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Summary Of Union Myths By Thomas Sowell

1059 Words5 Pages

Cody Ziebko
Professor Lenz
English Composition 1
November 11, 2014 Speaking out mostly against unions Thomas Sowell’s article “Union Myths” attempts to give many reasons to dislike unions and claims in the end machinery will take our jobs. Begging the question he asks, “Why do we have secret ballots in the first place, whether in elections for unions or elections for government officials? To prevent intimidation and allow people to vote the way they want to — without fear of retaliation.” Giving his thoughts on what he believes to be the answer, this shows just one example in which the author uses fallacies to strengthen the article and throughout the entirety of the writing there is numerous accounts of misconceptions and fallacies.
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This seems to be an unjustified conclusion as the Employee Free Choice Act would cause three pro-labor changes to the National Labor Relations Act (White). Workers previously had free choice in the secret-ballot elections to decide whether a company would become unionized. The more recent Employee Free Choice Act took the power away from the employer and gave full control to the majority rule of the workers (White). Taking away the secret ballot is not taking away the worker’s right to free choice, it is giving the unions and their members more power over the employer’s executive decision to hold a secret-ballot election. In the article the author states “union representatives could simply collect signatures from the workers until they had a majority” (Sowell). This is untrue because in order for a representative to collect enough of a majority there would have to be a majority inside the company and therefore a unionized outcome would still arise as the outcome. Sowell in his writing said, “Workers in the private sector have voted to reject having a union represent them, the unions’ answer has been to take away secret-ballot elections.” From the evidence provided above it can be concluded that this statement is opinionated and

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