I'm currently watching Food Inc. and they mentioned how unions improved working conditions in the early food productions businesses during the 20th century. Is this true? And if not, if unions did not get involved, would these conditions ever improved? Explain
You might argue that they improve conditions for people who already have established jobs, but they make it harder for people who want to enter into the industry as employees. What specific points/arguments do they give to support the notion that unions helped food workers? And there's nothing wrong with workers organizing, but the current laws with regards to unions do not represent anything remotely close to the principle of free association. Someone from the Mises site, forget his name, had a good analogy; imagine that your wife/girlfriend breaks up with you. So you surround her house, don't let anybody in to see her, and have your buddies beat the crap out of anybody who tries to; that's an American union.
I think it was someone from the Chicago School (please correct me if I am wrong because right now I cannot confirm this) that said that while unions were surely helpful in improving working conditions they quickly degenerated into the present system and at that point they ended be useful for bot employees and employers. Of course government intervention, allowing unions to violate laws with complete impunity (call it the unchecked school bully syndrome if you will), is to blame: the recent spate of "kidnappings" in France is particularly telling. Personally I tend to agree with this Chicago School view.
jaglinsk: I'm currently watching Food Inc. and they mentioned how unions improved working conditions in the early food productions businesses during the 20th century.
I'm currently watching Food Inc. and they mentioned how unions improved working conditions in the early food productions businesses during the 20th century.
How exactly did the unions "improve working conditions"? Did they raise money from their members to make donations to those working among them who needed the extra money? Did they raise money from their members to purchase better equipment or upgrade the existing equipment and property of the businesses?
Or did they become a government-enforced special interest group that coerced their demands from business owners...?
http://mises.org/Community/forums/t/10317.aspx
http://mises.org/Community/forums/t/10618.aspx