I mentioned this before, but we’re hosting a League Roundtable on the questions facing organized labor in America.
The series was kicked off by Kevin Carson, who wrote about Taft-Hartley and other ways the government has legally restricted the ability of workers to organize.
That was followed up by Mark Thompson, who argued that market anarchy favors labor over management.
Erik Vanderhoff wrote about his own experience in a union.
And today Freddie deBoer laments the lack of pro-labor libertarians and argues that libertarians should be in favor of labor rights, and that a strong labor movement could in fact make government less necessary.
More to come.
Just Some Fuckhead
Thanks, Kain.
arguingwithsignposts
Hmmm. Is the LoOG going full-on liberal?
arguingwithsignposts
Because I’m afraid of teh edit button:
inb4 Kain=slavery=fetus!
Yutsano
@arguingwithsignposts: Dammit. Are you TRYING to bring her out from under her rock? Jeez I never had you pegged for a masochist.
arguingwithsignposts
@Yutsano: SWMNBN has been awful quiet lately, hasn’t she? I hope Cole pulled out the ban hammer. But I suspect there was an epic WoW campaign going on.
Yutsano
@arguingwithsignposts: She does tend to go in fits and starts. I suppose I should just enjoy the silence for now.
Off to work for at least one more week. After that things get entertaining.
jwb
@arguingwithsignposts: You do know that you can still edit by opening edit in a new window or tab, right?
Loneoak
DeBoer’s piece is great.
Poopyman
Well, before the inevitable appearance of SWMNBN…
Don’t have much time at the moment, so I picked one of the linkies ED put up top and read. EV makes a very good point, which he sums up in one paragraph:
As a private employee I have a manager above me who would (ostensibly) tell someone wishing to damage my career/reputation to GFY. I’ve seen in my work on local commissions that govt employees aren’t so lucky. More needs to be said about this, IMO.
Pooh
That deBoer piece is really good, and I’m not sure there’s a word of it with which I disagree, though I think he might (intentionally) be selling “art of the possible) types like Yglesias a bit short.
Mark S.
Freddie deBoer hits it:
Not being able to see power imbalances is what makes most of libertarianism worthless and whorish.
Xecky Gilchrist
This is the first time I’d seen the terms “pro-labor” and “Libertarian” in the same time zone.
David Fud
Glad to see the liber-al-tarian argument being made. Maybe we are seeing a new beginning to non-glib libertarians who can actually apply their beliefs with utility instead of talking about how the government kills angels that dance on a head of a pin.
Davis X. Machina
I second the recommendation to read EV’s thread — the comments, however…. another story.
His basic point is simple, and unionized teachers thank God for it every day. I can flunk a student who’s an All-State varsity starter, or the child of a board member, or a relative of the owner of the district’s biggest employer, if I have to — and I’ve had to — without deciding which railroad bridge I and the family get to sleep under as a result.
Protection from arbitrary dismissal isn’t a trivial benefit. It makes the job do-able.
If the non-union principal feels compelled to go and change my grade, he has that power, with all its advantages and disadvantages.
jwb
@Poopyman: This is a great point and one of the principal arguments for tenure as well: if teaching evolution is hard now, imagine what it would be like if teachers could be easily fired for teaching evolution. Getting rid of great teachers who teach things radical right wingers don’t want taught rather than getting rid of incompetent teachers is the real reason there is an attack on tenure. We all know that incompetence is very prevalent where there is no tenure or union protection, so I’m just not persuaded that the ratio of incompetence would change significantly in the teaching profession if tenure or union protection disappeared. The intimidation of teachers would, however, increase exponentially.
Davis X. Machina
@Xecky Gilchrist: Anarcho-syndicalism — and leftier than that you can’t get — is a species of libertarianism, after all.
The Right didn’t, doesn’t, doesn’t get to own libertarianism unless it’s by default — or sheer volume.
Poopyman
@jwb: Absolutely, so when I heard about this on the radio this AM, I went “WTF?”
Judas Escargot
@Davis X. Machina:
Anarcho-syndicalism—and leftier than that you can’t get—is a species of libertarianism, after all.
Wait… I thought Chomsky for too left for BJ?
(I kid, I kid).
Xecky Gilchrist
@Davis X. Machina: The Right didn’t, doesn’t, doesn’t get to own libertarianism unless it’s by default—or sheer volume.
The volume thing must be what has me confused. Though I did use the capital “L”, if that helps.
