Oooh, you said the C-word! Got to put a dollar in the Swear Jar and repent to St. Ayn of Leningrad.
So, your evidence/argument that they are making an “unfair” or below market wage is that it’s not hard to imagine that they are? On this MB, not many posters are going to challenge you on that, but that doesn’t make it the least bit persuasive.
BTW, I don’t really think that matters all that much-- it’s a private company and the guy can shut it down for any reason or no reason. It’s just that a lot of posters here seem to be assuming it without any evidence at all.
That’s a creative read of my post… you might as well have just said, “what part of your ass did you pull that out of exactly?”
As stated, no, I don’t have specific data about what compensation these *particular workers were receiving, but I gave specific numbers on what the *average amount a union worker receives versus what a non-union worker received; a number $16/hr higher for the union worker. Even assuming the boss was unusually generous, it would take quite a bit to close that gap. Extrapolating from a norm to speculate on a specific case is the very definition of “not much of a stretch to assume,” which is what I said.
If specific numbers directly related to the topic and a link to the relevant data draw this kind of snark, I’m not sure what it is you actually want…do you want a cookie?
I can get you a cookie.
AI,
You said “in the same positions”, but the chart you cited appears to be just aggregate totals. It’s nonsense like this that has women believing they get $0.79 for every dollar a man makes “for the same job”. It’s not the same job, both things are comparing apples to oranges, not people “in the same positions” or “for the same job”.
That’s a reasonable point. The gap between a unionized fast-food worker (if there are any) and a non-unionized fast-food worker, versus between a unionized staff writer versus a non-unionized staff writer could be very different.
A brief Google shows The Writers Guild of America, East at around $50,000 for an entry-level staff writer, or $24.04/hr.
Whereas the median for an entry-level staff writer appears to be a touch under $40k. So about $19.23/hr:
https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Staff_Writer/Salary/a66a6a9b/Entry-Level
This is of course without additional benefits factored into compensation as was done in the original link. I might dig a little deeper out of curiosity tomorrow, but it’s about time to get to sleep to be ready for the salt mines tomorrow.
If the dynamic you describe were the only one in play, I would not object to collective bargaining.
But as it happens, the NLRA forbids an employer from deciding to fire striking workers en masse.
Then there are lots of goods and services that people don’t want to pay enough of their own money to get. They might think differently if someone else pays for it, but compared to the other things they want, no.
Certainly there are several types of services that aren’t considered subject to the market, but in general, the market is very good at finding out what people really want, compared to everything else they really want. Apparently not enough people wanted these websites enough to pay for them. They were willing to use them, providing Ricketts subsidized them with his own money. When the writers wanted to band together and try to get more money, that showed that the companies were going further into the hole, faster. So he pulled the plug. Or maybe he just hates unions, and while he was willing to subsidize the ventures for his own amusement, he was not willing to subsidize unions too. Doesn’t matter - the companies weren’t worth enough to him to pay for, and also not worth enough to anyone else to pay for.
If you think these websites are so important, why not fund them yourself? Not trying to force “the rich” to pay for it so you can use it - band together with others like you and pay for it yourselves.
Regards,
Shodan
Well, of course. Only corporations are allowed to cooperate and manipulate the system and write legislation tilted in their own favor. If workers did that, it would be harder for non-workers to skim money off their backs, so obviously we can’t have workers organized in any fashion.
As a reminder, I asked what law you were picturing when you suggested that this conduct is retaliatory under the law.
That’s not a fair summary of my response. As a reminder, I said that I had no objection to workers organizing, and threatening to quit, or refusing to work, until their demands are met. That’s absolutely appropriate.
I object to the government stepping in on the side of the workers and ordering the management to not fire the workers and hire new ones.
In other words, it’s legitimate for the workers to say, “As individuals, you can replace any one of us; as a group, we are irreplaceable, so you must negotiate or risk losing all your trained staff.”
