Minimum Wage and Workers' Rights

Overview

Wages should be set by what the market will bear and not by some arbitrary government standard.  Current minimum wage laws actually harm working people reducing their options for employment.  Workers should be able to form private unions to peacefully negotiate with employers.  Their agreements should hold the weight of contract law, but unions should not be given special protections and privileges from the government.

Click here for a more detailed explanation of the effects of the minimum wage.

Opinions

"Unions don't cause high wages; high wages cause unions."

Milton Friedman

The minimum wage law does not mandate that anyone actually get a job at that higher wage. Clearly, it does low-skilled job prospects little good to have a higher wage if in the process they end up with no jobs at which to be earning that wage.

Jim Cox, Author of The Concise Guide to Economics

Minimum wage laws and other regulations hurt the very people they supposedly help -- those at the bottom of the income ladder.  They do this by raising the cost of hiring new workers, thus pricing those with the least experience out of the market.  Workers should have the right to join a union, but no worker should be compelled to do so and no employer should be compelled to negotiate with unions. 

Congressman Ron Paul, (R-TX)

Labor rules are acceptable so long as those involved consent, but are illegitimate if imposed on others.  Government minimum wage laws, compulsory collective bargaining, etc. are hence illegitimate.

David Theroux, The Independent Institute

Wages should be set by the market.  Workers should have the right to join, or not join, a union they choose without being subject to coercion of any kind.

Dave Nalle, Republican Liberty Caucus

Minimum wage laws are another unconstitutional government intervention.  They are wrong politically, and decidedly counterproductive economically.  Workers do not have any other rights than anyone else.  All individuals have the same rights, no matter what their occupations.  Labor unions, as long as they do not violate laws in restraint of trade and other workers’ rights, are OK.  Disallowance of their attempt to impose monopolistic wage rates for their members would mean that they would mostly be limited to being grievance committees and social organizations.

Richard Timberlake, University of Georgia

Government has no role.  It should be up to firms and private negotiations among parties without coercion of unions or government.

David Littmann, Mackinac Center for Public Policy

Abolish all government protections for unions.

Jeffrey Miron, Harvard University

Whenever the minimum wage has been increased, the most obvious result was an increase in the number earning less than the minimum.  Those displaced from job opportunities by a higher minimum wage have to abandon the job search or they have to compete in larger numbers for scarce jobs that pay less than the minimum wage.  Such intensified rivalry must push the lowest wages even lower.  As moral issues go, this "living wage" crusade is purely malevolent.

Alan Reynolds, The Cato Institute

Abolish the minimum wage. It's an interference with the right of contract and it prices out of the labor market all workers who skills or experience are worth less that Congress decrees. Labor unions should be permitted but their special privileges, especially the ability to coerce, extract dues from, and "represent" unwilling workers, should be stripped away.

Lawrence W. Reed, Foundation for Economic Education