E.D. Kain
Thanks for reading, everyone. I appreciate all the feedback.
Dork
If I wanted to experience organized labor, I’d visit a well-run maternity ward.
wengler
There are pro-labor libertarians, just none among the Propertarian Party of the US.
cyntax
The deBoer piece is quite good. Thought this was a particularly succinct observation about institutional libertarianism (Cato Institute and such):
jpmeyer
I mean shit, even Henry Hazlitt endorses labor unions in Economics in One Lesson.
jwb
@Poopyman: I didn’t actually see that as any sort of attack on tenure. It really addresses the procedures for dismissal, ensures that the teacher is given an opportunity to address any complaint before being fired, and ensures dismissal is based on documented incompetence rather than on other matters. The whole procedure would be somewhat more streamlined than it is now, but it would also be rationalized. As always, the devil is in the details, but it seems like rational reform to address some real issues, even if I don’t think it would actually end up changing much.
Southern Beale
Looks like the Wall Street Journal went to the McMegan School of Economics. CJR found numerous errors in its page-one story on the Wisconsin union fight — all of which skew the story against the unions.
Sly
If you’re looking for good books on labor history, Labor in America by Melvyn Dubofsky and Foster Rhea Dulles is still pretty much the gold standard of the field, and I think its still the most widely used survey for college courses.
There are, of course, loads of monographs on specific incidents or locations that can provide incite into larger issues. I probably enjoyed the following four the most:
Killing for Coal by Thomas Andrews
Death in the Haymarket by James Green
Roots of Steel by Deborah Rudacille
Bread and Roses by Bruce Watson
Joel
I liked Freddie’s post, even if his writing style is a little verbose for my tastes.
Stillwater
@arguingwithsignposts: Hmmm. Is the LoOG going full-on liberal?
It’s getting there, FP posts on labor issues anyway. There are still plenty of commenters who reflexively go glib, but lots of them at least agree that the middle class is shrinking by almost any real, non-glib, measure.
Check it out yourself.
Stillwater
@cyntax: Yeah, I agree. Freddie’s been writing some pretty good stuff lately (I don’t know if this is a change or not).
me
@Xecky Gilchrist: Intellectually honest libertarians shouldn’t have a problem with people getting together and forming a union. They might have an issue with (government supported) required union membership.
Mark Thompson
@arguingwithsignposts: Some of us have been making these arguments for a long time:
For what it’s worth, I regret the language that “Congress realized that the NLRA was too restrictive.” My view on the original Wagner Act/NLRA has evolved, and whatever philosophical objections I still have to it at this point are fairly mild beyond the fact that I view any regulatory structure governing labor-management relations as being capable of providing only temporary(albeit potentially significant) gains to labor.
The point here is just that I, for one, have been publicly advocating a much more pro-union libertarianism for years.
Tonal Crow
@wengler: Republicans are not propertarians. They are “I’ve got mine and you can go fuck yourself”itarians. Thus, for example, they have no problem with banks “foreclosing” on people who’re up-to-date on their mortgages, or who don’t even have mortgages. They’re fine with arbitrarily seizing someone’s property, as long as they’re the seizer and the not the seizee.
me
@Mark S.: Expect Balko to get apoplectic about that.
Bulworth
@Sly: Thanks for the list:
I bought Death In The Haymarket some time ago but only turned to it a few weeks ago–but before the latest debate over unions in Wisconsin. I’m not quite finished, but it’s been interesting to read it while the current debate in Wisconsin develops.
Labor in America looks worth having.
Poopyman
@jwb: OK. Didn’t get that sense from the radio spot, and the way the winds are blowing these days maybe I’m a bit twitchy.
Speaking of the winds, somewhere beyond our router a tree branch must be whacking a data line, because internet service is going up and down constantly.
Stillwater
One thing I’ll say here about Freddie’s proposal to support unions as a counterweight to corporate power is that he mistakenly calls this a ‘libertarian’ position, when it is, in fact, a liberal position. As these guys argue more deeply, their libertarian instincts get undermined by the realization that private power – rather than government power – has always been the source of economic discord in America. They keep getting closer to the views of a liberal, even tho they can’t shed their self-identification as libertarians.
Davis X. Machina
@jpmeyer: The Roman Catholic Church, a notorious progressive hotbed in the 19th century, went all in for labor not long thereafter.
