In §25 of CV Benedict worries that “deregulation” of labor markets can be hazardous to the interests of workers. AFL-CIO chief John Sweeney and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) president Andy Stern interpret this as Benedictine support of regulations like the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). However, Benedict neither cites any concrete examples of the deregulation he abhors nor endorses any specific labor regulation regimes. He is concerned that the pressures of global competition can diminish the ability of “workers associations” to protect the legitimate interests of workers. He explains:

Through the combination of social and economic change, trade union organizations experience greater difficulty in carrying out their task of representing the interests of workers, partly because Governments, for reasons of economic utility, often limit the freedom or the negotiating capacity of labour unions. . . . The repeated calls issued within the Church’s social doctrine, beginning with Rerum Novarum, for the promotion of workers’ associations that can defend their rights must therefore be honoured today even more than in the past. . . .

Of course workers should never be forbidden to join voluntary workers associations in support of worker rights. Nor should any government limit the ability of such associations to represent the interests of their members. Although Benedict did not describe workers associations as “voluntary,” his reference to Leo XIII’s 1891 Rerum Novarum (RN) makes clear that that is what he had in mind. In §54 of RN Leo warned that workers should not be forced to join labor unions that “do the utmost to get within their grasp the whole field of labor and force workingmen to join them or to starve.” A more fitting description of the EFCA, which would permit union thugs to terrorize any worker who refused to sign a union card, is hard to find.

Leo revisited the question of legitimate unions in Longinqua (1895). Such unions have “very important duties” among which are “not to touch what belongs to another; to allow everyone to be free in the management of his own affairs; [and] not to hinder any one to dispose of his services when he pleases and where he pleases” (§16). The NLRA violates each of these duties. Union security (forced dues) allows unions to touch and take what belongs to another; exclusive representation (forbidding individuals to decide on their own whether to be represented by a union) denies workers the right to manage their own affairs; and strike rules prohibit workers from disposing of their services when they please and where they please.

In §63 of CV Benedict writes that part of the definition of “decent work” is “work that permits the workers to organize themselves freely, and to make their voices heard.” Yet exclusive representation prohibits free organization and overrides individual voices. Individual choice in affiliation is overridden by mandatory submission of a numerical minority to the will of a numerical majority. Individuals are forbidden to represent themselves. Individuals are forbidden to discuss terms and conditions of employment with their employers without union permission. Employers are forbidden to reward individual workers for meritorious performance without union permission. Individuals have no voice. Only unions may speak.

Again in §63 Benedict writes, “The global context in which work takes place also demands that national labour unions, which tend to limit themselves to defending the interests of their registered members, should turn their attention to those outside their membership, and in particular to workers in developing countries where social rights are often violated.” Neither Sweeney nor Stern assents to this idea. They vigorously oppose even the Colombian Free Trade Agreement, which would abolish Colombian tariffs on U.S. goods in exchange for the U.S. continuing not to impose tariffs on Colombian goods. Free trade and the economic development that goes along with it are dependable means to foster the rights of workers in developing countries.

In §64 of CV Benedict reminds his readers, “The Church’s traditional teaching makes a valid distinction between the respective roles and functions of trade unions and politics.” In this he follows John Paul II in §20 of Laborem Exercens (1981): “[T]he role of unions is not to ‘play politics’ in the sense that the expression is commonly understood today. . . . [T]hey should not be subjected to the decision of political parties or have too close links with them. In fact, in such a situation they easily lose contact with their specific role, which is to secure the just rights of workers within the framework of the common good of the whole of society.”

The AFL-CIO and the SEIU, along with most other unions, especially those representing government workers, are deeply immersed in American politics. Stern brags that “We spent a fortune to elect Barack Obama—$60.7 million to be exact—and we’re proud of it.” It pays off. For example, Obama appointed Hilda Solis, the SEIU’s “top choice,” secretary of labor. Solis was a four-term member of Congress thanks in part to over $900,000 of campaign contributions from unions. And it is not just money. For example, on August 6 purple-shirted enforcers from the SEIU allegedly assaulted Kenneth Gladney at a town-hall meeting in St. Louis for passing out “Don’t Tread On Me” flags in opposition to ObamaCare. Unions and the American politicians they have bought need each other to survive.

In sum, Pope Benedict does not ally himself with the likes of Sweeney and Stern. In keeping with papal teaching on labor unions since Leo XIII, he is more in tune with Samuel Gompers, who founded the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1886. In the April 1916 issue of the American Federationist, the official AFL newsletter, Gompers wrote, “The workers of America adhere to voluntary institutions in preference to compulsory systems which are held to be not only impractical but a menace to their rights, welfare and their liberty.” He carried this belief through to the end of his life. In his last address as president of the AFL at its 1924 convention, shortly before he died, he said: “Men and women of our American trade union movement . . . I want to urge devotion to the fundamentals of human liberty—the principles of voluntarism. No lasting gain has ever come from compulsion. If we seek to force, we but tear apart that which, united, is invincible.”

Benedict XVI doesn’t, and Samuel Gompers wouldn’t, approve of the coercive features of the NLRA and the EFCA.

Related posts:

1. Labor Unions
2. Book Review: Power And Privilege: Labor Unions in America by Morgan O. Reynolds
3. Labor Unions Aggravate Inflation by Lowering Wages

For example, were there no law regarding which side of the road we should drive on, one imagines that self-interest would lead to a spontaneous emergence of a custom to drive, say, on the right-hand side of the road—at least in the United States. But there would probably be some who would drive on the left; therefore, a law, with associated penalties, is needed to enforce concurrence among would-be outliers.

There are other standards of human conduct not codified in law, such as men taking their hats off in Christian churches and wearing hats in synagogues, eating with utensils rather than one’s hands, and giving the appropriate greeting. It is tempting to trivialize these standards by suggesting they are not as important as laws mandating which side of the road to drive on. But that is untrue. A nasty remark, discourtesy, or show of disrespect that is not apologized for can lead to violent conflict.

What should be the characteristics of laws in a free society? Think about baseball rules (laws). Through no fault of their own, some players hit fewer home runs than others. To create baseball justice, how about a rule requiring pitchers to throw easier pitches to poorer home run hitters, or one that would treat a double like an inside-the-park home run? Some pitchers aren’t as good as others. How about allowing them to stand closer to the batter? Better yet, we could rule their first pitch to each batter a strike no matter what. In the interest of baseball justice we might make other special rules to level the playing field between old players and young players, black and white, and fast and slow.

