Should the State Legislate Labor Unions?

To the Editor:

Lawrence W. Reed, in his May column (“The Freedom Not to Pay for Other People’s Politics”), surprised me by writing:

“California voters will go to the polls later this year to decide on a Beck-inspired referendum. [The measure, Proposition 226, was defeated in June.-Ed.] If it passes, unions in that state could no longer collect or use money from employees for political purposes without express permission. Millions of dollars will be spent by both sides over the exercise of a right that ought to be a given in the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

Is Reed really advocating that the state legislate labor union policy? While I do not like how some labor unions (e.g., the teachers unions) collect funds to lobby for causes I find destructive, I do not want the government dictating how labor unions are run. Whether the union is for employees of a government monopoly should not affect my position, either.

I believe Reed’s position is not the true free-market libertarian position. Am I mistaken?

—Brian Schwartz
Palo Alto, California

Lawrence Reed replies:

Government is already deeply involved in legislating labor relations, and much of what it has done in this area has been destructive. It should never have granted labor unions the power by simple majority vote to impose collective bargaining on all workers at a site, for instance. Nor should government have given labor unions the power to forcibly extract dues money from unwilling members and then spend some of it on political causes that those very members oppose.

Now that government has done those things, would Mr. Schwartz advocate that it walk away from the playing field and pretend that doing so is some kind of “laissez-faire” approach? Why not get the government to undo some of the harm it has already done—for instance, by stripping the unions of the coercive power to extract political contributions? To do any less would be to validate and perpetuate past intrusions of government.

When the government grants special favors to special interests to employ legalized coercion for political purposes, that’s neither “free-market” nor libertarian. When we can get the government to withdraw the coercive privilege that it should never have granted in the first place—which is what my column advocated—then we are moving in a free-market, libertarian direction.