Tag: labor unions

Categories
nannyism national politics & policies

For and Against?

Labor Union Logic

Bad ideas take a person only so far.

Proponents of a widely destructive policy may be loath to relinquish it altogether when destructive consequences loom. Yet they may also loathe to see it applied consistently — because of the pain it’ll cause their particular gang.

Harm to others inflicted by lousy ideas? Fine!

Harm to yourself? Not fine!

Hence the semi-​reversal by Los Angeles union officials of their demand for a minimum wage of $15 an hour, recently approved by LA’s city council. Union leaders have been among the most ardent proponents of the new minimum, which until now they’ve insisted must be imposed equally, no exemptions for special hardship.

But now union reps like Rusty Hicks want exemptions for unionized companies so that unions are free to negotiate an agreement that, as Hicks puts it, “allows each party to prioritize what is important to them.” Wow! Sounds like he might favor free markets, in which parties to a trade participate, voluntarily, only when priorities are aligned and each expects to gain.

Many motives for Hicks’s contradictory stance are plausible. One is that the requested exception would encourage companies to unionize to escape burdensome new costs. Accept one burden to escape a worse one.

Instead of letting unions cripple all workplaces but their own, let’s “allow each party to prioritize what is important to them” across the board, by letting employers and employees negotiate without any political interference whatever.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Labor Union Logic

 

Categories
general freedom

Rauner on a Roll

political, politics, Labor Unions, collage, photomontage, politics, protest, illustration, editorial, crowd

Last week I came not to bury a newly elected chief executive but to praise him — for not merely paying lip service to term limits, but for in fact making the passage of state legislative term limits a high-​priority, line-​in-​the-​sand policy goal.

I refer, of course, to Illinois’s new governor, Bruce Rauner.

Another controversy catching my attention pertains to union-​bullying. Governor Rauner hopes to stop public-​employee unions from extracting dues from the unwilling. These “fair share” dues are spent on bargaining strategies or political causes with which the dues-​payer may be wholly unsympathetic. Why should workers be compelled to part with part of their income to support activities they don’t consider beneficial?

Rauner is using both an executive order and a lawsuit to try to outlaw coercive unionizing of public employees. (He has also acted to liberate private-​sector employees from unions.) The order declares that dues may no longer be extracted from unwilling non-​members. The complementary lawsuit is a preemptive bid to get the order judicially sanctioned as legal.

Governor Rauner is not a union member. He therefore lacks standing in the lawsuit, so three public union members have joined as plaintiffs. Representing them is Jacob Huebert, an attorney with the Liberty Justice Center (and author of the book Libertarianism Today).

Again, I say: Yes!

To be sure, I wouldn’t endorse everything that Rauner is saying or doing, even on issues where we’re simpatico. But when you’re right, you’re right. Good going, Governor.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Labor Unions

 

Categories
crime and punishment free trade & free markets too much government

Giddy, Nope

The National Labor Relations Board has ordered CNN to rehire 100 workers and pay off 200 others.

NLRB rebukes CNN for “failure to bargain” with a union. The dispute apparently involves no breach of contract with employees — only a breach with a union’s demand that CNN deal with it.

Blogger Daily Pundit is giddy: “I can’t imagine a happier outcome than seeing CNN, the hack propaganda mouthpiece for the ‘respectable’ American left, being forced into bankruptcy” by a “rogue bureaucracy.”

But wait. Would the tyrannical destruction of CNN be — ideological schadenfreude aside — a happy outcome?

No.

However poetic the justice, or injustice, being inflicted on its owners and officers, their right to make economic decisions —  the right to control our own lives and property —  does not hinge on the content of their notions. The only way we can all have rights, share the same standing  in the world, is to ground our rights in our shared humanity … and not anything more specific, narrow, or particular. Only those who forcibly violate the rights of others properly forfeit some of the protections to which peaceful persons are normally entitled.

Even if Pundit’s point is only to relish CNN’s comeuppance, not to root for governmental harassment of lefty prattlers, it’s misguided. Each new assault on our freedom —  to hire, to fire, to speak, to write —  serves as precedent for comparable and worse assaults. If we hope to defend our own freedom, we should defend that of all peaceful individuals. And prefer that they be left alone.

We must defend even those with some pretty noxious ideas.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.