You say, “Williams, you can’t be serious! Can you imagine the conflict that would emerge: players lobbying umpires, umpires deciding who gets what favor, lawsuits, not to mention fighting?” You’re absolutely right. The reason baseball games end peaceably, and players and team owners are generally satisfied with the process, whether they win or lose, is that baseball rules are known in advance. They apply to all players. They are fixed, and umpires don’t make up rules as they go along. In other words, baseball rules meet the test of “abstractness.” They envision no particular outcome in terms of winners and losers. Baseball rules simply create a framework in which the game is played.

Laws, or rules that govern a free society, should have similar features. There should be a “rule of law.” The rule of law means laws are certain and known in advance. Laws envision no particular outcome except that of allowing people to peaceably pursue their own objectives. Finally, and most important, laws are equally applied to everyone, including government officials.

Sir Henry Maine, probably the greatest legal historian, said, “The greatest movement of progressive societies has hitherto been a movement from status to contract.” In nonprogressive societies the rule of law is absent. Laws are not general. They’re applied according to a person’s status or group membership. There’s rule, not by legis, the Latin word for law, but by privilegium, the Latin term for private law. What’s lacking is the principle summarized by English jurist A. V. Dicey: “Every man, whatever be his rank or condition, is subject to the ordinary law of the realm and amenable to the jurisdiction of the ordinary tribunals.”

Consider the case of a person arrested and charged with rape. Should his status—whether he’s a senator, professor, or ordinary man—play a role in the adjudication of the crime and subsequent punishment? I’m betting that the average person would answer no.

Just about every law that Congress enacts violates all the requirements for the rule of law. How do we determine violations of the rule of law? It’s easy. See if the law applies to particular Americans as opposed to all Americans. See if the law exempts public officials from its application. See if the law is known in advance. See if the law takes action against a person who has taken no aggressive action against another. If you conduct such a test, you will conclude that it is difficult to find many acts of Congress that adhere to the principles of the rule of law.

A rule-of-law regime would require that we scrap the Internal Revenue Code in its entirety. What justification is there for the tax laws to treat an American differently because he has a higher income, minor children, or income from capital gains instead of wages? Equal treatment, at the minimum, would require Congress to figure out the cost of the constitutionally authorized functions of the federal government, divide it by the adult population, and send us each a bill for our share. You say, “What about the ability-to-pay principle?” That’s just a politics-of-envy concept that would be revealed as utter nonsense if applied to anything else, such as gasoline or food.

That Americans have become ruled by orders and special privileges helps explain all the lobbyists, money, and graft in Washington. We’ve moved away from a government with limited powers, as our Founders envisioned, to one with awesome powers. Therefore, it pays people to spend huge amounts of money to influence Congress in their favor. Privilege-granting is precisely what most Americans want, though they might disagree on who gets what privilege. Most Americans have no inkling of what the rule of law means. We think it means obedience to whatever laws Congress enacts and the president signs. That’s a tragedy.

Customs, traditions, mores, and rules of etiquette, not laws and government regulations, are what make for a civilized society. These behavioral norms, mostly transmitted by example, word-of-mouth, and religious teachings, represent a body of wisdom distilled through ages of experience, trial, and error. It’s the morality embodied in those thou-shalt-nots: kill, steal, lie, cheat, and so on. The importance of these behavioral norms is that people behave themselves even if nobody’s watching. There are not enough cops and laws to replace personal morality as a means to a civilized society. At best, the police and criminal justice system are the last desperate line of defense for a civilized society. Our increased reliance on laws to regulate behavior is a measure of how uncivilized we’ve become.

Twenty-five years ago, during a dinner conversation with Nobel laureate Friedrich A. Hayek, I asked if he could propose one law that would help restore, promote, and preserve liberty. Hayek answered that the law would read: Congress shall enact no law that does not apply equally to all Americans. Hayek’s suggestion would do untold wonders in fostering the liberties envisioned by our Founders. But I’m betting that most Americans would greet Hayek’s proposal with contempt after they realized it would mean Congress could not play favorites.

Related posts:

1. Hayek on the Rule of Law and Unions
2. Fairness: Results Versus Process
3. Nullifying the Rule of Law

Friedrich Hayek points this out in his 1944 book, The Road to Serfdom. According to Hayek, the right to own land was at one time reserved for the nobility. That was privilege. But the term, he writes, came to apply to anyone who owned property, even though virtually every adult now has the right to own property. We see something similar today. Rich people are called “privileged” even if they earned their wealth without political pull. Those who are poor, on the other hand, are called “underprivileged,” even if their being poor has nothing to do with having less than the average amount of privilege.

There are many examples of privilege all around us. Think of the student who attends a heavily subsidized state university. The university passes on much of the subsidy by charging a low tuition. Who pays for this subsidy? Taxpayers pay, and these taxpayers include people who will never attend a subsidized state university. The students who do attend are privileged. Why don’t many of us think of them as privileged? Because they are not typically wealthy. We have confused wealth and privilege.

Or think of the union member who is paid a wage premium because his powerful union has bargained for high wages. Those high wages discourage employers from hiring as many workers as otherwise. Some of the workers who are priced out of the union jobs work instead in nonunion jobs that pay less. This distinction has become so noticeable in western Europe that economists talk about insiders and outsiders. The insiders are the people working under union protection, many of whom vote for high-wage contracts that cause others not to be hired. Those not hired are outsiders. And why does the union have such power? Because of legal privileges the government gives them. Even in the United States, the government requires that if 50 percent plus one of the nonmanagerial employees at a firm vote for a union, all of that firm’s nonmanagerial workers must have the union as their sole bargaining agent. That is privilege.

Another example of a privileged group, an example that came to light recently, is the approximately one million government employees in California who have special license plates that shield them from toll-booth transponders and red-light cameras. California’s state government has made it easy for its employees to get such license plates and impossible for other Californians to get them. Moreover, according to www.techdirt.com, when the police stop these state employees for traffic violations and look up their records, they find that the drivers are in the “protected” category. Some officers will then decide not to write the ticket. That is privilege.

There are many more such examples. They include hospitals in Illinois, which are protected from competition by a tortuous process that others have to follow to build a new hospital or outpatient medical facility. It was this last regulation, incidentally, that allies of Illinois’s notorious ex-governor, Rod Blagojevich, used to shake down Mercy Hospital.

