I agree with you in spirit, but I think you're a little bit off the mark.
If you re-read what you posted, Jefferson (and Adams and everyone else who edited the DoI) is saying that God gave us certain inalienable rights -- rights which cannot be taken away from us absent due process -- and "among" these inalienable rights are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Because of that "among," what Jefferson is saying, then, is that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are only some of our inalienable rights, not the only ones that God guarantees. In modern times, he might have slapped that clause in a parenthetical with an "e.g." for example.
No master list exists of all our rights. God granted us a sh*tload of inalienable rights, and to spell them all out in a laundry list would be an exercise in human fallibility, for there would be no way (1) we'd ever nail down the entire list, and (2) everyone would agree on all points.
But you're right in that collective bargaining is NOT a right because of one simple thing: God does not give the gift of rights to a collective. He gives them to the individual. A collective has no rights; only powers given to it by law (e.g., a government).
The distinction is subtle but important because rights come from God and exist regardless of human government. As a gift from God, rights extend to all human beings in equal measure, and therefore cannot be deprived of any man absent due process. Power derives from human government and therefore exists only within a civic structure. Power does not extend to all human beings in equal measure, and because power is a creation of man, it can be given to or taken away from man by man.
I would add that there is a large difference between a right and an entitlement!
I have a right to work - but I am not entitled to force an employer to hire me!
Furthermore, although I tend to agree with Hamilton's argument that a BoR was unnecessary - exactly those rights are also inalienable!
Essentially we have the “right” to do just about anything, as long as it does not infringe upon the rights of others.
It is the responsibility of governments to secure these rights and provide for an environment where they can be excersized freely.
The word used is Unalienable not Inalienable. Yet I hear and read people in the media use Inalienable more than Unalienable.
Do you or anyone else here know why that might be?
Interesting points. I would suggest that Jefferson would not have flung off the three he did as mere examples, but as three which were so foundational to human freedom that not mentioning them would have rendered the Declaration fatally ambiguous.
Furthermore, an argument can be made that rights do not exist as an arbitrary “laundry list” but as an organic structure where some few rights are so basic they can be used to infer other, secondary rights, just as primary colors can be used to build all other colors.
Without explicitly doing the derivation, it seems fair to say that from these primary rights there flows a right to control one’s relationship with others, to the extent such relationships do not interfere with the rights of those others or third parties. Hence we do have a right to enter into contract and a corresponding duty to honor contract.
Furthermore, as a collective entity may be the construct of many individual “subcontracts,” we do have a right to act in the collective, providing individual rights are not involuntarily suppressed in the process.
Therefore, if a group agrees among themselves to “parley” with “management” through a chosen representative, there is nothing inherently wrong with that, and freedom of association is enshrined in the Constitution as a legitimate expression of that right. Indeed, one can argue that the Judeo-Christian theology which underpins Western culture could not exist without such a construct.
However, all agreements reached through such a process must be based on a true “meeting of the minds,” i.e., there must be a mutuality of consent, or there is no contract. In the case of a state, “management” consists of the chosen representative of the people at large, and state employees are typically a subset of the people. As such, they have no inherent right to bargain collectively for what injures the interests of the people, especially if the people are coerced into submission. Where there is undue coercion there is no meeting of the minds, and a contract is not formed.
This is why, IMHO, violence or the threat of violence, at the hands of state employees who, as you say, have exceptional power, negates the consent necessary for a contract to be valid, and any deal with the union that shreds the interests of the people on terms of force is a necessarily void contract, and the law should not recognize it.
Collective bargaining is not a God-given right, not an unalienable right, not a natural right, but it may be a legal right or a contract right or some other kind of right.
“A collective has no rights;”
That begs questions regarding “the right of the people peaceably to assemble”. Can an individual assemble alone? Are not “the people” as used here a collective with the right to do something that an individual can not do alone?
“The distinction is subtle but important because rights come from God and exist regardless of human government. “
Can you truthfully and honestly say that about the right to a trial by jury and the right to vote?