No, because when companies use collusion to artificially increase their bargaining position, it’s considered a felony.
Lawyers are typically organized into law firms, which are (at least here) partnerships. Most lawyers wish to become partners - that is, the owners of the business.
This cuts out the typical dichotomy between “fat cat CEOs” and “the proletariat” in terms of lawyers - there are not really two different (and mutually antagonistic) classes.
My understanding is that “partners” are not really the owners of the business, and can be fired. In any event, core decisions including those that affect the “Partners” are made by a select few higher-ups, with run-of-the-mill partners having little input.
I could be wrong - let me know if you disagree and I’ll look around.
Collusion between companies is the sole way to be disadvantaged?
I’ve read CF and Das Kapital. Not any of the others.
You’re patting yourself on the back for trying to articulate specific Marx theory but in the process, you totally miss the point. I was not deconstructing Karl Marx nor Marxism.
The OP used the word “proletariat.” IME, most proponents that throw around phrases like “proletariat” and “labor theory of value” have not actually read Das Kapital.
For (rhetorical) convenience, I sometimes call them “Marxist disciples” or “Marxish type thinking” or “Marxian viewpoint” etc etc even though they did not formally study Communism nor read Grundrisse.
Ok, I will throw out the word “Marx” and try a convoluted description of group if it makes you happier: Why do people-who-use-the-word-Proletariat often constrain their worldview to the particular employer they work for?
If you actually read Das Kapital and CF as you claim, you’d understand neither of those works addresses that question. It’s a psychological question, not an economic one.
You are at least partly wrong. Partners are owners and get a portion of the business income on the top level (and this can be gruesomely lucrative). How management rights work varies by the firm - some are too large for “direct democracy”. At others, all partners make decisions as a sort of collective CEO, or run functional areas.
Some firms, such as the Big 4 accounting firms, have way more partners than they can handle. However, becoming one is still a fast-track to sucess. Of course, it’s not even neccessary, because you can be well-rewarded even without it.
That’s the heart of the difference. Professionals are not commodities. Commodities are things which are indistinguishable. Union members get the same pay based on seniority or grade. Performance and pay decisions for professionals (at least engineers) are done on an individual basis. There may be buckets, but when I’ve done salary administration each person was treated individually.
Since people tend to think they are better than average, professionals will be against unions since they will feel they’d get only an average raise, and think they can do better. In fact those who are better often have more influence and political clout than those who average worse, and these are the very people who would be vocally against unions.
I’d venture that the reason unions are so prevalent among government workers is that fear of political favoritism tends to work against individual performance reviews, and legislators, who answer to union members who vote, aren’t going to be as willing to fight against unions as the management of WalMart.
“pinning one’s hopes on unions” means structuring one’s lifestyle around the propped-up wages negotiated by the union vs the true world labor price.
Here’s the pattern of trouble, you get a job that pays $40/hr. A union gets organized and negotiates $60/hr for you + pension + health benefits + free parking, etc. etc.
Now, you “build” your life around that $60/hr income instead of the $40/hr you’re really worth. People have a tendency to spend virtually all of their income … therefore, the size of their home mortgage, the size of their car payments, and the balance on their credit-cards are all built on that $60/hr income.
When the union gets weakened because of market conditions, mergers, outsourcing, etc, that’s when the realization hits that you can’t support your lifestyle on a readjusted True Market Wage. You end up with the lower True Market Wage via union concessions or you’re downsized and you have to seek employment at a non-union job.
There are 2 alternative ways to structure your lifestyle to wages which are better than unions:
[ol][li]improve your skills so your true market value can actually increase to $60/hr[*]limit your household spending so that it aligns with the $40/hr[/li][/ol]
If a union can bring you more $$ than $40/hr, hey that’s great — take advantage of it. Use collective bargaining as a “tool” like you say. In that case, treat any wage over and above prevailing true market wages as gravy and put it away in a savings fund. Live off the true market wage — or if you really really want that $60/hr wage, find a way to improve your marketable skills to actually be worth $60/hr. Or start your own business and pay yourself $60/hr or more.
