So you seem to be suggesting that as long as unions are not given any special privileges and are treated just like any other body in the legal system then their harm is so limited that no special laws to limit their powers would be required.
Ok, I’ll buy that.
Thanks,
In a free market, no ban or curb is necessary.
Unions will not be able to force employees to join based on 50% +1 democratic ballot.
Unions will not be able to protest or organize on company property or time.
Unions will not be able to employ violence against replacement workers during a strike or against company property via vandalism.
Unions, like all cartels, that seek privilege through monopoly (solidarity) will be susceptible to outside competition by non-union labour.
Employers can dismiss all union employees without penalty under law.
Unions will not be able to constrict, impede or manage the flow of labour within a firm. New workers will not be defacto required to join the union as a condition of employment.
That’s not to say that employees should not organize and have fraternal organizations, but the idea of insulating workers from competition, and forcing higher than market labour rates (attainable by free market competition among employers for labour) through force and coercion is simply not compatible with a free market.
Some terms could be negotiated, but again, even if they were, why would a firm negotiate with everyone, or a large group of people, and not individuals? And what leverage does a worker have, but to sell his labour to another buyer? If there are no better offers, it seems to me he has no leverage, and if there are better offers, why is he negotiating with his current firm?
All of those libertarians who support workplace sit-ins are actually for violating property rights.
Presumably they can still boycott the business though, everyone has that right.
Right, but it is my opinion, that in a free market, people may boycott by selecting another party to exchange with, but they will not protest. It is only under this monopoly state system, which raises the barrier to entry for labour, so that they are disinclined to engage in their own entrepreneurship that breeds a static labour/capital paradigm. Without the state forcing up barriers, and with open competition, may more worker will chose to work for themselves, or generate increased competition among employers for their services naturally.
That is the problem with unions. The labour sits around demanding a better deal, when if a better deal could be found elsewhere, presumably they would leave and take advantage of it.
Remember, good employees typically don’t have a problem getting paid, moving up, getting bonuses etc. Companies work hard to retain quality employees, because even in the statist market, they have the most leverage.
It’s generally the mediocre, the dull and dishonest who seek a higher labour rate and protectionism through coercion, because there are no better opportunities for such people.
Well if they are committed enough then they can protest. It is certainly an option I wouldn’t rule out but I would agree that they could be doing better things.
By not letting the state do anything to begin with. If unions aggress against property owners voluntary institutions responsible for law and order can deal with them. Why is the state needed?
They can do anything. It is simply not very worthwhile. When I was on my hiatus, I ended up arguing this with some veteran libertarians, and they couldn’t grasp the idea that if organizing is ultimately futile, then organizing isn’t preferable market behaviour. I mean, people can jump off cliffs, but that doesn’t mean that they should. And likewise, people can organize, protest and strike, but when they are replaced and have to take less money in another job, that decision can’t be seen as more than a failure, as their metric for success was forcing better wages and conditions at that particular workplace and they did not achieve it.
I liken it to eating soup with a fork. You can do it, but why would you?
Unions (and protests) are not effective free market methods. They are effective under the state. Libertarians who embrace this line of thinking, IMO are still working with a state paradigm perspective.
It meets the non-aggression axiom, therefore it is libertarian!
Soup with forks! Soup with forks!
I’m a huge fan of Hutt and am quite partial to his macroeconomics (he is torture to read though), so I’m not exactly the biggest fan of unions. This said, I do think that they can serve certain purposes such as reducing transaction costs and giving more bargaining power to the workers. I don’t really see why there is any reasons why some for of collective bargaining won’t exist in a free market, I just things might be different when unions don’t have the power of the state behind them. Although, once again, I don’t necessarily think it’s any more fair to talk of coercive unions than it is to take of coercive corporations or whatever else.
Giles, this isn’t to poo-poo your post, but when you get out in the working world, you will likely see that when firms unionize, it is the lowest skilled and least productive workers who vote for the union, and the most skilled don’t vote or abstain. That’s because better workers are already compensated based on the leverage that they could change firms, or become competitors. They don’t get anything out of having their fortune tied to the less productive, less skilled workers with less career mobility.
Unions are inherently coercive. They don’t actually have control of property in order to exclude, and so they have to rely on monopoly privilege, either enforced by the state, or by violence (Tom Woods covers this in his 10 part lecture series on Mises org). Corporations may seek privilege as it relates to liability, but the act of pooling capital to engage in large scale projects is not inherently coercive.
Because a free market will disincentivize collectives and incentivize competition. You should brush up on your Rothbardian cartel theory (no, I am not kidding).
I will not argue with whatever argument you wish to give on the inefficiancy and unfair laws unions may have. I would probably agree with most arguments regarding that. What I wonder is, how much of a target should unions be among free market advocats? Most people seem to associate free market advocats with corprotism or neo-cons anyway, as well as extrodinarily anti-union in political matters.
In today’s world the market is far from free, corporations as they exist is at least debatable with free marketeers, even if they agree with corporations certainly they would disagree with corprotism/ crony capitalism I would imagine. It seems like a losing battle in propaganda to seem “anti-labor and pro-Corporation” when the situation doesn’t call for it.
Having had the unfortunate experience of being in a union of mostly low skill workers, I can tell you that this is exactly the case.
Whenever there was a vote on whether we should increase the power of the union, or even vote to strike, it was always the same, lazy, below average workers who would vote affirmative; an increase in the base minimum wage for the workers would affect them, because they hadn’t been able to advance up the ladder.
In contrast, those who had worked hard for a long period of time, and been able to advance because of it, saw no reason to associate themselves even more with these workers, and would always vote against it.
Falling back on a one-sided tunnel-vision again, I see.
Corporations (particularly many of the large-scale ones) certainly often seek privileges in many ways other than limited liability, and certainly are no less in bed with the state than many unions. You can downplay this in the name of anti-leftism all you want, but as a matter of general principle there is no difference between the union issue and the corporate issue in the context of our current political system - both involve the use of the state to tip the scales of bargaining power and shield various interest groups from competition. You just have a clear preferance for one of the interest groups.
I agree with most of what you say, but only “in the context of our current political system”. Nothing that you quoted is untrue, however. Unions are coercive, and would be in a free market, as well. Corporations, while certainly seeking privilege in the current system, would only be able to restrict liability in a free market, which is, as LS put it, not inherently coercive.
The Austrian view on competition and collusion almost precludes unions. As long as some people have an advantage over others in employability and know it, people with a known advantage will have no monetary incentive for joining a union. If there would really be such a collusion of labour, why would there not be collusion in anything else? Unions as we know them would vanish in Rothbard’s totally free market.
Go ahead and make the argument. It’s a bit off topic for this thread about unions, though, don’t you think?
How do you know that unions would be coercive in a free market?
By law, once a majority of your employees votes to organize into a union, you must enter into negotiations with them for a collective bargaining agreement rather than negotiating the terms of an employment contract on an individual basis. In a free market, you are under no obligation to enter into a contract with anybody. This is why unions are practically non-existent in “right to work” states. In “union shop” states, a/k/a the Rust Belt, unions have driven capital to the Sun Belt and overseas. So the unions have a big stack of laws protecting their status, but nobody to hire their members.
Thank you. Good point.
Union gain their power depending on how much government support they are given or how much the market gives them For example if there is a union of very skilled workers who are in high demand that union will be able to argue for very good wages etc for those members. Though such people of course don’t need unions, their skills do the negotiating for them.