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If there's one thing I've had drummed into me over the past several months, it's this:
The public hates unions.
Except for a small core of ideologically radical supporters, almost everyone has something bad to say about unions. The reasons for hating unions are many and varied, but the feeling sure is familiar.
"They should all be shot!" is a frequently-expressed sentiment. "Lazy bums" is another. "Why should they be going on strike when they make so much more than the rest of us?" is the number one complaint.
Yet, despite all the complaining, broad public acceptance of unions --- as legitimate political and bargaining agents --- still persists. How come?
I think the reason has something to do with this: You see, too few of us really know what's going on behind the labour movement. Hardly anybody really understands the issue.
Just what is it that the labour movement wants? What is it really after? Why is it that everything the labour movement wants has to be achieved by forcing everybody else to go along? Why can't it achieve its goals through reasoned advocacy and mutual consent?
Why won't the "labour movement" play fair?
"Without adding collective bargaining principles to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms," announced CUPE's president, Jeff Rose, "unions may lose the right to negotiate mandatory union membership. To bargain successfully," he concluded, "individual needs have to be suppressed to serve the needs of the majority."
But "suppressing the needs of the individual in order to serve the needs of the majority" is precisely what leaders of fascist, communist, socialist, and many of the eastern and third world countries have been advocating and are practicing today. And you can only suppress the needs of the individual by suppressing individual rights.
Any group, association, or union that can't recognize the principle of individual rights isn't an "association", but a gang or mob --- or worse.
And that's what's wrong with the labour movement. It wants to "suppress the needs of the individual."
So much for labour philosophy. Let's examine this frightening goal via practical application:
A good place to start would be by taking a realistic look at how the "labour movement" views labour itself. Everybody knows that if there's one thing union members are told to hate above all else, it's a scab.
Somebody who's willing to do their job for less.
Scab labour.
The very term sounds offensive, and with good reason. Economically, "scab labour" means competitive labour. Politically, it means the enemy.
Yet, even "scab" labour is still labour. Obviously, the labour movement's philosophy that "everybody should have the right to a job" is practiced as "Nobody has a right to our jobs."
And that's the awful truth behind the labour movement. While it camouflages itself behind its proclamations that everyone should have a "right to a job", it systematically works to deny the opportunity of earning that right to anyone who isn't a dues-paying "member".
I hate to disappoint anyone, but I'm afraid there just isn't any such thing as "the right to a job" --- and that's why the labour movement (or government, for that matter) is incapable of actually providing such a right.
A "job", lest we forget, is simply the term we use to describe a particular relationship --- specifically, an economic one. A "job" is not a piece of property that anyone can "own" or claim a "right" to.
By suggesting that an employee has a "right" to a job, the labour movement is advocating that some people should have a "right" to a relationship, regardless of what the other half of that "relationship" may have to say about it.
So excuse me for bringing this up, but I thought we're supposed to be living in a free country where we have a right to choose our relationships. Surely, freedom of association must include the right not to associate. Otherwise, where's the "freedom"?
It seems to me that if two or more people can't get along or agree with each other, then it's their moral, ethical, and logical obligation to peacefully go their own separate ways and find others with whom they can get along. But the labour movement just doesn't see it that way.
When unionized employees vote to strike against an employer, they're admitting by their action that their relationship with that employer is no longer satisfactory to them. But if that's the case, why hang around? Why not do the right thing and look for greener pastures elsewhere?
Can anyone offer me a logical reason why some guy who isn't happy with his job should have a "right" to it? Can anyone explain why the guy who would be happy with that job shouldn't have a right to compete for it? Does this make any sense at all?
The labour movement insists that its monopoly on the employer-employee relationship is necessary so that employers will "bargain in good faith."
Now that's the biggest contradiction of them all! How on earth can anyone in his right mind claim to be "negotiating in good faith" when one of the parties in the negotiations has no right to negotiate with others? What's left to "negotiate"?
That unions exercise legalized coercion as their method of "negotiating" is nothing new to those of us who believe in individual freedom. What is astonishing is how so much of the Canadian public, despite being aware of it, tacitly accepts this coercion --- and sometimes even outright violence --- as inevitable and legitimate aspects of the labour movement.
Our laws do not prevent the use of this coercion. Instead, our labour laws institute, sanction, and enforce it. Explicit in every union action from initial certification to its "negotiating" philosophy and ultimately to its political advocacies is the use of coercion and the denial of freedom of choice to anyone who does not agree with its militant labour stance.
Legalized coercion is the tool of the labour movement. Mutual consent is the target of its destruction.
It's coercion when individuals are forced to join a union against their will just because a "majority" votes for it. Don't minorities have any rights? Should the rest of us just stand back and keep swallowing the old union line that it represents its members when we all know that union methods of recruitment depend on the word mandatory?
Just ask Merv Lavigne what he thinks about union coercion. Ask him how he felt about being forced to fund political causes he doesn't even agree with.
Or, if you prefer, talk to Dolly Foran of the Arlington Crane Company in Hamilton, a company she supposedly "owns" --- only she's not allowed to choose who works for her. Because of union coercion, she is only permitted to hire unionized labour and can't even hire her own nephew.
