All Posts Tagged With: "labor unions"
Hayek 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 | ContinuedReason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America
By Robert Reich Reviewed by George C. Leef
1Mar2007 | George C. Leef | 0 comments | ContinuedBig Government–Big Risk
In his Freeman column last June, “The End Run to Freedom,” economist Russell Roberts makes the following argument: As people get wealthier, they demand more security. Their demand for security leads many people to favor the welfare state or the nanny state. The welfare state refers to a government that subsidizes people who bear losses; [...]
1Jan2007 | David R. Henderson | 11 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 | ContinuedJohn Kenneth Galbraith: A Criticism and an Appreciation
Last April John Kenneth Galbraith died at the age of 97. Galbraith was one of America ‘s most famous economists and a self-proclaimed liberal (in the American sense of “statist” rather than in the European sense of “believer in freedom”). His fame came not from his technical accomplishments in academic economics but from his awesome [...]
1Dec2006 | David R. Henderson | 30 comments | ContinuedWhat Is Going on in France?
Pierre Garello is a professor of economics at Aix-Marseille University, France. It is sometime painful for a liberal—I will be using that word in its old, continental, sense—to live in France, especially in southern France: so much light, so many beauties given by nature, and at the same time so much wealth wasted! Riots; strikes; blockage [...]
1Oct2006 | Pierre Garello | 0 comments | ContinuedBelt and Braces in the Labor Market
Like every exchange, the exchange of labor for money is protected, as it were, by a belt, the contract. Labor, it is argued, must additionally be protected by the braces of justification. In even plainer English, this means that in order to dismiss a worker, an employer cannot simply rely on the contract telling him that he can do so by giving notice that will, so to speak, unbuckle the belt. He must also contrive to unbutton the braces by dealing with a requirement of justification.
1Jun2006 | Anthony de Jasay | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Jewel of Consistency
The acid test is that a man live by the principles he professes to believe.
1Jun2006 | Fred DeArmond | 0 comments | ContinuedJohn Maynard Keynes: The Damage Still Done by a Defunct Economist
Seventy years ago, on February 4, 1936, the English economist John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) published what soon became his most famous work, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money. Few books, in so short a time, have gained such wide influence and generated so destructive an impact on public policy. What Keynes succeeded in [...]
1May2006 | Richard M. Ebeling | 40 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 Disconnect Between Political Promises and Performance
What can politicians do to create more higher paying jobs? Politicians must think that most of us believe the answer is: a lot. One of the most persistent campaign promises is the creation of good jobs at good wages. I shall argue that politicians can do quite a number of things to increase high-wage employment. [...]
1Apr2006 | Dwight R. Lee | 0 comments | ContinuedShould Professors Be Allowed to Unionize?
A current dispute at a liberal-arts college in Wisconsin prompts me to ask whether professors should be allowed to unionize. For many years I have been interested in questions of labor law and probably would have been interested in this dispute even if it did not happen to involve my alma mater. Carroll College is [...]
1Mar2006 | George C. Leef | 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.
Repeal Davis-Bacon
After Hurricane Katrina ravaged much of the Gulf Coast, President Bush ordered the suspension of the federal Davis-Bacon Act, which mandates that workers on all federally financed construction projects of more than $2,000 (virtually all, that is) be paid the “prevailing wage” of the project location. The suspension would have covered only the parts of [...]
1Dec2005 | George C. Leef | 1 comment | ContinuedWal-Mart Is Good for the Economy
Ideologues who rant against Wal-Mart do not understand economics. In a market economy, success goes to those businesses that best and most efficiently serve consumer needs.
1Oct2005 | John Semmens | 1 comment | ContinuedAustralian 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 | Continued-
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