Hayek on Trade Unions: Social Philosopher or Propagandist?

Ray Richardson and B. C. Roberts

Chapter 12 in Hayek: Economist and Social Philosopher, 1997, pp 259-280 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract When reviewing one of Hayek’s books recently I became conscious of his willingness to make a number of important empirical judgments, particularly on trade unions, without accompanying them by any supporting evidence.2 As an example, just one among many, consider his remarkable claim (in ‘1980s Unemployment and the Unions’ — Hayek, 1991) that the legalised powers acquired by British trade unions prior to 1980 became ‘the biggest obstacle to raising the living standards of the working class as a whole ... the chief cause of the unnecessarily big differences between the best- and worst-paid workers ... the prime source of unemployment... [and] ... the main reason for the decline of the British economy in general’ (Hayek, 1991, p. 344).

Keywords: Trade Union; Wage Differential; Full Employment; Relative Wage; Union Wage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1997
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-349-25991-5_12

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9781349259915

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-25991-5_12

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().