Opinion of the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947 (Taft-Hartley)

[Maistre]

HA. Regardless of what you think of unions, banning closed shops/right to work laws are a violation of freedom of association.

Uh, what? So you're saying that making a requirement to work somewhere be that someone must associate with a union promotes freedom of association? There is no freedom there. It leverages ones need to earn an income against union interests.

I always find it funny that libertarians have a massive blindspot on this issue. You believe in the freedom of contract, yes? Why is it that employers, having entered into a contract with a labor union that says that they will only hire and maintain employment for union laborers, should not be allowed to require employees to do so? Do you support the right of a contract or not?

Beyond that, there's also the simple fact that, if you don't want to work somewhere where you have to pay union dues, there are plenty of non-union jobs for you to choose from. 94% of the private sector workforce is non-union. If you really, really want to be a slave with no rights at work, that can be fired arbitrarily and made to work long hours for next to nothing badly enough, there are plenty of places where you can do so.

I've worked union and non-union jobs, and literally no one with a brain prefers the latter over the former. The union dues that you pay are miniscule compared to the job security, benefits, and higher wages that come with being a union member. There's a reason why a majority of Americans want a union at work, after all. The only reason they don't have one, in most cases, is because signing a union card in most places gets you fired and your employer gets away with it, even though firing someone for talking about or joining a union is against the law.

Of course this issue is also muddled by the fact that the majority of our libertarian teenagers have never held and probably will never hold a real job, preferring instead to spend their waking hours arguing about how cat-calling is free speech and that Lincoln was a Marxist dictator who confiscated property, interchangeable of course with their paranoid rants about the central bankers (read: Jews) who control the economy and make "real capitalism" (which doesn't work anyway, but libertarians have no conception of history) impossible. Try working in a non-union shop and then get back to me on how great it is not to pay union dues while you're making $7.25 an hour working two jobs in a vain attempt to pay rent thanks to the gentrifying parasites moving into your neighborhood.

So I take you would have been lean no on this bill?