(Download) "Toward a Free-Market Union Law." by The Cato Journal # Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Toward a Free-Market Union Law.
- Author : The Cato Journal
- Release Date : January 01, 2010
- Genre: Politics & Current Events,Books,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 249 KB
Description
F. A. Hayek and W. H. Hutt wrote extensively about the malign economic and social effects of the special privileges and immunities granted by governments to labor unions, but they wrote much less about what a free-market unionism might look like. They argued that all legislation that has conferred coercive powers on unions should be repealed, but they did not propose any specific free-market union legislation to take its place. Perhaps they thought that if all offending legislation were repealed there would be no need for any union-specific legislation. The common law of property, contract, and tort would suffice. Nevertheless, it is difficult in American politics to replace something with nothing. Therefore, I think it is useful, albeit constructivist, to propose a free-market alternative to the Norris-LaGuardia Act of 1932 (NLA) and the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 as amended in 1947 (NLRA). Perhaps the chief value of such a proposal is to make explicit what the ordinary law of property, contract and tort implies for the labor market and the role of unions therein. New Zealand's 1991 Employment Contracts Act (ECA) is a good, but imperfect, guide in this endeavor. A free market is one in which interactions between people take place in the context of voluntary exchange. The principal role for government in a free market is to enforce the rules of voluntary exchange. In what follows, I will set out my formulation of the criteria for voluntary exchange in any market, including the labor market, and consider what these criteria imply for strikes and "yellow-dog" (union-free) contracts. Next, I will show how the NLA and the NLRA violate those criteria. Then I will briefly examine what Hayek and Hutt had to say about voluntary unionism. Finally, I will examine some of the provisions of the ECA as possible components of an American free-market union law. I have examined the usefulness of the ECA as a guide to building voluntary unionism elsewhere (Baird 2001). Here I do so in a bit more depth.