Labor Day honors the heroic endeavors and contributions of workers in building a dynamic America, sometimes even at the cost of their lives. However, these hard-earned contributions often get co-opted by boastful labor leaders and self-important politicians who claim that those endeavors were possible only through union leadership and legislation protecting unionism. The truth, however, is that the special-interest legislation designed to protect unions has had a horrible impact on the American economy.

Economic studies of the last half-century show the cost of protective union legislation to the American economy is $50 trillion. Yes, $50 trillion. Union laborers earn 15% more than nonunion labor. However, the overall impact of unions is that wages in general for everyone are lower, because the American economy is one-third smaller than it would be if there had been no unions.

In California, the impact has been severe. California's prevailing wage laws kick in when $1,000 of public tax money is used on a public construction project. This anti-competitive law ensures that getting a public works contract is not based on paying lower wages than a competitor, as bidders must use the same wage rates.

The standard cost factors of a public construction project are wages and materials. Prevailing wage rates are set by the Division of Labor Statistics and Research using local labor costs. As an example, in San Francisco prevailing wage scales require total compensation of $65 per hour for a plumber. With government setting high wages, a contractor with a winning bid won't use quality materials but will have slap-dash workmanship and cost over-runs to make a profit.

Furthermore, unions strongly support increasing California's minimum wages. Such an increase doesn't help entry-level workers earn more but rather stops job competition for unions by raising wage bars for unskilled labor. A higher minimum wage creates employment hurdles, with increased unemployment for entry-level workers. Unions routinely use higher minimum wages to leverage increased pay for union members—at the job expense of the nonunion entry-level workers.

Strikers or union organizers use the cachet of better wages and benefits as the reason for the strike or organizing. Yet unions ignore the most basic method to increase wages, benefits, and employment: Create greater demand for the products or services being offered by the business. This simple economics lesson is ignored by unions. Better wages and benefits result from free-market forces acting on a business competing for the workers who will help meet the consumers' demands.

As an example, Cesar Chavez, the charismatic leader of the United Farm Workers, made a strategic error with his grape boycott. To gain better wages, benefits, and more farm worker employment, he needed only to create a higher consumer demand for grapes. Free-market forces would have required the growers to plant and harvest more grapes, thus necessitating more workers to plant and harvest the grapes. Competing growers would have had to offer better pay and benefits to attract farm workers. Then Chavez's dream of better working conditions for farm workers would have been accomplished without the forced contracts between the grape growers and the UFW following 16 years of strikes, marches, and secondary boycotts.

In 1937 when Harry Bridges formed the ILWU in San Francisco, he explicitly forbade discrimination. He believed in widening the labor base to have solidarity among all workers. If only other unions had followed his example.

During the early days of integration, pitched battles occurred at public project construction sites between union workers and black laborers. The union construction workers would walk off job sites when black laborers showed up for work. Women were discriminated against by both construction and public employee unions. It took court orders and societal pressures to force open union jobs regardless of race and sex.

Why the opposition? It wasn't about wages and benefits—it was about job competition. We got ours; you aren't going to get ours—go find your own jobs.

Unions have a place, with workers freely forming associations to obtain better pay and working conditions from an employer. These associations of workers need to be able to have free-market bargaining powers for a free-market exchange of skills, talents, and expertise for just compensation from a business.

Unions, workers, and the American economy would be better off without legislation protecting unionism. Let's call on our legislators to repeal labor and union laws and to allow free-market bargaining between workers and employers without governmental, legislative, or union interference.