Regulators’ Privilege

Which brings me to one of the most oppressive forms of privilege: government regulation itself. The regulators, simply by virtue of the discretionary power they hold, have privilege. Their privilege is their power to tell the rest of us what to do and to impose sanctions on us if we disobey.

Although wealth and privilege are not the same, it is true that privilege often leads to wealth. Consider the recent census data on U.S. counties with the highest median household incomes. In 2006 five of the top ten (including the top three) were near Washington, D.C.: Fairfax County, Virginia; Loudoun County, Virginia; Howard County, Maryland; Montgomery County, Maryland (eighth); and Arlington County, Virginia (ninth). One reason for this is that working for or lobbying the government attracts highly skilled people who would likely do well elsewhere.

But a big reason is that many government employees are in the privileged positions of regulators and granters of privilege.

But this is all just semantics, right? Well, not quite. Once we start using the word “privilege” where what we really mean is “wealth,” we start applying this term to those who came by their wealth without special privilege–the Bill Gateses of the world, sure, but also the more-common successful businessmen or professionals who are earning a few million dollars a year down to a few hundred thousand dollars a year and who don’t show up on any “richest people” lists. The vast majority of people who get rich in even a semifree economy such as ours do so by producing goods and services that others value. But because the word “privilege” carries a negative connotation, when we call someone “privileged,” we are communicating, even if unintentionally, that this person came by his money dishonestly. And if you think that this is not a major issue, consider what President Obama’s first budget book, an official U.S. government publication, said about the highest-income people in the United States: “While middle-class families have been playing by the rules, living up to their responsibilities as neighbors and citizens, those at the commanding heights of our economy have not.”

There you have it. After decades of using the word “privilege” instead of “wealth,” we have the ultimate result: a government that is officially hostile to high-income people, whom it accuses, in a completely unsupported claim, of not “playing by the rules.”

There’s one other major problem with the misuse of the word “privilege.” It robs us of the word we need when we really want to oppose privilege. Try objecting to the kinds of privileges I laid out above without using that word. You’ll find your justified outrage blunted. In his novel 1984 George Orwell wrote about how the absence of words to express a thought makes the thought harder or impossible to express. The function of the successive editions of the “Newspeak Dictionary” in 1984 was to take away the ability to express certain thoughts. And the oppressors in 1984 who promulgated the famous “Freedom is Slavery” and “War is Peace” slogans did so to confuse people so that they would cease trying to understand. It’s time to end that confusion and reclaim a powerful word that has been misused by those who wish to reduce our freedom.

Related posts:

1. The Real Meaning of Tax Loopholes
2. A Reviewers Notebook: Opportunity or Privilege?
3. Book Review: Power And Privilege: Labor Unions in America by Morgan O. Reynolds

Passage by the House is certain, but it may not pass the Senate in its present form. As we will see, compromises that have been suggested are just as indefensible as EFCA itself.

Legal scholar Richard A. Epstein has laid out a convincing case against the first two provisions in a new Hoover Institution book. Under card check, a union would become the monopoly representative of all nonmanagerial workers in an enterprise if 50 percent plus one of those workers signed a card (or other piece of paper or petition) indicating their support for such representation. Signatures would be collected by union organizers who would likely remind any dissenters that the union knows where they and their families live. Under the current National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), signatures collected on authorization cards are used as the basis on which secret ballot elections are called. Workers can avoid union intimidation by signing cards and then voting against the union on the secret ballot. Because of this unions now hesitate to request an election unless they get somewhere near 70 percent of the targeted workers to sign.

No Escape

Workers would have no such escape under the EFCA. Epstein writes that the NLRA was widely accepted because its infringement of individual workers’ common-law freedom of contract was thought to be adequately offset by democratic protections for workers–the very protections that EFCA would eliminate: the secret ballot and a ratification vote on collective-bargaining contracts. Therefore, he argues, EFCA may not withstand constitutional scrutiny.

EFCA provides that a firm must begin bargaining with a union for a first contract within ten days of a card-check certification. Bargaining then goes on for up to 90 days. If no agreement is reached, the dispute goes into mediation for 30 days. If they still don’t agree, the dispute is turned over to an arbitration panel that has the power to impose a two-year “contract” on both parties. The terms set by the arbitration panel would not be subject to judicial review or worker ratification.

The NLRA now imposes a duty on both parties to bargain in good faith over wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment. But they are not forced to come to an agreement. They each can exit the bargaining process and bear the consequences (strikes and lockouts). EFCA would eliminate the exit option. In ordinary contract law bargaining must be voluntary.  No one has a duty to bargain with anyone. Epstein says the duty to bargain in good faith was widely accepted because the exit option was preserved for both parties. This is another reason why the EFCA may not withstand constitutional scrutiny.

The NLRA also regulates employer speech during election campaigns. Employers cannot threaten to punish workers for voting for unionization, and they cannot offer to reward workers who vote against unionization; but they can point out the possible hazards of becoming union-impaired. EFCA would prohibit employer speech altogether. Epstein likens the distinction between regulating and prohibiting employer speech to the distinction in takings law between regulating the use of private property and government occupation of private property. Actual occupation of private property is subject to strict constitutional scrutiny, and so, too, may be the prohibition of employer free speech.

In the mid-1950s over one-third of private-sector workers were unionized. In 2008 only 7.6 percent were. Unions say their decline is due to weaknesses in the NLRA, which permit employers to thwart attempts to unionize. However, according to NLRB data illegal firings of union supporters occur in only 2.7 percent of representation elections. Moreover, unions won 56.8 percent of elections in 2000–2008. In 2008 they won 63 percent. If employers had as much power over elections as unions say, unions wouldn’t do nearly as well. Nor does it seem that employers try to wear workers down with prolonged campaigns. The average election campaign is less than six weeks.

Unions are losing members because the number of elections held each year and the number of workers involved in the elections are declining. Fewer and fewer workers are interested in unions. Union decline has nothing to do with employer misbehavior during elections. Union election wins add fewer newly unionized workers than the number of workers they lose due to the contraction of already union-impaired firms.

Senate Support

Although there are 60 Democrats in the U.S. Senate, several of them have said they will not support EFCA as currently written. Some congressional supporters, and the union bosses they serve, have suggested compromises to get 60 votes to avoid a filibuster. All would eliminate card check, shorten election campaigns, increase penalties on unfair labor practices, and impose “equal access” rules to force employers to allow union organizers on company property during work times and to grant unions the same amount of time to argue for unionization as employers use to argue against unionization. The CEOs of Costco, Starbucks, and Whole Foods have endorsed a compromise that includes all of the above and drops compulsory arbitration.

