On Trade Unions

The right-wing media are in a tizzy over the recent bout of strikes. I wish they would read a bit of genuine free-market literature and educate themselves to the fact that unions are ESSENTIAL market mechanisms.

"We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combination of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labor above their actual rate[.] When workers combine, masters ... never cease to call aloud for the assistance of the civil magistrate, and the rigorous execution of those laws which have been enacted with so much severity against the combination of servants, laborers, and journeymen." - Adam Smith on Trade Unions