Collective Bargaining as a Dispute-Reduction Vehicle Accommodating Contrary Animal Welfare Agendas

Abstract:     
Animal activists and animal enterprise managers share little common ground debating science and values. Activists are frustrated with the pace of improvements in animal welfare. Enterprise managers tire of activists’ increasingly threatening, urban-guerilla tactics. Meanwhile, legislation is ineffective to bring meaningful improvements to animal treatment or to stop activist civil disobedience-driven acts of property damage and public vilification of perceived animal 'enemies.' Lawsuits filed to sanction a camp’s behavior tax patience and resources on both sides. Violence against persons appears imminent between the factions.

This essay advocates implementing collective bargaining processes along certain animal enterprise sector lines to engage enterprise management with activist representatives to adopt animal labor accords. Animal exploitation in business renders sentient creatures 'workers' in laboratories, zoos and aquaria and food production, among other environments. Labor-management negotiations leading to improved animal welfare conditions should imitate the most efficient and timely processes that periodic union bargaining sessions use in setting human labor protocols. This essay further describes existing sources for adopting baseline standards of animal treatment in their various work environments, and argues that collective bargaining surpasses adjudicating or legislating for improving standards of animal welfare, whether in American agri-business, amusement or research-based enterprises.

Keywords: animals, collective bargaining, dispute resolution, agricultural policy, animal rights, animal enterprises

JEL Classifications: C78, D23, D74, J52, K30, L66, Q18

Working Paper Series