Mandating a uniform, short election campaign arbitrarily restricts the ability of employers to make their case against unionization. Increasing employer penalties for unfair practices further inhibits free speech because it is not clear what speech would be considered unfair. Whatever the degree of risk aversion among employers, they would choose to speak less.

Equal-access rules are especially problematic. For government to coerce employers to stand by while union organizers invade their property with the sole intent of imposing harms on them during time they have paid for seems to be an obvious government occupation of private property. Therefore it should be subject to strict constitutional scrutiny under the Fifth Amendment. Unions already have extraordinary access to workers during election campaigns. Employers are forced to supply unions with the names and addresses of all workers within seven days of the notice of an election. Union organizers may make unlimited visits to workers’ homes, contact workers by phone as often as they wish, and, unlike employers, make any promises they want to workers in pursuit of votes for unionization. The unions’ problem is not lack of access to workers; it is lack of any service that workers want to buy.

The biggest problem with any EFCA compromise is what, during the New Deal, came to be known as the camel’s-nose-under-the-tent strategy: First get what you can and then gradually grab the rest. Since President Obama seems determined to repeat and amplify the mistakes of Roosevelt, the only safe strategy against EFCA is to kill it outright.

Related posts:

1. Elections, Extortion, and Unions
2. How Bad Can it Get?
3. Neutrality Agreements: Bid for Union Power

It seems that the only approach that has not been tried on a large scale is some form of school choice.

Most school-choice proposals are in the form of either educational vouchers, which pay all or part of the cost of nonpublic education, or tuition tax credits, which let parents deduct tuition from taxes owed. Some of the support for school choice comes from the expectation that it would introduce more competition into education and produce higher-quality education for all students, particularly minority students. Though school choice has that potential, I support it for another reason: Namely, I think any government-created and -protected monopoly is harmful to the best interests of consumers. Competition always produces a superior and lower-cost product than government monopolies. It is no accident that our supermarkets (stocking over 60,000 different items) are the best in the world. Similarly, it’s no accident that we lead the world in communication, computer hardware, software technology, the Internet, and other areas where competition is ruthless.

There is no reason to suspect that it would be any different if there were competition in primary and secondary education. U.S. universities, particularly at the graduate level, are the envy of the world. People from every country salivate at the chance to earn a graduate degree here. However, I would wager that there would be no such excellence if our graduate education were organized like our primary and secondary education.

Most of the criticism of school choice, regardless of method, is wrong and self-serving. My own preference is for tax credits as opposed to vouchers. Tax credits would reduce the risk of government intervention in the form of Departments of Vouchers.

Public Officials Choose Private Schools

There is considerable hypocrisy among some of the staunchest opponents of school choice. They want, demand, and can afford school choice for themselves, but for the less affluent it is a different matter. President and Mrs. Barack Obama enrolled their two daughters in Washington’s prestigious Sidwell Friends School, forking over $28,000 a year for each girl. Whilst Obama was senator, the girls attended the University of Chicago’s Laboratory School, a private school charging almost $20,000 each. A Heritage Foundation survey found that 37 percent of the members of the House of Representatives and 45 percent of senators in the 110th Congress sent their children to private schools. Public-school teachers enroll their own children in nonpublic schools to a much greater extent than the general public. In Cincinnati about 41 percent of them send their children to nonpublic schools. In Chicago it is 38 percent, Los Angeles 24 percent, New York 32 percent, and Philadelphia 44 percent. Both congressmen and public-school teachers enroll their children in private schools at rates three, four, and five times the rate of the general public.

Defenders of the education monopoly have advanced arguments against greater competition in primary and secondary education. These arguments seem plausible; however, a little reflection shows they are simply baseless.

Common Arguments Against School Choice

Public schools would be destroyed. This charge amounts to a tragic confession that public schools are so inferior that given choice all parents would opt out. In fact, some public schools are doing a satisfactory job; those schools would survive. Schools doing a poor job would have to either improve or face an exodus of students and perish.

Private schools would skim off the best students. Assume for a moment this might happen. To object to parental choice for that reason is callous arrogance and cruelty. It differs little from saying that parents who want better education prospects and a brighter future for their children should be held hostage until some undetermined time when public schools have improved.

School choice would lead to school racial segregation. Most voucher and tuition-tax proposals prohibit racial discrimination. The major thrust for school choice has come from black parents. Moreover, most large city public schools are already racially homogeneous, but while a smaller percentage of blacks attend private schools, those schools are more racially heterogeneous.

There are not enough private schools. This is an absurd criticism and reflects ignorance of markets. In the 1970s there were no computer software stores and few videotape rental shops. Would anyone have argued back then that the manufacturing and marketing of computers and VCRs should be held up until software and video shops were in place? By purchasing computers and VCRs, consumers created the demand for those shops. We would expect the same with private schools. If parents had vouchers or tax credits worth $3,000 or $4,000, profit-seeking entrepreneurs would meet the demand for private schools.

Parents, particularly those who are low-income, can’t make wise choices. This is a demeaning attitude toward the poor, and it also reflects ignorance of how markets operate. People have little direct information about the quality of most goods and services they use. They depend on indirect information, such as word of mouth, consumer reports, and advertisements. The market would generate information about K–12 schools just as markets already provide information about colleges and universities. It is inconceivable that parents, particularly black parents, could choose schools worse than the ones their kids already attend.

Education vouchers and tuition tax credits face another source of opposition: from those fearful of government control of nonpublic schools. I share that concern and urge strong measures to minimize that likelihood. The question I pose to these critics is: Which is the more serious and costly risk, the increased government intervention in nonpublic schools that might accompany school choice or the continued educational destruction of the nation’s youngsters, particularly its black and Hispanic youngsters?

Finally, I am thoroughly convinced that all children, including black children, can achieve academic excellence. What’s necessary is 1) parental involvement, 2) well-behaved and motivated children, and 3) a competitive educational environment.

