UBI leads to labor withdrawal. Undermines bargaining power.

Mike Konczal is a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, where he focuses on financial regulation, inequality and unemployment. He writes a weekly column for Wonkblog. “Thinking Utopian: How about a universal basic income?,” May 11, 2013 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/05/11/thinking-utopian-how-about-a-universal-basic-income/

Another project is to expand the say workers have in their workplaces. This includes not only unionization, but also a more general project of democracy that doesn’t end once you walk through your employer’s door. As Century Foundation Senior Fellow Richard Kahlenberg and labor attorney Moshe Marvit have argued, labor organizing needs to be considered a basic civil right. It seems clear that a universal basic income would help workers by giving them more bargaining power. But others worry that a UBI would encourage workers to leave the labor force rather than voice grievances and demands, and that it would make changing labor practices more difficult. For instance, some feminists argue that a universal basic income would simply reinforce and solidify an unjust gendered division of labor.