Labor Unions: Socialism’s Shock Troops

The View From 1776:

Both in England and in the United States, labor unions led the political assault to overwhelm the individualistic traditions that made those nations great and to impose socialistic planning and regulation.

This is a reprint of an essay posted on this website five years ago, on January 26, 2005. It is timely because of the strangling influence today of labor unions that drove GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy and the public employees unions that control state budgets and are pushing big-union states like California, New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut toward bankruptcy.

Many people, even conservatives, will be much offended by the characterization of labor unions as socialistic shock troops. And it is true that labor unions have improved the lot of their members, bringing factory and mining employees into the economic middle class.

It’s not the improved lives of union members, however, that is the evil necessarily associated with unionism. It’s both the fact that improvement of union member status is a transfer payment from non-union employees and consumers that impels inflation, and that government regulatory involvement is essential to the process of union extortion.

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