Related posts:

1. Ideas and Consequences ~ School Choice via the Universal Tax Credit
2. School Choice for Inner-City Kids
3. What American Education Needs

But an even bigger problem is the use of the term “fundamentalist.” I understand Christian fundamentalists to be people who, as Bryan Caplan writes in The Myth of the Rational Voter, “ignore or twist the facts of geology and biology to match their prejudices.” So wouldn’t a market fundamentalist be someone who distorted facts to make the case for markets? We can certainly imagine such a person, but I’m not one—nor are many of the people who are strong advocates of free markets. It’s not that I think markets will always work perfectly. It’s just that they work so much better than the coercive solutions that are proposed by those who call me a “market fundamentalist.” Of course, there are times when standard free markets might not work well, but in many of those cases, voluntary charitable activity and simple fellow feeling fill the gap. We don’t think of it as a market transaction, for example, when a stranger in a strange city gives me directions to my hotel. But it certainly is an exercise of his freedom, and it generally works pretty well.

Government Fundamentalists

What should we call people who seem to regard government as the solution regardless of the evidence? I propose the term “government fundamentalists.” How would you identify a government fundamentalist? One characteristic would be a tendency, after the person points out market failures, to argue for government intervention as the solution. Rarely does anyone who proposes a government solution spell out how the incentives will be set up so that the government will actually solve the problem. Even many economists who are strongly committed to free markets will agree that economic freedom can underprovide defense from foreign attackers because of the notorious free-rider problem: Those who refuse to pay will get the same defense as those who pay, giving all an incentive not to pay. The possible result is that national defense is underprovided. But I’ve yet to find an advocate of government provision of defense who can explain how incentives will be set up so that government actually defends us and doesn’t simply engage in national “offense,” picking fights with a dictator in Iraq or a demagogue in Panama, to cite two examples of the U.S. government’s so-called defense.

But given that even some passionate advocates of economic freedom approve of government solutions to problems caused by market failure, we need another characteristic to distinguish government fundamentalists. Here’s the characteristic I propose: a tendency to advocate government solutions even in the face of evidence that those very solutions have not worked.

Take the tax on gasoline. The original idea for taxing gasoline was that users of roads would pay for them. Even at its best, though, the gas tax was not a great solution. The revenues were put in a big pool and politically allocated. There was no necessary connection between where people valued having roads and where roads were built, a connection that automatically would have existed had the revenues been collected with tolls. Tolls, after all, are prices not taxes.

It got worse. In the late 1960s, governments started diverting some gasoline-tax revenues to other uses. The first big diversion was to government-run mass transit that couldn’t survive on its own without subsidies. Later, more funds were diverted for bicycle lanes and lanes on roads and freeways that were dedicated to money-losing bus service. So the whole idea of user-supported roads has been steadily undercut.

Moreover, in response to higher gasoline prices, people have reduced their driving and shifted towards higher-fuel-economy vehicles. Because the federal tax on gasoline is in cents per gallon, revenues fell slightly, from $21.053 billion in fiscal year 2007 to $20.982 billion in fiscal year 2008, a drop of $71 million. In most years, by contrast, revenue grows as the number of drivers grows.

What should be done? If you notice how politicized road construction is, if you notice that a gasoline tax that was supposed to be used only for roads is now used for other things, and if you notice that the shift to higher fuel economy is reducing the growth of revenues for road-building, you might consider a market solution. You might consider taking the issue out of politics, allowing private entrepreneurs to build roads and charge tolls for their use. You might realize that doing so would forever free road construction and maintenance from the vicissitudes of gasoline tax revenues and from the politically powerful governments that grab the funds for their money-losing projects.

More Government Will Fix Failed Government?

But what do many people advocate when they notice this problem? Higher gasoline taxes. If you assume that government solutions are better than free-market solutions, you would naturally conclude that the gasoline tax should be increased. But if you are to avoid being a government fundamentalist, shouldn’t you actually look at the evidence on how well or badly gasoline taxes and government provision of roads have performed? Shouldn’t you also look at the how well or badly toll roads work?

That’s not what many people have done. Take political writer Thomas Frank. In a January 28 article in the Wall Street Journal, “Toll Roads Are Paved with Bad Intentions,” Frank wrote that few state governments “are willing to raise the gasoline taxes which pay for the repairs” to government-owned roads. In other words, Frank sees that there is no necessary connection between the need for repairs and the willingness to raise gasoline taxes. Isn’t this failure to fund roads a strike against government-funded roads? Not in Frank’s mind. He points out a problem with an incomplete system of toll roads: Tolls will price some drivers out, and some of these drivers will then spill over to nontoll roads. But this wouldn’t be a problem if all roads were toll roads. Frank, though, does not consider such a system.

Economist Jeff Hummel recently captured the essence of government fundamentalism this way: If markets don’t work, have government intervene. If government intervention doesn’t work, have government intervene further.

Notice the irony. Many free-market economists like me are quite willing to admit that markets don’t work perfectly and to examine and accept government solutions if their advocates can show how governments can be motivated to actually carry them out. And yet we are called market fundamentalists. On the other hand, many people who call us that are unwilling to change any of their views about the efficacy of government intervention no matter how badly the intervention works. Who are the fundamentalists here?

Related posts:

1. Government in Business
2. How Government Makes Natural Disasters Worse
3. Government Funding Brings Government Control

Example: Should unions be permitted to charge workers who are already forced to accept their representation services for organizing expenses involved in the unions’ attempts to capture hitherto union-free workers?

Section 8(a)3 of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) gives a union the power to force objecting workers to pay fees to the union as a condition of continued employment. Section 2, Eleventh of the Railway Labor Act (RLA) imposes the same coercion in the railroad and airline industries. In its Ellis decision (1984) the Supreme Court ruled that organized workers under the RLA who object to the payment of union dues may be forced to pay only for collective bargaining, contract administration, and grievance adjustment. In its Beck decision (1988) the Court extended those same protections to objecting workers subject to the NLRA. In Ellis the Court specifically ruled out the expenditures a union incurs when it attempts to organize union-free workers as a permissible charge against already-organized objecting workers. In Beck the Court stated that Section 8(a)3 of the NLRA and Section 2, Eleventh of the RLA are “in all material respects identical,” that they are “statutory equivalents,” and that “Congress intended the same language to have the same meaning in both statutes.”

Thus a reasonable person might conclude that under Section 8(a)3 already-organized objecting workers cannot be charged for a union’s new organizing expenses. Indeed, even William Gould, a former chairman of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) who was appointed by President Clinton, expressed that view.

However, the NLRB has defied the Supreme Court.

