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Who Protects the Worker?
241
tion, twenty-three percent of the people whose heart stops are suc-
cessfully resurrected and are released from the hospital and go back
to productive work in society.
We think that's pretty amazing. We think the facts speak for them-
selves. However, relating that to the medical community is sometimes
very difficult. They have ideas of their own.
More generally, jurisdictional disputes—what activities are
reserved to what occupation—are among the most frequent
sources of labor stoppages. An amusing example was a reporter
for a radio station who came to interview one of us. He empha-
sized that the interview had to be short enough to fit on one side
of the cassette in his cassette recorder. Turning over the cassette
was reserved to a member of the electricians' union. If, he said,
he turned it over himself, the cassette would be erased when he
returned to the station, and the interview lost. Exactly the same
behavior as the medical profession's opposition to paramedics,
and motivated by the same objective: to increase the demand
for the services of a particular group.
Collusion between unions and employers. Unions have some-
ti mes gained power by helping business enterprises combine to
fix prices or share markets, activities that are illegal for business
under the antitrust laws.
The most important historical case was in coal mining in the
1930s. The two Guffey coal acts were attempts to provide legal
support for a price-fixing cartel of coal mine operators. When, in
the mid-thirties, the first of the acts was declared unconstitutional,
John L. Lewis and the United Mine Workers that he headed
stepped into the breach. By calling strikes or work stoppages
whenever the amount of coal above the ground got so large as to
threaten to force down prices, Lewis controlled output and there-
by prices with the unspoken cooperation of the industry. As the
vice-president of a coal company put it in 1938, "They [the
United Mine Workers] have done a lot to stabilize the bitumi-
nous coal industry and have endeavored to have it operate on a
profitable basis, in fact though one dislikes to admit it their ef-
forts along that line have in the main . . . been a bit more
efficacious . . . than the endeavors of coal operators them-
selves."
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FREE TO CHOOSE: A Personal Statement
The gains were divided between the operators and the miners.
The miners were granted high wage rates, which of course meant
greater mechanization and fewer miners employed. Lewis recog-
nized this effect explicitly and was more than prepared to accept
it—regarding higher wages for miners employed as ample com-
pensation for a reduction in the number employed, provided
those employed were all members of his union.
The miners' union could play this role because unions are
exempt from the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Unions that have taken
advantage of this exemption are better interpreted as enterprises
selling the services of cartelizing an industry than as labor organi-
zations. The Teamsters' Union is perhaps the most notable.
There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, about David Beck, the head
of the Teamsters' Union before James Hoffa (both of whom
ultimately went to jail). When Beck was negotiating with brew-
eries in the state of Washington about wages for drivers of
brewery trucks, he was told that the wages he was asking were
not feasible because "eastern beer" would undercut local beer.
He asked what the price of eastern beer would have to be to per-
mit the wage he demanded. A figure, X dollars a case, was
named, and he supposedly replied, "From now on, eastern beer
will be X dollars a case."
Labor unions can and often do provide useful services for
their members—negotiating the terms of their employment, rep-
resenting them with respect to grievances, giving them a feeling
of belonging and participating in a group activity, among others.
As believers in freedom, we favor the fullest opportunity for
voluntary organization of labor unions to perform whatever
services their members wish, and are willing to pay for, pro-
vided they respect the rights of others and refrain from using
force.
However, unions and comparable groups such as the profes-
sional associations have not relied on strictly voluntary activities
and membership with respect to their major proclaimed objec-
tive —improving the wages of their members. They have suc-
ceeded in getting government to grant them special privileges and
immunities, which have enabled them to benefit some of their
members and officials at the expense of other workers and all

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Who Protects the Worker?
243
consumers. In the main, the persons benefited have had decidedly
higher incomes than the persons harmed.
GOVERNMENT
In addition to protecting union members, government has adopted
a host of laws intended to protect workers in general: laws that
provide for workmen's compensation, prohibit child labor, set
minimum wages and maximum hours of labor, establish com-
missions to assure fair employment practices, promote affirmative
action, establish the federal Office of Safety and Health Adminis-
tration to regulate employment practices, and others too numer-
ous to list.
Some measures have had a favorable effect on conditions of
work. Most, like workmen's compensation and child labor laws,
simply embodied in law practices that had already become com-
mon in the private market, perhaps extending them somewhat
to fringe areas. Others, you will not be surprised to learn, have
been a mixed blessing. They have provided a source of power for