Although trucking deregulation has significantly reduced the Teamsters’ power, not a little bit of that power remains in place. Here’s a letter to the Wall Street Journal.
Editor:
Unionized truck-driver Keith Hernandez writes that, in an attempt to “put profits over people,” driverless-truck companies threaten his and other Teamster members’ “good union wages and benefits” (Letters, June 18).
Mr. Hernandez should look in the mirror, for it is he and his fellow Teamsters who put profits over people. The profits are Teamster members’ excessively high wages paid as a result of their union protecting them from competition. The people are the millions of Americans who now pay for delivery services the unnecessarily high prices that result from this restriction of competition.
If driverless-truck companies successfully break this hold of the Teamsters, these companies will indeed profit, but they’ll do so only insofar as they lower the prices that hundreds of millions of American people pay for delivery services.
Labor unions generate profits for their members at the expense of the people. Successful entrepreneurs generate profits for themselves only by enriching the people.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
