You don’t have a “compulsion to join a subcontractor” bias. Why is that?
It is perfectly legal everywhere to hold interviews for a job and offer a person that job through an agency, where the prospective employee is required, as a condition of employment, to join a separate legal entity in order to fill the role interviewed for. The only time it even raises an eyebrow is if the interviewee doesn’t know this from the start.
Telling someone that to work in this place, in this job, you have to join XYZ staffing agency, is legal everywhere. Telling someone that to work in this place, in this job, you have to join XYZ union, is illegal in some places.
It isn’t illegal because forcing someone to join XYZ as a condition of employment is bad, it’s because the government wants to reduce the influence of unions.
That’s not a social good, that’s just an inaccurate statement of the restriction. (Again, the company gets to choose who can and cannot be hired; they do not have to agree to exclusivity, but when they agree to exclusivity, that’s when they’re making part of the hiring choice).
Again, you’re restating the restriction in a weird way rather than explaining why it’s a good thing. Why is that beneficial in a different way from eliminating other exclusivity?
“The social good is the wider freedom of restaurants to serve non-Pepsi products and for non-Pepsi companies to more freely choose where they sell their products.”
“The social good is the wider freedom of universities to serve non-Chartwell food and for non-Chartwell companies to more freely choose where they sell their food.”
“The social good is the wider freedom of the Olympic Games to sell their games to other TV channels and for non-NBC channels to more freely choose what airtime they provide.”
Are you in favor of eliminating all exclusivity arrangements in all commercial contracts? If so–if you want to dramatically limit the freedom to enter into agreements–you need to explain why. If not, you need to explain what makes union exclusivity so different from every other sort of exclusivity.
The rest of your post, about “great conditions and benefits,” is a distraction not worth addressing.
Say what now? This isn’t a matter of debate, with the possible exception of things like the Chinese Communist Party, and even there I’m not sure it’s debatable. It’s like saying, “Tigers aren’t canines.” To argue otherwise is to fundamentally misunderstand the words in the sentence.
Speaking as someone who works for a city government where we have approved vendors for just about everything, it get shady if the secretary, boss, or whoever is doing this of their own personal goodwill, as opposed to buying an official dozen donuts for an official staff meeting.
Put another way, if I randomly decide on the way into work to buy a couple dozen donuts out of my own pocket for my co-workers, that’s ok- I’m doing that in my capacity as @Bump, an all around good guy, and that’s ok. But if I have an official staff meeting where I’m agreeing to provide food or something, then yes I’m required to go through one of the approved vendors.
If the donut vendor started trying to crack down on/intimidate people bringing in stuff on their personal dime for their co-workers in no official capacity, then yeah, it would be problematic, IMO.
This is true, but I’m struggling to see how you’re tying this back to the union conversation. Are you making a broader point about labor, or nitpicking Chartwell’s exclusivity deal for the fun of it, or something else?
A pre-entry closed shop (or simply closed shop ) is a form of union security agreement under which the employer agrees to hire union members only, and employees must remain members of the union at all times to remain employed.
So if someone wants to be employed by a company, they must first join the union. Is there any guarantee of a job, or do they enter some sort of queue directed by the union leaders?
No business leader would freely agree to such a premise. They’d only do so under the hardship of their business going under.
We’re talking about freedom of association here. You’re saying it’s OK for an employer to compel membership in a separate entity as long as they arrange it the right way.
I have a problem with that. Compelling membership in separate entities is either acceptable behavior, or it is not acceptable. Saying it becomes acceptable by the act of flowing wages through that separate entity’s bank account is a cop out.
RE: the second paragraph, so what? Businesses sign all sorts of contracts as a way to keep their businesses afloat. Are we going to claim that any contract signed as a way to keep the business operating is not freely signed? That’s gonna rock capitalism to its core.
Huh. A correction to the correction: not all closed shop workplaces require union membership prior to hiring. From that wikipedia link:
The OP should be corrected to read that a post-entry closed shop is a valid exercise of worker power. If someone wants to change that to a shop that requires agency fees of nonmembers, I’m cool with that as well, but for practical reasons; in theory the exclusivity behind a closed shop seems a perfectly legitimate sort of exclusivity, and its legal status is primarily based on anti-labor activism on the part of business owners.
Only 10% of workers in the USA are members of a union. I think ensuring that that 90% retains access to all the available jobs with the option of freely choosing union membership or not is a good thing.
We aren’t going to agree on this. You would prefer that they can be compelled to join unions to work for certain organisations.
I think commercial entities and the contracts they enter into are a different subjects to individuals employment contracts. Contract law and employment law precedents think so to.
I mean, the union looks out for the workers and the temp agency doesn’t, but for purposes of exclusivity in contracts, no: they should be treated the same. If one of them can make an exclusive contract with a company, then the other should also be able to do so.