Crimson Red Sports

For 14 million unemployed Americans and their families, this Labor Day will not be a happy one. Instead of enjoying a day off of work, they’re suffering a disturbing trend under the Obama economy: Jobs are not being created, the unemployment rate has not improved, and the economy is at a near standstill. Even worse, the labor market’s stall might be turning into a decline.

And today, in Detroit—which in July had the highest unemployment rate of any metropolitan area in the country—President Obama is due to stand with labor presidents including the AFL-CIO’s Richard Trumka, Teamsters’ James P. Hoffa, and the UAW’s Bob King to tout his bailout of the auto industry and his yet-to-be-disclosed plan to turn the economy around.

Private-sector workers have a right to unionize, of course. Management gets the union it deserves. But unionization has economic costs, as Sherk and Hederman write:

Unions make businesses less competitive and discourage investment. This reduces job growth. Studies show that jobs fall by 5–10 percent at newly organized firms. Going forward, employment grows by three to four percentage points more slowly at unionized businesses than at otherwise identical non-union companies.

I think the theory of unions when they first started in the 19th century was a good one, but it didn't take long for them to become corrupted and have remained so ever since.