| Abstract: | Craft unions are trade unions which represent a specific professional branch of the workforce. The German Constitutional Court is currently examining a new law which would more or less stop their activities. This paper argues in favour of such restriction, not only in protected sectors with price regulation, public bail outs, etc. (as a previous paper did), but also in competitive sectors of the economy like airlines. The reason is that craft unions abuse monopolistic bottlenecks to siphon off economic rents at the cost of their colleagues, which simultaneously hurts efficiency and equity. Moreover, there is no indication that these adverse incentives diminish over time. |
