Scabs are an impossiblity under German style, mandated labor agreements -- everybody must work under union contract. We made the Germans do it, post 1945. It is a very simple idea. When are we going to catch on?

Another need for legislation mandating unions is that the labor force today -- especially the most oppressed segment -- is largely made of old women and single mothers: not exactly the most militant, old style labor ass kickers.

I remember a strike called by my, then, Teamster local 804 presdient Ron Carey. I had a funny feeling he was only calling it to allow the membership to let off some steam. He already had a $17 a week increase in hand (multiply by 5 in today's dollars -- not bad, heh?) but explained: "I'm not saying there's a dollar there." Just as I suspected the next day there was one more dollar there -- probably with a wink and nod from management, again, just to let some strike steam out of these guys.

Imagine telling 804 that the store cannot let us out for two hours after our shift -- every night! -- because management does not want to pay a supervisor to stay around and unlock the door. We would have -- as the old saying goes -- made them a new door anywhere they wanted.

Slightly less crazily militant old ladies and single mothers may need legislation to mandate unionization if they are ever going to get there.

How is it "union busting" to choose to hire someone else? That's like saying that choosing to eat at McDonald's is "Burger King" busting.

Furthermore, the union workers didn't just protest, they harassed and intimidated workers, interfered with the work, and generally made it impossible for the job to get done. Do you really consider it a fair labor practice for unions to use such bullying tactics? If so, would you consider it fair for someone to stand outside your home and harass you all day, every day?

Look I support labor unions--as voluntary associations of laborers who work together and negotiate together to secure better contracts. But saying that people should be forced to join labor unions because old women and single mothers aren't militant enough for your taste is an unfair imposition of your beliefs on others. If you want to recruit those workers to join unions, by all means, do so, and if their bosses try to stop them, there are laws to protect them. But it's an insult to women and the elderly, not to mention the poor in general, to say that because they're not "ass-kickers," they need a law to tell them what to do.

Amy- You're last paragraph just sounds bizarre, like throwing around "mom and applie pie" when we were talking about a conflict between a multinational media corporation and a bunch of local construction workers.

The union busting by MTV was that they refused to work in Philadelphia specifically to avoid signing a union contract. Somehow, when big corporations uses aggressive tactics to pursue mergers or defeat rivals, that's applauded as ruthless capitalism, but when workers fight hard to maintain union standards, they are accused of "bullying."

Poor Viacom. Picked on by bullies holding signs. I sure don't buy that as "bullying." Viacom was cheap and wanted cheap employees, and when they couldn't get it, they ran to get non-union labor somewhere else.

It is MTV that was attempting to bully Philadelphia. They were trying to say, either we work non-union or we take away the jobs. That's typical corporate bullying.

As long as corporations engage in that kind of economic blackmail, I fully support all union efforts to demand decent wages.

Sorry if that's "too real" for MTV.

From the Philadelphia Enquirer:

Ashley Singer, a production assistant, said in an affidavit that when she arrived at the Third Street entrance at 7:45 a.m. March 8, men wearing signs from the carpenters' union were outside.

One "man physically forced me away from the door by pushing his body into my arm that was reached for the door," she said in her statement. She rang the doorbell and asked contractor Scott Caputo to open the door from the inside. "The man blocking the door looked at Scott Caputo and said I was not going to make it in today and said to Scott Caputo that, 'If you... try to come out here, you're not going to get back in either,' " she said.

Do you have evidence to refute her statements? Do you believe that unions have the right to assault workers and prevent them from entering their workplaces?

Finally, how is it "economic blackmail" for Bunim/Murray (the production company actually in charge of the hiring. MTV, as it turns out, had nothing to do with the decision.) to say "we've chosen our construction company, and that's who we want to use. If the city of Philadelphia refuses to protect our worksite from threats and intimidation by rival companies, we will pull out and find a place where we can work unmolested"? You may not like their choice of companies, but they have the right to choose it, and law enforcement should have kept union protestors from interfering. The fact that they didn't is why Bunim/Murray pulled out.

Oh, and MTV came back to the table and capitulated. As of Tuesday, they've given in to union demands and will hire union workers to do the show in Philly. So you got your way.

Oh, and PS, please don't attribute views to me that I haven't expressed. I don't support big corporations doing anything because I don't support government endorsement of the fictitious entity of "corporation." I'm on your side against big business in most cases because without government protectionism, those big businesses wouldn't be able to exist and operate with impunity. However, the fact that they do exist, and even the fact that they sometimes do bad things, does not give union members the right to assault and threaten their employees.