Where it crosses the line into unacceptable, in my view, is the might of the federal government stepping in on the side of the workers, saying: “Here’s the law: while the workers are refusing to work, and are outside your business criticizing you to the public, you must not fire them.” Management no longer has any choice to take about firing the staff and training new ones; they are forbidden from doing so.
Oh, please. The question I asked was:
“Do we know anything about what the employees were paid, and how that compared to other, comparable jobs in that industry in that area?”
For some reason, you chose to answer a different question. It’s not that I wonder where the answer came from, I wonder where the question came from. Not me.
I thought management could hire and train replacement workers during the strike?
Yes, they can.
But they cannot fire the old workers and retain the new ones. I said, “Management no longer has any choice to take about firing the staff and training new ones; they are forbidden from doing so,” the word I emphasize here, ‘and,’ is a conjunction which shows that both items must be true in order for the condition as a whole to be accurate.
Management is allowed to train new replacement workers as temporary staff but is not allowed to fire the extant staff. They must preserve their jobs and return them to their positions following the strike.
So in order to prevent this situation it is okay to just sink the entire company?
Very quick perusal of the nlrb site shows there are times that companies do not, in fact, have to give positions back to strikers after a strike is over. But, I’m not really that concerned about it, I was just curious about one point in your statement. But, yes, they cannot be fired although it’s a small distinction from “not permitted to go back to work”
“Okay,” according to who?
Ask the company’s competitors: yes, it’s absolutely “okay,” for that company to be sunk.
Ask the vendors that service the company: no, it’s not “okay.”
I have no idea what “okay,” even means in this context.
According to me: the only decision that matters is the one made by the person whose money is running the company. If he or she feels that it’s no longer worth it, however he or she measures “worth,” then it’s “okay.”
Are you sure you read all the words in the post you quoted and are replying to? Because it seems to me that if you had, you wouldn’t have written the response you wrote.
You got off easy, usually you are required to be specific.
In circumstances where the conditions for successful free-market operation are actually satisfied, that’s very true. When those conditions aren’t satisfied, we get market failure: i.e., markets are not successful at providing something that benefits people. Let’s review some of those conditions:
Universal and sufficient information. Do all consumers have adequate accurate information about how much access they have to reliable journalistic coverage of news events and political issues, and about the importantce of reliable knowledge of news events and political issues to the decisions they make?
Low barriers to entry. Is it easy to enter markets for reliable journalism? Or are there significant barriers to entry? (For example, startup costs, staff knowledgeable about the workings of local institutions, etc.)
Rational decision-making by consumers. Do consumers always make rational decisions? Or is something like reactions to news coverage potentially prone to partisan bias that can affect people’s judgement of its importance?
ISTM that all those free-market conditions are far from being fully satisfied in the case of news journalism. So your market-fundamentalist argument that “whatever outcome the markets have produced must reflect what people really want most” is fundamentally flawed.
I think you are confusing “market failure” with “people don’t want what I want them to want”.
For instance, the idea that partisan bias means that consumers aren’t making rational decisions, or universal information. If consumers don’t want a product, it is the job of the business to market itself so that the consumer recognizes his need for the product. Maybe you think someone else should buy this product. They don’t. Because your opinion on what is and is not bias is worth no more than anyone else’s, and less than that of the consumer who actually spends or doesn’t spend the money. Because it’s his money and his decision.
Somebody starts a band. They are really good, but they cannot get any gigs so they disband. That’s not a market failure just because nobody ever heard of them, or because electric guitars are expensive, or because they sell themselves as a country and western/rap fusion, and there was a shoot out between gangstas and rednecks and thus people are biased against both types of music.
Same here. Nobody wants these websites, despite their not being biased and even though Ricketts paid the up-front costs and it is really, really important that somebody do quality journalism on whatever the hell they did quality journalism on. So they go out of business, and the writer’s union doesn’t get the new members and the writers themselves have to hit the bricks and find somewhere where they can get paid for writing. So it goes - “creative destruction” is a good although not unmixed blessing, because it frees up resources to produce something that other people really do want, not what they really should want as judged by people who don’t pay anyway.
Regards,
Shodan