Monday, September 04, 2006

What Labour Day Should Really Be About

In an excellent column which appeared in the Vancouver Sun a few days ago, Jason Clemens of the Fraser Institute and Patrick Basham of the Democracy Institute put forward their views on Labour Day.

Instead of celebrating the “foibles of unionism” they argue, this day should be about celebrating the “wonders of human labour.”

“Human Labour coupled with imagination and the right institutions,” they write, “has provided societies with a previously unimaginable prosperity and standard of living.”

Yet, they go on, “Our Labour Day celebrations are more about unionism than the underlying labour. This misunderstanding between the relative value of labour and unionism is at the heart of a series of Canadian laws designed to benefit unionism, which unfortunately comes at the expense of average workers.”

Laws, for instance, which force employees to be unionized against their will or which force them through their dues, to finance the pet political causes of union bosses.

Of course, the best way to celebrate the wonders of human labours would be to change our laws to protect the individual rights of employees.

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