Proposals to counteract these deleterious consequences were deemed necessary, and Lewis proceeded to explore some of them. He suggested a vast legal reform program to reduce labor monopoly in order “to purge the law of its pro-monopoly features” (Lewis 1958, 6). He called for the elimination of the Norris-LaGuardia Act, the National Labor Relations Act (which provided the legal framework of the National Labor Relations Board), and the legislation, including minimum wage laws, designed to protect or promote labor monopoly. But even that draconian proposal did not seem sufficient to Lewis, who then proposed what he called a “limitist approach” in unionism matters: to prohibit all large-scale concerted action among employers and employees (Lewis 1958, 7). His proposals also encompassed intervention in the organization of unions and prohibition of membership in the union as a condition of employment at the plant level. All of these proposals should be considered as the reorientation of existing structures toward competitive unionism and, eventually, a freely competitive labor market.

Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, loc. 975