Archive for Charles W. Baird
Freeman columnist Charles W. Baird (http://www.charlesbaird.info/) is a professor of economics emeritus at California State University at East Bay.
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 [...]
1Nov2007 | Charles W. Baird | 0 comments | ContinuedClosing a Malevolent Circle: The Employee Free Choice Act
In 2006, 7.4 percent of American private-sector workers were unionized. That figure has fallen every year since 1955, when it was close to 35 percent. Despite the unjustifiable privileges granted to private-sector unions by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), they are almost economically irrelevant. But they are not politically irrelevant. Collectively unions spend at [...]
1Jul2007 | Charles W. Baird | 0 comments | ContinuedHayek on Closed Shops and Yellow Dogs
Charles Baird is a professor of economics and the director of the Smith Center for Private Enterprise Studies at California State University at East Bay . In my December 2006 column I discussed some of Hayek’s classical-liberal views on the rule of law and labor unions. In brief, Hayek approved of voluntary unionism based on [...]
1Apr2007 | Charles W. Baird | 0 comments | ContinuedHayek 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 [...]
1Dec2006 | Charles W. Baird | 2 comments | ContinuedFreedom for Workers
In my January/February column this year I explained why I believe that, given the existence of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which regulates American labor-management relations, a classical liberal should support a national right-to-work-act. Last year Freeman book review editor George Leef published Free Choice for Workers: A History of the Right to Work [...]
1Sep2006 | Charles W. Baird | 0 comments | ContinuedUnions 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 [...]
1May2006 | Charles W. Baird | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Government-Created Right-to-Work Issue
The principles involved in right-to-work laws are identical with those involved in [workplace antidiscrimination laws.] Both interfere with the freedom of the employment contract, in the one case by specifying that a particular color or religion cannot
be made a condition of employment; in the other that
membership in a union cannot be.
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.
Employee Free Choice and Top-Down Organizing
The good news is that American union membership in the private sector fell from 8.2 percent in 2003 to 7.9 percent of the labor force in 2004. (In 1900 the figure was 7 percent without any union-friendly legislation on the books.) Over the same time the market share of government-employee unions fell from 37.2 to [...]
1Jun2005 | Charles W. Baird | 0 comments | ContinuedHenry Hazlitt on Unions
I know of three (somewhat repetitive) sources for Hazlitt’s views on unions: Chapter 20, “Do Unions Really Raise Wages?” in Economics in One Lesson (1946); Chapter 13, “How Unions Reduce Real Wages,” in his The Conquest of Poverty (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1973); and his chapter in The Strike: For and Against, introduced by [...]
1Nov2004 | Charles W. Baird | 0 comments | ContinuedBack 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 [...]
1Apr2004 | Charles W. Baird | 0 comments | ContinuedCalifornia’s Apprenticeship Scam
In 1937 Congress and President Roosevelt enacted the National Apprenticeship Act (NAA), which, sadly, is still in effect. It enables “the [U.S.] Department of Labor to formulate and promote the furtherance of labor standards necessary to safeguard the welfare of apprentices and to cooperate with the states in the promotion of such standards.” Like most [...]
1Dec2003 | Charles W. Baird | 0 comments | ContinuedLessons from the Washington Teachers Union
The Washington Teachers Union (WTU) is the exclusive bargaining agent for District of Columbia government school teachers. Teachers represented by WTU must, as a condition of continued employment, pay union dues whether they want WTU representation or not. Its website, www.wtulocal6.org, boldly proclaims its motto, “Building Better Schools: It’s Union Work.”
1Sep2003 | Charles W. Baird | 0 comments | ContinuedAn Egregious Union Scandal
The scandals involving serious misbehavior at Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia, Global Crossing, and Tyco have resulted in appropriate public outrage at the dishonesty and malfeasance in those corporations. At the same time they have resulted in inappropriate bashing of all corporations by labor unions and other anti-market interest groups, which have called for much greater government supervision
1May2003 | Charles W. Baird | 0 comments | ContinuedLabor Law and the West Coast Dock Dispute
The two-month West Coast dock dispute was settled in late November, but not until after President Bush obtained an injunction to halt the shutdown that was underway at all 29 ports from Seattle to San Diego. The injunction imposed the full 80-day “cooling off” period permitted by Sections 206 through 210 of the 1947 Taft-Hartley [...]
1Feb2003 | Charles W. Baird | 0 comments | ContinuedUnions Lose Again in Oklahoma
In my February column I celebrated Oklahoma’s new right-to-work (RTW) law, which was adopted by voters 54-46 percent in September last year. A RTW law prevents unions with monopoly-representation privileges from forcing nonmembers to pay for representation they do not want. Section 14(b) of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) authorizes states to enact such [...]
1Nov2002 | Charles W. Baird | 0 comments | ContinuedOnly One Place of Redress: African Americans, Labor Regulations, and the Courts from Reconstruction to the New Deal
Most black people believe that history demonstrates the necessity of labor-market regulations on their behalf. The message of this book is that the one place of redress blacks (and other minorities) had against discriminatory state and federal economic regulations was the court system guided by the principles of what came to be called, and later [...]
1Sep2002 | Charles W. Baird | 0 comments | Continued-
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