I
was in my home town of Lake Bluff, Illinois in mid-February 2011,
when protests began at the State Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin
against newly-elected Governor Scott Walker's proposals of reforms to
the state budget. I had lived in Madison from 2005 to 2009 while
attending the University of Wisconsin at Madison, studying political
science. I managed to move back to Madison that summer, and the
following spring I filed to run for the U.S. House of Representatives
from Wisconsin's 2nd Congressional District in 2012.
On
February 16th,
2011 – just a day or two after finding out about the protests from
a friend in Madison – I published my reaction to Governor Walker's
suggested public-sector collective bargaining reforms as a file
entitled “Scott Walker's Public Union Proposals” in a Facebook
group dedicated to my congressional campaign.
Initially,
I agreed with the provision that public employee unions retained the
right to negotiate on wages at all, but disagreed with taking away
their right to negotiate on health benefits and vacations, disagreed
with requiring them to negotiate every year, and disagreed with
freezing their wages until a new contract is made. However, I agreed
with the provision that there be an annual secret ballot on whether
public employees want to stay unionized.
Also,
I opposed the provision that public employee unions could not get
salary increases above the consumer price index except if approved by
public referendum, agreed that public employees should pay 5.8% more
of their salaries for their pensions and 12.6% more for their health
coverage, disagreed that the state should stop collecting dues
for unions, and disagreed with taking away the right of home health
care, family child care workers, University of Wisconsin Hospitals
and Clinics employees and UW faculty and academic staff to
collectively bargain.
Additionally,
I supported the provisions that public employees could opt out of
paying union dues if they wish, that state and local employees would
have the right to refuse to join unions, and that the National Guard
should be used to suppress strikes which disrupt state services such
as prisons. Also, I opposed firing 6,000 state employees if Walker's
measure did not pass, as well as opposing firing teachers for going
on strike and firing the Democratic state legislators for going to
Rockford, Illinois in order to deny the Republicans a quorum on the
vote for Walker's proposed legislation.
At
this time, I had not yet taken a position differentiating the needs
for collective bargaining rights of private-sector workers as opposed
to public-sector government employees. Being that, at the time,
Governor Walker was stating that he did not want
Wisconsin to become a Right-to-Work state, I opposed him on that (he
has since changed his position, and I have revised mine several
times). Explaining my positions, I wrote that all types of employees
should have the authority to collectively bargain, that collective
bargaining should be “free, open-ended, and frequent”, and public
employee unions should have the responsibility to collect their own
dues without help from the state government.
I
further explained that “Individual employees [should] be free to
choose whether to join unions and pay dues to them, joining a union
would never be a precondition for employment, and refusal to join a
union would never be a legitimate reason to fire an employee.” I
have espoused this position since, during high school, I worked for a
grocery store, and discovered that my workplace had enacted what is
called a post-entry closed shop agreement (however I quit to
re-assume my high school studies before I would have had to join the
union).
I
ended my explanation of my position on Walker's proposals by
disagreeing with the argument that people who refuse to pay union
dues are choosing to become free-riders. My explanation supported the
individual worker's subjective evaluation of the benefit which may
come from being represented by a union; I argued that to compel the
payment of dues to unions in order to bargain for increased benefits
would ameliorate the employer's financial incentive to hire new
employees.
I
have since argued on my blog - based on my experiences as a temporary custodian at the Madison
Area Technical College - that lack of freedom to and from association
with unions only serves to create animosity between unionized and
non-unionized workers.
After
studying the issue for two more weeks, I published another file on
February 28th,
2011, on the topic of the difference between public-sector and
private-sector unions. I argued that “public-sector unions have
more leverage than private-sector unions because government[al
service providers] is more likely to have a monopoly in the provision
of services than in the market” (i.e., than non-governmental
commercial service providers).
I
wrote that while “[g]etting rid of collective bargaining rights for
certain types of jobs is one way to address this problem,
[a]nother... and... a more libertarian solution... would be to
undermine the government monopolies in the provision of such
services” (i.e., education, health, public works and
infrastructure, police and judicial services, etc.).
