and your team so this has been a wonderful evening because of all of you coming together for all the various reasons you're here. so thank you very much. drive safely.

hello, i'm robert mackenzie and welcome again to the fine old harper library in the university of chicago. a group of guests have come together to see and to discuss the latest film by milton friedman in his series to choose. in this, he examines working of the labor market and the role of labor unions. and again comes up with some controversial views. in answer the question, who protects the worker.

people who earn their living in a modern, heavy industry, seldom engage in the kind of back breaking toil that was the everyday lot of most workers a century ago. and yet they far more what has produced these improvements. the offhand reaction of most people is likely to be that labor unions are largely responsible for the enormous progress that workers have made in the past two centuries, but clearly, at least for the united states, that cannot be true. after all, in 19th century, when workers very well, there were hardly any labor at all. and even today, no more than one out of four or five workers is a member of a trade, and the remainder do very well indeed. achieving the highest level of living in the world.

labor unions do, of course, benefit their members, but far from being a key to the developed and of the modern society, they are a throwback to an pre-industrial era, to the agreements among craftsmen in the middle ages, or to go back even earlier, more 2000 years ago to the agreement among medical men in greece. from the tiny greek island of kos, the coast of asia minor is four miles away in the mist. 2500 years ago, a hospital and medical school flourished on kos. the great hippocrates, the founder of modern medicine, worked there. legend has that hippocrates taught his students in the shade of this plain tree. he welcomed anyone who wanted to learn. so long as they paid his fees. there's another legend that.

saint paul stood here and preached the gospel of christianity. what isn't is that hippocrates and his followers studied medicine on the road forward to becoming a science. when hypocrites died at the age of 104 or so legend has it, this island was full of medical people, his students and disciples. competition for custom was fierce. some 20 years after he died they got together and constructed a code of conduct. they named it the hippocratic oath. after their old teacher master every new physician. before he could start practice. came to this spot back here in front of those columns and took the oath. the oath was full, fine ideals

for protecting the patient, but it also had a couple of other things in it. listen to this one i will impart knowledge of the art to my own sons and those of my teachers and to disciples bound by a stipulation and oath, according the law of medicine. but to none others. today we'd call a closed shop or listen to this one, referring patients suffering from the agonizing disease of kidney or bladder stones. i will not cut persons laboring under the stone, but we'll leave this to be by men who are practitioners of this work. a nice market sharing agreement between physicians and surgeons. hippocrates must turn in his grave when a new class of medical men takes that oath. after all, he taught anyone, provided only they paid his tuition.

he would strongly have objected to the kind of restrictive practices that physicians all over the world have adopted to protect their custom in the united states. the american medical association has for decades been one of the strongest labor unions in the country, keeping down the number of physicians, keeping up the costs of medical care, preventing competition by people from outside the profession. with holes in it all, of course, in the name of helping the patient. if you sit up, know you feel i've got support. without warning any, one of us may suddenly need medical. if we do. we want the very best care can get. but who can give us that.

is it always a graduate of an expensive medical school who has a union card called a medical license? or might it be someone like this? a trained paramedic working for a private enterprise organization? rendering emergency care? and hopefully we'll get a very contract out of that. many such provide primary care for emergency cases in the united states. this particular paramedic team attached to a fire department in southern california. they're good at their job, but it's not unusual to local physicians objecting or monitoring the paramedics responding. they take a hippocratic here in the united states and they believe that they should be the one that is treating their patients, should be the one that saves that patient's life. and if someone else does, it, it just kind of interferes with everything that they've been

taught. about. but why should medical care be a monopoly licensed physicians? shouldn't anyone who is capable of providing effective help be free to do so. take a blood. test and we want to see them go down. just leana, when we got here, you can be sure that no one will be able to stay in this business long unless he can by performance that he's doing a good job. joe dolphin knows that well. we've taken some statistical samples, the kind of effectiveness have in california. give me an example that. in one district of california that we serve, which is a county which is populated to the extent of 580,000 people before the introduction, paramedics less than 1%. the patients that suffered a cardiac arrest for their stuff

lived through their hospital stay and were released the hospital. with the introduction of paramedics just in the first six months of operation and 23% of the people whose heart stops are successfully resuscitated and are released from the hospital go back to productive work in society. we think that's pretty amazing. next request. we think the facts. speak for themselves. however relating that to the medical community is sometimes very difficult. they have ideas of their own respirations. 12 and regular. right. all right. looks good to me, too. okay. scripps, how are you reading this, doctor? okay. you guys ready to go? that's it for us. script says code to go to party disputes between union and nonunion workers are not always as high minded as between organized medicine and joe dolphin. one day in 1978, workers at a coal loading dock on the ohio river in southern continued to

