I admit that I have a predisposition against labor unions. Oh, I know there are many arguments for labor unions, and members of my family used to swear by Jimmy Hoffa and the good he did for truck drivers. Still, labor unions are historically associated with corruption of the worst kinds. CBS News once interviewed philosopher and dock worker Eric Hoffer about the book he wrote, The True Believer. When asked about his longshoreman union brothers’ habit of stealing booze from ship’s cargo during loading and unloading, he exploded and insisted that pilferage was their inherent right for doing such difficult and thankless work. Then there was the televised interview of the president of the National Education Association responding to a journalist’s question about balancing teachers’ best interests with students’ welfare with the words, “I will concern myself with the welfare of school children when school children start paying union dues.” I even remember reading that the United Auto Workers targeted Henry Ford and his Ford Motor Company when they were the highest paid factory workers in the world and after Ford had already instituted profit-sharing for all of his employees.
This anecdotal history can be counterbalanced with stories of evil capitalists taking advantage of poor ignorant workers, taking a page from Karl Marx by treating management versus labor union issues as class struggle dynamics. However, the economic reality is that a large business enterprise pulls together the efforts of some smaller operations, be they subcontractors or factory workers, to produce a product. Consider a car manufacturer that builds several styles of automobiles. Though the car company may design the automobiles in-house and fabricate the engines and bodies used in the cars they produce and sell, such things as windshields, bumpers, brake systems, tires, bumpers, and the wire harnesses that operate windshield wipers, turn signals, and head and tail lights are usually subcontracted by smaller suppliers.
In a major propaganda coup pulled off by the big labor unions the reality that labor unions are merely companies that subcontract man-hours to manufacturing concerns is concealed by politically charged rhetoric that insists the interplay between the big corporation and their weak and helpless workers is a class struggle. It is not a class struggle, but the efforts of a company that supplies human labor (they call themselves labor unions) to the car manufacturer along with the products supplied by the other subcontractors. There are only two differences that exist between a labor union and a bumper or windshield subcontractor. #1, a labor union is a company by another name that supplies man-hours to produce inventory to sell. #2, a labor union engages in an ongoing public relations campaign and lobbying effort to disguise the reality of their business enterprise so that it appears to be part of a larger “class struggle” between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
Disagree with my view of economics if you want, but the underlying problem that I have with labor unions is the same issue I have with slavery, serfdom, and other constructs that deny individuals freedom to choose how they will spend their time. I favor the free exchange of goods and services between willing participants and am opposed to the use of force to coerce the behavior of other people that results in them doing what they do not want to engage in doing freely. And I see the Savior supporting that approach to human responsibility in a parable He taught in Matthew 20.1-16 in which He described a householder who hired a laborer at the beginning of the day, another laborer near the middle of the day, and yet a third laborer near the end of the work day, paying each of them what they agreed to work for at the time they were hired.
However, at the end of the day when the three men were paid the one hired first, who had worked the longest, objected that the three were paid the same despite not working the same and they all murmured. Despite their objections, the householder denied that he had done wrong (Matthew 20.13) and pointed out that he paid each of them the amount they had agreed upon. Further, he asked them (Matthew 20.15), “Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good?”
What is my takeaway from this parable? Several things: First, there is nothing wrong with capital and labor (the householder and the laborers) entering into a mutually agreed upon exchange of goods and services. Second, it is entirely appropriate for the mutually agreed upon exchange of goods and services to be different with each worker, and there is no requirement for some concept of “fairness,” whatever that is. That is, the requirement that the three be paid the same rate for their time spent working is an invention, a social construct, and not inherently required between capital and labor to be just and proper.
Labor unions employ well-documented illegitimate means to achieve their desired ends, from extortion and threats to denials of individual freedom of choice for the workers they represent. Additionally, labor unions have proven throughout the 20th century to be illegal enterprises used by organized crime. Argue on behalf of a labor union all you want, but deny what happens when anyone in any union chooses to break with the labor union and enter into his own negotiations with his employer for his pay and benefits. It is now illegal to do so in much of the United States. And even if it is not illegal to do so, it is still dangerous to do so. Labor unions do not take kindly to one of their members breaking ranks for any reason.
