EFCA and Compromise

As proposed, the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) would 1) replace secret-ballot union representation elections with card-check certification of unions as exclusive (monopoly) bargaining agents for workers in their workplaces; 2) impose compulsory-interest arbitration on employers who do not agree to a first union contract within 130 days; and 3) increase penalties on alleged unfair [...]

Organizing and the Organized

Congress permits unions to bargain for workers who do not want such representation, and it compounds this violation of freedom of association by permitting unions to force workers they represent to pay union dues and fees as a condition of continued employment. So-called union security has given rise to a circus of legal disputes which [...]

Worker Freedom in Peril

The Alliance for Worker Freedom (AWF) recently published its 2007 Index of Worker Freedom (IWF).The index ranks each of the 50 states on the basis of ten variables that affect the freedom of workers. “Freedom” is defined properly as the absence of interferences with individual worker choices.
After explaining the ten variables used and identifying [...]

Paycheck Protection: Much Less Than Meets the Eye

On June 14 the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its unanimous verdict in Davenport v. Washington Education Association (WEA) in which the Court upheld the constitutionality of the “paycheck protection” section of a Washington state campaign-finance-regulation initiative adopted in 1992 by 72 percent of the voters. That section required labor unions to get the permission [...]

Hayek on the Rule of Law and Unions

In F. A. Hayek’s mind the rule of law has two equally important parts. Like most writers on the subject he argued that the rule of law requires everyone, including those who wield government powers, to be bound by the same set of rules. He called this principle “isonomia” (Greek for “equal law”). Isonomia, by [...]

Unions and Abortion Protestors

The National Organization for Women (NOW) and labor unions have a long record of support­ing each other in their respective public-policy wars, so one could reasonably expect the AFL-CIO to be on NOW’s side in Scheidler v. NOW, a long-running case that was finally decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in February. But NOW and [...]

The Pursuit of Happiness ~ Australian Labor-Relations Sell-Out

In mid-March, at the behest of the H.R. Nicholls
Society, I traveled to several Australian cities speaking
on the subject of the American labor market and
the lessons that it might have for labor-law reform in
Australia. Along the way I discovered that Australian
labor-relations regulations are much more irrational,
contradictory, and oppressive even than our own
National Labor Relations Act.

Henry Hazlitt on Unions: Part II

Back Toward Serfdom in New Zealand

In the September 2000 issue of this magazine I reported that the Labour Party in New Zealand, at the behest of labor unions, had repealed the 1991 Employment Contracts Act (ECA), which had abolished compulsory unionism there. In its place was substituted the Employment Relations Act (ERA) to help unions reverse their drastic decline in [...]