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Labor Unions
I am interested in unions as sources of economic and political power
for workers and as parts of civil society. I am also interested in various
philosophical problems that they raise. For example, what should we conclude
if unions benefit their own members--but at the expense of the whole economy
or of specific outsiders? What if they benefit their own members economically--but
also hamper the same people's individual rights? I address these questions
in an article, entitled "The Legitimacy of Labor Unions," that
has just appeared in the Hofstra
Labor and Employment Law Journal. This article can be downloaded
here (in .pdf format). An abstract follows:
Labor unions do not have a well-understood rationale, as do
capitalist enterprises, strictly voluntary associations, and democratic
states. They are nonprofit associations, but also coercive economic
agents; working-class communities, but also powerful special interests;
embodiments of rights, but also incompatible with certain individual
freedoms. These tensions result in an ambivalent legal status. For instance,
unions may collect fees from (and negotiate contracts for) certain employees
without obtaining their individual consent, yet no one can be required
to belong to a union. Unions are exempt from antitrust laws and may
restrain competition, but only in particular ways. We cannot assess
these rules unless we have a convincing philosophical justification
of unions in hand. This justification must answer utilitarian arguments
that unions undermine social welfare by hampering the efficiency of
markets; libertarian objections that unions override individual rights
of expression and contract; and democratic complaints that unions (being
economic "special interests") are less legitimate than elected
governments are. This article argues that unions are valuable parts
of civil society and are morally legitimate as economic and political
actors. Indeed, it would be desirable to ease certain obstacles to union
growth by reforming labor law.
A revised portion of this article has been reprinted as
"The Libertarian Critique of Labor Unions" in Philosophy
& Public Policy Quarterly, Volume
21, Number 4 (Fall 2001).
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