This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, March 17th, 2009. I'm Caleb Brown.

The so-called card check legislation may make it easier for workers to unionize but it also would mean

destroying the price structures of stores like Target and Walmart would also

throw another wrench into labor relations in the US. So says Richard, a law professor at the University of Chicago and Cato Institute

adjunct scholar.

His new article on the Employee Free Choice Act is in the forthcoming issue of Regulation

magazine.

The basic understanding of label law before the 1935 passage of the waiver Wagner Act is was governed almost exclusively by common law principles and the key ones were these.

First it was freedom of contract between employer and employees to set whatever terms and conditions

they wanted.

And this tended to lead to optimal contracts in the sense that people would try to figure

out how to first maximize production and then divide the profits and if a monopolist was

doing too well on the manufacturing side new entry would bid the

wage is up again.

There was an antitrust constraint so that workers could not harmonize in order to restrict

output on their side and employers could not harmonize or cooperate in order to restrict output on their side and employers cannot harmonize or cooperate in order

to create cartels on their side.

Oddly enough, it was probably easier for labor to do this than management because they were

generally willing to use force in a way that management would not at least under those circumstances.

So you had a number of situations where tickets were designed to restrict entry and so forth.

And the third key piece to this was an action for inducement

to breach of contract which any employer could bring against any union who tried

...