Every once in awhile, I'm prone to hit a topic that perks the eyebrows of my fellow libertarians. This is one of those.
One of the core mistakes we make in our zeal to create a capitalist society is to miss the role that collective bargaining rightly plays in such a society. It is not necessarily inconsistent with capitalism, nor is it necessarily a component of a socialist society. In the following paragraphs I intend to lay out how collective bargaining and capitalism can be not only compatible, but symbiotically essential to each other's survival.
One of the first rules of capitalism is the idea of a free market of goods and services. The widget manufacturer has his widgets to market, the grocer has his groceries, and the gas station has gasoline and other assorted wares. What is left to the blue collar worker to sell on the open market is his labor.
Collective bargaining as it is practiced in America today is a travesty. It is a system of abuses where either the worker or the employer are held hostage to the whims of the union hall. it fails to recognize what the idea of collective bargaining is truly all about.
For a worker to sell their labor on the open market and be successful, they must first have something to sell. I have learned that in this area, where a handyman is easy to hire; they're a dime a dozen. A handyman that will SHOW UP is a bit trickier, and as one's reputation improves one's value improves (the starting wage for someone hanging their shingle at the local laundrymat is $60/day; if you are referred to another person, you can double that right away, and soon command your own price). The way the unions used to compete is by providing an assurance that their members were skilled, qualified workers who would more than recompense the cost of their salary to their employers.
Until the federal government stepped in.
In an effort to control the growing monopolies in America, the government began writing legislation that forced the employers to negotiate with the unions; at this point the unions didn't need to provide a skilled workforce anymore, they had the employers over a barrel. This has led to an increasing decline in skill among some union workers, and has created friction and resentment between the employers and union employees, and in some cases, has caused the employers to seriously limit the number of employees they hire, thus costing much needed jobs. Marginal workers were pushed out of the workforce, as employers didn't want to bring them into a union shop and give them job security for a less than standard job.
In order to rectify the problems such legislation has created, I believe we need to repeal the laws that force employers to negotiate with the unions. The unions have become as big a business as the big businesses they once set out to fight, and they themselves need to compete in an open market. If they begin to do this, being a union employee may once more be the stamp of quality that it once was, and businesses may stop resenting the unions as they have for so many years; possibly resulting in fewer jobs being outsourced.
signing off,
Gideon MacLeish