[pseudalopex]

US jurisprudence requires unions to represent non-members whether they want to or not. I don't like agency fees, but they're a response to a free-rider problem.

Yes, a union is pretty much a corporation that supplies labor. The biggest difference is how they're governed. Nobody bats an eye if a supplier negotiates an exclusive contract.

[GauntletWizard]

Agreed. I think exclusive supplier contracts are pretty dumb, too - At least without clauses for 'Price match or get out'. And the solution to the former should be (and I'll admit this is a stretch) to fix that problem, or better yet: simply to make your union's services so attractive and obviously a public good that the significant majority want to be sure it sticks around. Yes, the free rider problem is universal - Unions cause it as much as suffer from it (ever heard of unions suffering from deadweight because of seniority rules? No, nobody else ever has either :P)

[pseudalopex]

Whatever you or I think about exclusive supplier contracts, is there a single state that forbids them except for unions?

Seniority rules are something unions negotiate for. Contracting firms stick warm bodies on projects all the time. That's between the supplier and the customer, not imposed by the federal government.

I agree it would be better to fix that, but as you said, it's a stretch. Good luck getting Republicans or Democrats to go for it.

[chimeracoder]

> US jurisprudence requires unions to represent non-members whether they want to or not. I don't like agency fees, but they're a response to a free-rider problem.

They get around that by structuring all of the benefits in the employment contracts to cover only their members, and by negotiating exclusive employment contracts with employers (so that there are no non-members).

Put another way, 94% of people who are represented by an NLRB-governed union never had the opportunity to vote for or against union membership in the first place. Most of those are employed by employers with exclusive contracts ("closed shop"), and because the union itself is not required to stand for reelection (its representatives are, but the union basically guaranteed permanent representation[0]), it means that free-riders are a non-issue.

[0] The process of decertifying or deauthorizing a union is very strictly regulated and unions have very broad leeway in preventing it, so it almost never happens except in cases of criminal misconduct and the like.

[pseudalopex]

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation considers anything but "open shop" to be "forced unionism" and lists 28 states as free from that scourge.[1] No exclusive contracts, no agency fees.

[1] http://www.nrtw.org/right-to-work-states

[chimeracoder]

> The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation considers anything but "open shop" to be "forced unionism" and lists 28 states as free from that scourge.[1] No exclusive contracts, no agency fees.

I think you're conflating open shops and right-to-work laws, but besides that, the point is that there is no free rider problem even in states with right-to-work laws, because the union can structure their contracts with the employer so that non-members don't receive any benefits. Sure, they'll represent non-members, but there aren't any reasons the non-members would ever need them to, because the benefits literally would not apply in the first place.

Unions don't really talk about this, because the free-rider problem is a convincing argument to use in favor of mandatory dues withholding, but in reality it's an issue that they already have the tools to avoid.

[pseudalopex]

NRTW's definition of "right to work" appears to be the common definition. It's also the common definition of "open shop".

Minority unions can bargain only for their members -- but as far as I can tell, members can't commit to be bound by the outcome, which undermines the union's bargaining power. Even then, the prevailing legal opinion seems to be that they can't negotiate terms that structurally favor members over non-members.

Majority unions have to represent all workers in a bargaining unit, members or not.

[chimeracoder]

> NRTW's definition of "right to work" appears to be the common definition. It's also the common definition of "open shop".

Not quite, because you can have an open shop in a state that doesn't have a right-to-work law. Right to work laws only ensure that workers have the ability to dissociate from the union without losing their employment.

> Minority unions can bargain only for their members -- but as far as I can tell, members can't commit to be bound by the outcome, which undermines the union's bargaining power.

Alternative way of phrasing that: Only unions which represent the majority have the ability to compel all members to accept whatever terms they negotiate.

> Majority unions have to represent all workers in a bargaining unit

They have to represent them for things like grievances, yes, but that doesn't mean that they can't pick and choose which subgroups they advocate for in negotiations over others.

That's literally what negotiating is - you have to figure out what you're willing to give up in order to get what you value more. And a union with a heterogeneous membership will inevitably have to decide which group of members to prioritize over others.

The purpose of right-to-work laws is to limit their ability to marginalize minority members, because those minority members always have a second option that doesn't involve unemployment.

[pseudalopex]

> you can have an open shop in a state that doesn't have a right-to-work law

"Right to work" laws are also called "open shop" laws because that's what they mandate. Of course unions can choose not to collect agency fees in other states.

Going back to the beginning, you claimed that unions can negotiate closed shops. The Taft-Hartley Act outlawed closed shops, NLRB v. General Motors made union shops equivalent to agency shops, and 28 states forbid agency shops.

> Alternative way of phrasing that: Only unions which represent the majority have the ability to compel all members to accept whatever terms they negotiate.

No, those statements aren't equivalent. Plenty of other negotiations see parties authorize their representatives to agree to terms within certain parameters. Plenty of contracts commit the parties to accept the result of some process.

> They have to represent them for things like grievances, yes, but that doesn't mean that they can't pick and choose which subgroups they advocate for in negotiations over others.

They can't choose members as one of those groups. If other groupings correlate with membership, sure, they can get away with some favoritism. You originally claimed they can exclude non-members entirely.