R. C. on unions

R. C. is fluent on the subject of labor unions. He has never come across a good one, he says, for the same reason he has never known a good porch-climber. You may get the impression, on reading this section, that R. C. Hoiles sometimes gets pretty mad as he dictates these columns. He does. (D. R. Segal)

● Labor union officials are past masters when it comes to fooling the public. They are great

actors. Now they are putting on an act to try to make the public believe that they are trying to drive out robbers and corruption in their unions. They have a committee on ethics.

When I use the words “labor unions,” I mean those who believe collective bargaining should

attempt to take away from an individual his right to make his own bargain; that they have a right to simultaneously stop working without notice and contend they are still employed and to picket and try to keep others from doing the work they were doing. They also use boycotts that if practiced by other than union members would be a crime, punishable by fines and or prison. I do not believe there is any labor union that does not use these tactics.

The only means labor unions use to temporarily get wage increases are such practices as

seniority, limiting apprentices, feather bedding, limiting hours and output, strikes, picketing and boycotts backed up with aggressive force or the threats of same,

All these violate the Golden Rule, the Stealing and Coveting Commandments and the

Declaration of Independence. And any human relation that violates these eternal moral laws is robbery, corruption and fraud.

No one has ever explained how acts by all labor unions that practice legalized robbery,

corruption and fraud, can eliminate robbery, corruption and fraud.

Would any believer in this kind of labor union contend that he would want those workers

above him, who had better jobs, from combining to keep him from advancing and competing with them as he is keeping those with poorer jobs below him from competing with him by seniority, limiting apprentices and by graft and corruption in keeping him in the job? If he so contends, he has no conception of the meaning of the Golden Rule.

Would any believer in labor unions believe it was not robbery to get a wage arrived at by

strikes and picketing and duress or threats of same and which cause the man outside of the union to pay more than he would have to pay if all jobs were on a competitive basis? If that is not robbery according to the Eighth Commandment, then what is robbery?

● Would any believer in labor unions contend it was not coveting other people's rights and

property by using seniority and limiting apprentices to keep other men from competing with

them? In short, to keep some men from having the right to help establish values? And there can be no true value unless all people, not just some people, have the right to help establish values.

We have a robbery value when some people are limited from competing and helping to establish values.

Would any one contend that labor unions were in harmony with the morals and the principles set down in the Declaration of Independence that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness? Are not labor unions' means of getting a wage increase denying other men their equal rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness?

So it seems irrational and nothing but a farce and an act on the part of labor unions to

contend that they are trying to eliminate corruption and fraud and robbery in labor unions when they are constantly practicing corruption. Robbery and fraud are the only means of getting an advantage over their fellowman.

If employees are not to be selected on the basis of competition—the workers who will do the most for tine compensation paid—are they to be selected on non-competitive rules? By lot? By seniority'? By the workers' needs? By favoritism? By gift wage? By rotation? By force or intimidation? Otherwise by what measurable, impersonal eternal rule are they to be selected?

And any wage or any price that is secured by the means used by labor unions is not an honest or just or fair wage or honest or just or fair price if we believe in the principles set down in the Declaration of Independence and the Golden Rule and the Coveting and Stealing Commandments.

Yes, it is a mockery and a delusion and a fraud for labor leaders to be pretending that they are trying to eliminate fraud and corruption in labor unions. The only way of eliminating fraud in human relations is liberty, a free and unhampered market for labor and all prices.

● In order to combat the results of class legislation favoring organized labor unions, our

government has adopted the policy of cutting real wages by increasing the amount of credit

the government issued. In other words, we have used the Federal Reserve System to give the workers more dollars but diluted the purchasing power of these dollars. It is simply a method of self defense against labor union monopoly.

● It is just as irrational to believe that we can protect public interest by granting unlimited

monopolies to organized labor as it is to believe that we can “protect public interest” by

murder; that we can make stealing “protect public interest”; that we can correct the

uncorrectable; that we can make legal monopolies harmonize with competition; that the

unimprovable can be improved by law; that vicious acts can be made virtuous by law; that

wrong can be made good by man-made law; that holdups can be made virtuous; that the

unrespectable can he made respectable by law; that unequal things can be made equal by law.

The harm that labor unions do, is that they take away from an individual his right to make

an individual bargain, to use his own conscience, to develop his own faculties. He becomes a robot.

● Alexander Hamilton said: “A power over man's subsistence amounts to power over his will.” Labor unions get control over man's will by preventing him from working on terms not

satisfactory to the union.

Labor unions, like the Communist government, have power over man's will because they

have a monopoly, because they have a power over his subsistence since they want to have a monopoly over who can have jobs. They want control over both workers and employers. On the other hand, under the American system of free enterprise, with 4 million employers in the United States alone, the employer cannot have power over man's subsistence. Competition between employers prevents that.

There is no possible way of making an act that violates the ideologies of the Declaration of

Independence, the Decalogue and the Golden Rule in agreement with these great moral laws by legal statutes. The only possible way of correcting the great injustices of labor unions having power over man's subsistence, is to repeal all laws that interfere with individual competitive bar-gains.