When people ask my opinion on unions (or, as happens more frequently, when I give it sans solicitation), I usually use the example of garbage collection to illustrate how unions distort the market. Garbage collection is a job that demands little if any skill. Workers need no talent or brains, just an able body and a capacity to endure the disagreable stench. A single garbageman is easily replaceable and hardly essential to our daily lives. In short, a garbageman's labour should be worth fairly little on the market.
But if all garbagemen band together they can exert upward wage pressure well in excess of their actual value as individual workers. This is the power of collusion, a criminal offense under Canadian law except when practiced by labour unions. The union uses denial of garbage collection services to distort the market outcome for members. They want us to believe that the value of any one individual's services is equal to the value of their collective services. This is false. None of us care if one garbageman holds out for a higher wage, but if they do it as a group then we notice. Toronto is sadly being held captive in this very same situation right now.
If you are a union symphatizer, let me ask you this: would you mind if gasoline stations or grocery stores conspired to keep prices at an elevated level? If yes, that your unconditional support of striking unions is rank hypocrisy. There is no difference between collusion to keep wages above market levels and collusion to keep any other price above market level.
p.s. Ontario residents have another even more detrimental strike action to fear this summer.
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