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richardhutnik on 11 June 2012
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SamuelRSmith said:
rocketpig said:

I don't get the free market dualism of Walker's (and conservatives in general) argument. I really dislike unions 90% of the time. They're a monopoly on labor. But, on the other hand, how can a person tout "free market capitalism" while removing the rights of an organization to negotiate their own pay? Because they work for the government?

No, man. No. That's hypocritical. People deserve the right to negotiate how much pay they receive in the workplace. You don't get to trample their rights just because they're a "civil servant". There should be no exceptions to this rule because you "don't like their job" or "think they're paid too much".

You're either free market or you're not. In a free market, people are allowed to negotiate. The quality of government workers is already bad enough. What we should be looking at is removing tenure, ability to fire employees, and shaking up how quickly bad employees can be removed from the system. We shouldn't take away their ability to get good employees in the first place. That will just lead to more inefficiency and corruption because the government will be full of even more lazy, incompetent jackasses.

Well, most free-market guys have no problem with unions, per se. It's the places well unions get extra power through legislation that causes the problem.

Private business owners are allowed to crack down or fight the power of the union if they deem the union to be taking the piss, why can't the public sector employers? Okay, there is a difference between the strong-ball negotiations that private employers must use, versus the power of legislation that public employers can deploy. However, public unions do get the benefit of legislation to their advantage (private unions must keep costs to a pioint where the employer can maintain profitability, public unions can just demand that they raise taxes).

My understanding against unionism from those who advocate free markets today, and genuinely do this (not pro-business) is that unions have a monopolistic position in negotiating that ends up forcing people to not pick other options for them to personally negotiate.  The argument is that unions should be able to compete for people to sign up for them, just like anything else, and workers should have a right to pick more than one union to represent them.  It isn't they can't organize, it is that they should be free to, and that the competition unions face, would cause them to improve.  And they do need to improve.  Those who are pro-business (different that pro-free markets) is that they don't like to have to honor contracts and want to maximize flexibility in who they hire and fire, and be able to drive down wages, and pay as they see fit, to maximize profits.  They don't want the workers to have say in anything that goes on in the business, but have them as replacable cogs.  The pro-business folks would end up going to the government to pass laws against individuals organizing to form unions, and against collective bargaining.  Such pro-business folks will also end up getting support from the government in the form of subsidies, and also work the government oppose legistlation that would regulate their ability to merge.