"At best, a union can achieve a higher, restrictionist wage rate for its members only at the expense of lowering the wage rates of all other workers in the economy. Production efforts in the economy are also distorted. But, in addition, the wider the scope of union activity and restrictionism in the economy, the more difficult it will be for workers to shift their locations and occupations to find nonunionized havens in which to work. And more and more the tendency will be for the displaced workers to remain permanently or quasi-permanently unemployed, eager to work but unable to find nonrestricted opportunities for employment. The greater the scope of unionism, the more a permanent mass of unemployment will tend to develop. Unions try as hard as they can to plug all the "loopholes" of nonunionism, to close all the escape hatches where the dispossessed workmen can find jobs. This is termed "ending the unfair competition of nonunion, low-wage labor." A universal union control and restrictionism would mean permanent mass unemployment, growing ever greater in proportion to the degree that the union exacted its restrictions."
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Original Language: English
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Sources
Murray N. Rothbard, "Restrictionist Pricing of Labor", The Freeman, May 1963, pp. 11–16.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Trade_unions
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Trade unions
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