The NLRB examined the implications of the Beck decision for workers subject to the NLRA in California Saw (1995). It decided that expenses incurred by a union for activities outside an objector’s bargaining unit may be charged 1) if they are “germane to the union’s role in collective bargaining, contract administration and grievance adjustment;” and 2) if, following Lehnert (1991), a Supreme Court public-sector case, the charges “may ultimately inure to the benefit of the members of the local union by virtue of their membership in the parent organization.” The specific expenses at issue in California Saw were litigation costs incurred by a parent union. Organizing costs were not part of the case.

The NLRB then defied the Court’s Ellis ruling on organizing expenses in its Meijer decision (1999). It ruled that such charges, if they are for “organizing within the same competitive market as the bargaining unit employer,” are permissible under the California Saw standard. Such organizing, the Board reasoned, inured to the benefit of the objectors by making collective bargaining on their behalf for higher (nominal) wages more successful. The Board held that the Supreme Court’s ruling in Ellis was irrelevant because the intent of Congress, as stated in Section 1 of the NLRA, was to promote organizing. When Section 2, Eleventh was added to the RLA in 1951, the airline and railroad industries were already fully organized, so promoting organizing was not part of Congress’s intent. This argument is a non sequitur because, notwithstanding Section 1 of the NLRA, the specific intent of Congress with Section 8(a)3, like Section 2, Eleventh, was to capture free riders. Congress never linked union security to organizing. The Supreme Court has not yet taken up this question, but since the Ninth and Fourth Circuit Courts of Appeal have issued different opinions it may. However, in the new political environment it may not.

The Economics

The NLRB rested its decision in Meijer on empirical evidence presented by economists’ testimony that when unions successfully organize hitherto union-free workers in a specific competitive market, there will be fewer union-free employers against whom unionized employers will have to compete. This increases the ability of those employers to pass union-imposed cost increases forward to consumers, and thus makes the employers less resistant to union demands for higher wages. Thus increased organizing by unions will raise the wages paid to already-organized workers.

The expert witnesses referred to several empirical studies, using 1960s and ’70s data and published in the ’70s and ’80s, which purport to show that a 10 percent increase in the number of workers who are unionized in a specific competitive market will on average increase nominal wages by 2 percent. Similar results were found in a 1992 study of the retail grocery industry commissioned by the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which had organized employees at Meijer, Inc., a retail grocery chain based in Michigan.

In 2004 John DiNardo and David S. Lee (DL) published an important paper that cast doubt on those studies, which were based on old household interviews as reported in the Current Population Survey. The DL study used enterprise-based data from 1984 to 1999, which track specific employers over time, to estimate the effects of new unionization on wages (and other outcomes). Moreover, the earlier studies did not adequately address the “selection bias” problem. It may be that instead of unionization leading to higher wages, unions try to organize profitable firms that are likely to pay higher wages in any case. DL controlled for selection bias by using a statistical technique called “regression-discontinuity.” They found that the effects of new unionization on wages were “centered around zero.”

Apart from statistical issues, there are other problems with Meijer. For example, the expert witnesses relied on a standard neoclassical comparative-static model of the labor market: Increased organizing leads to increased density (the percent of workers who are organized), and this leads to higher wages through increased bargaining power (decreased price elasticity of the demand for labor).

This ignores the competitive market process. Even if it were true that capturing hitherto union-free workers initially raises real wages for already-organized workers, that increase (if it is above the competitive market rate) will not endure. The neoclassical model describes a union reducing the alternatives available to customers and owners of capital. But captured customers and owners of capital are quite entrepreneurial about escaping. The plight of American car makers and car buyers who had been captured by the United Auto Workers (UAW) illustrates the point. American car buyers fled the UAW by buying from union-free producers both here and abroad. American car makers fled the UAW by setting up manufacturing plants in foreign jurisdictions that are less union-friendly. The Big Three and the big UAW have lost significant market share. The UAW has had to accept wage cuts to reduce the loss of its jobs.

The market process message is clear: Too much organizing leads to less job security and lower real wages.

Related posts:

1. Government-Sector Unionism
2. The Pursuit of Happiness ~ Unions Draft Temporary Workers
3. The Myth of Compulsory Union Membership

Don’t misinterpret me. I am not suggesting that people not vote. Most Americans see voting as their civic duty and, despite the evidence shown by Professors Gelman, Silver, and Edlin, people have a feeling that their vote counts. If one thinks that his vote makes a difference, that is a worthy benefit deserving of the time and effort it takes to vote.

You Get What You Pay For

Voting has other problems in addition to the relative unimportance of each individual vote. When one votes for a particular candidate, is there any way to be sure that one will get what one votes for? There’s no older story in the political arena than that of the candidate who promises one thing when he campaigns and does something else when he wins office. Moreover, if he lives up to a promise made to one group of Americans, it will always come at the expense of another. Some political promises are incredible, such as Barack Obama’s promise that he would work to unite Christians, Muslims, and Jews. That’s true political arrogance in light of the hundreds of years of sometimes murderous conflict between these groups.

Americans cast millions upon millions of votes—that is, they make decisions—in the non-political arena where individual votes do count and where there is a much higher probability of being satisfied with the outcome. Moreover, what they get in return for their vote does not come at the expense of another. That arena is the marketplace.

In our wallets we have what amounts to ballot slips; we can think of them as dollar votes. When we take, say, nine of them and “vote” for two pounds of steak, we are fairly certain about the outcome. We get the two pounds of steak. If we don’t get the outcome we voted for—we get, say, steak of poor quality—there is swift retribution. We can simply fire the seller by taking our business elsewhere. We act unilaterally and don’t have to bother with costly organizing. Very often simply the threat of taking our business elsewhere is enough to get some kind of remedy.

An individual’s threat to vote for a politician’s opponent as an expression of dissatisfaction with the politician’s actions, on the other hand, is not likely to carry as much weight.

There is another contrast between the market arena and the political arena that can be appreciated by asking what draws the greatest public complaints: Is it market-provided goods and services, such as computers, televisions, clothing, and food? Or is it government-provided services, such as public schools, postal services, and motor vehicle departments? In the case of market-provided goods and services, the prospect of profit gives providers an incentive to please customers. The government sector, however, is not-for-profit, so it suffers no losses when it fails to please “customers.”