work after the mine workers union had called a strike that night. a crowd of armed union men invaded the site site and then they fire in a little building setting. after they fired mr. teagarden car here and threw another firebomb into the trailer. others were headed running back and were firing trucks and shooting holes through tire with handguns and going back beyond the loading dock here. and while standing back in their, i could hear them shooting in the air, escaping from truck to force. there were so many people moving around and doing so much damage and setting so many things on fire. a whole lot of things going on at one time. we should have been heavily armed and shouting these people did something to such destruction. i wouldn't have believed the rabble rouser would have

gathered together that many irresponsible people to come on the person's property, do this kind of destruction until i had finally seen it done. these workers are on the other side. the union fence. they're building to social security offices in baltimore. on this government project. everyone's a union worker. they rely on their union to protect them against competition from nonunion labor. but some local contractors see a very different side to a closed. we feel that anybody should be denied a choice. and we feel every man should have the choice if he wants to be unionized or not, not legislated, not saying he must belong to a union if he'll want to. when you tell a man he belong to a union or he must do, or that you're taking freedoms away from this man, a freedom of choice. this business man here to choose

me to do business with me. all needs this right to choose. do business with each other and by the same token, our employees have the right choose whether they want unionization, not. on this government site, authorized personnel only really means unions. personnel on the. unions have long recognized that the surest and effective way for them to get power without violence is have the federal government on their side. that's why so many strong unions have made it a point to locate their headquarters, close to the source of power. the heads of the trade that cluster near capitol hill know this place very well. it is the room assigned to the committee on education and labor of the house of representatives

and it is where much of our labor legislation is discussed and shaped before a presentation to congress. per i know rooms like this myself very well because i've often testified before congressional committees and they all meet in rooms like this up there on the podium is where the members of the house or the senate sit. of course, behind them there will be clustered bunch of aides, as you know, there are something like 30 to 40 aides for. every single member of the house and the senate. and very often in one of these committee rooms, there'll be almost nothing but aides around. when i've sat in the bear pit over here where the witnesses said to testify, sometimes thought that maybe the whole thing was a show being conducted by and for aides with an occasional member of the house or a senator dropping by to see what the show was all about. this is a room in which hearings held on the most recent increase

in the minimum wage. for example. who do you suppose testified here in favor of a higher wage rate? do you suppose it was representatives, the poor people who were supposedly helped by the bill? for not a bit of it. the major people testifying for it, for of the american of labor, the the major organization of unions in this country. there's hardly a member of one of their trade unions who worked for a wage anywhere close to the minimum wage. despite all the rhetoric about helping poor, they were in favor of a higher minimum wage for a very reason because it would protect the members of their unions from competition from the lower and lesser people. that's.

to see the effects of minimum wage laws in action. go to a place like this where. they sell quick and inexpensive food. you don't need much training to start work on job. it to be a traditional training ground. the unskilled. not any longer. thanks to the minimum laws and from the worker's point of view the people that it was to help and the people in some cases hurting the most. such minorities, unskilled labor and young people. and businessmen. especially small businessmen, cannot afford to bring in these people at. at the high wage. at the higher wage. they are willing, however, to take apprentices to train them. that's very difficult to do now. under the minimum laws, the people who are discriminated against by a high minimum wage rate are the people with low skills, which includes a disproportionate of --.

indeed, i have for long believed that the minimum wage rate was a most anti -- piece of legislation on our statute books, not by intention, but through its results. to say that thank you. and to the the more they get paid, the better people can live. whether they're paid in cash or in-kind. the staff restaurant and the department of housing and urban development in washington, dc. these people are eating subsidized food like all civil servants. federal workers get extremely generous fringe benefits. they have also had an increase degree of security. it's been almost impossible to fire civil servant. in january 1975, a typist in the environmental protection agency was so consistently late for work that her supervisors

demanded she be fired. it took 19 months to do it. and this incredible. 21 foot long chart lists the steps that had to be gone through to satisfy the rules and all the management union agreements. this is really of typical horror stories. what it amounts to, and it shows the. it shows the number of steps she got to go through the process involved girl supervisor his, deputy director, his director, his director of personnel, operation, the agency's branch chief, an employee relations specialist, a second employee relations specialist at a special office of investigations and the director of the office of investigations. there's veritable telephone directory needed. was paid with taxpayers money. having a system where the who could invent a better protected job than this one before it came to its end. we now have a time certain at which the decision has been made within the agency half hour's drive out of washington.

