The emphatically pro-market CEO of the successful Whole Foods chain, John Mackey, is under fire because he opposes unionization of his stores. Today’s Wall Street Journal has the story here.
Mackey is quoted as saying, “The u nion is like having herpes. It doesn’t kill you, but it’s unpleasant and inconvenient.” Furthermore, he says, “The choice is not ‘Work for WFM on our terms or starve, but rather ‘Work for us on the terms we offer, or work for other employers on the terms they offer.”
Exactly. In a free society, business owners are entitled to determine the terms of employment every bit as much as a home owner is entitled to determine who he will or will not allow into his house. If Mackey wants no union to deal with, he should be free to make that a condition of employment. Workers who are willing to accept that condition can work for Whole Foods and workers who think that they must have union representation are free to seek employment with firms that don’t have Mackey’s aversion to herpes.
Suppose that the employees in the AFL-CIO insisted that they had a right to drink alchohol during the work day and the head of the AFL-CIO replied that not drinking alcohol was a non-negotiable term of employment. I’d side with the AFL-CIO in that dispute. It is just as much entitled to demand a booze-free workplace as Mackey is to demand a union-free workplace.
The problem, of course, is that in the “some animals are more equal than other animals” world of politics, freedom of contract for employers has been whittled away.
