Thoughts on Labor Unions

I agree with all but two of the following quotes: Darrow was nuts, Brandeis was too idealistic in failing to see the qualitative differences between the leadership of labor unions and the management of private firms--which has never been equal and therefore never deserved equal power. Jevons has the deepest insight: the fact that it's the most deeply cynical is surely coincidence. 

 

I think Shaw missed his calling by the way: great potential as a sitcom writer.

 

 

All plucked from a collection in The Economist:

 

“Labour unions would have us believe that they transfer income from rich capitalists to poor workers. In fact, they mostly transfer income from the large number of non-union workers to a small number of relatively well-off union workers.”

Robert Anderson, writer, Just Get Out of the Way: How Government Can Help Business in Poor Countries (2004)

 

“Strong, responsible unions are essential to industrial fair play. Without them the labour bargain is wholly one-sided. The parties to the labour contract must be nearly equal in strength if justice is to be worked out, and this means that the workers must be organised and that their organisations must be recognised by employers as a condition precedent to industrial peace.”Louis Brandeis (pictured), lawyer (1856–1941), The curse of bigness: Miscellaneous papers of Louis D. Brandeis (1934)

 

“All classes of society are trades unionists at heart, and differ chiefly in the boldness, ability, and secrecy with which they pursue their respective interests.”William Stanley Jevons, economist (1835–82), The State in Relation to Labour (1882)

 

“No king on earth is as safe in his job as a Trade Union official. There is only one thing that can get him sacked; and that is drink. Not even that, as long as he doesn’t actually fall down.”George Bernard Shaw, playwright (1856–1950), The Apple Cart (1928)

 

“If you don’t like your job you don’t strike. You just go in every day and do it really half-assed. That’s the American way.”Homer Simpson, character in The Simpsons (American TV series)

 

“With all their faults, trade-unions have done more for humanity than any other organisation of men that ever existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty, for education, for the betterment of the race, for the developing of character in man, than any other association of men.”Clarence Darrow, lawyer (1857–1938), The Railroad Trainman (1906)