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 preindustrial 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. Theres another legend that. Saint paul stood here and preached the gospel of christianity. What isnt 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 wed 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 well 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 ive 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 well 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. Theyre good at their job, but its 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 patients life. And if someone else does, it, it just kind of interferes with everng bee taught. About. But why should medical care be a monopoly licensed physicians . Shouldnt 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 hes doing a good job. Joe dolphin knows that well. Weve 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 thats 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 . Thats 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 wouldnt have believed the rabble rouser would have gathered together that many irresponsible people to come on the persons property, do this kind of destruction until i had finally seen it done. These workers are on the other side. The union fence. Theyre building to Social Security offices in baltimore. On this government project. Everyones 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 hell want to. When you tell a man he belong to a union or he must do, or that youre 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. Thats 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 ive 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, therell be almost nothing but aides around. When ive 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. Theres 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. Thats. To see the effects of minimum wage laws in action. Go to a place like this where. They sell quick and inexpensive food. You dont 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 workers 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. Thats 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 theyre paid in cash or inkind. 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. Its 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 agencys 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. Theres 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 hours 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 elses expense. It doesnt 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. Theyre trying to get engineers to work on their projects. You know, myself im 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 thats forming in this area. And theyre hunting for people just like myself to come in. And what they do is theyll 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 its not really a move, its very easy to do because youre only across the street. Its not a big traumatic thing where youre leaving. Lets say one city and moving to another city. Its 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. Its one thing when people come for jobs and are on their own, as was the case most of american history. Its 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, theres 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, theyll be coming in shortly. Imagine. We have electronic sensors in along the hillsides and along the most traveled trails to alert us when theres alien crossings. And from the sensor, we work ahead of them, try to head them off. Theyre 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. Theyre going to run. Theyre to get picked up, sent back. But sooner or later, theyre 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 theres a shortage of Domestic Labor available. Jill hannam and her partner run a farm produces plump california raisins and theyre 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 cant imagine that it would actually go through. If it did, thered be a full scale farmers revolt around here. Its 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. Im 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 wor