George Leef’s latest Forbes column offers a brief history lesson on U.S. labor law, including its unintended negative consequences, before highlighting a proposal that could improve the current state of affairs.
The ultimate solution is to repeal the National Labor Relations Act. As I have argued here before, the NLRA is a horrible piece of special interest legislation that tramples all over the rights of workers and employers in order to help unions organize and extract money. There’s no baby in this bath water to worry about.
Sadly, there is no immediate prospect of repealing the NLRA, but Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Representative Todd Rokita (R-IN) have introduced a bill they call the Rewarding Achievement and Incentivizing Successful Employees Act – the RAISE Act. The bill amends the NLRA to allow employers to give individual workers pay increases without first pleading for union approval.
Regarding the bill, James Sherk and Mitchell Tu of the Heritage Foundation comment, “Economists have found that workers’ pay rises by an average of 6-10 percent after companies introduce performance-based pay. Employees work harder and earn more, and the company has higher profits.”
It would be fascinating to see what would happen if Congress were to pass the bill, forcing President Obama to decide whether to sign it and actually help stimulate the economy, or veto it to stay on the good side of Big Labor that puts so much money and manpower behind the Democratic Party.
