From: peercy@crhc.uiuc.edu (Mike Peercy)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,alt.society.civil-liberty,alt.individualism
Subject: Re: Employee vs. Employer rights (was Re: What keeps me from being Lib.)
Date: 12 Apr 92 23:25:47 GMT
Organization: Center for Reliable and High-Performance Computing, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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kadie@herodotus.cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie) writes:

| History, in my opinion, is on the side of at least some limitations on
| employer action and against the Libertarian philosophy. The LP offers
| theoretical arguments about how employers who don't discriminate or
| demand sexual favors will do better will than those who do. But there
| are also theoretical and *historical* arguments that it was to
| employers' (short term) advantage to keep, for example,
| African-Americans working for lower wages. Any African-American who
| refuses to work for less found him or herself unemployed and
| blacklisted. Any employer who defected by offering equal pay for equal
| work, found him or herself boycotted by the other employers.

I'd be interested in seeing references for these--especially the
blacklisting and boycotting parts.  It seems to me that, in this day
and age, blacklisting and boycotting would be used to _ensure_ employment
fairness, rather than to thwart it.  If blacklists and boycotts were ever
effective at institutionizing the previous beliefs in racism, that is
certainly argument to get the government out of the picture now and let
societal engines institutionalize the current beliefs in civil equality.

As to the particular problem of differences in wages, certainly it is
bad to have European-descended workers paid more than African-descended
workers with the same qualifications and the same job.  However, this is
an excruciatingly difficult problem to fix through legislation.  The
difference in wage is the market's reflection of the "cost of racism"
the employers must bear if they want to be racist.  From the employer's
point of view, it is more appropriate to see the higher wage of the white
worker as a premium paid for the "delicate luxury" of having white men
sweat instead of black men.  The employer only wants the work done, and
(being a good capitalist) at the lowest price.

So, left to its own devices, the free competition for labor will result
in more blacks being hired.  This will result in a shorter supply of black
unemployed and a greater supply of white unemployed.  Thus the price of the
black worker rises and that of the white worker falls.  Along with the
natural equalization of wages is the commensurate social integration of
blacks into the once-lily workplace and the climbing of blacks to positions
of management and higher pay.

On the other hand, the result of imposing a minimum wage is exactly the
opposite.  Racist hiring practices now do not carry a premium:  they are
subsidized; they are free.  If the white worker will work at the minimum
wage, then _any_ preference for the white worker--the slightest racist
tendency--results in the black being locked out of the job.  Much more
effective than blacklists or boycotts, wouldn't you say?

In fact, these types of laws were the first racially motivated labor
laws in South Africa, early in this century.  They were passed over the
protestations of the companies by the forces of white labour.  (As a
historical note, many corporations in South Africa went right ahead and
hired blacks at below minimum wage and considered the fines just a cost
of business.  Of course, labour pressed on and got more and more racially
motivated laws and restrictions passed, until an actual apartheid party
was elected in 1948.  The rest is--how shall we say--history.)

I include this both to show that laws regulating employment are dangerous,
as they can have very bad (intentional or unintentional) effects, and to
challenge the notion that denial of civil equality is always perpetrated
by the employer.  Often it is imposed by one group of (potential) employees
on another.

Mike Peercy
peercy@crhc.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc