Unions and other Gangs; J. Wilke

UNIONS and other GANGS JOAN WILKE THERE ARE THOUSANDS OF GANGS across the country today . You may belong to one or more of them yourself. And maybe without knowing it. There are parent and teacher gangs. And consumer gangs. And racial gangs. Women's gangs. Voters' gangs. Religious gangs. Gangs of professional men. Gangs of farmers. Gangs of businessmen. The law even recognizes "one-man gangs" ... individuals claiming to represent thousands of others through the device of class action suits. Their goals are often laudable. There's certainly nothing wrong with a higher standard of living with which so many of them are concerned. But it's how that Miss Wilke is an advertising writer. higher standard is attained that separates responsible citizens from gangsterism. A gang is a bullying group of individuals that draws its strength from numbers for the purpose of pushing other people around. It operates at the expense of others.

Any such group deserves to be called a gang. And when it re ceives legal acceptance and ap proval, it deserves the title of dic tatorship. The first gang that succeeds be comes the excuse and impetus for the formation of all the others. The first privilege granted to groups by law becomes the justifi cation for all the rest, creating a gangocracy or mob society. Among the most notorious and successful gangs today are the labor unions. Hardly a day passes 707 708 THE FREEMAN December that we don't pick up a newspaper and read that "they've struck again." Back in the old days, when Jesse James got his gang together, held up a train and· took the payroll, it was generally considered a rob bery. In fact, there was very little doubt about it. Sometimes they might have joined up with other gangs like the Daltons for greater force and surer success. And it was all very beneficial to their standard of living. But then, right during a holdup . . . (TRUM PETS!) ... the Cavalry arrived!

And they didn't say , "We're here to protect the right of the engineer to get into his cab and for the con ductor to go down the aisle." They said "Y'all stop that!" They re covered the loot and put the bounders in jail. Never once did they toss the money bags to Jesse and wish him well. That would have been incredible. It is just as astonishing to me that today's union activity is pro tected by law and defended as a "right." Unions are usually defended on the basis of freedom of associa tion ... the right to join together for bargaining. Actually, unions are in violation of others' rights to freely asso ciate. And compulsory arbitration is no bargain. If unions were simply groups of workers getting together for a better bargaining position with their employer on the terms of their employment, they would be within their legal if not their moral rights. They would also probably be fired. And maybe blacklisted among employers. At least, no employer in his right mind would hire someone he thought would cause trouble with his other employees and try to force demands beyond the original hiring agreement.

Unions couldn't exist for very long without the protection of biased laws. The Law Requires • .. It is the law that forces employ ers to bargain, to accept decisions by labor boards, to pay back-wages for time spent in idleness or strik ing, to make raises retroactive, to prohibit firing and regulate hiring while allowing all kinds of welfare financing of strike activities paid out of the taxpayers' pocket and the employers' production costs. Everyone is the ultimate victim of union extortion. It all happens under the protec tion of the law. It couldn't happen any other way. Extortionate power is monopoly power. It can only exist under government protection or establishment. The government has granted labor groups monopoly power over industry.

1975 UNIONS-AND OTHER GANGS 709 But union activity is defended as peaceful. So was Al Capone when he offered "protection" to some little business. But if the businessman refused, you know what happened. That's about what happened in Kohler, Wisconsin over a period of some ten bloody years. The Kohler strike, complete with bomb ings, burnings and brutality, clearly demonstrated the violent gangsterism of union extortion. The law no longer tolerates such courageous refusals to capitulate to unreasonable demands. Bargain ing is compulsory. Unions just can't stand such bad publicity. It shows the essential nature of their activity. It is argued that unions are a bulwark against communism and we're reminded that unions are not allowed in Russia. Russia is nothing but unions with all the bosses in Moscow. In dependent unions aren't allowed in Russia because they represent political power and one dictator just doesn't like another dictator in the same country any more than one mobster likes another moving in on his territory. Of course, that's also why U.S. union bosses don't want communism here. To an ever increasing extent, they are the ones telling the govern ment what to do. They don't want it the other way around.

Dubious Arguments It is argued that union members are among the staunchest defend ers of our American way of life. We all have blind spots, but any~ one who thinks he has the right to join with others to use the law as a bludgeon to tell other people how to run their business has no un derstanding of the American con cept of freedom. There are many people who have joined unions not because they wanted to, but because they had to in order to get a job. That's slavery. It's certainly not freedom of association. There are many more who will argue that unions are essential in a capitalist society to get the work ingman a decent wage. To support their claims, they invariably refer to conditions during the earliest days of industrialization. Actually, uni on leaders have simply taken credit for the natural and inevitable increase in wages coming from increased produc tivity,1 Union demands beyond the market's real wage level stifle the production upon which future raises depend, increase unemploy ment and price marginal workers out of the market altogether.