As
a market anarchist and a student of Gustave de Molinari, I recognized
then, as I recognize now, that the State – the local monopoly on
legitimate violence – is the source of legitimacy of all monopoly
and oligopoly in the private sector. I wrote that “[t]he only way
to solve Wisconsin's union problem... is to encourage competition in
the provision of those services which are typically provided by
government.”
Rather
than believing that corporations dominated public interest - and that
if we didn't have a State, corporations would control our lives - I
believe that the State is the source of corporate power, and that if
the State didn't exist (that is, if there were no ban on governments
competing to provide services in a territory), corporate power would
be small enough to be able to be effectively limited by non-violent
consumer and worker action.
My
positions on collective bargaining result from an awareness – due
to studying Milton Friedman - that unions seek State power to help
them monopolize the
representation of workers in collective bargaining, in the same
manner in which businesses seek State power to help them monopolize
markets, industries, and the provision of certain services.
In
non-Right-to-Work states, private-sector unions monopolize the
representation of workers in bargaining by enacting “compulsory
unionism” - laws permitting closed-shop and union-shop union
security agreements in unionized workplaces - and by promoting
majority unionism over dual unionism and minority unionism.
When
such practices are implemented, individual workers become less free
to negotiate with management on their own merits, and unable to
join and pay dues to some other union. Arguably, this is good because
it stands to increase worker solidarity, but majority unions would be
free to appeal to the State to prohibit alternative unions, whether a
union would demand less,
or whether it would be more
radical in
its demands, and call for a strike of which the majority union
leadership would not approve.
In
late March 2011, I was asked to respond to the argument that
Right-to-Work legislation interferes with an employer's and a union's
right to freely enter into contract. In my reply, I explained that it
is not primarily the law which
interferes with the contract rights of employers
and unions,
but the employers
and unions which
interfere with the contract rights of the individual
worker.
Explaining
my opposition to unions and employers colluding to require workers to
join unions, I wrote that “I am more concerned about preserving the
individual employee's right to freely enter into contract with either
or both unions and employers than I am with preserving union or
business rights”. I also supported requiring closed-shop and
union-shop businesses to notify applicants about their type of
bargaining arrangement during the application process.
I
explained that I did not want employees to be “forced to choose
between participating in a strike and continuing to work” in order
to provide for himself, risking getting fired for agreeing to work
without committing to fund a union that might not actually even do
anything that promotes his own interests in the workplace.
Also,
I elaborated upon the idea that bargaining for increased benefits has
adverse effects on the incentive to hire: “Increased benefits
can... mean higher standards for the hiring of future employees;
...[making it] more difficult for future employees to qualify for
those increased benefits... contributing to unemployment.”
In
mid-April 2012 – around the time I filed for candidacy in
Wisconsin's 2nd District
congressional race – I published a lengthy file about
private-sector labor laws and contract rights. This occurred shortly
after I learned about collective bargaining agreements and labor laws
from a co-worker who aspired to organize our workplace.
I
responded to a statement by economist Friedrich Hayek that
Right-to-Work laws and union privileges are both the results of
favorable special legislation, that there should be no need for
either, and that such special privilege should be removed by special
legislation declaring certain pertinent contracts invalid. I agreed
about the special favors, but I argued that legislation should not
impair the obligation of contracts, because judgments in lawsuits are
the only way to retroactively invalidate contracts.
I
explained that union security agreements “act as unnecessary
barriers of entry into the labor market... increase unemployment
levels and the cost of living... make it less likely for new and
fledgling labor unions to gain prominence[,]... make independent...
strikes less likely to occur, [and] narrow the range of acceptable
tactics for – and goals of – negotiation”.
I
supported discouraging unions and employers from making union
security agreements at all, and I supported prohibiting any and all
(although admittedly unlikely) legislation which would seek to impose
- in all unionized workplaces - security agreements such as
union-shop and closed-shop, which empower established unions more
than other agreements.
I
took this position because I was struggling to apply the lesson which
I was learning; namely, that “compulsory unionism” is not the
result of state laws mandating favorable
organizing conditions in all unionized
workplaces within a state, but rather the result of state
laws permitting the
representatives of labor and capital to govern their workplace
together.
