It is probably... impossible in our time for a student to be a true friend of labour and to have the reputation of being one (Hayek [1959] 1967, p. 294).
Introduction
As this epigraph implies, unions have a much better reputation than they deserve. Even today (2007) a majority of the general public thinks that labor unions are the best friend that any working man or woman could have. That is simply wrong, and in Friedrich Hayek's writings on unions, from Monetary Nationalism and International Stability ([1937] 1972, pp. 21-2) wherein he first noted the inflationary dangers of collective bargaining, to 1980s Unemployment and the Unions (1980), which Arthur Seldon …