Virginia Law Review In Brief
posted by Virginia Law Review
In Brief, the online companion to the Virginia Law Review, recently published a discussion centered around Professor Matthew T. Bodie’s article Information and the Market for Union Representation, published in the March 2008 Issue of the Virginia Law Review:
Professor Catherine Fisk’s response worries that “[w]hile Professor Bodie does an admirable job of explaining why information matters, the process will not be significantly improved if an argument for more information is taken as an argument to protect the status quo of misleading and one-sided information.”
In Rent-to-Own Unionism?, Professor Jeffrey M. Hirsch notes that “Bodie rightly decries the NLRB’s failure to ensure that employees have access to the information needed to make a fully informed decision whether to unionize,” but remains unconvinced “that the gains from a consumer approach to union elections are large enough to warrant the regulatory response it demands.”
In Professor Harry G. Hutchinson’s response, he identifies and addresses three shortcomings in Professor Bodie’s proposal: “First, unions may resist disclosure initiatives unless they are paired with a card-check certification program, which defeats the goal of enabling workers to make rational decisions about union membership. Second, Bodie’s conception of capture focuses on employer capture and ignores the problem of capture by outside interest groups aligned with union hierarchs. Finally, Bodie’s mistaken conclusion that unions secure better conditions for workers leads to a faulty assessment of the problem of free riding.”
To conclude the forum, in The Market for Union Services: Reframing the Debate, Professor Bodie writes “a brief reply to their efforts, in hopes that it is just the beginning of a much more extended conversation about the way we conceive of and regulate union representation.” He focuses on the various policy implications of his proposal suggested by the other authors, specifically the effects of mandatory disclosure, card-check and neutrality agreements, and the idea that more information could lead to less union representation, before once again calling for continued discussion.
April 13, 2008 at 2:32 pm
Posted in: Law Rev (Virginia), Law Rev Forum
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