Because
I understood an inkling of the aforementioned position, I took the
position that the Taft-Hartley Act should be repealed, thereby
effectually invalidating Right-to-Work laws, and making them
unnecessary. I began to argue that Right-to-Work laws “impair the
obligation of contracts”, by which I meant the responsibility of
the State to refrain from infringing upon the rights of individuals
and agencies (in this case, employers and unions) to privately make
contracts (in this case, governing how particular unionized
workplaces are run in terms of union security agreements). I came to
support a system of individual contract rights in a system of
personal law, rather than a system wherein the State has power to
dictate what sorts of contracts are acceptable.
I
also expressed criticism of the long-standing power of the National
Labor Relations Board to approve and deny unions' requests to engage
in strikes (as well as of the power of union leaders to decide
whether or when a strike will occur). I supported abolishing the
board and repealing the National Labor Relations Act, saying that
“[t]hey are not necessary to uphold the right to collectively
bargain which existed prior to – and exist[s] independently of –
the current federal... labor-policy...“. I also supported
establishing labor relations boards at the state and local
levels, and “urging local governments to begin to administer
N.L.R.B.-type services”.
Additionally,
I supported local governance, counter-economic activity, and
mass-scale direct consumer action (including boycotts) – rather
than empowering the State and excusing the growth of its power to
remedy the special business privileges which the State erected – to
uphold the right to collectively bargain; by demonstrating that
the powerto
do so lies in the workers, and that it is retained regardless of
State endorsement and protection of such rights claims. I recognized
that this view is compatible with the segment of the Industrial
Workers of the World (I.W.W. / Wobblies) which did not choose to
pursue Statist political solutions to the labor struggle, and to
instead pursue revolutionary anarcho-syndicalism.
Because
I observed that the free-rider problem which arises in workplaces
when workers are not required to pay dues actually arises
because non-dues-paying workers are required – as workers at an
organized workplace - to receive the benefits of collective
bargaining which they did not help fund and in which they did not
participate, I supported encouraging unions and workplaces to adopt
dual-unionism and minority-unionism, members-only collective
bargaining, and open-shop union security agreements, so that there is
a place for individuals and unions alike - multiple
unions, at
that - within the workplace.
Since
adopting those positions in 2012, I have come to recognize the
existence of labor unions as a feature of a capitalist system (which
actually resembles feudalism due
to its rentier system and lack of allodial property rights, and I can
name anarcho-socialists and students of the Austrian School alike who
would agree with this notion).
My
most startling realization about unions being part of State
capitalism occurred when Joseph Carriveau wrote to me that “[u]nions
are not syndicates”. I began to understand that the purpose of
collective bargaining is not just to get as much compensation out of
management and profits as possible, but to bring about egalitarian
cooperative management and control of production in the workplace.
Most importantly, “autonomous unions” (syndicates) require that
the union be free to decide how and under what conditions it strikes,
rather than beholden to the supposed authority of a government board.
Soon
after, I began learning more about egalitarian labor-managed firms
(E.L.M.F.s), cooperative corporations, mutual and cooperative banks
and credit unions. I began to understand syndicalism, cooperativism,
corporativism, mutualism, entrepreneurialism, and others as – as
Rudolf Rocker put it - “only different methods of economy”; that
is, only different methods of making certain financial, structural,
and organizational decisions about matters of the firm, such as the
relationship between labor and management or capital, the logistics
of investment and funding, and the methods of profit and cost
calculation.
What
I have learned about the subjects has given me hope that an effective
counter-economy could develop through an anarchy-without-adjectives
coalition of business associations which unite egalitarianfirms –
including dispute-resolution and security-provision agencies -
operating under each particular anarchist “method of economy”
(indeed, if all enterprises were cooperative, then it would be
difficult to distinguish a professional association, business
association, business alliance, industry trade group, or pro-business
lobbying firm, from an autonomous, industrial, trade, craft, or guild
union, a federation of cooperatives, or a pro-labor lobbying
firm).
