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Actually, paradoxically, labor unions lower wages.  Who do you think pays for all those strikes, those elections, those efforts to organize, those slowdowns?  Those monies could have gone to the workers, but they do not.

Someone had better tell those Dartmouth jocks that labor unions are not the be-all and end-all that our friends the woke socialists think they are.

By Walter E. Block

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/04/when_student_basketball_teams_unionize.html

What’s the latest in labor union news?  The Dartmouth basketball team has formed a labor union.

Say what? Aren’t these labor organizations only for employees?  Isn’t it true that the Dartmouth basketball team members are students, not workers?  Yes, and yes, but in making these points, we reckon, is the absence of the fact that Dartmouth College is a member of the Ivy League, and they do things differently than ordinary mortals. Perhaps someone should check on whether the professors there, who led these student-athletes down this particular garden path, have been engaged in a bit of plagiarism, instead of rational teaching of their classes.  Maybe there’s something wrong with the water supply, if that is what they are drinking, in New England.

One way to look at this new initiative is that it is stakeholder theory gone berserk.  Stakeholder theory is the view that yes, the corporation should offer a fair return to the owners, the stockholders, but should also do so for complete strangers, and people who have no ownership rights in the company at all.  For example, workers, suppliers, customers, neighbors, the man in the street (not to say the man in the moon), and people halfway around the globe, to boot, for all we know.

The point is, if (Dartmouth) students can become employees, without working for an employer or being paid to do so, then anyone can.  Hey, I shop regularly at McDonald’s (I don’t, but work with me here).  I’m now going to sign up as many diners of this restaurant as I can, and form a labor union, organized against Ronald McDonald.  We’ll bargain for lower meal prices, cleaner restrooms, etc.  And woe betide management if they do not “bargain fairly” with me and my fellow rent seekers.

I also play chess at tournaments.  Ditto.  I’m gonna organize my fellow competitors, and we’ll demand reduced entry fees.  The National Labor Relations Board can hardly say me nay, given its support for the Dartmouth basketball players.

But I am just getting started.  I’m also a straight white male.  We’re gonna get organized and demand more respect from everyone else.  Pay, too.  I am also fat, bald, and bearded.  Yes, yet another “labor union” is in the offing.

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