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Comment by ausbah | Hacker News Reader

calling it a free market is laughable naive. the market is lopsided in favor of businesses because many laws at the state and federal are explicitly pro-business and anti-union; see "right to work laws", the 1947 Taft-Harley act, etc. - especially over the past 20 years

and saying workers should just go and join a union backed job is even sillier when <15% of all full time workers are apart of a union [1]

[1] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm

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Right to work is pro employee. If unions want membership they shouldn’t be able to coerce it. They should have to earn it and compete for it. If a union can’t survive based on voluntary membership then that tells you something.

it is the state infringing in the market on the side of business and capital by restricting the ability of workers to collectively bargain with employers

workers are less well off but it's ok because "individualism"

No one is being restricted from bargaining collectively. They’re just being given the choice to opt out. Unions just get upset because they lose their monopoly status to police workers voices who disagree with their position and politics.

Right to work is only anti union because it allows employees to choose whether or not to join a union. Forcing an employee to join a union is absolutely not pro-employee.

Right to work is not pro-business. It simply reduces some of the extra-contractual powers that labor laws give unions.

These laws are violating the right of business to freely contract, while reducing the opportunity for those who don't have unionized jobs to compete for those jobs. So Right to Work is anti-'exploitation of businesses and outside workers'.

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