As I understand it, one of the reasons that many of the 18th and 19th century classical liberals were for free labor markets is precisely because they thought that freeing labor markets would increase the bargaining power of workers. And I think this is borne out by history. Corporations almost never want fair and equal free labor markets – in fact, most progressive era legislation that was supposed to help workers by enacting health and safety regulations were forced through by large companies.

Why does this support my point? Because it increases the cost of entry for small businesses, and thus restricts the number of potential employers, and thus the number of choices that workers have. With a smaller supply of jobs, the remaning businesses have more bargaining power. And so the worker suffers. This was one of the big critiques of government-sustained monopolies, and it’s a critique repeated by Marxist historian Gabriel Kolko in his book TheTriumph_of_Conservatism_. Corporations hijacked (or you might be more revisionist and say “constituted”) the progressive era’s push to increase centralized control of economies, and this led to a reduced ability by workers to control their own fates (although I should note that Kolko’s book doesn’t advance the thesis in the way I’m advancing it – he just documents the degree of corporation-sponsored worker legislation).

In addition, by raising the cost of entering a competitive business market, many people who would’ve been entrepreneurs and business operators had to be wage-laborers instead.

So, here’s a general moral: even if many classical liberals underestimated in actual practice the willingness of workers to engage in collective action, perhaps they misread the situation in two different respects:

1) It was not always obvious the ways in which major capital owners were restricting the bargaining power of laborers, thus raising the costs of collective bargaining.
2) Individual worker action already provided enough of a collective effect to cause corporations to push governments to restrict labor markets in their own favor.

I live in the midst of a lot of so-called “professionals” (physicians, professors, lawyers, engineers, executives, small business owners) in a state with high unemployment (by U.S. standards anyway). As a group, they seem to be doing rather well. Those few who have had to look for new jobs in the last couple of years have found them reasonably quickly (e.g. within a few months).

I thought that the standard complaint was that the well-off professionals were doing well while the working class was treading water—hence increasing inequality. Or do we think that professionals getting wealthier even as their “stable quality of life” is being destroyed?

However, as one of said professionals (in the software industry) I believe strongly that much of the churn is voluntary, in the sense that people rather move on their own than be laid off. That does not prove anything of course, it may be just that they seek to escape unpleasant environments, which is certainly often an aspect. But many are looking, aside from financial consideration, for intellectual challenge etc. That’s perhaps more the case in at least some professions (those strong in innovation) than in the trades, manufacturing, or many services.

To the extent that professional environments become corporatized, and level & rate of innovation goes down, this becomes moot. E.g. the software industry was an overall great place at least for younger workers until 2000 or so, after that less so. Accordingly some people start thinking about unions. But one challenge is how to have cohesion & continuity in the local chapters when people don’t want to stay on for long?

In skilled trades where tenure with any particular employer is typically short, it’s long been known that unions are the most effective method for ensuring decent working conditions. I think it’s the meritocratic myth that keeps that understanding from being transferred to the white-collar world.

OTOH, unions have been historically associated with “lifetime jobs” or institutional situations, to a similar effect. Most professional jobs, for two decades or so, have not been of that nature, and professionals have been prone to moving between jobs every few years. Not sure what is cause and what effect. Also not quite independently the professional “class” (in reality a perhaps more glorified variety of grunts) has been in an aggregate up trend until recently, which has reduced people’s attachment to particular jobs and cohesion in the professions.

Although the usual explanation seems to involve some kind of meritocracy (in which the respondents all imagine themselves above average and destined for great things), most of what one sees anecdotally is much more boring: a misguided classism that associates collective action with dirty-fingered uneducated types who couldn’t possibly negotiate their own contracts and prevail over their employers by sheer force of intellect and will.