On 2/20/2011 10:37 PM, Pat Gunning wrote:
>
> Why do you suggest that collective bargaining is an institution? Isn't 
> it more accurate to call it a special legal right granted by the State 
> to a representative of the MAJORITY of employees of a particular 
> organization? By virtue of his being elected by the majority, the 
> union boss receives the legal right to prevent the free exchange of 
> work for pay between those who do not wish to be represented by the 
> elected union officials and the employer.

This is an incorrect statement with respect to US law under the National 
Labor Relations Act. Legal interpretation of that law has long held that 
a union cannot hire or fire an employee. The pre-1930 union shop 
contract, under which union membership is a precondition of employment, 
is illegal in the US. Similarly, the symmetrical yellow dog contract, 
under which non-membership in a union is a precondition of employment, 
is also illegal.

Moreover, those who do not wish to be represented by a union are free to 
find work elsewhere. The institution of the modern collective bargaining 
contract which applies to all workers in a group of jobs, is not 
essentially different from the union of owners (aka the stockholders of 
an incorporated firm) who can limit the property rights of any single 
owner. Majority rule at a stockholders' meeting is not significantly 
different from majority rule at a union meeting. Of course this symmetry 
is limited by the fact that capital is liquid while labor cannot be 
disembodied from a human being. But, then, that was Marx's point about 
power differentials in the labor market.


> Commons viewed the trade agreement that results from collective 
> bargaining as between unions and industry. One side wants higher pay 
> and restrictions on bosses; the other wants lower pay and a freer hand. 

This statement is not historically correct. Pat assumes a set of 
institutional relationships, "managements right to manage," which were 
created through an historical process. A useful study of this is 
Christopher L. Tomlins, "The State and the Unions: Labor Relations, Law, 
and the Organized Labor Movement in America, 1880-1960."