you come to montgomery county, where many very senior civil servants live. it has the highest average family income of any county in the united states. of the people live here who are employed. one out of every four works for the federal government. like all civil servants, they have job security. salaries linked to the cost of living. a fine retirement plan. also linked to the cost of living. and many manage to qualify for security as well. becoming double dippers. many of their neighbors are also here because of the federal government. congressmen. lobbyists. top executives of corporations with government contracts. as government expands, so does this neighborhood neighborhood. government protects its workers. just as trade unions. their members. but both it at someone else's

expense. it doesn't have to be that way. -- parsley is an engineer. he designs memory systems for computers. he works for intel corporation, one of many companies which have sprung up south of san francisco in a place that they call silicon valley. all these companies have one thing in common. they're trying to get engineers to work on their projects. you know, myself i'm one of these engineers. and so obviously i get, uh, i get letters in the mail, phone calls, the like where people are are trying to get me to leave intel and go to this particular company. one of the companies right across the here inner cell is one of the new companies that's forming in this area. and they're hunting for people just like myself to come in. and what they do is they'll offer you like typically a 30%

fire salary, stock options, a bonus and several things to get you to move to their company. and since it's not really a move, it's very easy to do because you're only across the street. it's not a big traumatic thing where you're leaving. let's say one city and moving to another city. it's fairly very straightforward. in a free labor market, everybody benefits when the market is restricted. things are very different. those mexicans are heading for the united states side, the border. there are real about permitting unrestricted immigration into a welfare state. it's one thing when people come for jobs and are on their own, as was the case most of american history. it's thing when a welfare system support them come what may at the expense of other people. yet look what happens when you try to interfere with market forces. well, there's several fairly

large groups of aliens on the hillsides waiting toward the dark to set in. other groups that are still on the mexican side of the border, they'll be coming in shortly. imagine. we have electronic sensors in along the hillsides and along the most traveled trails to alert us when there's alien crossings. and from the sensor, we work ahead of them, try to head them off. they're right on the sensors of what they stand for. okay. you never have. i say 100 or so here. thank you for that that. clarity. think. this not a case of good guys

against, bad guys. the officers are simply trying to do their duty. the poor mexicans are driven by hunger and attracted the prospect of jobs. you do good work. the law enforcing people have an impartial job. astrophage and water. they're going to run. they're to get picked up, sent back. but sooner or later, they're going to make it. time. one minute after the next. you know. in one month, in 78, 16,000 illegal immigrants were arrested this stretch of the border. but believe it or not, the border patrol estimated that nearly 200,000 found their way through to places like this in northern california, where was work? waiting for them. hey. illegal mexican immigrants are not cheap labor around here. many earn more than the minimum wage law demands they can do so

because farmers need many extra hands during the harvest season. and there's a shortage of domestic labor available. jill hannam and her partner run a farm produces plump california raisins and they're spending legislation which would make it illegal for farmers to hire undocumented workers and supposedly would impose $1,000 fine per worker on the farm? i can't imagine that it would actually go through. if it did, there'd be a full scale farmers revolt around here. it's matter of fact, last year there was quite a bit of activity in the kerman area, which is about miles west of fresno. many of the farmers banded together and as much as warned, the border patrol to stay off their property and they were willing to back that up with guns. i'm afraid they were very upset about it and because their

situation was desperate, they needed the workers and they need the work to be done. and the border was interfering with that. they saw it. violence employers to assure the availability of workers is no more justified than violence by trade unions to assure their members jobs. but violence is one of things you are very likely to get when you try to prevent a deal between people who have jobs offer and people who are looking jobs. 15 years ago, the economy of spartanburg, south carolina, was stagnant. it depended on peaches and cotton. wages were lower. the national average and unemployment was higher than the average. then dramatically the picture changed. people in spartanburg decided to make their town a center of free trade. they did this using a new right

to work law, eliminating many restrictions. labor. the city council cut taxes to the bone. they advertise the fact that spartanburg was a place worth investing in in by any standards, let alone spartanburg. the result was revolutionary in industrialists came from germany, switzerland all over the world to build factories, set up plants. the workers of spartanburg clearly benefited from the new industries. the first to notice were the people who owned and ran the traditional industries. in terms of the business, it has been a problem for us. it means that we've got to be on our toes. we've got to be sure that we are providing good workplace and we are providing jobs and what have you and that we are running as competitive as possible. i think that from the workers

point of view, this is certainly them with more opportunities to have a market, their product, their labor their expertise. suddenly, in free market workers who once not find jobs were now at a premium. everyone benefited and employers alike and the town thrived. one of the workers who arrived in spartanburg was mr. juma. he came as a refugee from, idi amin, uganda. we came in this country just for the $139. i had a family and my wife and two kids. and as soon and we came with only four bags of clothing, which was 40 pounds each bag.

