Yet Another Anti-Labour "Study"
Sep 25, 2009
anti-labour, child, laws, markets, think-tank
The Fraser Institute has just released a new study in its Studies in Labour Markets series. Entitled “Labour Relations Laws in Canada and the United States,” the report claims to be an “empirical” comparison between labour law in the two countries.
The Institute states that this study (and the two previous to it) are part of a long-term project designed to evaluate “the extent to which labour relations laws bring flexibility to the labour market while balancing the needs of employers, employees, and unions.”
The study’s authors claim that “balanced” labour laws are crucial in creating and maintaining an environment that “encourages productive economic activity.” Nowhere do they seem to acknowledge, however, that labour relations are never “balanced” at all – management has always had a disproportionately greater amount of power and influence in the workplace.
The Institute seems to believe that the absence of labour regulations would be the preferred option in terms of the relationship between an employer and its employees: “Labour relations laws inhibit the proper functioning of a labour market and thus reduce its performance when they favour one group over another or are overly prescriptive through the imposition of resolutions to labour disputes rather than fostering negotiation among employers, employees, and unions.”
Since the aforementioned worldview is laid out as fact in the preamble to the study, one has to wonder why any such study was undertaken at all – labour laws are bad. Period.
The study goes on to claim that evidence from markets around the world demonstrates that those jurisdictions with “flexible” labour markets have more productive labour markets - ie. higher job creation rates, lower unemployment, and higher incomes. This results in a higher standard of living.
Of course, by “flexible” the authors mean markets lacking any substantive regulation whatsoever. Therefore, those markets with the least regulation – in this case the 22 Right-to-Work (RTW) states in the US – have the most “balanced” and “least prescriptive” labour relations laws. In fact, the Fraser Institute rates these states as almost perfect in terms of their lack of regulation.
Next best to these completely unfettered markets in the United States are the other 28 US states that are not RTW, but nonetheless have relatively “balanced” labour relations laws. Of surprise to nobody is that most Canadian provinces (with Alberta the least-bad of the bunch) score very poorly in the flexibility of their labour markets.
So, to sum up, legislation supporting workers’ rights in the workplace is bad. This is bad for labour markets, which in turn means it is bad for the economy. The message seems to be that we would all be so much better off if only management was allowed to do whatever it wants.
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