Copyright © 1973 by Arlington House, New Rochelle, New York.

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in connection with a review.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 72-91215

ISBN 0-87000-186-8

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

ONE OF this book’s conclusions is that fear of strikes inflicts far greater damage on the economic system than actual strikes. That is why its title is The Strike-Threat System, not The Strike System. The harmful consequences upon the capital structure alleged here may all be experienced without actual strikes. The mere right to disrupt the continuity of the productive process is having deplorable effects, regarding both the size of real income and equity in the distribution of that income.

FOR THE sake of clarity, I shall begin by presenting my case in the simplest terms. In so doing, I run the risk of losing those readers who tend at first to disagree and then are unwilling to suspend judgment. But for the reader prepared to face apparent heresies, disclosure of my position at the outset will be the most fruitful procedure. I shall explain why I believe that coercively imposed wage rates, or more directly enforced restraints on entry to any occupation, cannot redistribute income from “capital” in general to “labor” in general.

IN THIS and subsequent chapters, I propose to consider whether there are any arguments advanced in the formidable literature of the labor movement which might upset the reasoning briefly submitted in Chapter 1.

IN THIS chapter I shall challenge some of the hardier myths that shroud the history of the strike threat.

THE STRIKE, like the boycott, is a coercive or punitive device. It is deliberate disruption of the process of human cooperation by way of the collusive, coordinated withdrawal of labor from an organized activity. Hence “the strike-threat” is essentially a threat to disrupt unless (as Henry Simons once put it) “bribed” not to do so. “The strike-threat system” is a social order in which the right or effective power exists for those who can apply this method of coercion to seek private objectives by threatening to use it.

MY Theory of Collective Bargaining contains a history and critical discussion of the notion of “labor’s disadvantage in bargaining,” an idea which, first introduced in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, remains a powerful influence in popular opinion and has not disappeared from the field of labor economics.

IN AN age in which semantics is an academic discipline, it sounds almost platitudinous to refer to the misleading images which mere words often evoke. Yet I feel compelled to stress the adverse effects which one such image has had upon the quality of our thinking. There is an innocent, apparently neutral, nonemotive, word which, through the deceptive picture it conjures up, has caused greater intellectual havoc in the social sciences than any other misleading stereotype.

IN THIS chapter I explain that, when antitrust does not stand in the way, it is relatively easy to exploit actual or potential competing parties (competing workers or owners of competing assets) by shutting them out from an occupation, industry, or area, but extremely difficult (and, in general, impossible) to exploit complementary parties (capital by labor, or labor by capital) by shutting in workers or assets, that is, confining them to a particular occupation, industry, or area.

IS THE argument for the tolerance of the strike threat that the free market price of labor is “unfair”? Or is it alleged that the market price would otherwise be forced below the free market value? It is often difficult to tell. However, it is the second allegation that we are to consider in this chapter. Can the threat or use of the strike prevent the workers’ exploitation? Can it somehow achieve the results that a competitive labor market would bring about?