Too Much Labor Law

December 30, 1957

The subway strike in New York occurred because the motormen resented being forced into an all-inclusive union where they could not “bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing.”

The phrase in quotation marks is one of the declared aims of the Taft-Hartley Act. In New York, the subway bargaining unit is determined by the Transit Authority. But the strike illustrated one of the notorious ways in which the Taft-Hartley Act fails to live up to its own professions. Under that law the National Labor Relations Board determines the “appropriate bargaining unit.” Whatever union gets the majority vote in such a unit thereupon becomes legally the exclusive bargaining agent for everyone, including those who voted against it. By the NLRB’s power to decide the bargaining unit, plus the monopolistic bargaining power then given to the winning union, the right of the individual worker to be represented by an agent of his own choosing is in effect denied.

MORE INTERVENTIONS

To all those who hope for any balance or sanity in our labor laws, Secretary Mitchell’s speech before the AFL-CIO convention on Dec. 5 was disheartening. The Labor Secretary recommends changes that need not or ought not to be made. He opposes nearly every change that ought to be made. He wants to increase still further the multitude of Federal interventions that have had such baneful results since they began a generation ago. He opposes the repeal of those that have done the most harm. He recommends all sorts of detailed regulation of union pension and welfare funds—and then admits, at the end, that “there are laws already on the books, after all, against bribery, against fraud, against murder and embezzlement.” But he is adamant against repeal of pernicious provisions.

Mitchell pays pious lip service to three “general principles.” Present labor law, and his own recommendations, violate all three.

His first announced principle is “to protect by law the right of American working men and women to organize into unions and to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing.” The Taft-Hartley Act, as we have seen, thwarts this second right. And the right of the individual worker not to join a union is denied by the Secretary.

His second announced principle is that labor and management “each be free from governmental domination.” But through our network of Federal labor laws both the individual worker and the individual employer are dominated by government. The freedom of the individual worker to get and keep a job without joining a union is denied. The freedom of the employer to seek employees of his own choice, or to replace them, is greatly abridged.

NO RIGHT-TO-WORK LAW

Mitchell’s third principle is “to protect the basic rights of individuals.” But our Federal laws and regulations abridge the basic rights of the individual in favor of the coercive privileges of the group.

Specifically, the Labor Secretary declares, the Administration “will not recommend a so-called national right-to-work law and we will oppose such legislation if it is proposed.”

This brings us close to the heart of the issue. The Taft-Hartley Act contains a self-contradiction. Sec. 8a declares: “It shall be an unfair labor practice for an employer . . . by any term or condition of employment to encourage or discourage membership in any labor organization.” But the “encourage” is canceled by a provision validating the compulsory all-union shop. Mitchell still wants to impose compulsory union membership.

The Taft-Hartley Act should either be amended by a consistent Sec. 8a, which would outlaw the compulsory union shop as well as the compulsory non-union shop (prohibiting an employer or a union from making any hiring stipulation either way), or, if the unions refuse to accept such a two-sided enactment, the Taft-Hartley Act should be repealed. We need not start passing “anti-labor” laws, but we might try repealing a few anti-management laws. Perhaps the best course, in fact, would be the repeal of all labor legislation except that forbidding force, fraud, coercion, or intimidation by anyone.