It's coercion that the labour movement supports by arguing that Toronto furrier Paul Magder shouldn't have the legal right to open his store on a Sunday. Or that Bob Stollery of Eastway Ford in St. Thomas shouldn't be allowed to sell his cars on a Sunday.
Why should the labour movement care? You'd think it would be happy at the employment opportunities and jobs created. But no. Because plentiful employment and jobs are not the goal of any movement dedicated to maintaining a labour monopoly.
Which explains why the labour movement detests the independence of the particular individuals I've mentioned. After all, what is it that Bob Stollery, Paul Magder, Dolly Foran, and Merv Lavigne really want?
Simple. The right to choose the terms of their own relationships. The right to consent to their relationships.
And isn't that really what all of us want and need? Is that so much to ask?
Too much, it seems, for the labour movement.
But the use of union coercion doesn't end with labour. Unions also advocate business monopolies.
For example, Canada's postal unions are fully aware that their influence on Canada Post represents a handicap to the business. They know that if the consumer had a choice to go elsewhere for postal service at competitive rates, their members would be out of a job.
So in order to compensate for the damage they do to the business (apparently you can bite the hand that feeds you; just don't bite it off!), unions must resort to advocating forced relationships in the marketplace as well. In other words, organized labour must advocate business monopolies.
So, far from being opposed to business monopolies, as so many people believe, unions are explicit and uncompromising supporters of business monopolies.
A classic example occurred during the recent provincial election when both management and labour of Labatts Breweries staged a public protest against free trade in the brewery industry.
Citing the fact that Canadian brewers were only "75% as efficient" as their American counterparts (an embarrasing admission, when you stop to think about it), both labour and management were successful at having the brewery industry exempted from the free trade negotiations.
When both business and labour combine forces to argue that their inefficiency is a good reason to force Canadians to pay them higher prices, and when our governments go along with it, then you can be pretty sure that we're all in a lot of trouble.
The question begging to be asked is just how did our breweries become so uncompetitive in the first place? Ironically, because of the very protectionism they lobbied to keep. Does anybody honestly believe that more protectionism is going to improve the brewery industry's inefficiency?
While there doesn't seem to be much common sense behind arguments supporting protectionism, it sure is easy to understand the motivation behind it.
Because it has not been seen in its true philosophical light, organized labour has been falsely credited with being the primary cause behind the over-all improved working conditions, wages, and standard of living that the common worker has become accustomed to over the past half century.
And that's ironic. Because economic freedom, coupled with the capital and technology that were created as its consequence, is the real reason that the common worker's standard of living has improved. And guess what? That's the very thing the labour movement is against.
If, after all, unions have anything to do with the creation of wealth, then it follows that an impoverished nation like Bangladesh could solve its standard of living problems simply by unionizing all the labour in the country.
Of course, we all know that wouldn't happen. In fact, the standard of living in the country would certainly drop. Unions can only coercively redistribute existing wealth, not increase it. Ironically, unions can only perpetuate their parasitic existence in the few Western nations that still boast some semblance of semi-free economies.
You won't find any major strikes or collective bargaining going on in black Africa, most of Asia, or in communist countries because they have so little wealth to redistribute to national labour in the first place. And what little wealth does exist is already being "redistributed" by their governments.
It's time we took our blinders off and stopped pretending that "organized labour" is a pro-labour movement at all. It is, in fact, a profoundly anti-labour movement, much more dedicated to its ideology (of "suppressing individual needs") than to the best long-term interest of workers in the marketplace.
For that reason, Freedom Party is about to embark on an incredible task: we intend to challenge the very root of the labour mythology on which organized labour depends to get its support.
Among the myths:
And the myths go on and on.
But in order to launch a successful educational campaign against this union mythology, we can't afford to adopt a half-hearted philosophical approach to the labour issue. Any hesitation on our part about attacking the fundamental premise of unions (i.e., that coercion is a legitimate element in labour relations) will amount to nothing more than a tacit approval of their actions and their political goals.
You can't win a philosophical debate in the long-run by saying that "Unions would be OK if they just weren't so ________." (You can fill in the blank.)
There's a lot more involved with advocating freedom in labour relations than trying to illustrate the practical shortcomings of organized labour's goals. There's a deeper reason why its philosophy doesn't work in practice. Unions by their very structure, nature, and definition are wrong, and this point must be made clear to everyone involved in the issue.
And that's what make it such a scary challenge.
To a lot of people, suggesting that you're "against unions" is interpreted as being against the right to voluntarily organize a labour association. Far from it. Because if there's one thing that a union isn't, it's a voluntary association.
We have to start looking at unions and the labour movement for what they are, not what we'd like them to be --- or what they "could be" --- if only they were "run properly", or "weren't so violent."
It just isn't so.
Until the term "voluntary" is re-instated as the fundamental element underlying all labour relations, labour itself will continue to be the biggest loser in what can only ever be a continuing political conflict between "organized" labour and competitive labour.
And that's the truth behind the labour movement.
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last updated on April 28, 2002
