Just got an appeal to send fiat $$ to finance a campaign to get a National Right to Work bill out of committee and up for a vote. DeMint says that 80% of Americans are in favor, but big unions and their political benefactors are scared to death. As a free marketeer, I can't argue with this type of legislation. Why should workers be forced to join a union to get or keep a job. Voluntary, no problem.
I'm inclined to sign the petition and send some Fed Reserve notes. What do you think. Is this all BS?
David Olifant
Why should workers be forced to join a union to get or keep a job. Voluntary, no problem.
If you don't like the conditions of a contract then you can always choose to work elsewhere right?
The problem with this "National Right to Work Bill" is that it doesn't solve the underlying issue - namely, the existence of laws which force businesses to deal with unions if majorities of their employees wish to form them. So instead of passing a "National Right to Work Bill", the National Labor Relations Act should simply be repealed.
The keyboard is mightier than the gun.
Non parit potestas ipsius auctoritatem.
Voluntaryism Forum
How about a constitutional amendment to dissolve the constitution and all repeal all federal laws? That would take care of the issue, at least from the federal level.
Next would be abolition of states.
Federal laws are meaningless when federal judges get to interpret them any way they wish. The only real fix is to eliminate all federal laws.
I agree, get rid of the other law. There should be NO laws regulating business. I suppose there might be a business that wants only union workers, so they should be allowed to only hire them. But they should not be forced by the union to only hire union workers.
But a law which prohibits requiring union membership would work.
Now from a pure libertarian perspective, there is nothing to stop one collection of individuals (call them a union) from creating an exclusive contract with an employer that prohibits the employer from hiring other employees. Such a contract would have to be voluntary to be legitimate, obviously. In that case, any intervention that forces the employer to break such a contract would be a violation of the employer's property rights (or the fact that he has a right to enter into voluntary contracts as he so desires). In this sense, a National Right to Work Act would not be a good thing.
Having one bad law to counter other bad laws doesn't fix things. It only compounds the stupidity. The least they could do would be to repeal all such interventionist laws on labor and business. I still hold that the federal government has become more about who's ruling over people than the actual laws. They make stuff up as they go all the time, and we all are supposed to live with it.
The NLRA (1935) prohibits interference with a persons right to join a union and have a union collectively bargain for him. It prevents interference in the form of spying, violence,etc. I have no problem with the freedom of people to join together to maximize their wages, etc. Of course, the business should have the right to hire non-union workers as well. And if the union workers price themselves beyond the market DMVP....adios.
Its the way things have evolved, that the unions have the power to force businesses to be exclusively union. Is that due to their numbers or is it law? That is, their power to strike because of sheer numbers could make a company willing to be pure union, or they are brought to a standstill.
You are right. Thanks for putting it in that perspective.