consider myself a voluntarist before an anarcho-capitalist. I might be satisfied by an aggressive reeducation of moron cultural marxists but refuse to advocate such things. I don’t advocate capitalism so much as I reject the initiation of aggression and simultaneously recognize why capitalism is superior to alternatives. A real libertarian can acknowledge ‘voluntary governments’ as legitimate while clearly seeing their methods as immoral. The economic reasoning of Rothbard, that either form of typical labor unions are inherently restrictionist, is sound as far as I can tell. People are free to live in primitive barter societies, just don’t ask me to.
There is no such right. Libertarians support property rights. On YOUR property, you can freely associate with who you want.
On company property, you have no right to hold a union election, petition your fellow workers to join your union, advertise the union, conduct any union related business etc.
Without the capacity to organize in the workplace (unless one used an inordinate amount of subterfuge and dishonesty aka time theft) I don’t see how 100% unionization could occur in any significantly sized group of employees.
That’s just some of the free market problems in ESTABLISHING the union.
I don’t know, but let me restate my original post. Libertarians do not support government protected unions. Libertarians don’t care one way or another if a union is not propped up by government. I do not think a free market would give rise to unions. Without violence most unions would be broken by scabs. It happens in Nevada all the time. Recently scabs were brought in by Granite construction to break a union strike at the Reno/Tahoe airport.. The union members are still unemployed, and the construction is almost complete. Nevada doesn’t protect unions, but sometimes the FEDGOV overrides them.
I agree. I don’t believe a free market tends towards solidarity as a means of increasing the general welfare, but rather through competition and the division of labour. Likewise, I don’t think the free market will make protest or boycott less effective than competition and so those tactics will also have diminished utility where other (and potentially better) options exist.
A free market wouldn’t give rise to unions, because in a free market there would be no need for Unions. Libertarians must remember at all times that in world as it exists today Buisness does not operate as a free market, rather as a cartelised market which benefits a minority of priveleged interests who exploit the majority. The Big Buisness of today didn’t get where it is today through free and fair competition but through monopoly privilege and by preventing competition through regulation.
The virtue of the union is that they increase the bargaining power of labour. In any master/servant relationship it is in the interests of the master to obtain labour cheaply whereas it is in the servants to sell their labour dearly. The master or employer prefers a non-unionised workforce because he holds a superior bargaining position: if an individual walks off the job because he doesn’t like the pay and conditions it imposes a great cost on the individual, but a neglible one for the firm as he is probably just one individual out of hundreds or thousands who’s disapearance won’t impact on running of the buisness.
When the employer negotiates pay and conditions with a unionised worker he is in a far weaker bargaining position, if he tries to bully the worker into accept pay and conditions below what the Union deems acceptable the employer risks most of his workforce downing tools and walking off the jobs thereby imposing crippling costs to the firm. The idea that a Union needs 100% participation through violence and intimidation to make a strike effective is a fallacy.
Maybe they are formed by people, but their actual power is granted to them by government and its law.
I don’t know how about the U.S. but in Poland union officials are paid by… Employers! I always wonder - whom do they serve… 