Union Bosses Monopoly-Bargaining Privileges a Means of Controlling NonMembers

Fact Sheet: Union Monopoly Bargaining Contracts Hurtful

In a fact sheet now available for reading or downloading from the National Institute for Labor Relations Research web site, I explain why vast numbers of union nonmembers and reluctant union members who are legally compelled to accept the officers of a single union as their monopoly-bargaining agents are in reality captive passengers, rather than “free riders,” as Big Labor apologists like to claim.

The fact sheet (which can be opened at the link above) uses illustrations and simple logic to show that union bosses regard Section 9(a) of the National Labor Relations Act and parallel monopoly-bargaining provisions in other federal and state statutes “as a means of keeping union nonmembers under Big Labor control rather than as a means of ‘benefiting’ union nonmembers.”

It features quotes from forced-unionism apologists who recognize that many workers who are subject to union monopoly bargaining get paid less than they would if they were union-free. For example, Richard Rothstein, an education policy specialist who has long been affiliated with the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank that was founded a quarter century ago with forced dues-fueled financial backing from eight unions, has written:

In [unionized] firms, wages of lower paid workers are raised above the market rate, with the increase offset . . . [in part] by reducing pay of the most productive workers. If firms with this practice are rare, competitors will be able to bid away their best workers.