These
security and dispute-resolution agencies, each offering voluntary
citizenship, would provide choice from amongst competing
governments, which would aim to out-compete the State in public
service provision through offering more perfectly progressive
user-fee structures (potentially paying disadvantaged
citizens to choose to accept their protection over that of others),
fostering an environment of free and fair trade - with reasonable and
justifiable profit - without either necessitating involuntary
subjugation to a single State or interfering with the obligation of
contracts.
While
it is still my position to support only the types of private-sector
union security agreements and union organizational and election
practices which are the least Statist and majoritarian, and which are
the most compatible with individualism, voluntary exchange, and a
desire to eliminate the free rider problem, I would take a much
stronger position against public-sector unions - especially the
Association of Federal, State, County, and Municipal Employees
(A.F.S.C.M.E.).
This
is because public employee unions - through donations, lobbying, and
elections - practically have the power to appoint their own
employers; the politicians who serve and represent the people who
have the power to write laws that grow or shrink bureaucracies, and
to hire and fire public employees. Thus public employees have
personal financial incentive to elect candidates who will continue to
promise them the continuation of their jobs and increases to their
benefits, at increasing expense to taxpayers. Growth in the size and
costs of bureaucracy is growth in the power and inefficiency of the
State.
This
is problematic, of course, because governments all over America are
in debt, and in some cases paying off debts incurred over a hundred
years ago, so any promises to keep funding insolvent governments only
serve to cause future generations to go further into debt. And let us
not forget that all of this revenue collection occurs in the context
of Statism; the local monopoly on legitimate coercion in the
enforcement of government order, including the enforcement of tax
law.
Rather
than increasing the freedom and egalitarianism of governance and
commerce, the unchecked power of public-sector collective bargaining
risks growing the State; thereby entrenching a barbaric, backwards
system of legitimized violence, monopoly and oligarchy, and
territorialism, which has no concern for either a logical justice
system or classically liberal civic and economic values such as
market choice and competition, voluntary association, and freedom of
choice in government.
In
all cases, I support dismantling all State-erected privileges and
protections for businesses and unions alike, and I support maximizing
the decentralization of - and limiting majority power within –
representation in government, by business associations, and through
collective bargaining.
I
believe that this would have profound positive effects, such as
curbing the growth of State and corporate power, electing less
corrupt politicians through less expensive elections, strengthening
bipartisan opposition to federal centralism, allowing growth of and
diversity of thought within the labor movement, freeing the markets
for consumer goods, and fostering the natural development of free
enterprise, fair credit, and affordable and responsibly-financed
government.
I
additionally support transcending the “centralization vs.
decentralization” paradigm in favor of a diffusion of power,
brought about through increasing the rights and
the abilities of
the accused to represent themselves in court (and of people in
general to participate in a system of interpersonal contracts), so
that people are able to effectively represent themselves without
necessitating empowerment of political, business, and union
leaderships and bureaucracies.
Insofar
as I am willing to support tactics utilizing the current
representational government - gradualistic reforms to the State - my
position now is that I disagree with Friedrich Hayek that
Right-to-Work laws should be removed by special legislation, so I
also disagree with Ron Paul's attempts in the early 1990s to pass a
national Right-to-Work law.
Instead
of invalidating Right-to-Work laws nationwide through special
legislation by Congress, I believe that Right-to-Work laws should be
found unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court; i.e., through a
judgment, the only legitimate way to retroactively invalidate
contracts. However, I understand that Paul's legislation – had it
passed – would eventually have forced the Supreme Court to make a
decision about the constitutionality of Right-to-Work laws.
I
also believe that union security agreements should be found
unconstitutional by courts in the states and at the federal level,
because they hinder the ability of potential employees to interact
unilaterally with employers. I take this position not out of lack of
solidarity with the needs of working people, but out of the necessity
to avoid taxpayer debt, socialist bureaucracy, labor aristocracy, and
excessive planning that inhibits freedom.
I
would wager that Joseph Carriveau agrees that for workers to get
their fair share, most contracts – however constitutional – ought
to be dissolved.
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