Public Labor Unions Are Beneficial to Society

I. EconomicsI. a. Unemployment I will first attack again my opponent's premise that unions increase productivity. "It is only by imposing restrictions on the economy which reduce productivity that a union can provide an economic benefit to its members. In a free and open labor market a worker will be able to receive a wage that reflects his productivity and which is no higher than what comparably skilled workers are receiving elsewhere in the economy. .. And it is productivity that has increased over time in response to the incentives and direction provided by competitive markets that, at least until recently, made U. S. workers the best paid in the world. "[1]How will they work harder if they are paid more and don't have a chance of getting fired? If you didn't have a chance at getting fired, no matter how little work you did, would you do less or more work? Simple. Less work. Why? Because you can get away with it. People like doing as little work they can. And labor unions encourage this by preventing firing. "The reason companies like Wal-Mart don’t want unions isn’t because they’re anti-union, but labor unions promote laziness and apathy. Laziness and apathy cause businesses to go bankrupt. "[2] If too many of these unionized workers are in the company, the company can not operate to market capacity and therefore go out of business. Another way Labor Unions increase unemployment. Now on to my opponent's latter premise that labor unions don't reduce the labor supply. Take a look at it from this graph: [3] Think at it this way: "Unions are labor cartels. Cartels work by restricting the supply of what they produce so that consumers will have to pay higher prices for it. OPEC, the best-known cartel, attempts to raise the price of oil by cutting oil production. As labor cartels, unions attempt to monopolize the labor supplied to a company or an industry in order to force employers to pay higher wages. In this respect, they function like any other cartel and have the same effects on the economy. Cartels benefit their members in the short run and harm the overall economy. "[4][5]Finally, my opponent doubts the mountain of empirical evidence I have to support my claims. I will pull out a few more to close my point here. "This pattern holds across many industries: Between new companies starting up and existing companies expanding, non-union jobs grow by roughly 3 percent each year, while 3 percent of union jobs disappear. In the long term, unionized jobs disappear and unions need to replenish their membership by organizing new firms. Union jobs have disappeared especially quickly in industries where unions win the highest relative wages. Widespread unionization reduces employment opportunities. "[5][6][7][14]"Unionized manufacturing jobs fell by 75 percent between 1977 and 2008. Non-union manufacturing employment increased by 6 percent over that time. "[8]This chart will solidify my point: [8]Labor unions do increase unemployment. I. b. Inflation This explains the process pretty well: "If unions succeed in wage hikes, and employers raise the prices they charge consumers to maintain their own profit margins, and the supply of money remains the same, then something else has to "give. " Either the prices of goods and services in nonunion sectors have to fall and offset the union sector hikes, or people's cash balances need to fall, in terms of their purchasing power. "[9]"When market conditions are such that producers whose labor costs have risen cannot raise the prices of the goods they sell, a curtailment of production results, as indicated above; and the general population accordingly suffers a loss of potential goods and services. "[12] In fact, labor unions tend to work as monopolies [10] and this obviously increases the prices of goods. Unfortunately, there isn't much direct statistical evidence of this, but the correlation can be easily seen. And like I said earlier, tariffs are bad. II. Working"Workers can't advance much or at all on their merits, but must generally progress within the limits defined by union contracts. Employers may have trouble weeding out ineffective employees if they belong to unions. In theory, at least, unionized workers might become so comfortable and protected that they lose the incentive to work hard for their employer. .Even in some cases outstanding workers are pressured by the union to not go the extra mile. .. So here you can thank the unions for poor production on the employees part, and jobs that have moved over seas, where it is more affordable to get products made. .. "[11] Unions do encourage sloth. III. Other Workers I'll repeat this again: "The average union wage is 28% higher than a non-union wage"[13] Higher wages for unionized workers. Higher wages for workers who do the exact same thing as other workers, but those other workers don't get higher wages is unfair. And plus, since non-unionized workers work harder than unionized workers (since, as I proved earlier, unionized workers can get away with not working while non-unionized workers can't), it is even more unfair the unionized, less hard working employees make more money than the non-unionzed, more hard working employees. Dosen't that sound unfair to you? And plus, when the company has to lay off workers due to the effects of the labor union, they have to lay off the non-unionized workers first, since the unionized workers are protected by the labor union. The only time a unionized worker can lose his job is when the company goes out of business. Dosen't the non-unionized workers being laid off first, even though they are the harder working workers, seem unfair to you too? And don't tell me that they deserve it because they did not join the union. They choose not to join the union because they don't want the company they are working for to be forced to shut down and they don't want to lose their job. Labor unions are determinal to soceity and should be eliminated. Sources:[1]: . http://www.fee.org...[2]: . http://www.broowaha.com...[3]: . http://mises.org...[4]: George Borjas, Labor Economics, 3rd edition (Columbus, Ohio: McGraw-Hill, 2005). [5]: . http://www.heritage.org...[6]: Henry Farber and Bruce Western, "Accounting for the Decline of Unions in the Private Sector, 1973-1998," Journal of Labor Research, Vol. 22, No. 2 (September 2001), pp. 459-485. [7]: Bernt Bratsberg and James F. Ragan, Jr. , "Changes in the Union Wage Premium by Industry," Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Vol. 56, No. 1 (October 2002), pp. 65-83[8]: . http://freemarketmojo.wordpress.com...[9]: . http://mises.org...[10]: . http://www.forbes.com...[11]: . http://www.sodahead.com...;[12]: . http://www.nathanielbranden.com... [13]: . http://stephencabotblog.com...[14]: Peter D. Linneman, Michael L. Wachter, and William H. Carter, "Evaluating the Evidence on Union Employment and Wages,"Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Vol. 44, No. 1 (October 1990), pp. 34-53.