Collective bargaining is a free market concept so long as participation is not compulsory, and so long as no law or union contracts can be created that abrogate rights of non-participating, non-collectivized (competing) individuals. In that sense, most unions, as constituted, are not free market at all. The notion that you cannot individually bargain with a firm as a result of a law, and not a voluntary contract between parties, means that for as much I love Hostess products, I would rather see it, and everyone who dug their artificial protectionist heals in, as casualties. That void will be filled soon enough.
Here is the thing that constantly leaves me shaking my head in both wonder and disgust. Under a fiat currency debauching regime, labor is among the very last to adjust to currency devaluations, as they are perpetually forced to bargain for higher nominal wages to keep pace with monetary inflation, and only after price inflation has fully permeated the economy, and their wealth and purchasing power has been siphoned away.
If neither Keynes nor any other currency debauching economist, banker or politician had ever existed, a sound currency in a growing economy would naturally favor labor. As prices fall, wages would be the very last to eventually fall. It would be FIRMS that are perpetually forced to bargain for lower nominal wages, as they ask employees to take pay cuts in nominal value, not exchange value. That should be a union-members wet dream, as productive labor would find itself perpetually in the cat-bird's seat. And yet, ironically, union members I have spoken with (out of those who at least have a basic understanding of how a fiat currency works--against them) still tend to be opposed to a sound currency. When it boils right down to it, they don't mind at all that other wage earners are being perpetually ripped off, so long as a union is in place to make sure that they get theirs. Thus, they are very much anti-labor in the aggregate.
