HRW on the meatpacking industry

While it’s not technically a weblog, and the group is Canadian, the Work Research Foundation has an online magazine, Comment, that tackles labour issues from a Christian, leftist perspective. Several contributors do have blogs, however.

Reporting isn’t the problem. The facts are out there on this subject and many reporters have done their job on the issue of illegal immigrant laborers being taken advantage of in the meat-packing industry. FWIW, I know first hand about this issue, having once been a worker for Iowa Beef Packers (now Excel).

My local paper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, has done decent reporting on the subject too. Some politicans even give a damn about it, even conservative ones, given the impact the growing number of immigrant workers are having on rural Minnesota communities.

Now if bloggers give a bit more of a damn, I guess a few extra words won’t hurt, but it won’t help much either as long as suburban voters don’t feel guilty about it when they buy meat at the local grocery store. What’s needed is the same sort of labor activism that Ceasar Chavez led for illegal immagrants in the California lettuce fields. Now if some enterprising blogger could help promote that sort of labor activism, I’d be genuinely impressed.

Yep, the meatpackers are evil. Blog about because a report says so. Very balanced approach if I must say so.

Can someone write a post justifying to a libertarian like me why companies shouldn’t be able to fire workers who try to organize a union?

To keep the spectre away?

“The purpose of collective bargaining, which is a lot of what unions do for their members, is of course precisely to even up the playing field in negociations of this sort;”

Mancur Olsen discusses distributional coalitions. Are distributional coalitions moral?

According to the New York Times: Recently, a number of for-profit colleges have faced inquiries, lawsuits and other actions calling into question the way they inflate enrollment to mislead/increase the value of their parent company’s stock.

In the last year, the Career Education Corporation of Hoffman Estates, Ill., has faced lawsuits, from shareholders and students, contending that, among other things, its colleges have inflated enrollment numbers. The company acknowledged that it was under investigation by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In February 2004, F.B.I. agents raided 10 campuses run by ITT Educational Services of Carmel, Ind., looking for similar problems.

Kaplan is wholly own by the Washington Post Company. I provided the S.E.C., Department of Education, and federal courts information that appears to prove Kaplan inflated the Concord School of Law enrollment, telling investors that the “flagship” of its higher education division has as many as 600 to 1000 or more students.

Why didn’t the Justice Department and S.E.C. included Kaplan with their investigation?

Can someone write a post justifying to a libertarian like me why companies shouldn’t be able to fire workers who try to organize a union?

Employers have the right to organize in corporations, which not only have human rights in the Bill of Rights according to the Santa Clara railroad case, but a wide variety of additional abilities such as immortality, omnipresence (the ability to pick and choose dirisdictions), etc.

A true libertarian should be opposed to such superhuman entities, giving him three choices: 1) eliminate corporations, 2) remove the absurd interpretation of the 14th amendment granting them equal protection to humans, or 3) allow workers some form of organization to help humans compete on more even ground against superhuman entities in the marketplace. As the first solution is impossible, and the second is unlikely and will take a great deal of time to solve, practical libertarians (perhaps a vanishingly small subset) should take option three into consideration. While unions are far less powerful than corporations as an organizational tool granted by government, they do offer a slightly better ability to compete and corporations should not be able to suppress this competition by firing workers who attempt to organize a union.

Bob McGrew wrote:

This is, in a sense, off-topic, but it’s a request for some blogger to write more about labor. I’m a libertarian who believes that employment is a contract much like any other. Can someone write a post justifying to a libertarian like me why companies shouldn’t be able to fire workers who try to organize a union?

Well you’re correct in that it all seems to come down to “it’s good to give workers (or rather unions) more money” or “corporations are evil” mentality. If you believe that adults should be treated as adults and human relations ought to be voluntary, then it has to extend to the workplace. An employment contract has to be voluntary on both parts in that neither can use force or fraud on the other. While arguably an employer might have more “bargaining power” (although they generally have more at stake as well since it’s usually easier for an employee to switch jobs than an employer to start up a new company), neither can really “force” the other to do something against their will.

Just as an employee has (or ought to have) the right to refuse to work for a company that does or does not have a union*, an employer has (or ought to have) the right to decide whether they want* to have a union in their shop.

* By the same token, so-called “right-to-work” statutes are unjust in that they intrude on the voluntary contract between an employer and employee where the employer has agreed to have a union in their company and a workers wants the “right” to work there without joining the union.

‘Can someone write a post justifying to a libertarian like me why companies shouldn’t be able to fire workers who try to organize a union?’

What you’re asking is not a blog post, but a recap of modern history and law. In no democratic country employers are allowed to sack employees purely because they organise themselves. That right to form unions is decreed by law and it is also recognised as a human right. That should tell you something. If you have a problem with that, you have a problem with the whole last few centuries of human civilisation. You want a blog post to solve that? It’d be like trying to explain what red looks like to a color-blind person. Actually, that’d probably be more feasible.

What I don’t understand is, how can you not see the contradiction in your position. You say an employer-employee contract is equal, which is not exactly true apart maybe from freelancing professions, but let’s say it is – then it should be all the more evident to you that just like any company has its own internal and external organisation, associations, trade consortiums, business to business networks, negotiating power with banks and financial organisations, and so on ans so forth, its employees have the equivalent right to have their own internal and external forms of association. Otherwise, it’s not even close to being an equal relation at all. Why is that not obvious to you?

I agree that “you’re giving up on the last few centuries of civilization” isn’t much of a retort anymore. After all, if you’re giving up on the Enlightenment, you can hardly keep the intervening centuries. Actually, “you’re giving up on civilization” isn’t much of a retort anymore.

Re: Labor Unions and Libertarians.

This is what Adam Smith had to say on the subject. Some editing on my part for length.

Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labor above their actual rate. To violate this combination is everywhere a most unpopular action, and a sort of reproach to a master among his neighbors and equals. Masters, too, sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labor even below this rate. These are always conducted with the utmost silence and secrecy, till the moment of execution, and when the workmen yield, as they sometimes do, without resistance, though severely felt by them, they are never heard of by other people. Such combinations, however, are frequently resisted by a contrary defensive combination of the workmen; who sometimes too, without any provocation of this kind, combine of their own accord to raise the price of their labor…..A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more; otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation….
Is this improvement in the circumstances of the lower ranks of the people to be regarded as an advantage or as an inconvenience to the society? The answer seems at first sight abundantly plain. Servants, laborers, and workmen of different kinds, make up the far greater part of every great political society. But what improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconvenience to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labor as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged.

The liberal reward of labor, as it encourages the propagation, so it increases the industry of the common people. The wages of labor are the encouragement of industry, which, like every other human quality, improves in proportion to the encouragement it receives. A plentiful subsistence increases the bodily strength of the laborer, and the comfortable hope of bettering his condition, and of ending his days perhaps in ease and plenty, animates him to exert that strength to the utmost. Where wages are high, accordingly, we shall always find the workmen more active, diligent, and expeditious than where they are low.
Adam Smith
Welath of Nations

Why unions? Because it’s the only way to equalize the bargaining power between employers and workers. The economy requires surplus labor to function effectively – unemployment. When unemployment gets too low, inflation picks up and the Fed raises rates to slow growth – i.e. to get people fired. So employers are always in a position where there are fewer jobs than people who want them – and the result is that employers have a persistent negotiating advantage over workers.

The answer is for workers to unionize – it’s the only way to level the playing field. Moreover, unions must care about the survival of companies; companies (and, more importantly, their executives) don’t care about the survival of workers or the adequacy of wages.

As to why should libertarians allow a closed shop? Preventing free-ridership – the same reason taxes are compulsory and the government enforces your property rights.

I’m a libertarian who believes that employment is a contract much like any other.

Why do I always get the impression that people become libertarians first, and then figure out what to believe later?

The politics of most bloggers, and most liberals is pretty mediocre.

The ones who think of themselves as intellectuals argue mostly from the standpoint of some form of technocratic faith. That there might be a conflict inherent in their position never occurs to them. In a technocratic world/philosophy all contradictions are either resolvable or ignored.

—
On another note:
“…my intuition is that this is indefensible from a Libertarian point of view, and this is not a small part of why I hold even the saner forms of Libertarianism to be contemptible.”

Yes, and yes.

abb1: claiming that labor competition exists only in modern developed countries and only because of the safety net is ridiculous. India, for instance, recently posted a huge gain in average wages due to increasing competition for labor– and India is not noted for the strength of its safety net.

And are you seriously claiming that, because Bill Gates needs a job less than I do, if Bill Gates offers me a software job at MS it’s in essence the same as “shooting me between the eyes and taking my stuff”? That’s just too silly for words.

…India, for instance, recently posted a huge gain in average wages due to increasing competition for labor…

You take India – arbitrary chosen geographical location – but most of the new jobs there have nothing to do with geographical location of the workforce. Why don’t you calculate what has happened to average wages of the actual jobs that moved to India? That would be a better, much more meaningful statistic.

That’s just too silly for words.

All I am saying is that for you having job is a necessity while for Bill Gates having you (or anyone) working for him is not. This gives Gates a leverage, power to coerce you into selling your labor for less than it’s worth. Why is it silly? It seems quite obvious.

“This is, in a sense, off-topic, but it’s a request for some blogger to write more about labor. I’m a libertarian who believes that employment is a contract much like any other. Can someone write a post justifying to a libertarian like me why companies shouldn’t be able to fire workers who try to organize a union?”

Simple, in a world where perfect competition isn’t actually occuring on the ground, so instead oligopoly and monopsony rule the day, there is necessarily implied market power, including market power in labour markets, thus unions serve as a countervailing force to the market power of oligopolistic corporations.

nicholas weininger – What we mostly do think is that if you are a member of association A, and other people choose not to associate or make contracts with you because of your membership in A, this is not a violation of your right to be in A.

Sorry, that’s just pure sophistry. In other words, bullshit.
What you are describing is one way of effectively voiding that right.
Let’s translate the argument on to another level where it might be clearer. Take the case of Mr X. He practises no religion. One day he decides to convert to Judaism. (Let’s assume that’s easy, for the sake of argument). If, after he’s become a Jew, people he works with stop associating with him, and more, his employers sack him, purely because of his religious membership, what are they doing if not voiding his human right to practice whatever religion he wants? A human right sanctioned by law. He would sue and it’d be an obvious case of discrimination. No one would dare defend the position of the employers, because it’s obviously wrong.

Of course religion is not the same as trade unions, so the parallel is loose, but the point is a legal right to do something is not just the right to do it, in and of itself, regardless of what happens if you do it. Otherwise, everything that can technically be done becomes a right. If I steal money from you, I go to prison. Stealing is not a right, not just because it’s wrong and identified as a crime, but because that means I have to pay consequences for committing that crime.
If I join a union, and my employer sacks me because of that, and other employers won’t even take me to work for them because of that, then they just *are* taking away that right to join unions, because they’re making me pay for it, they’re voiding the purpose of unions in the first place.

What would unions be for, if the right to join them _and_ not have that be held against you as if it was some kind of crime is not respected by employers? Just a social club?

I don’t see how on earth that kind of discrimination against what is, I remind you again, a human right, can be justified.

The declaration of human rights doesn’t simply list a series of things that people can do. The purpose of defining those rights is to protect them against discrimination.