Reason: Shikha Dalmia: 'Right-to-Work Laws Are, Indeed, Libertarian'

Source:Reason Magazine- columnist Shikha Dalmia.

"Every time Right to Work is in the news, a civil war breaks out among libertarians about whether it is consistent with libertarianism or not. On one side are folks like me who think that right-to-work laws are a modest advance for worker freedom because they exempt workers from having to pay mandatory union dues as a condition of employment in unionized companies. On the other is my best friend Sheldon Richman—who has long argued that such laws advance government, not liberty; Gary Chartier—who believes they violate the freedom of contract; Kevin Carson—who declaimed that I was only "half right" when I wrote that a union lawsuit alleging that Indiana's right-to-work law was tantamount to slavery was stupid; and my colleague J.D. Tuccille—who is disappointed that Michigan has "inserted itself into the marketplace to place its thumb on the scale in the never-ending game of playing business and labor off against one another." 

But before I go into the points of disagreement between the two camps, let me just briefly note the areas of agreement.

To the best of my knowledge, none of us (with the possible exception of Carson) buys the liberal argument against these laws most recently made by Michael Kinsley that abolishing dues encourages freeloading and prevents the provision of a "collective good." That assumes that there is only one optimal arrangement everywhere and always that maximizes total worker good: a monopoly union representing all workers.

Like Tuccille, I can certainly imagine joining a union under certain conditions (heck, there have been workplaces where I've been tempted to start my own unionization drive). There is absolutely nothing wrong with unions or collective bargaining. But there is also absolutely nothing wrong with the extreme opposite: Individual workers representing themselves and striking their own deals with employers. In fact, virtually all salaried workers do that—even in unionized companies—and, I don't think, it is possible to argue that the sum total of their welfare has been diminished because they don't have the equivalent of the UAW representing them.

One reason is that even in a quasi-free market such as ours there is enough competition for labor that employers do not maximize their profits by low-balling their employees or having them work insane hours in Steinbeckian conditions. In fact, individualized representation allows employers to customize remuneration packages based on individual merit—which redounds to everyone's benefit because it gives all workers an incentive to boost productivity and income. One-size-fits-all contracts with uniform raises and benefits for all conceivably depress the income of excellent workers as much as they raise it for mediocre workers. In any case, if freedom to negotiate individual contracts works for salaried workers, there is no reason to believe that, in principle, it wouldn't work for wage workers." 

From Reason Magazine