I have to take issue with Steve Chapman’s comment “American workers may owe a small debt of gratitude to organized labor.
They owe a bigger one to capitalism.”
He conveniently elected to ignore to mention all the environment- and labor-related laws and regulations the unions have, over the years, worked with the government to establish–such as child-labor law, workers-protection law, minimum-wage law, environmental-protection law, workplace safety law, equal-opportunity law and so on.
These are the regulations and laws that have kept the capitalist system civilized.
One should nor forget that the optimal objective of the capitalist system is to get the most out of the workers for the least expenses–that means slavery. The ultimate goal of the labor unions is to get the most from capitalism for the least labor delivered. Each is necessary to keep the other in check.
Could you imagine what would happen if we would get rid of the labor unions and all the labor-related laws and regulations? We would be back to slavery. Is this not what is happening in some underdeveloped countries with no labor unions and no labor-related laws?
