Power and Privilege Labor Unions in America

This book reconsiders the economic role of labor unions by challenging fundamental assumptions.

Anyone who seeks a comprehensive treatment of the effects of labor unions, as well as the legal and economic reasons for those effects, would do well to read this book. Reynolds shows that unions prevent women and minorities from working in highly skilled jobs and cause reductions in the wages of non-union workers.

While agnostic on whether unions increase labor's share of national income, Reynolds presents conclusive evidence that labor's share of income in industries is not correlated with unionization (Chapter 7). Reynolds also explains why union corruption is widespread and why government regulation has done little to restrain it.

Morgan O. Reynolds was chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor. He is retired as a professor of economics at Texas A&M University. He is an adjunct scholar of the Mises Institute, and a senior fellow of the National Center for Policy Analysis based in Dallas, Texas.