| "I am not willing to extend the liberties of a labor union to stifle the growth of another company that is winning in the free market." That's the key point. Unions are constrained on what they can do. I can threaten to stop working unless my employer stops purchasing from a company with a horrible safety record, where the employees of the other company are on strike as protest. We're both agreed on that, right? But do it collectively - say, 90% of my fellow 4,000 employees threaten to stop working in support of the workers of the other company - and suddenly it's labeled a union and our actions considered an illegal sympathy strike. I can't help but conclude that the legal constraints on what a union can do mean that it can't fully participate in a free market. Instead, the 'free market' you're talking about is actually 'the market where collective action freedoms have been deliberately handicapped.' (Personally I think there must be constraints on a free market, but that's a different conversation.) "if the factory owner can fire all of the union workers during a strike" Why can the factory owner do that? Surely the union contract would prohibit mass firing during a strike. Otherwise, as you say, what's the point of having a union? In the context of US law, there are certain things that an employer is prohibited from doing. Mass firing of legally striking employees is one of them. Even non-union ones. (See http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2012/10/15/walmart-striking-wor... for a nice summary. |