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Interesting case. Now I disagree with unions (in most cases) and I believe you should be allowed to fire someone because they are a Christian and vice versa or because they have a skin color you don’t like.
But since there is a union involved I definitely think special protections should be involved. The flight attendant can’t bargain for herself and work in her chosen profession. It’s not a free market. It’s already at its core a coercive relationship where she’s forced to join the union.
Stones her union rep by government force. So she certainly should have to deal with the complaints of her constituency. Without knowing all the legalese here it feels like this was decided correctly.
But a core part of this to me comes from unions only existing because of government violence. Otherwise they wouldn’t exists.
There are a small amount of unions that would freely appear without government. Construction is one potential area as project may be short-lived and both sides of the transaction would prefer to work with an organization verifying worker quality.
The solution in a free market (works best when it’s a constant costs business like airlines and not firms with moats who can discriminate) would be for the wrong thinkers or wrong skin pigment bidding their labor cheaper than the right thinkers and the firm hiring the wrong thinkers makes more money.
Then the airline would hirer different workers. Unions primarily only exists because the Gov gives them special rights. And if the employer violates those rights they sue and the government then uses violence at some stage of the dispute to enforce their ruling.
Example? I gave one potential instance where the union provides worker training/quality standards for short term work.
Where do unions exists as you say?
I define that as a special rights.
It means the employer can not choose to hirer a cheaper worker. If you can’t fire then you can’t hire someone else either.
It basically violates free association. Unless the employer can fire the unionized employees for not accepting the wages they are offering.
American law does have many provisions that require employers to take steps to deal with the union other than "laugh at them". For instance, the rules prevent them from reaching out to another union as a method of recruiting replacement workers. Many states have closed shop rules which prevent employers from negotiating with other, independent, employees once a union has gotten 50%+1 votes.
And we shouldn't stay in the hypothetical world, on the ground, union picketing consistently veers into conduct that would get most other kinds of protestors thrown in the clink. They are known more for bullying and physical violence than say, your average pro life rally or those people trying to stop Burning man.
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