Unions further add to unem ployment lines and social disrup1 See Why Wages Rise by F. A. Harper (Foundation for Economic Education, Irvington, N.Y., 1957).

710 THE FREEMAN December tion by limiting and controlling memberships, with priority for en try going to favored friends, rela tives and racial groups. The law encourages union activ ity in the private sector but con siders it illegal in the public sector. Irony abounds. Along with a lot of garbage. Such areas of industry as gar bage collection and sanitation were preserved as government's public responsibility for the reason that interruption of such services would be too dangerous or disrup tive. So government monopoly of public services was tied to laws making strikes illegaL The laws are simply being disregarded and it is the monopoly position estab lished by government that gives the public workers their striking power. In San Francisco where illegal strikes have occurred, street clean ers are now making $19,000 a year. We need to relegate all services other than peacekeeping, law en forcement and judicial activities to the competitive market and then enforce laws against strikes in those areas of public safety and order reserved as government re sponsibility.

Strikes and union activity in the private sector serve to justify and incite demands in the public sector and are in themselves dis rupt'ive and dangerous. In the gas crisis some months back, the impact of the truckers' strike was felt in a very short period of time, causing criti.cal food shortages in some rural com muni ties and giving some truckers a very heady feeling about their power. Any nationwide strike in our in terdependent society is bound to have quite an impact on every business and everybody. While compulsory public sector bargaining gives union leaders un due and unconstitutional power over elected government leaders and thus all members of society, union activity in the private sector is equally dictatorial and dele terious. Industry-wide union standards and dictates act to stifle and crip ple the competition between pri vate enterprises upon which effi ciency, progress and continuous service depend.

Leave It to Competition The only way outside of slavery to make sure services won't be in terrupted is open competition. Tha t means competi ti on in labor as well as the rest of industry. It means employment by private arrangement. 'Unions need never be outlawed. All that is needed is to abolish 1975 UNIONS-AND OTHER GANGS 711 their privileged status under the law. Individual bargaining would end the artificial war between em ployers and employees created by labor bosses for their own benefit. And it is only fair and honest dealing. It means substituting in dividual efforts in competition on the basis of ability for the shake down demands of group force. It is everyone getting the best bar gain he can without holding up someone else. It is nothing more than honoring one's agreements instead of going back on them. What an opportunity was missed just recently when the post office employees threatened a nation wide strike. All offices could have been closed down immediately and permanently. Virtually overnight, new systems would have started, with competition working to bring down prices and improving ser vices beyond anything imagined at present. We could have been rid of one of our biggest and most ex pensive political fiascos. Instead, the criminal action of an illegal strike was rewarded by acceptance of extortionate demands.

The only proper response to job dissatisfaction is: "I quit." Try to take that right away from anyone! And correspondingly; the re sponse to strikes and union de mands is the response only com petition can give: "Okay, we'll get someone else." It is the response of freedom to tyranny. But it is a response that is forbidden by law in a country we still like to call free. ~ IDEAS ON LIBERTY Creating Unemployment WHEN STRONG LABOR UNIONS in the past made it their function to provide fo:r their own unemployed members, they thought twice befo.re demanding a wage that would cause heavy unemployment. But where there is a relief system under which the general tax payer is forced to provide for the unemployment caused by exces sive wage .rates, this restraint on excessive union demands is re moved. Moreover, "adequate" relief will cause some men not to seek work at all, and will cause others to consider that they are in effect being asked to work not for the wage offered, but only for the difference between that wage and the relief payment. And heavy unemployment means that fewer goods are produced, that the nation is poorer, and that there is less for everybody.

HENRY HAZLITT, Economics in One Lesson THE NEVV THE TIP POINT is among the most familiar phenomena of our every day. life. A child discovers the tip point of a tricycle and a teeter totter. A boatman perceives the turning of a tide. A baseball um pire will take so much sass from a player and then no more. At a certain point, matter will boil, freeze, crystalize, or jell. The tip point is the moment at which con ditions change not in degree, but in kind, or -in direction. Two hundred years after our free society began, we are close to such a tip point now. We are with .. in a drop or two of the critical moment at which freedom crystalReprinted by permission from NATION'S BUSINESS, August 1975. Copyright 1975 by NATION'S BUSINESS, Chamber of Com merce of the United States. 712 JAMES J. KILPATRICK lizes into regimentation, when the people no longer are masters of government, but government .is master of the people.