we were not to take more than that. we have to leave all our possession, all property in the uganda. and myself i just came down to flour baking company and i was hired as a laborer to work in the at $2.49 since. but our. 25 years later he was chief accountant of the company in a free. his best protection his real wealth turned out to be his skills and his desire to use them. america has to offer me a lot of things and this is a country. i came in this country penniless today. i owned a house. i owned cars. my wife has got a good. i myself. i got a good job. and the children are schooling and has been working so fine.

i believe this is because the opportunity. this is, however, one still work in this country. there's a lot of opportunity. when unions higher wages for their members by entry into an occupation. those higher wages are at the expense of other workers who find their opportunity reduced. when government pays its employees higher wages, those higher wages are at the expense of the taxpayer. but when workers get higher wages and more civilized working conditions through free market when they get them by firms competing with one another for the best workers, by workers competing with one another for the best jobs, those higher wages are at nobody's expense. they can only come from higher productivity, greater capital investment, more widely diffused skills. the whole pie is bigger. there's more for the worker, but there's also more for the

employer. the investor, the consumer. and the taxpayer. that's the way a free market system distributes the fruits of economic progress among all the people. that's the essence of the age of the worker. the discussion is already underway here at the university of chicago. so let's join it while we try to free system without labor unions. we tried it back in the 1920s and into the thirties and it led the world into the biggest economic disaster its ever seen in modern times. now, i don't think we're talking free market or labor unions. we're talking free market with or without labor unions and a free market system without unions is a total disaster. let's get other reactions to this now. around the group is free market system. milton friedman has been arguing i think not labor unions best protect the interests and serve the interests of the worker. walter williams, your reaction?

well, i think clearly labor unions serve the best interests. workers who happen to members of labor unions at the expense of workers who are exclu retired from being members of labor unions. ernest green, i don't think you can have a democratic society without having trade unions. i think if you look at any democratic country, it's essential to right of workers to organize. i think it's consistent if we are to maintain a democratic country. those freedoms that the right of workers to organize is is a primary objective that we have to maintain. bill brady well, if they are so vital, why are so many union members leaving the. why are they? why are they losing so many certificate? why are the unions losing so many of these certificate elections? why has the number of union members declined so precipitously from 23% of the labor force to what is it now less than 19 18%.

well, it depends whose figures you're reading, but workers aren't leaving the labor movement in droves. and we're the union is not declining precipitously. my union, the united steelworkers of america, the major unions in the country, many small ones are out organizing and growing. the mix of work, the mix of work in the society has we have some employers, as we saw the film, who can't wait to rush off to the south and try to get anti-union environment and invest their money in prosperity in the south instead of in the north. and surely if invest money anywhere you're going to have prosperity. so we also have a mix in terms of civil service and service workers where we have employers who have rumbled on that i don't know. i don't know that i don't know that if you invest money anywhere, you're going to have prosperity. i don't think that that's a given as you to be dealing in eight and a and apprentice that that is incorrect but we haven't got one of the way. wait a minute. the key question we're discussing is who protects the worker?

is it the labor union or free market that best serves his interest? well, it seems from the evidence that i have from a number of research products i've engaged and i found that labor unions protect their members at the expense of disadvantaged. and it's a very, very interest thing. i question that labor unions down through the ages have discriminated against all kinds of people in of those workers. we find that labor unions have gone on strikes and have murdered and maimed people because. other people sought entry in terms of mr. green's remark. he says in the free democratic society we need unions. yes, that is true. we need the right for voluntary association that is people have the right to form associations, but it not be a requirement that you be a member of a labor union or to a establish a contract for employment. can't can we get something? can we get some perspective in this water talking about unions

