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The Future of Unionism
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16271 |
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BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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3 / 1989 |
2,341 Words |
| Author
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Grover Norquist
Grover Norquist is president of Americans for Tax Reform. |
THE NEW UNIONISM
Charles C. Heckscher
New York: Basic Books, 1988
256 pp., $ 22.95
Question: What is everybody's favorite color? Perhaps people have different favorite colors? Well then, let's rephrase the question: If everyone in your hometown had the same favorite color, what would it be?
If this exercise strikes you as odd, welcome to the world of The New Unionism, by Charles C. Heckscher of Harvard Business School. Heckscher has tried to explain what you and I and some 117 million working Americans would like in our employment contracts. He has lots of suggestions about wages, working conditions, risks, commuting time, and hundreds of other things. His is a pretty ambitious project for someone who doesn't even know you or your family.
Heckscher also purports to show how monopolies and legally enforced cartels, at least in the labor market, are more economically efficient than the free market. This will greatly surprise the economists who for the past two hundred years have been laboring under the delusion that monopolies restrict entry into a market by favoring the monopolists with monopoly rents (unearned benefits), while costing consumers more money of the same services and products and creating unemployment for those not lucky enough to be granted entry into the cartel.
The Rise And Fall Of Unions
In the 1930s, labor unions represented less than 15 percent of the work force in America. Then Congress passed the Wagner Act and other laws giving labor unions increased power to require workers to join and pay dues. By the mid-1950s, labor union monopolies covered 35 percent of the work force. Then, over the following thirty years (and increasingly in the last ten years) fewer workers chose to work under labor unions. Many even voted to throw out their labor unions. To Heckscher's surprise, those industries, and firms with powerful labor unions began to decline in absolute and relative size. Employment in those industries fell. Employment and pay increased more rapidly in nonunionized industries, firms, and regions.
Those who earned a living from the compulsory dues of working men and women asked Congress to pass more laws that would force more workers to join unions and pay more dues. Workers
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