The wages in the supply-demand of labor market tends to an equilibrium. Unions try to resist that equilibrium and when it works for a number of years, it gives the illusion that the wage is sustainable. However, union employees such as General Motors and airlines are finding out that reality beats any union promises. Nowadays, even a Democrat administration such as Obama is pressuring GM & Chrysler to get their union employee wages on par with Toyota. The Federal government has become part of that “equilibrium” process.
I can’t think of any. Give me some examples.
I’ve tried to show that psychologically, workers do not see union as simply as a collective bargaining “tool.” Sure, they may give lip service saying that unions are just a negotiating tool but the way the real proof is in the way they structure their lives around their income. That’s where you see if “pin their hopes” on union has any meaning.
The fact that you get some profit sharing doesn’t make you an owner. A lot of low level employees have some sort of profit sharing arrangements.
My suggestion that partners can be fired was correct, see http://amlawdaily.typepad.com/amlawdaily/2008/06/one-man-partner.html for some discussion. The aspect of note in that article seems to have been that one sole managing partner could unilaterally fire other partners (and a “name partner”, no less) but it seems to be par for the course for a ruling committee to fire partners.
Anyone who can be fired is not an owner.
[Note that I am not disputing that partners at major law firms make a lot more money than flight attendents.]
Decision-making varies by firm. What does not vary is that partners are, if you like, the “owners”. They receive the profits and are the “capitalists”. However, the difference between partners and senior associates in terms of rewards is not necessarily huge, as all lawyers are in effect selling their highly personal ability to raise revenue - the more experienced they are, the harder they are to replace.
Certainly they can be “fired”, but that is no different from most other other business position typically though of as managerial or ownership - directors and CEOs can be “fired” as well, and minority shareholders may be bought out by majority shareholders (subject to oppression remedies) … a law firm partner is sort of like an officer and shareholder rolled into one; from among their ranks (in a big firm) they may elect “directors” who then become “managing partners”.
In this scheme it is highly unlikely for there to be any pressure for lawyers to unionize (aside from the law societies and the like to which they already belong), as the interests of lawyers are aligned with management to a great extent.
As the article notes, it depends on the firm. In most firms it cannot be done.
Quote:
In any event I would dispute the notion that the ability of one “owner” to get rid of another means that the other is not really an “owner”. In modern businesses there may be situations in which there is not one absolute majority shareholder, effectively meaning that there is, in accordance with the suggested criterion, no “owner” at all.
And here’s the problem with microeconomic analyses. Yeah, sure, in theory, this is beautiful, but real life is a special case. How do we know what the “true market value” for labor is? Is it whatever some executive says it is? How do you separate this from other variables, like inequities built into the corporate governance system, skewed executive compensation incentives, imperfect information distribution, cultural/intellectual hegemony, etc. Maybe the Cato Institute can do an analysis and send us an index card noting our true economic values.
All but the wealthiest in society do this. They have to. Besides anything else, it’s economically efficient.
I can’t help but feel that this is mostly due to the US’s historic resistance to unionisation. This true of other strongly capitalist countries as well (for example, the UK).
Personally I live in Sweden and work as a systems administrator. I am a member of a union. What’s more, when I joined the union (it has since merged with another union and I am not sure of the current requirements) it specifically dealt with people that had a postgraduate education. That’s to say if you didn’t have something like a Masters or a Doctorate you weren’t allowed in as you weren’t qualified enough.
There’s also another union I could join, Unionen, that deals specifically with white collar professionals. They claim to be the largest such union in the world.
https://www.unionen.se/Templates/Page____40886.aspx (page in English).
Unions are (comparatively) popular here.
You can’t generalize about partnerships in this way. The basic concept of a partnership at common law is that it is a contractual agreement where two or more people enter into an arrangement to work together. Under the pure common law definition of partnership, everything that the partners own is owned jointly, and there is joint sharing of profits and liabilities. One partner cannot fire another. If the partners cannot get along, and cannot resolve their differences, they have to apply to court to wind up the partnership on equitable terms.
However, since it is a contractual relationship, it is open to the partners to modify the basic common law model to their own satisfaction, by creating classes of partners with different rights, the power to buy out a partner who is not performing, and so on.
