Richard Epstein: "The age of big government is now upon us. The question is how to respond to this daunting reality" (HT:SD)

http://www.hoover.org/publications/defining-ideas/article/136881

December 18, 2012

defining ideas

The End of Unions?

by Richard A. Epstein (Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow and member of the Property Rights, Freedom, and Prosperity Task Force)

What Michigan Governor Rick Snyder gets right and wrong about labor policy.

"Given these harsh economic inequalities, it is intellectually incorrect for people to say that they are in favor of the collective bargaining system that insulates labor unions from what are (and before 1914, were) per se violations of the anti-trust laws. It may well be that their clout has become so strong that unions cannot be undone by frontal political assaults. Indeed, the right-to-work compromise was adopted under the Taft-Hartley law of 1947 precisely because the Republicans lacked the political power to undo the 1935 Wagner Act in its entirety.
But we should not scorn half measures that move the system in ways that lead to higher levels of employment, higher wages, and lower consumer prices, without the threat of strikes and the huge public expense of running the National Labor Relations Act. Free-riders in labor markets perform an essential social function insofar as they promote competitive markets.
Right-to-work laws thus represent a strong movement in the right direction. They should be defended, not opposed, for their ability to knock organized labor off its privileged perch. Michigan owes a huge debt of thanks to Governor Snyder. The other non right-to-work states should join in the crusade to trim union power.

Political leaders can be expected to hold back their punches to get legislation through. But the job of independent intellectuals is to offer principled defenses of these legislative changes in order to maintain the long-term coherence of, in my case, libertarian thought, which is needed to make future labor market reforms possible."