I agree with you to some extent. I want costs to go lower. To that end, unions are a barrier. However, why isn't executive pay also a barrier? Why can't we ever talk about it? I think there is no reason why our corporations should pay millions of dollars to the CEO and I think it should be illegal to be compensated for being on a board at all. Imagine the cost savings that could be translated to either the shareholders as dividends or the consumers as lower prices or both!
I think ceo compensation is another topic, but its very important to understan that CEO compensation does not come from workers, it comes from investors.
If you could effectively limit what CEO's make, the savings will go into the stock and investors, it will not raise wages, because wages are not set by CEO pay.
Think of the effects of a maximum wage in an economy. It cannot possibly help workers. It will definitely help investors/capitalists/employers.
A crock. If the CEO gets a bonus, and everybody else no raise and some layoffs, how exactly can that be called compensation from investors?
Wages and bonuses are set by CEO decree. And they, across the board, set them as low as they can get away with so they hit their quarterly numbers and get their bonus.
Im guessing that you think that all wages come directly from capital, so there is a limited pie of wages that can be given out. So when a CEO makes a lot of money, he has to be taking more from that limited fund and not allowing others to get it.
But its not really true: wages are paid by the production of the worker himself. In a farm with a landowner, an apple picker picks 10 apples and pays 20% on the landowner. That is, his wage is 8 apples.
A guy comes in picks 100 apples. By the same rate, he would earn 80 apples, or the wage of 10 common apple producers. By the same nominal rate, he would earn 98 apples.
The common producer has a lot to envy on that person, and might make a case for him getting 8 apples, 80 apples or less than 98 apples. But in any case whatever he lobbies for will go to the landowner, because the landowner already has lots of people that pick 10 apples and pay 2.
CEO pay is agreed in a market, and albeit there are interesting governance issues, it is truly drawn from investors. Personally I do believe investors are getting stiffed. ITs just not the solution to increase wages.
> CEO pay is agreed in a market, and albeit there are interesting governance issues, it is truly drawn from investors. Personally I do believe investors are getting stiffed. ITs just not the solution to increase wages.
except it is not. A CEO of corp A is a member of the board in corp B. Disgraced ex-CEO of citi John Thain is on Uber's board now. I think Eric Schmidt was on Apple's board at some point? Point is the board is NOT representative of ordinary passive investors or even institutional investors like Vanguard. The passive investors have almost no leverage. How do you propose we level the playing field for the investors?
> I'm not sure, but my point is that docking CEO pay is not the way to increase wages.
I actually agree with you more than I disagree with you. Beyond a certain point, higher wages are bad. I don't want much higher wages. I am just saying we need to cut wages at the top.
State often limits who can unionize. For example in argentina, police and firemen cant unionize. In the us maybe the military cant ( but the can in argentina!)
Second some jobs are easier to unionize than others due to geographicalities. Farmers in the us have below minimum incomes. Their effective unionization has no limit on how much wages they could get. But because its impossible to be cohesive with small numbes and large distances it doesnt happen.
Unions form successfully by their capcity to limit supply. Anything that can be imported breaks unions. Anything that cant helps them. Thats why teachers, cops, garbage and transport are unions in the us, but electronic manufacture isnt.
Any worker can unionize, but not all workers can. Akin to saying everyone can be rich and have a servant.
The prohibition of unions was a terrible thing indeed, and unions themselves have also been producers of tremendous violence, murder and oppression. There are no short examples of abuse.
Nevertheless, any union that has significant effects has them by providing new limitations on labor. You don't need to ban unions to make them dissapear, you just have to let labor roam free and then they dissipate instantly.
> Any worker can unionize, but not all workers can. Akin to saying everyone can be rich and have a servant.
The barrier to entry for unionizing is a lot lower than getting rich and hiring a servant. That is not a comparable situation. Incredibly poor labourers and rich professionals alike unionize.
> you just have to let labor roam free and then they dissipate instantly.
We have completely voluntary unionism in my industry and people join the union voluntarily. You seem to have a _very_ skewed view of unions that only takes the negatives.
My union (Professionals Australia) takes a pragmatic view to labour relations. I resigned from my previous union because they didn't take that view and focussed on short-term gains for only a subset of their members.
Trade unions are the easiest example of monopolization of labor. I bet you a bitcoin they either lobby to require professional degrees to excercise labor or give out their own. Tell me if i should give you an address.
Professional licenses are one of the most classic examples of limiting supply. Classic as Adam smith, wealth of nations, 1776 classic, where he talks about the artificial restriction of a certain number of years of study to be able to exercise some labor skill.
Ugh my union does no such thing - but you won't believe me so let's just stop there hey?
Even if it did, I have no moral objection to labour banding together to restrict supply. It's just the free market in action. Actors (capital, labour, consumer) are free to band together and increase their functional power.
There is no perfect state of equilibrium in a market, just a temporary pause. Same goes for capital and labour - what works now won't work tomorrow and so constant tension and negotiation will occur. Some parties will lose and some will win. Either way the situation is merely temporary.
Or is the free market just for capital to band together to increase it's power?
I just went over the website a bit. Its interesting.
First, there is this RPEng, which is exactly what I thought it would have. They do certification.
It also has an interesting advocacy section:
- "At least 10% of the work carried out on Victoria’s major projects must be undertaken by apprentices, trainees or engineering cadets...we were able to make the case, and change Government policy."
On Privatisation of power
- "As well, privatisation resulted in large reductions of the number of staff employed as well as significant outsourcing of important functions"
If you asked me, I'd say its unavoidable for unions to do these kind of actions the same way its unavoidable for private companies to try to monopolize a market. Its the basic incentive.
> Even if it did, I have no moral objection to labour banding together to restrict supply. It's just the free market in action. Actors (capital, labour, consumer) are free to band together and increase their functional power.
Sure, thats not really a problem at all. There are plenty of circumstances where that will provide real and palpable defenses against employers that have powers that shouldn't be. But dont mistake the debate of allowing unions to exist, and encouraging them.
Much like the biggest employer monopolies, the biggest union results come through the government. Unions lobby for the government to put rules, like the eng cadets or limit outsourcing, or require accreditations given by them, etc etc. If you had a union that didnt have the power of government to apply those rules, they wouldn't be very relevant.
> There is no perfect state of equilibrium in a market, just a temporary pause. Same goes for capital and labour - what works now won't work tomorrow and so constant tension and negotiation will occur. Some parties will lose and some will win. Either way the situation is merely temporary.
Or is the free market just for capital to band together to increase it's power?
This is a common theme I find on this topic: capital monopolizes and gets profits they shouldnt, so why shouldnt workers do the same?
Well, two wrongs dont make a right, and someone being a criminal and profiting from it doesn't mean we should all become criminals. Free markets are precisely a tool against forming monopolies, both on companies and on labor.
Yes they can.