Book Reviews

Parliaments, chivvied or bought by special interests, have often be trayed the Lockean hopes (indeed, Willmoore Kendall considered this to be the joker in the Locke deck), but it remains incontestable that if the State isn't the sole reposi tory of force life would be reduced to rule by gang shoot-outs miti gated by general anarchy. Law, in the Lockean, or repub lican, State means that the tax payer, as voter, calls the turn on where the tiger of government should be turned loose for con trolled feeding. But when we have public-sector unions arrogating to themselves the right to strike 317 318 THE FREEMAN May against what the sovereign legis lators choose to pay them, we have an absurd situation. The govern ment is no longer sovereign. We have a two-headed arrangement, with the right of the people to rule colliding with the right of union sanctioned arbitrators to infringe on popular sovereignty if it seems necessary to keep the public-sector union bosses happy.

In a wide-ranging essay, Sov ereignty and Compulsory Public Sector Bargaining (Wake Forest Law Review, reprinted as a pamph let), Sylvester Petro has explored the whole reach of a crazy situa tion that is making government impossible in our big cities and even threatens the integrity of the federal union. It seems strange to Dr. Petro that virtually nobody has caught on to the logical fallacy of sup posing there could be a workable two-headed sovereign. Elected gov ernments are supposed to have supreme governing power. But if a public-sector union can presume to refuse to collect the garbage, or to open and close draw bridges, or to put out fires, or to crack down on muggers and restrain street gangs, meanwhile coercing the govern ment to reach a "collective bar gaining" agreement that mayor may not be within the taxing pow er of the government to sustain, just who is ruling us anyway?

Even if an "imperial" arbitrator is provided for in a collective pub lic-sector bargaining agreement, the State loses control. The arbi trator, not the people, becomes the ultimate sovereign. Union Bosses vs. Legislators Once unions become recognized as compulsory bargaining units in the public sector it becomes im possible to deal with them in ways that will still permit legislatures to rule. In New York State the so called Taylor Law supposedly es tablished compulsory collective bargaining while prohibiting strikes by public employees. The result, as might have been fore seen, is just another dead-letter verboten. Garbage collectors and bridge tenders have gone on strike anyway. Since jails don't exist that can hold thousands of strik ers, the power to arrest becomes meaningless. An occasional union leader may go to jail, but this only hardens his rank-and-file followers, who forthwith make him a martyr.

It does not bring strikers back to work. As I write this review, the news from Scotland provides a grim un derlining for Dr. Petro's words. A ten-week strike by garbage truck drivers has left 70,000 tons of rot ting garbage in the streets of Glasgow. The citizens have been afraid to become their own gar1975 SOVEREIGNTY AND BARGAINING 319 bage collectors, for that would be "scabbing." So the Royal Highland Fusiliers have had to be called from traditional guard duty at Edinburgh Castle, not to break the strike but to kill thousands of rats that have been running wild in the streets. Query: is it the union or the city hall that is sovereign in Glasgow? Or could it, ultimately, be the rats, who have controlled populations in the past by spread ing bubonic plague? Dr. Petro details the efforts of various labor-law writers to justi fy compulsory public-sector bar gaining on the "private-sector analogy." But there is no analogy.

Private-sector bargaining under NLRB rules is bad enough,but, as Dr. Petro points out, there are market checks that keep both unions and employers within shouting distance of common sense. Private businesses must have some margin of profit if they are to con tinue paying union members. But no government agency is under what Dr. Petro calls "the uncom promising duty to make a profit which prevails in private busi ness." The public-sector union, run by power-hungry bosses, can be extortionate and still hope to col lect on its extortion. People in civil society must have police and fire protection at any cost when the alternative, which is anarchy, is considered. Campaign Funds The effect of compulsory public sector bargaining is to make gov ernment officials supine. Dr. Petro speaks of the "Hanslowe Effect," named after a Cornell professor who has pointed out the collusive possibilities between unions and public officials once union-shop ar rangements invade government. A public service union of teachers, for example, must, if dues are col lected from everyone, be rich enough to make a profound im pression on any politician needing funds for campaigning. Until very recently public servants, con strained by civil service rules, have been fairly unpolitical. But now that they are listening to the siren song of professional organizers, they are, in the words of boss Jerry Wurf, "political as hell." The present contributions to political candidates are enormous, and they will grow greater as the likes of Mr. Wurf grow more powerful.

Dr. Petro explores many of the side effects on the quality of pub lic service that have come with unionization. Is it a mere coinci dence that there has been a drop in Scholastic Aptitude Tests since the public-school teachers began to be politicized? Can there be paren tal and taxpayer control of educa tional policy if the teachers be come a monolithic unionized bloc? When Albert Shanker speaks of 320 THE FREEMAN May organizing three million teachers into "the largest union in the U.S." he doesn't say he hopes to control school curricula. But Mrs. Catherine Barrett, the head of the National Education Association, has been forthright about it. "We are the biggest potential political striking force in this country," she said, "and we are determined to control the direction of education." With this sort of thing growing, the new "sovereign" (Le., the en trenched compulsory public service union) could indeed be more ter rible than tigers.

The booklet, Sovereignty and Com pUlsory Public-Sector Bargaining, may be obtained at $1.50 from The Foundation for Economic Educa tion, Inc., Irvington-on-Hudson, New York 10533. ~ PURITAN ECONOMIC EXPERI MENTS by Gary North (Remnant Review, Box 5025, North Long Beach, California 90805, 1974) 40 pages, $.75. FREEMAN readers will recall the series of three articles which ap peared from April to June 1974, which are now available as a book let. Here is the long-neglected story of the Puritan economic experi ment with government interven tion in America. Between 1630 and about 1676, the new England Puri tans - first cousins spiritually of the tiny band of Pilgrims in nearby Plymouth Colony - tried again and again to solve the problems of eco nomic life by passing regulations. Each time the interventions made things worse. In the name of Chris tian charity and social responsibil ity, Puritans passed maximum wage laws, price controls, and ~m port regulations. They created li censed monopolies in key occupa tions. They tried to regulate styles in clothing. They set maximum rates of interest. They regulated buying and selling of land. They tried to operate, through the civil government, huge parcels of "free"

agricultural land. Finally, in the final quarter of the seventeenth cen tury, they gave up. They opened up the economy as no society had ever done before. The foundations of American economic life were laid by men who had tried government intervention and had seen it fail. I) the Freeman VOL. 25, NO.6. JUNE 1975 Caveat Emptor: The Consumer's Badge of Authority Bertel M. Sparks 323 With that badge the consumer can dictate what goods Will be produced, in what quantities, and at what prices. Free Money Is Sound Money Hans F. Sennholz 338 The history of the gold standard heralds the principles and achievements of free and honest money. The Pursuit of Excellence Man's most important field of conquest is still himself. A Majority of One By our effort and maturing we become Man or Woman. Ralph Bradford Jo Nathan 344 351 Gold Standards Charles Curley 353 The different so-called standards have different implications for the economy.