Forward into the past! Reaction is not just for reactionaries.
jwb
@Poopyman: Well, the press I’ve read did make it sound like a major concession. But I think that’s because they press wants us to believe that the primary function of tenure is to protect the incompetent. These reforms do seem like they would make it marginally easier to get fire someone who is tenured. But the reforms would also put a clear process in place to ensure that the tenured teacher is being fired for continued documented incompetence rather than something else.
E.D. Kain
@Mark Thompson: yes but didn’t you also have to turn in your libertarian decoder ring?
Origuy
@jwb:
To much of the Right, this is a feature.
El Cid
Whether “market anarchy” favors labor or owners is an empirical question.
It is an empirical question now, and it was so in the past. A definition of “favor” is also used, so depending on what sort of shifting level of success on one particular portion of an issue is classified as being in one group’s “favor”, the analysis will be quite different.
If labor is “favored” at one time — i.e., it gets a larger share of profits than at another time — it doesn’t mean that labor is “favored”, but that it has greater power to influence certain decisions more in its direction.
It was in the late 1960s and early 1970s that the business community began to organize to roll back labor and wage gains.
The launching of the Business Roundtable signified the largest coordinated group acting on behalf of the wealthiest members of the corporate community.
They worked by lobbying, supporting think tanks, campaign financing, in short, the entire range of influence they could exert.
The notion that labor can be organized and act with a focus while market anarchy prevents the corporate community from doing so is false.
Corporations are both competitors and allies; and when it comes to common goals such as defeating the power of labor unions and the income and wealth power of middle and working classes, they come together and act with power and success.
E.D. Kain
@Stillwater: Freddie is a leftist, and no libertarian by any remote sense of he word.
Erik Vanderhoff
@Davis X. Machina: Exactly!
Mark S.
@me:
/evil chortle
Sly
@Bulworth:
If you liked Death in the Haymarket, you’ll probably like Bread and Roses. It has the same kind of narrative structure, but its principle focus is on migrant workers.
Roots of Steel is different, in that it doesn’t focus on one specific event but looks at the history of a particular company town in Maryland over the course of a century.
Killing for Coal was just published recently, but I’ve found no other book that more thoroughly examines the Colorado Coal Strike of 1914 and, specifically, the Ludlow Massacre. But it’s geared more toward other historians and not so much the public audience, so if someone is really interested in the subject (the Colorado Coal Strike remains the deadliest strike in American history), Scott Martelle’s Blood Passion is a lot more accessible.
Stillwater
@E.D. Kain: Ahh, that would explain his tortured stretching of supporting unions as way of ensmallening government into a ‘libertarian’ justification for unions. The main argument he makes is straight ahead liberal.
Stillwater
That above comment is tortured english. Sorry. No edit allowed.
Ash Can
@arguingwithsignposts: My own guess is that someone was caught goofing around in class once too often and had her computer privileges suspended.
jwb
@Stillwater: Open edit in new window, then you can edit!
Davis X. Machina
@Sly:Try and find the 1999 Harp Song for a Radical: The Life and Times of Eugene Victor Debs, a strange and wonderful book by Marguerite Young.
Magical realism meets biography meets labor history.
Sui generis isn’t even close to an adequate description.
oliver's Neck
E.D., I wanted to read all of that stuff but got nauseatingly distracted by your co-blogger trotting out the old, “The middle-class must be fine because capitalism produces ever newer and cheaper commodities! Sure, your grandparents may have had a pension, put three kids through college, and owned (outright) their own house on a single blue-collar salary – while you have six-figure undergrad college debt, a worthless 401k, no job security, and a drop in real wages since the mid-70’s – but hey you have ipods and HDTVs so STFU!”
My hope (for him) is that Jason is just an over-privileged idiot who has never had to think about things really deeply or critically.
Stillwater
@E.D. Kain: Got to thank you for making that explicit. I just read about a half-dozen posts at his blog. Very good stuff. Got it book-marked.
ETA: Thanks for the tip jwb.
Violet
E.D, just wanted to thank you for doing this and for bringing it to our attention. Good stuff.
khead
So I am supposed to applaud deBoer for realizing something my grandfather pointed out to me 30 years ago?
All a person needs is a relative who can tell them about the pistols pulled on them by the mine thugs sometime last century.
Good luck with that among today’s glibertarians.
khead
Yeesh. Sorry about the horrible grammar – but y’all get the point.
If the choice is Uncle Sam or mining thugs, the miners would take Uncle Sam. Back then they would anyway….
We wasn’t much real big on grammar in southern WV when I was growin up.