Re: Unions (was Re: Will aircars destroy the auto industry)

From: Michael S. Lorrey (retroman@turbont.net)
Date: Sun Apr 30 2000 - 18:03:03 MDT


GBurch1@aol.com wrote:
>
> Speaking of unions . . . My views on unions have evolved considerably over
> the last few years as I've become more and more libertarian in my political
> philosophy. I don't see why people shouldn't be able to band together into
> collective bargaining arrangements or why a union shouldn't be able to make a
> contract with a company that forbids the hiring of non-union employees. Of
> course, state sanctioning shouldn't be tolerated, but I can see unions doing
> a lot of good in a more libertarian world, especially in taking over and
> decentralizing many of the functions of the state social welfare function.
> Many of the things that anarcho-capitalist theorists see as being provided by
> privately-produced law agencies would be more effective if coupled with
> social welfare unions that also had some economic functions such as
> collective bargaining. Individuals would have to have the freedom to enter
> and leave unions (with some costs imposed, I'm sure). I wonder what others
> think of such ideas?

Problems with unions are that there is no public oversight, union
leadership tends to be secretive (and tends toward corruption and
resorts to violence to get the job done (this is not just a
characteristic of the Teamsters)), and difficult to push alternative
leadership candidates over incumbents. I highly oppose allowing unions
to demand closed shops. This is a very anti-competetive thing, as well
as refusing to allow more than one union to operate in the same shop. If
I'm a worker, I want to be able to choose not only if I want to belong
to a union or not, but to have a choice of unions. Unions also foster
workplace harrassment of independent operators in open shops, and the
worker greivance procedures they mandate tend to foster frivolous
complaints.



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