Sunday, April 5, 2015

More Evidence of Unions Behind Call for Higher Minimum Wages

Unionized construction workers joined the protest in favor of a higher minimum wage by storming a Manhattan McDonald’s during a Saturday morning rally, reports the New York Daily News. Unionized airport workers and home health-care aides also marched to the McDonald’s on Sixth Ave. between  14th and 15th Streets.

The union activity is really seeking to destroy enterprises from hiring marginal workers. Thus, damaging overall economic production and causing unemployment.

From Man, Economy and State by Murray Rothbard (my bold):

Compulsory unemployment is achieved indirectly through minimum wage laws. On the free market, everyone’s wage tends to be set at his discounted marginal value productivity. A minimum wage law means that those whose DMVP is below the legal minimum are prevented from working. The worker was willing to take the job, and the employer to hire him. But the decree of the State prevents this hiring from taking place. Compulsory unemployment thus removes the competition of marginal workers and raises the wage rates of the other workers remaining. Thus, while the announced aim of a minimum wage law is to improve the incomes of the marginal workers, the actual effect is precisely the reverse—it is to render them unemployable at legal wage rates. The higher the minimum wage rate relative to free-market rates, the greater the resulting unemployment.\Unions aim for restrictionist wage rates, which on a partial scale cause distortions in production, lower wage rates for nonmembers, and pockets of unemployment, and on a general scale lead to greater distortions and permanent mass unemployment. By enforcing restrictive production rules, rather than allowing individual workers voluntarily to accept work rules laid down by the enterpriser in the use of his property, unions reduce general productivity and hence the living standards of the economy

  -RW

2 comments:

  1. Union contracts often index wages to a percentage of minimum wage. This is similar to the county appraiser valuing property up to allow the county commissioners to avoid the politically embarrassment of raising the mill levy.

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    1. And here I thought they were doing it out of solidarity...

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