Labor unions are not pro-worker, and improving the status of America’s blue-collar middle class does not depend on fealty to union bosses. This essay first appeared in Civitas Outlook, the new online journal of the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas-Austin, on December 17, 2024 (here)…
Labor Law
Union Organizing is on the Decline
Despite a friendly NLRB tipping the scales, workers are increasingly rejecting labor organizers’ underhanded tactics. This essay originally appeared in Law & Liberty on June 17, 2024 as “The Continuing Decline of the Private-Sector Union” (here). Thanks to Real Clear Policy …
Union Time on the Taxpayer Dime: Coming Texas Showdown
In the Lone Star State, a long-running legal challenge to “release time” in public-employee union contracts approaches its finale. Justice at last? This article originally appeared in Law & Liberty on February 12, 2024 (here). Thanks to Ace of Spades HQ! In the post-Janus age, it is just …
Ending the Stranglehold of Public Employee Unions
A popular nonpartisan author revives a forgotten body of constitutional objections to “collective bargaining” by public servants. Will Americans listen this time? This essay first appeared in Law & Liberty, on January 23, 2023 (here). Thanks to Power Line, Instapundit (here), Real Clear M…
Unions Regain Political Influence Under Biden
Organized labor seeks to reverse declining membership and other challenges. This essay originally appeared in Law & Liberty on February 1, 2021 as “Union Tide Rises Under Biden” (here). Thanks to the Southeast Texas Record (here), Legal Insurrection (here), and Real Clear Policy! …
What Really Threatens American Labor
This essay originally appeared in Law & Liberty on July 15, 2020 (here), in response to a lead essay by Richard Epstein (here). Thanks to Real Clear Markets! Richard Epstein has been challenging conventional wisdom in the academy since he burst onto the scene as an enfant terrible in the 1970…
“Reforming” Conservatism Should Not Include Embracing the New Deal
And, no, FDR is not a conservative icon Thanks to Instapundit (here), and to Conrad Black for his response in American Greatness (here), the New York Sun (here), Newsmax (here), and Real Clear Policy (here). Black says that my essay was “a very perceptive summary of the fragmentation of the…
There Is No “Conservative Case” for Labor Unions
My Law & Liberty colleague, James Rogers, makes an unpersuasive case for collective bargaining Thanks to Cafe Hayek (here) and Real Clear Policy (here). James Rogers’ “prudential, conservative case” for labor unions (“Crony Capitalism & the Case for Labor Unions”) rests on certa…
Are Labor Unions Outmoded Institutions?
Still engaged in an atavistic class struggle, organized labor operates as a monopoly—long outlawed in every other sphere of the economy This essay originally appeared in Law & Liberty on February 5, 2020 (here) On January 1, a law took effect in the union stronghold of California that poses…
Making the Cover of The Independent Review
Thanks to the Tom Woods Show for inviting me to discuss this article (here). Last year, Professor Stephen Presser—then a visiting scholar at the University of Colorado—invited me to deliver a lecture to his students on a topic of my choice. As a retired labor lawyer, I chose the mythology of …