Under Chairwoman Lina Khan , the Federal Trade Commission has begun lawsuits and launched investigations into companies and industries that the Biden administration unfairly views as monopolies.
Organized labor has been conspicuously absent from the FTC 's target list. This should be surprising. After all, union bosses have a greater hammerlock on our economy than any of the companies the FTC is targeting. Khan should stop attacking successful companies and start focusing on the threat that organized labor poses to our entire economy .
Powerful unions threaten entire industries, and by extension the economy, with alarming regularity. UPS recently reached a tentative deal with the Teamsters labor union, avoiding a strike that would have been the largest in six decades by leaving the company without roughly 60% of its workforce. A UPS worker strike would have had catastrophic consequences for the economy and the global shipping and postal industries. Three in four of us receive at least one package per week and are growing increasingly dependent on package and basic goods delivery services. UPS delivers 20 million packages per day across the nation.
This is not the first time a powerful union like the Teamsters has threatened our economy, and it certainly will not be the last. Teamsters and other powerful labor unions, such as Randi Weingarten’s American Federation of Teachers, pose an unchecked threat to global and domestic markets. Consumers feel the impacts of union overreach every day. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union’s singular control over West Coast ports has increased shipping costs and driven up the price of imported goods. The United Auto Workers’s aggressive demands have increased vehicle costs for families struggling to make ends meet.
Unions create a monopoly over labor supply in certain industries by acquiring excessive bargaining power. This monopoly reduces competition for workers’ skills and artificially inflates wages and benefit expenditures. Union bosses claim that this is beneficial to employees. In reality, this artificial inflation reduces the number of union jobs available in an industry and increases the cost of goods and services to consumers. Unions also stifle innovation and productivity by imposing rigid work rules, resisting technological change, and discouraging merit-based rewards.
Every day, unions operate outside of the law through their long-standing exemption from antitrust law despite explicit recognition from the courts that the majority of union contracts are anti-competitive. Union bosses leverage this power to benefit themselves and their cronies at the expense of rank-and-file members. The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists union is on strike thanks to a vote by its board of directors, who can afford a lapse in income due to their multimillion-dollar earnings. Lower-profile actors, who now have no income until the strike is over, are left holding the bag.
Unfortunately for workers, it is unlikely that the Biden administration will tackle this problem in any serious fashion. Union bosses shove billions of dollars of their members’ money into Democrat campaign coffers each election cycle and demand a return on that investment. During his 2020 campaign, Joe Biden pledged to be the "most pro-union president you’ve ever seen." Khan recently attended a Writers Guild of America strike and hinted at future FTC action in the entertainment industry.
Despite the administration’s consistent pattern of putting powerful union bosses before workers, it is not too late to change course. The Biden FTC should stop chasing imaginary monopolies and investigate the true threat that union monopolies pose to our economy.
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Tom Hebert is the director of competition and regulatory policy at Americans for Tax Reform and the executive director of the Open Competition Center.
The FTC should focus on union monopolies not successful companies
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10.11.2023
Under Chairwoman Lina Khan , the Federal Trade Commission has begun lawsuits and launched investigations into companies and industries that the Biden administration unfairly views as monopolies.
Organized labor has been conspicuously absent from the FTC 's target list. This should be surprising. After all, union bosses have a greater hammerlock on our economy than any of the companies the FTC is targeting. Khan should stop attacking successful companies and start focusing on the threat that organized labor poses to our entire economy .
Powerful unions threaten entire industries, and by extension the economy, with alarming regularity. UPS recently reached a tentative deal with the Teamsters labor union, avoiding a strike that would have been the largest in six decades by leaving the company without roughly 60% of its workforce. A UPS worker strike would have had catastrophic consequences for the economy and the global shipping and postal industries. Three in four of........
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