down through the ages makes no sense at all in terms of where we're at in this century at this time this business of trying to relate where unions come from to the diplomatic profession and hippocratic oath, hippocratic or hypocritical oaths. however one looks at that back in the greek islands really has very little relevance. yes, it does. the violence to hear me out a minute. i waited patiently. okay. the violence that's associated with. well, not so patiently, but i waited. the violence associated with labor movement and so on has been minimal. and was the reaction in this century not over the ages, a reaction the century to the violence done workers by corporations and powerful economic groups when there was no workers organization to protect them and no to deal with their greed and. now, now i'm talking to milton because. he's heard the flavor of the discussion and what what len williams now is now saying is utter nonsense. there's no other no two ways about the conditions of the worker in. this country, before they were

labor unions very important improved very greatly. you cannot tell me that millions of people my, parents, your parents, for all i know, parents and many people around came to this country from europe in order to exploited and in order to be subject and subjected to violence. of course, they were infantry with that permanently. i mean, most of the blacks came to this country not voluntarily, but they were shipped there, blacks. and the interesting thing about about the excuse is that left out information and back to the sure the blacks are an exception. i agree with you. complete 20 to the exception. they are they a very important exception. but they are millions and millions of people that mr. williams represent are not mostly they are mostly from the slavic that came from. well if you look at the membership of the steelworkers, if we go back the violence there was, violence, of course there always has violence. it's not excusable i'm not excusing violence on the part of anyone, but i agree with mr. greene and with walter williams that people should be free to

organize of course, they should be free to organize. what i object to is special privileges that have been given by government to labor unions, which are not available to groups at all. when labor unions have used violence in in industrial disputes, they are not subjected to the same sanctions as people ordinarily are. when cars are turned over the course of a labor dispute. how often people go to jail as a result of it? dr. and walter williams go back in history and they take a look at a situation. america was empty. where we didn't have anything like the sophisticated industrial economy we have today, but had much more agricultural and rural kind of economy. and of course, when the when the impoverished peasants of europe ancestors and most of our ancestors, except for the slaves, is another situation. but when these people came from europe and came to a wide open continent with the most fertile soil then available to anyone in the world, naturally there was progress. and i or any of us would be mad to deny progress. but is developed and as

population increased and as we moved into to a much more sophisticated industrial economy. we moved then into the situation in the 1930s or earlier than that at the end of the century, some of the more skilled jobs came along. labor movement then didn't happen by didn't happen because there wasn't need there. the results of development, even with all the wealth available in america, the results of this development was that many working people were not having anything by standards of of civilization or whatever, anything like their fair share this progress. now you're arguing that in a free market for everyone benefits. does that mean that you would favor abolition of all immigration restrictions? the situation of immigration restrictions really has to do with the question of a welfare state. as i say in the film, i would favor completely free immigration in a society which does not have a welfare system with a welfare system the kind

we have. you have the problem. people immigrate in order to get welfare, not in order to get employment. you know, it's a very interesting thing if you had asked anybody before 1914, the us had no immigration restrictions whatsoever. i'm exaggerating a little bit. there were some immigration on orientals, but it was essentially mainly free. if you ask anybody, any american economic historian. was that a good thing for america. everybody will say yes, it was a wonderful thing for america that. we had free immigration. if you ask today, should we have free immigration today? everybody will almost will say no. what's the difference? i think there's only one difference and that is that when we had free immigration, it was immigration jobs in which everybody benefited. the people who are already here benefited. they got complementary workers who could work with them, make their better, enable them to develop and use the resources of the country better. but today, if you have a system under which you have essentially governmental guarantee of in

case of distress, you have a very, very real problem is true in every western industrialized. and that's today under current circumstances, you cannot unfortunately have free immigration, not because anything wrong with free immigration, but because we have other policies which make it impossible to to adopt free immigration. i like the other reactions. is it at all to open the door of the labor market internationally? no, nobody. i would i would say yes providing they open the door to i think that the door to not only the labor market, the to all markets should be should be open. that is the product market. my feelings about the undocumented workers on mexican-americans are inscribed at the foot of the statue of liberty. i think that the people should have the right to come to this country. now, those who would you know, i hear a number of people saying that, well, the immigrant are contributing to our unemployment problem. and i pointed this out to some