Better for Poor People, Too

You might say, “That’s okay, Williams, if you have enough dollar votes. But what about poor people?” Poor people are far better served in the market arena than the political arena. Check this out. If you visit a poor neighborhood, you will see some nice clothing, some nice cars, some nice food, and maybe even some nice homes—no nice schools. Why not at least some nice schools? The explanation is simple. Clothing, cars, food, and houses are allocated through the market mechanism. Schools are allocated through the political mechanism. By the way, if you are a member of a minority, it is in your interest to minimize those decisions over your life made in the political arena, where the majority rules.

There is another unappreciated feature of the market arena. It reduces the potential for human conflict. Different Americans have different and intense preferences for cars, food, clothing, and entertainment. When is the last time you heard about Chrysler lovers fighting with Lexus lovers? It seldom if ever happens. Why? Those who love Chryslers get what they want, and those who love Lexuses get what they want, and each can live in peace with one another.

It is a different story in government-provided education. Some parents wish for their children to recite a morning prayer in schools. Other parents are repulsed by the idea. The fact that education is produced by government means there is either going to be prayer in school or no prayer in school. Parents must enter into conflict with one another. Why? If, for example, the parent who wishes for prayers in school loses the political battle, that parent will not have his wishes met. Of course he can send his child to a non-government school that has morning prayers, but through the tax code he is forced to continue paying for school services for which he has no use.

If government decided whether Chryslers or Lexuses would be produced, we would see conflict between lovers of Chryslers and Lexuses.

The prime feature of political decision-making is that it’s a zero-sum game. One person’s or group’s gain, of necessity, comes at the expense of another person or group. As such, political allocation of resources is conflict-enhancing while market allocation is conflict-reducing. The greater the number of decisions made in the political arena the greater the potential for conflict.

I never cease to be amazed by Americans’ faith in government and the political arena, whose essence is coercion, and their suspicion of the market arena, whose essence is peaceable, voluntary exchange.

Related posts:

1. I Won’t Vote!
2. Who Should Vote?
3. Ideas and Consequences: How Important Is Your Vote?

Start with the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) law, which requires each auto producer in the U.S. market to make fleets that average at least 27.5 miles per gallon for cars and at least 20.7 mpg for trucks. (Former President Bush and Congress increased that to 35 mpg by 2020, with no lower standard for light trucks.) That law had the unintended but totally predictable consequence of making cars less safe. The reason is that one relatively cheap way to raise fuel economy is to make cars lighter, and the lighter they are, other things being equal, the more dangerous they are to their occupants. In 1989 two economists, Robert Crandall of the Brookings Institution and John Graham of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School, found that, adjusting for the downsizing of cars that would have occurred anyway, the CAFE laws would cause an extra 2,200 to 3,900 deaths over the life of a 1989-model-year car.

But the CAFE law is itself the result of another unintended consequence of government policy, namely price controls on oil and gasoline. President Nixon’s economy-wide wage and price controls, imposed in 1971, did not cause much difficulty at first. But when the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) raised the world price of oil from about $3 a barrel to about $11 over a few months in late 1973, Nixon’s price controllers refused to allow refiners to pass on the whole increase in the price of gasoline. The result was a massive shortage of gasoline, with long lines at the pump. Rather than remove the controls, Nixon had government officials start allocating the gasoline by various arbitrary criteria, a process the Ford and Carter administrations continued.

Government officials in the Ford administration and in Congress noticed that American car buyers were not buying as many high-fuel-economy cars as these officials thought they should. In other words, Americans were responding to the artificially low price of gasoline by acting as if the price of gasoline were low! Gee, what a surprise. Of course, instead of removing the price controls, Congress and Ford decided to regulate the fuel economy of new cars—that’s how we got CAFE. Like all regulations, this one bred its own lobby, featuring Ralph Nader and Clarence Ditlow. They had been, until that time, advocates of car safety. But they wanted enforced fuel economy even more.

That’s not the end. One way the companies could meet their CAFE targets was by importing small, high-fuel-economy cars from their foreign production facilities. The United Auto Workers union noticed this and lobbied for—and achieved—separate standards. Auto companies then had to hit the standard with their domestic production and, separately, with their imports. That caused the companies to produce more small cars at home rather than import even successful cars from abroad. According to William Niskanen, the chief economist at Ford in the late 1970s, Ford dropped its Fiesta in the late 1970s not despite, but because of, the car’s potentially large market: Ford feared that its German-made Fiesta would “steal” sales from its U.S.-made Escort, thus lowering its domestic CAFE average.

Moreover, even the increase in the world price of oil engineered by OPEC in late 1973 was in part the unintended consequence of U.S. energy policy. Why? Because OPEC had been formed in response to President Eisenhower’s restrictions on oil imports. As economist Ben Zycher points out, in 1959 the U.S. government established the Mandatory Oil Import Quota Program (MOIP), which restricted the amount of imported crude oil and refined products allowed into the United States. It also gave preferential treatment to oil imports from Canada and Mexico. Two major growing sources of supply at the time were the Middle East and Venezuela. By reducing a major market for Middle Eastern and Venezuelan oil, the import-quota system drove down the demand for that oil, causing its price to fall in February 1959 and again in August 1960.

In September 1960 governments of four Persian Gulf countries—Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia—facing discrimination against their oil, joined with Venezuela to form OPEC. Their goal was to get monopoly power to offset the monopsony power created by the U.S. oil import quota system and thus get higher prices. Although OPEC was at first relatively powerless, by 1973 the governments of eight other countries—Algeria, Ecuador, Gabon, Indonesia, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates—had joined. In 1973, OPEC made its move.

From the CAFE to the Mess Tent

CAFE laws and other fuel-economy standards are not the only unintended consequences of U.S. price controls on oil and gasoline. One can even speculate reasonably that these price controls led to two major wars initiated by the U.S. government. The reason is that instead of blaming their government for lines at gas stations, Americans have tended to blame foreign governments—especially the government of Saudi Arabia, the leader of the OPEC cartel and its largest producer. In 1979 President Carter formed the Rapid Deployment Force to train for combat mainly in deserts. President Reagan kept this force and renamed it the U.S. Central Command.

Whatever Carter’s motives or understanding in forming this force, the hardwiring in Americans’ minds led them to associate gas lines with nasty Middle East governments rather than with the nasty U.S. government. That made them more willing than otherwise to support intervention in Middle Eastern affairs to secure the continued flow of oil. Thus when Henry Kissinger claimed in August 1990 that Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, if left unopposed, “would cause a world-wide economic crisis,” many Americans believed him. In a Wall Street Journal article that month, I showed that, in fact, the absolute worst harm Hussein could do to the U.S. economy, even if he grabbed Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, was a loss of less than half of 1 percent of GDP annually. But because so many Americans feared the return of gas lines, they were more open than otherwise to a U.S. attack on Iraq.

