From: jwh@citi.umich.edu (Jim Howe)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.economics
Subject: Re: Libertarians and Labor Unions
Date: 27 Jan 1993 19:12:18 GMT
Organization: IFS Project, University of Michigan
Distribution: world
Reply-To: jwh@citi.umich.edu
NNTP-Posting-Host: tarkus.citi.umich.edu

In article <1993Jan27.165230.10182@cs.wayne.edu>, mje@pookie.pass.wayne.edu (Michael J. Edelman) writes:
|> In article 1k66vtINNju7@srvr1.engin.umich.edu, jwh@citi.umich.edu (Jim Howe) writes:
|> [...]  If I have a driveway
|> >which needs plowing, should it be illegal for me to contract with
|> >you to do the plowing for the next year?  Is it any different if I
|> >contract with a plowing service which you operate?  If I contract
|> >with your plowing service, only your employees will be allowed to
|> >plow my driveway.  It would be a violation of our contract if I
|> >paid someone else to do the work, as long as our contract remained
|> >in existance.  
|> 
|> An erroneous restatement of the question. By the rules of agency shop, 
|> you would be compelled to (1) recognize the service that you first
|> contracted with as the sole supplier of services to your house and (2)
|> be required to pay a service fee to the shoveling service for any other
|> services you contracted- including those that the shoveling service 
|> cannot supply.
|> 

When you speak of the 'rules' of an agency shop, are you referring to
some government regulations, or are these rules spelled out in the
contract between the union and the coporation.  If the corporation 
and the union have both agreed to the terms, I don't see how the
government can intervene.  If I contract with a service and agree
to pay a service fee for shoveling and for any other services that
cannot be supplied by the shoveling service, why is it the business
of government to negate that contract?

|> You also may have misread the bit about the primacy of certain legal
|> principles over others, given  your request for a proof that
|> agency shop laws are illegal in the same sense as murder. The idea is that 
|> certain principles have primacy over the principles of contract law,  
|> for example, the laws prohibiting murder. In other words, if murder
|> is an illegal act, the courts will not allow you to enforce a contract for
|> that act.
|> 
|> Now here's the part that seems to be the one that caused difficulty: If 
|> an act is objectionable from first principles to a libertarian, then it
|> would seem that the act would still be objectionable if contracted for,
|> would it not?
|> 

Agreed.

|> Ergo: It is objectionable, from the perspective of individual rights, to
|> coerce a person to contribute money to something he may object to 
|> philisophically. Therefore even though some other agents may have contracted
|> to do so, after the fact, it is objectionable to coerce him to do so. Yet
|> agency laws allow a union to come in and do this sort of coercion after
|> the fact.
|> 

However you have simply shifted the focus from one of purchaser/supplier
to supplier/alternative supplier.  No one has the right to force me
to employ someone I don't want.  If I have agreed to the contract
stated above, I would be in violation if I hired someone outside the
terms of the contract.  If I wanted to hire an 'outsider', I shouldn't
have agreed to the contract in the first place.  If I agreed to the
contract, I must have determined that on whole it met my needs.
If the outsider doesn't want to join the service organization, no one
is forcing him.  He is still free to work for anyone who will hire
him.

|> SCOTUS held, last year, that a union may not use service fees to pay for 
|> things not strictly related to the union's representation of the employee,
|> i.e., contributions to political parties, so they're pointed in that 
|> direction as well.

I agree with this.

|> 
|> 
|>  >I consider myself to be a libertarian and I believe that the government 
|> >has no right to interfere in the making of contracts.  Only in cases which
|> >violate basic natural rights (as in your murder contract, fraud, etc.) would
|> >I agree that the government has the right to declare a contract null and
|> >void.  
|> 
|> What about freedom of association? What about the union's authority to take
|> your money in the abscence of a contract between you and the union?
|> 

What about freedom of association?  Taken from the purchasers position,
the purchaser should be free to make an agreement with whoever he
wants, under any terms the two parties find mutually agreeable (barring
fraud, coercion, etc.)  The fact that someone else may be shut out
is unfortunate, but a fact of life.  I see no difference between
a sole source contract for a particular item and an 'agency shop'
agreement that you describe except in scope.  As to the union's
authority to take your money in the absence of a contract, no one
is forcing you to work for the company operating under a 'closed'
shop.  If you want to work there, you have to make the tradeoff
between employment and paying union dues.


James W. Howe                  internet: jwh@citi.umich.edu
University of Michigan             uucp: uunet!mailrus!citi.umich.edu!jwh
Ann Arbor, MI   48103-4943         
Newsgroups: alt.politics.economics