people. i said, look, you know, this is the same rhetoric that irish used when the blacks are coming up from the north. you know they're using blacks as scapegoats. they're saying, get those people back where they came from so that members can get jobs. you know unions whereas well doing this know they call them scabs strikebreakers, etc., etc. so i not wish for mexican-american ins to become the new scapegoats of our national problems. they are not the problem. we and our nation benefits. to the extent that these people come here work and to that extent, to that extent. so it's kind of good for them to remain illegal aliens as opposed to being legal aliens. they're subject to our welfare program so that we don't want to come here. and i think i think that this country cannot have a group of workers remain outside the framework of laws and our protections. and as long as we have workers who are attracted the united states because the standard of and i think wages pay a part in that as part of that attraction. but it seems to me to have

undocumented without providing either a means of protection for them and it seems to me we've got to go to a question of providing the amnesty for those those generations of workers who have come here over a period of time to three, maybe four generations. we to see that they have the same rights and protection of all other workers. and as it stands now, large numbers of them live outside the framework of other laws and statutes that we have on our books come out doing the tragedy. the situation is what walter williams points that as long as they are undocumented and illegal, they are a clear net gain, the nation benefits and they benefit. they wouldn't be here if they didn't. the tragedy is that we've adopted all these other policies. so that if we convert them into legal residents, it's no longer clear that we benefit they may benefit, but it's no longer clear that we do what. len williams said before, is

again a travesty on what was actually going on. the real boost to the union trade union movement came the great depression of the 1930s. that great depression was not a failure of capitalism. it was not a failure. the private market system, as we've pointed in another one of the programs in this series, it was a failure of government. it was not the case that somehow or there was a decline in the conditions of the working class that produced a great surge unionism. on the contrary, the unions have never accounted for more than one of one out of four or one out of five of american workers. the american worker benefit not out of unions. he benefited in spite of unions, he benefited because there was greater opportunity, because there people who were willing to invest their money, because there was an opportunity for people to work to save to invest. that's the case today. you say we have to provide them with something or other earnings. who are the way we the people we love. but how do we the people it seems we the people provide them the protection by seeing that

their safety, talking about the immigrant population, occupational codes that protect the environment, that work in see that they have civil rights laws that protect their own person, see that they have a civil liberties laws that protect them further. we the people of this country provide that protection. it's so bad if they don't have you know, you're kind of paying an image, you know, why these people coming? we're not calling them here by jesus. why people out here. they don't all talk about, why did you leave little rock, arkansas, to go to the army. that not what would you extend their courage to finish? look, look, first thing look, let me say the thing, because there are some basic things that i would know. i was interrupting. i'm going to say five more things. i mean, there isn't all afternoon. but, you know, larry unions and a minimum wage is for case cannot improve the condition of the working people a country we do it every day because we can only go. are you suggesting people, countries where you know this man every day you what you're

telling the audience, you're saying that you can the problems in bangladesh, you make them a rich country. if you tell the union like we are and demand higher wages. i didn't say anything remotely like that. it's product that that keeps them coming back. my initial question why are so many leaving the union there? aren't very many? there are 2.5. you. i'm rhymed off some percentages. i live in good humor. do you have other percentages in or on true in with and of course they pay me. of course don't have any objection to that. neither do i. at least we got you a few minutes ago. we got you to get the labor movement up into century. and i agree with the observation. i agree the observation you're made that the industrial union movement that there was a union movement came of the out of the dirty thirties and out of the depression grew. and that that was essentially an union movement. but i wonder if i wonder when i when, i hear your commentary on the film and so on about unions and restricting practices and restricting access to industry and all of this. i really, i don't mean it

disrespectfully, but i really don't mind being that's all right. i'm, you know, i really wonder if you if you do understand how the industrial union movement, which is is the more recent part of the movement, how it really operates, we're not telling anybody who they have to hire, we're not doing anything. let's raise the question, which certainly dealt with in the film, have minimum wages, which is a form of government intervention, and serve the interests of the poor and indeed of the working class. and i know you've spent a good deal of time looking at this. i'd like to get out to. okay. well, at least from from the standpoint of teenagers, particularly minority teenagers, the minimum wage law has acted to destroy a number of employment opportunities. for example, back in 1948, the black youths between 1618 had an unemployment rate of 9.4% and white youth was 10.4%. a 10.2%. the labor force participation rates of blacks was higher than that of whites. and with increase in the minimum

wage law, we had the dramatic reversal that we have now. and so the minimum wage law has the effects of saying that if you produce $2.90 worth of goods an hour, you don't deserve a job. and. it's you can't look just to become a wage. you got to look at the relocation of firms. you've got to you got to look at the movement. people, you i mean, you can't. well, really can't do that. well, you look at relocation. a lot of people try to say a lot of jobs move the suburbs where you find black, white unemployment ratio is the same in the suburbs you find in cities. so it's no it's going away tell one element taking one element of the longest development and your life even and then his next nephew in and then ernest green come on i understand the more educate and then you get a differential between black and white bagging the gavel come on, lynn. well, you're you're taking one element years in a situation that's entirely different than we're in today and drawing something. please. and that's why i said there is no there. many other things are different. the enormous movement, black people in this country between

