| | Here is what Nathaniel Branden wrote in The Objectivist Newsletter of November 1963, regarding unions:
"[M]en have a right to organize into unions, provided they do so voluntarily, that is, provided no one is forced to join. Unions can have value as fraternal organizations, or as a means of keeping members informed of current market conditions, or as a means of bargaining more effectively with employers -- particularly in small, isolated communities. It may happen that an individual employer is paying wages that, in the overall market context, are too low; in such a case, a strike, or the threat of a strike, can compel him to change his policy, since he will discover that he cannot obtain an adequate labor force at the wages he offers. However, the belief that unions can cause a general rise in the standard of living, is a myth.
"Today, the labor market is no longer free. Unions enjoy a unique, near-monopolistic power over many aspects of the economy. This has been achieved through legislation which has forced men to join unions, whether they wished to or not, and forced employers to deal with these unions, whether they wished to or not. As a consequence, wage rates in many industries are no longer determined by a free market: unions have been able to force wages substantially above their normal market level. These are the "social gains" for which unions are usually given credit. In fact, however, the result of their policy has been (a) a curtailment of production, (b) widespread unemployment, and (c) the penalizing of workers in other industries, as well as the rest of the population." (p. 43, bound version)
Addendum
As for the right to strike, that includes only the right to refuse to work for an employer at a given wage. It does not include the right to prevent others from working for him at that wage. Yet the latter right now enjoys legal protection in the form of picket lines manned by jeering, threatening, intimidating bullies, whose sole purpose is to prevent competing workers (pejoratively called "scabs") from gaining access to the strikers' place of employment and taking jobs that the strikers have refused.
Union advocates typically portray labor unions as being in direct conflict with management, when in fact the real conflict is between labor unions and non-union workers, for it is the latter whom picket lines are designed to oppose and exclude. So much for freedom of competition in the labor market.
The right to compete for a job and bargain individually with employers is the very right to which unions as they exist today are unalterably opposed. Unionized occupations do not allow individual workers to compete for jobs by agreeing to work for lower wages, i.e., by making the employer a better, more attractive offer. So much for the "right to bargain."
Minimum-wage laws violate that right as well, for they prevent workers from accepting a wage that is below the legal minimum. By keeping wages above their market-clearing level, coercive labor unions and minimum-wage laws are one of the principal causes of unemployment.
- Bill
(Edited by William Dwyer on 2/21, 9:45am)
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