I agree corporations get off far too easy. And that is the fault of the government in many cases for not prosecuting them or letting them off with fines far below the profits of illegal activity.
"Controlling the supply of labor is very important if you want the wages to be at all decent." - I interpret that sentence very differently. I see it as controlling the labor supply is a great way to prevent the flow of labor that may be just as good and willing to work for less from entering the job market for this activity. It's also a great way to force higher prices upon your customers because no matter which provider/firm they go to they are likely to all have members of the union working there forcing the same wages.
This behavior at its core it anti-competitive. If they were in fact corporations this activity would be a felony. But as employees it is not. Just a thought.
The basic idea of collective bargaining isn't really illegal when applied to a employers in general, because it's already the norm on that side of the table. A group of businesspeople with mutual economic interest can legally "collude" when they decide what wages to offer employees, how to structure working conditions, how to carry out negotiations, etc., if they agree to form a legal partnership (you don't even need the newer legal fiction of unitary corporate personhood, just a classic partnership structure). Then colluding in business matters is not only legal, but expected. Why can't employees of such a partnership likewise "collude" when bargaining over wages and working conditions, forming into a single joined legal entity that sits opposite the joined legal entity of businesspeople on the other side of the table? It seems much more asymmetrical to say that the group of businesspeople can legally form a partnership to coordinate their economic activities for mutual gain, but the employees must each bargain individually and cannot form a, let's call it "workers' partnership", or union of workers, to likewise coordinate their economic activities for mutual gain.
One thing I find interesting: Will we will see some version of the odd asymmetries between corporate and union law tested out in the courts as the gig economy grows? A company providing labor, for example, can legally ask for exclusivity agreements. Aramark, a big catering contractor, does that frequently. A union can't, though; an exclusivity deal for employees, saying that catering staff can only be hired from a certain union, is banned as a "closed shop" under the Taft-Hartley act. What about a partnership of gig-economy workers? If they're not employees, it seems like they should be able to push for deals more like Aramark ones, even though unions can't do that.
The problem isn't "collusion" over wages for the union members. The problem is that the union is a gatekeeper for training for or holding that type of job, period. In this particular case, the law requires (for licensing) that prospective crane operators be apprenticed to a licensed operator before they're eligible for their own license. When all the licensed operators are union members, only union members can get licenses. That allows the union to get around the "closed shop" bits of Taft-Hartley, and allows them to restrict the supply of crane operators to their gain.
Well that has absolutely nothing to do with unions. That is the Government mandating that people be trained by particular people. That's a Government-imposed rule.
I personally think that laws banning closed shops are completely absurd and undermine peoples' freedom to negotiate contracts that suit them (which labour should have free access to, because of the massive unfairness of employment as a concept, and its inherent inequity between employer and employee).
But they have, and pretending that it's not their own fault for then turning around and effectively mandating a closed shop is absurd.
"Controlling the supply of labor is very important if you want the wages to be at all decent." - I interpret that sentence very differently. I see it as controlling the labor supply is a great way to prevent the flow of labor that may be just as good and willing to work for less from entering the job market for this activity. It's also a great way to force higher prices upon your customers because no matter which provider/firm they go to they are likely to all have members of the union working there forcing the same wages.
This behavior at its core it anti-competitive. If they were in fact corporations this activity would be a felony. But as employees it is not. Just a thought.