Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Labor roundup

  • Not headed to Gotham after all: “The RWDSU union was interested in organizing the Whole Foods grocery store workers, a subsidiary owned by Amazon, and they deployed several ‘community based organizations’ (which RWDSU funds) to oppose the Amazon transaction as negotiation leverage. It backfired.” [Alex Tabarrok]
  • “NLRB reverses course and restores some sense to its concerted activity rules” [Jon Hyman, earlier]
  • Among papers at the Hoover Institution’s conference last summer on “Land, Labor, and the Rule of Law”: Diana Furchtgott-Roth, “Executive Branch Overreach in Labor Regulation” discusses persuader, fiduciary, overtime, joint employer, independent contractor, federal contract blacklist, campus recruitment as age discrimination, and more; Price Fishback, “Rule of Law in Labor Relations, 1898-1940” on how reducing violence was a key objective of pro-union laws, anti-union laws, and arbitration laws; and related video; Christos Andreas Makridis, “Do Right-to-Work Laws Work? Evidence from Individual Well-being and Economic Sentiment” (“Contrary to conventional wisdom, RTW laws raise employee well-being and sentiment by improving workplace conditions and culture”) and related video;
  • Relief coming on NLRB’s Browning-Ferris joint employer initiative? [Federalist Society panel video with Richard Epstein, Richard F. Griffin, Jr., Philip Miscimarra, moderated by Judge Timothy Tymkovich; Philip Rosen et al., Jackson Lewis; earlier]
  • “Production company hires union labor after Boston officials allegedly threaten to withhold permits for music festivals. District court: Can’t try the officials for extortion because they didn’t obtain any personal benefit; the alleged benefits went to the union. First Circuit: The indictment should not have been dismissed.” [John K. Ross, IJ “Short Circuit,” on U.S. v. Brissette, earlier]
  • In 1922 a brutal mob attack resulted in the slaughter of 23 strikebreakers in Herrin, Illinois. Maybe something that should be taught in schools? [Robby Soave, Reason]

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One Comment

  • Regarding the Boston permitting authorities—the legal opinion is actually quite interesting. It goes on a long discussion of “wrongful” and what it means. I found that a little unfortunate. The idea that government officials can impose non-authorized (and illegal) conditions on permits simply because they want to support unionism and have it debatable as to whether that is “wrongful” is remarkable.

    And one concept that should be abolished from our thinking (well, maybe not that far) is this idea that supposed good motives on the part of government officials when they act lawlessly is somehow mitigating. It’s not. It’s a species of arrogance. If there are X conditions for permits, then adding Y and Z due to some official’s idea of how the world ought to work is every bit as lawless as doing so for venal purposes, and actually, in some ways, worse. If the motives are venal, they can just be paid off, and everyone goes on.

    If it is true that these two coerced the hiring of union employees, the punishment here should be very harsh–on the order of a decade or even more. There should be zero tolerance in our society for this sort of do-gooder thuggery. .

    • By SPO