Later, in 2003, the U.S. government still had the military capability to invade Iraq. The stated issue this time was Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. Still, the fact that the U.S. government had the capability to attack Iraq was due in part to Carter’s buildup of the Rapid Deployment Force.

As poet Robert Burns might say, “Oh what a tangled—and tragic—web government weaves when first it practices to intervene.”

Related posts:

1. Energy Policy: Wisdom or Waste?
2. Book Review ~Thats Not What We Meant to Do: Reform and Its Unintended Consequences in Twentieth-Century America by Steven M. Gillon
3. Book Review ~ Thats Not What We Meant to Do: Reform and Its Unintended Consequences in Twentieth-Century America by Steven M. Gillon

The dangers discussed in the Report are all threats to democracy. Government payrolls are taxpayer expenditures. Basic principles of democracy call for government expenditures to be determined in the open by duly elected legislators. Moreover, taxpayers must be able to testify in open legislative hearings regarding such expenditures. This is not how government-sector collective bargaining (GSCB) works. For example, in Washington state a legislator’s only role in the GSCB process is to vote yes or no on government-employee compensation bargained by the governor and the government-employee unions. Those bargaining sessions are closed to the public. The unions are a de facto fourth branch of government empowered to ignore both the legislature and the taxpayers. Unions are not ordinary special-interest groups, like the Sierra Club, that try to affect government policy. They actually get to codetermine government policy with the governor.

As described in the Report, GSCB in Washington state is an egregious special-interest game. The governor, who gets in-kind and financial campaign support from the unions, “bargains” with them. This is government of the taxpayers by the unions for the unions. It is taxation without representation.

Because the unions are permitted to force government employees to pay union dues and agency fees as a condition of continued employment, they are able to buy the loyalty of the governor and to bribe enough legislators to vote yes on the bargains. The Report gives details of this pay-to-play game in Washington state from 2004 to July 2008. It reveals the specific amounts paid by unions to various politicians in direct campaign contributions and the resulting union-friendly votes those politicians cast. The unions spent a total of $1,128,425 buying political votes. According to the Wall Street Journal, Colorado government unions assembled over $13 million of forced dues and fees to fight a ballot measure that would have prohibited them from collecting forced dues and fees.

Sign This Card or Else!

Unions are not content with the money they take from ordinary government employees. Some unions are now bribing politicians to vote for laws that will force individual private-sector workers—such as home healthcare workers, daycare providers, and even foster parents—who are paid with any taxpayer funds to submit to union representation and forced fees.

In private-sector collective bargaining the employer and the union sit on opposite sides of the table. The employer is playing with his own money, and he is constrained by the market competition he faces. The union represents the interests of employees under the constraint that if the enterprise loses out to competitors, there will be fewer employees to represent. If the workers of a private enterprise go on strike, its customers can take their business elsewhere. In GSCB both parties sit on the same side of the table. They are playing with other people’s (taxpayers’) money and are unconstrained by competition. Taxpayers cannot legally refuse to pay taxes. If the employees of a government agency go on strike, its customers (taxpayers) have no place to turn.

Notwithstanding this crucial difference, government unions often argue successfully that strikes in the government sector must be legal simply because they are legal in the private sector. Strikes take place even in many jurisdictions where government-sector strikes are illegal. When such strikes are settled, the strikers and their unions usually are granted amnesty.

Some states, such as Iowa, have tried to avoid government-sector strikes by imposing binding arbitration in collective-bargaining impasses. But that is an unacceptable alternative. An arbitrator in government-sector labor disputes is unelected but has power unilaterally to determine the size of government payrolls and thus significantly affect state fiscal priorities. Some states have been forced to raise taxes to pay arbitrators’ awards. In the words of the Report, binding arbitration in the government sector “could place an arbitrator in the position of single-handedly raising government expenses (and thus the taxes to cover the costs.)” If this isn’t taxation without representation, the Founders gave George III a bad rap.

The Report also tells of an attempt by the California legislature to prevent private-sector employers who receive more than $10,000 of state funds from speaking out against unionization during certification election campaigns. Only unions would have free-speech rights. In June 2008, in Chamber of Commerce v. Brown, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the California law on the grounds that the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) preempts state law in private-sector collective bargaining. According to the Court, Congress is free to give states the power to restrict employer free speech simply by amending the NLRA.

I expect this issue soon to be moot because the new Congress and the new president are poised to abolish secret-ballot certification elections. Under the Employee “Free Choice” Act employers will be forced to recognize and bargain with unions if a majority of their respective employees have signed union cards. Signatures will be collected in face-to-face encounters between union organizers and individual employees. Free speech and free choice be damned. Sign this card or else!

What Can Be Done?

The Report offers four suggestions to improve the situation. I think the first two make sense, and the others are too weak to make any difference. It proposes that all states subject government-sector collective bargaining to open-meeting laws that guarantee the opportunity for individual citizens to be heard on the subject of government-employee compensation and that force public disclosure of all collective-bargaining agreements. Currently only 11 states have such laws. It further recommends that states adopt legislation to force unions fully to disclose their financial information to workers and the general public. If people knew how much unions spend for political and ideological purposes rather than bargaining and representation, they would be appalled.

It also recommends that all states adopt “paycheck protection” legislation, which would force unions to get permission from each individual union member before any of his dues could be used for political purposes. Paycheck protection already exists in 16 states. While this is better than doing nothing, unions are skilled at obfuscating the difference between what is and what isn’t political spending. A more effective remedy would be for all states to forbid unions to collect any forced dues or fees from any workers. Finally, the Report recommends that all government-employee strikes be prohibited by law. Unfortunately, where that proscription already exists it has proven to be feckless.

I expect all the problems discussed in the Report to get worse during the next four years. In 1985 the U.S. Supreme Court, in Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, gave Congress a free hand in setting the rules for state and local labor relations. Congress can override any measures enacted by the states. It can even force states that do not now allow government-sector bargaining to do so. The only change we can expect here will be dictated by the unions.

Related posts:

1. Congress and Public Safety Unionism
2. Government-Sector Unionism
3. Worker Freedom in Peril