1948 and now, you can't just wipe that out. and you have whites say that's you certainly can't say that's the minimum. but you know, that enormous. well, this case is has the minimum served the interests of the of the working people of this country. the question, i don't think is any question to the working people of this country be much worse off than they are today. the youth of this country would be much off than they are today if we didn't have minimum wage. grady, you know, good idea or not, you're industrial is it's a bad idea. it is. it is one one of the one of the worst things that can that we can do to our youth. we prevent. them from wins. do you we what's that. how many kids do you have? i have to. it's not important how many? it is minimum wage doesn't affect this industry. his wages are far above the minimum wage. in effect, a single his members. it affects people that come out of all. hold it, hold it. wait, ron. to support minimum wage in this country. gentlemen, hold a moment. hold it a moment.

you hold. hold a moment now, if you will. of course have not. when people's organization chairman, said the flores milton, i was saying that there's not a single one. i suspect of the of the members of your union who is affected by the minimum wage. that isn't enough time. you that you are a public service or i say we're people's organization. if you're an organization of your workers and if you aren't representing the interests your workers you ought to fire and out. if you tell us that you are going against the interests of your workers, then you are simultaneously saying to your i remember this is pure sophistry. i sophistry and i am not talking. i'm talking about representing the interests, our workers, our union represents a lot of people. right. and some people, the ones you're probably aware of, the people who work in big steel mills and all the rest of it. but we also go out and organize all the time and win certification. despite bill brady's comment about that and many of the workers we organize our workers who are affected by wage and the result of our organizing them is

we're able to bring maximum wage and yes, the point is is that i think that both of these gentlemen we all should recognize is that unions, united states support the minimum wage. they are the major supporters. and so they spend millions, millions dollars in lobbying for them in a wage law. now they do it. they do it, and they do it out of the name of concern and being in the interests of people now in south africa, the unions are far more honest. that is, those races unions over there, they say we support minimum wages and equal pay for equal work. so as to protect wage jobs that to protect jobs and promote competition. but are you not implying that we're white, right? no, no, no. i'm saying that it doesn't make any difference about the intent, what the effects are, exports of into wage. well, they haven't in hooks with any way the floor blocks are reasons of what wage why they're they they they they represent middle class blacks. no no they don't represent the

black, the street, the membership of the and and all, by the way, by the afl-cio. they aren't owned by the border order. what is a conservative says harder society. your i. i don't didn't something i'm going to turn to milton now are you saying that and that you would advocate the repeal minimum wage legislation of course you would of course i would. but well bill brady bill brady, i should like to understand lyn why they want to restrict i minimum price to labor why don't you let me have minimum price on the products that we manufacture? we got here, as i understand it, to discuss your problems at the moment in of is there is there a is there a difference in the on a property of the people? i assume you're so anxious to have the free market system and to compete with each other and all the rest of it. we're talking about the needs of the workers and we're talking about the needs of the people who come into a society which isn't providing enough employment for them, which clearly doesn't seem to be able to provide enough employment for

them. and what are we going to do? and i think this notion that somehow if we just let every guy who's running a hamburger stand or whatever, we just let all these people, the young people of this nation in any way they chose them, any little rate they could get with that. everybody would then go to work. it would everybody have a job is absolute nonsense. i want to bring milton to one of the final stages, his film, which is on spartanburg, carolina. and i want to know your conclusion. you're drawing from that. would you, in effect, to see the whole of the united states become, as it were, spartanburg writ large? absolutely. what would that mean? and then we'll get reaction to it. it would mean a widening of the opportunity. everybody it would mean an opportunity for employers all over to with one another for workers, it would mean an opportunity for workers to find jobs which can make the greatest use of their own skills in their own capacities.