So a union person barricaded a door of a building and wouldn't let people in? So what? Working people face security guards ready to manhandle them any time they try to exercise speech on private property. You don't think the union guy wouldn't have been grabbed and manhandled if he had walked inside the MTV office?

Oh but it's okay to manhandle people to protect property rights? But if anyone blocks a doorway to protect their union rights, suddenly they are thugs?

The double standard on use of force to protect property rights is exactly where most libertarians fall down on their supposed anti-government stance. Rent-a-cops are free to manhandle protesters when they violate company property through trespass, but unions are told even passive blockades make them thugs.

I don't buy the double standard.

Whereas I don't consider it a double standard. If I punch you in the face, that's a crime. If I somehow manage to punch myself in the face, that's not a crime. However, if you physically restrain me to prevent me from punching myself, that's also a crime because I have the right to do as I please with my own body. The correlary to that is that I have the right to do as I please with the fruits of my own labor, in this case, private property rented or purchased with past earnings. I have the right to use force to protect that property because I (or someone who chose to give, sell, or rent it to me) earned it. You do not have the right to storm my private property and threaten me because you do not have a similar claim over it.

There's no such thing as freedom of speech on private property. You don't have the right to stand in the middle of my living room spouting off your political opinions, and you don't have the right to do so on my property at my business either.

But even if I take as a given your lack of recognition of private property, that still doesn't make it okay to assault people. "He hit me first," is not a defense past the age of 5. Just because security guards are mean to protesters and keep them out of the building, that doesn't make it right for protesters to intimidate some poor woman just trying to do her job. After all, if you hit me, that doesn't give me the right to beat up your sister. And I'm not sure what "union rights" you think are being protected by their actions. The right to take all jobs in the city? Where did that right come from?

And incidentally, what about the rights of the non-unionized workers? These people are paid less, are less skilled, and have fewer opportunities than union workers. And limits on unionized workers in skilled trades like metalworking and electrical make it nearly impossible for them to become union workers. Are they just SOL?

It seems like you and I can't even begin to accept the same first principles, like the right to associate (or not associate) with people one chooses, the right to private property, and the right to work unmolested. To some extent, that's going to make this debate futile, although I'm still enjoying it as an intellectual exercise.

But we're not talking about free speech in your living room; we are talking about free speech in a corporate office with government-guaranteed limited liability and all the benefits of incorporation.

But as I said, it's the double standard of pro-business libertarians. They are all for state violence in defense of property rights, but complain about any pressure by unions to defend their job rights. Yes- job rights; you may not believe in them, but many workers do.

As for non-union workers; I love the "right to work for less money" bleeding heart pro-capitalists. If the jobs are done union, there are more union jobs, so the non-union workers can then get better paying union jobs. It's not a zero-sum game.

Well, lucky for me, it seems I'm not a "pro-business libertarian." Like I said, I don't believe in government guaranteed limited liability and enforced incorporation. But the fact that they exist doesn't negate the private property rights of the business owners, just like the fact that the police protect your property from robberies doesn't negate your private property rights over your living room.

And even if your plan works, what are the non-union workers supposed to do for the next few months or years until the unions decide to increase their membership rolls? I'm not asking you to renounce your beliefs, merely to admit that those beliefs have costs, and that the people most likely to pay those costs are the poorest workers.

The equation of the living room with a business is the problem with your argument. The 4th Amendment talks about people being "secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects" with the idea that personal privacy is crucial to liberty, but this is not meant to extend to social spaces where a whole set of democratic regulations and conflicting interests come into play.

Whatever the status of the law as it is-- and in places like California for example, unions and other folks have the right to enter private malls to distribute information to the public as a right under that state Constitution-- the point is that I think enforcing property rights to protect union busters is a bad thing.

As for the "poorest workers" losing out with unions, that's ridiculous. They are the biggest gainers. Blacks are more likely to be in a labor union than white folks. Just look at some of the data in my Why Unions posts to the right for examples of this fact.

The irony of the argument is that "union members" are inherently making more than "non union members" because they have fought to raise their wages-- but we are not talking about some rigid status difference. Expanding the number of unionized workers increases the number of people making more money-- period -- a net gain of people doing better.

It's sophistry to talk about denying poor people jobs, when what you are talking about is making the jobs themselves pay less, so whoever gets them will make less money. It's a tautological game that just serves lowering pay for the maximum number of people.