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Comment by Overtonwindow | Hacker News Reader

This article made me curious, has any business tried to defend antiunion activities through a desire for free association? As in the business does not want to associate with unions.

It made me curious because I've not seen that argument before, in the function of a union seems like it wants to force the company to associate with it whether the company wants to or not.

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This is a very common tactic these companies typically use to discourage employees internally. Not that the company doesn't want to associate with a union but an attempt to convince workers that they shouldn't want to associate with a union.

Lots of companies have been "caught" putting up signs in the break room next to the legally required signs about worker rights, they'll put up a sign in the room that tries to convince employees that Unions take away their rights.

Corporations have their first amendment rights curtailed along various axes (or, depending on your political philosophy, they aren't people so they don't have first Amendment rights and any first Amendment-esque writes they enjoy are a convenience fabrication the US legal system put together so they didn't have to go through every law that applies to people and decide whether it applies to corporations).

But as example, without modification to the first Amendment, the Civil Rights Act broadly curtailed the freedom of association of employers and public establishments. Similar law exists for anti-union activity already.

Companies don't own their employees.

edit: There's an equivocation on "association" here. As an individual, I don't have the right to "disassociate" people from myself. I can't demand that my sister not refer to me as her brother, or that she stop doing things because she is known to be my sister and those things would be "associated" with me. Freedom of association is about a person being able to choose who they wish to interact with, not freedom for a person to dictate what is "associated" with them in people's minds.

>Freedom of association is about a person being able to choose who they wish to interact with

...like companies choosing not to negotiate (ie. "interact") with unions?

Yes. Companies can refuse to negotiate with unions (and accept the consequences of severely narrowing their access to the labor market)

> the function of a union seems like it wants to force the company to associate with it whether the company wants to or not.

The company might not want to associate with the union, but it seems that the workers working at the company do.

Supreme Court ruled that public sector employees can't be required to pay union fees as a condition of employment, on First Amendment/free association grounds.

Yeah, it the these workers get all the benefits too. Phunny how that happens.

Ok, but the people in the union are actual people. The company is a abstract entity we invented to facilitate business. The right of assembly of real humans is surely more important than the right of assembly of a legal fiction.

In British Columbia, unions have a really interesting precedent in free association: union members do not cross picket lines. Not just their own picket line, but anybody's picket line.

Actually, no one should cross a picket line.

It sounds nice in practice but there are desperate people out there. A strike provides those people with opportunities. Prisoner's dillema keeps them from sacrificing themselves for a union that sees them as the out-group.

Scabs hurt everyone.

one could argue that those people, in the end would be better off by actually joining the union and demanding better rights.

There is a reason socialism is inherently internationalist. Capitalistic society is not bound by national borders, and thus the exploitation of labour is a class issue that tranceeds national boundaries. Workers in different places are far more similar then people from different class in the same place.

Are we talking about unions or socialism? I don't see unionism as an inherently anti-capitalist construct. It's a contract amongst workers and business owners. As with all contracts, their value tends to be dependent on your individual situation. It's even possible for unions to be anti-socialist, by constraining access to a select few creating elevated wages for the in-group while shielding access to that value from the out-group.

What's specifically protected in BC is that you cannot get fired if (a) you're in a union, and (b) you cannot get to work without crossing a picket line.

Commercial rights have historically always been more curtailed than personal rights. There's a reason it's permitted to criminalize things like false advertising.

But can they force the employees to not associate with each other?

You cannot "free association" your way out of legally required actions. You can't, say, refuse to deal with the IRS because it's your right not to associate with them.

That's different. IRS is an extension of the U.S. Government itself, and as a Citizen/resident, you are required to work with them.

You are absolutely free to never associate with them as an employee, however. Important distinction.

> You are absolutely free to never associate with them as an employee, however. Important distinction.

You do not have that freedom in the USA. The Constitution is very clear on this question: Congress has the right to demand your forced employment. Congress hasn't seen fit to do so for many decades, but it has every right to do so and you have no de jure right to refuse employment.

Isn't this the case in every nation? The state has a monopoly on violence and is actually in control of the functioning of the country. By extensions to this, they also are able to "forceful" employ you.

Mind you, in many countries this isn't even relevant compared to what economic system the country is in. (heck, in some countries people swear allegiance to the literal ruler of a country before becoming a citizen).

And you can decline to interact with an extension of the US Government, unless there is a law that you can't, which there is. In the same way that there is a law that you can't decline to interact with a union.

My point is that the freedom of negative association does not supersede legally required actions whose performance involves associating with an individual or group.

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