it would mean that consumers would be able to get better products at lower prices. you know, consumers enter into this situation and to you might think that somehow or other you know one of the things that's always a mystery to me if a $2 and 90 cent minimum wage benefits people, why wouldn't a $6 minimum wage be better wouldn't a $10 minimum wage be better? why don't these people come out for a $200 a year minimum wage? if all you had to do to make a country browns you're pretty smart hundred dollars an hour or extended the babysitters. yeah if all you need to improve the lot of the conditions people is to legislate a higher wage. you're back on minimum wages. i want to know how would fight la cruz matters because it introduces a wide range of competition and the real thing that protects the worker is the of alternative employers seeking his services just as what protects consumer is alternative sellers limit. one thing that it would do and it would result in a very substantial increase in capital investment. absolutely and capital is the

workers best friend. that's the reason why everybody says this is only to say that a busy economy one in which there's investment, development and so on is an economy that's a good economy for working people. and everyone else. i think we say that in the afl-cio at least once month all the time, there's in which there's nothing in which we're more interested than having a busy functioning economy. the question is how to bring that about. i do suggest and i think would i think can be defended as long we want to discuss it that. the prosperity we have in america today that the labor movements have made in the north, the labor movement has made an enormous contribution that and in the absence of the labor and in the absence of minimum wage, this would not be as prosperous a country as it is. hold it. they're not necessarily and i want to get a reaction to that. he stated the case for what the unions achieve could we go around first of all do you accept any part of that? it's preposterous.

you know, as i suggested before, i mean, if we if, you know, if minimum wage is going to make people unions, we're talking about well, if unions can make people richer, what are your thoughts? tell people in bangladesh, why don't you unionize and demand a higher wage? you can be rich like the united states telling you its productivity isn't you know. no you know let's have higher wages in our country because they're productive. that's how you get higher wages. and that's just plain way. it's nonsense. and why are they more productive? because they have capital. enormous capital invested in the right and the highest wages are paid in the higher the capital intensive industries because there are consumers to buy the stuff who have wages which enable them to go into the marketplace and buy something without the cost of capital. they wouldn't have the wage there would be no way or paying them without the capital investment. ernest green, what's the reply? you're hit by my initial statement that it is a of a democratic society to have trade unions allowing workers to band together and their mutual interests and if if that if that group i'm saying that trade

unions like philip randolph sleeping car porters the pullman car would have never on its own given those workers who worked very hard, were very productive people well-educated any increase in their wages, had it not been for the intervention of randolph, the crucial issue is whether governmental measures which have the effect of favoring union organization of giving them privileges and immunities that are not accorded to other organizations in the society benefit the society as a whole or harm the society a whole. the proposition i tried to make in this film was that the source of the prosperity this country was freedom of enterprise, freedom of employers to hire, of workers, to work for whom they wanted to. that insofar as unions had played a role, they had protected some workers at expense of others and had retarded the prosperity of this country.

i think that lynn williams's statements to the contrary cannot supported by any empirical or other evidence that he has. understandably, i'm blaming him for this. he would faithless to his job if he did not believe sincerely what he's saying. i'm not questioning his sincerity, but sincerity is a much overrated in our society. the plain fact is that there is no evidence whatsoever that either unions or minimum wages have made positive contributions to the prosperity of this country. some unions have, of course, some unions have done great harm. it's not an an open and shut picture in which you can make a sweeping statement. on the whole, the growth of this country, the things i do, the sweeping statement i make is that the prosperity of this country, primarily from of enterprise and freedom to hire, to employ, to work and from restrictive measures imposed trade. everybody briefly now earns and i would say that the

intervention of strong federal government who employers are, the kinds of protection, the wage standards, health conditions, the other requirement of this government to protect its because the history of it has shown that that hasn't occurred and in your case in spartanburg, south, again, i that the only reason that they can come back now and attract firms from switzerland and germany is because one that we had a strong government that provided protection for all of its citizens which didn't occur 15 years ago. economic freedom, in my opinion, should not be a bridge. i think these two gentlemen are advocating that it be a bridge, advocating a retention of the minimum wage. they're advocating, i think the language for advocating the retention of the of the davis bacon act. they they do not it seems to me, believe that freedoms are interdicted and indivisible. they freedoms their economic freedom. there's press, there's freedom of assembly, religious freedom.

and you advocating to me a abridgment of economic. and when you do that, you the other freedoms that we have and if you it enough as we are doing in this country, if you do it enough, we are in danger of losing all of our other. for now we leave this very spirited and i hope you'll join us again the next episode of free to choose. the next week. milton friedman on one of the most disturbing in the world today, the problem of inflation. there is a way to deal with it. if you want to find out how to inflation, don't miss free to choose next week.

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