I’ve not personally heard of a partnership where one partner could fire all the others, but that seems to have been the case in the article you cite:
But you’ll note that the power for “involuntary withdrawal” is based on the specific terms of the agreement in issue in that case. You can’t say that because this one partnership chose to give that power to the managing partner, that all partners can be fired. It will depend on the law governing partnerships in that particular jurisdiction, plus the contractual terms of each partnership.
They are not owners either. They are management.
And the reason they’re management is because they run the firm. How much influence does a random non-managing partner have on terms of compensation and working conditions in a big law firm?
I don’t see any way in which they are like owners or managers other than “they make a lot of money”.
The interests of all employees are aligned with with management to some extent. Why is this alignment greater at law firms.
Law firms have employment policies and working conditions etc. which affect the employees including partners. These policies are set by senior leadership. They don’t necessarily align with the interests of the non-managing partners.
I would say an owner is someone who can’t be divested of her rights without compensation.
The fact that one partner could fire all the others was what happened to be remarkable about that specific situation. My point was that it appears to be standard practice for a committee of managing partners to have that right.
The fact that this right is derived from a contractual agreement is not relevant. All that means is that this contractual agreement is what renders the “partnership” not a true partnership.
First off, it’s not easy to fire a partner. To have made partner means that person has brought a lot of business to the firm and has invaluable relationships. This whimsical notion you have that workers are commodities and can be replaced really depends on who is doing the work. (If the workers feel like they have to unionize, then it’s a pretty clear indication that they feel like they can be replaced rather easily. This automatically sends a signal to the market that the real wage rate for that position is probably lower. But, I digress…)
Partners that are fired are essentially bought out of their partnership. Unless, of course, that partner is non-equity partner. Equity or non-equity, partners are very difficult to replace. The same idea holds true with certain LLC formations. All too common do member of an LLC “fire” one of their owners. This idea of a single “owner” versus worker is the wrong way to view the issue.
You determine the “true equilibrium market value wage” by looking around and taking notice of what comparable non-union jobs are paying. There’s no need to look for CATO conspiracy theories.
This doesn’t apply to every union job. It requires just a little bit of street-smart common sense. For example, most public schoolteachers are part of a union. In that scenario, you might as well simplify it and say that everyone in the primary-school teaching industry as unionized. Now, is there a huge competitive school district with non-union teachers? Not really. Plus school teachers do not have high salaries (in relation to the college education they invest in.) There’s some noise of against the unionization of teachers but in the big picture, the union’s status is relatively safe; people pay their property taxes to fund their school district and the teachers get paid. I would guess the equilibrium wage is probably equal or close to the wage negotiated by the teacher’s union.
However, autoworkers union is a different story. The equilibrium wage is painfully on display at Toyota, Honda, etc. The executives at GM, Chrysler, Ford know this. Even a union-friendly leftist administration such as Obama Barack knows this. To be an union employee at GM and not realize that your union-protected job has defied equilibrium forces with artificial wages is to be totally clueless as to how the world works. If you want to be in denial and remain clueless, then I guess you get what you deserve.
It’s so ridiculously easy to tell if your $60/hr wage is artificial: can you get that wage on your own without a union?
Equilibrium forces always beat union promises in the long run. People don’t seem to get that.
So acsenray, let me ask you what kind advice you would give to a high-school graduate child before he heads out into the “real world”:
Advice #1: Son, just look for a job with a union. If a union isn’t there, then work to organize a union. Then build your financial lifestyle around the union benefits. Don’t worry, that union will probably be there for your entire career and provide 100% of your pension savings. The government’s NLRB as been around since 1934 and will help keep your union strong.
Advice #2: Son, make sure your brain’s knowledge and skillset can fetch a high salary. Make sure that high salary is consistent with prevailing equilibrium wages and your job can’t easily be outsourced. Do not count on an outside organization such as a union to promise you a high wage. Unions are not permanent things. The only thing permanent is the knowledge you have in your brain to carry from job to job. That’s all you can really count on.
I believe Advice #1 is tantamount to child abuse and will mentally handicap him. Why do parents want to handicap their child? Why would parents want to make their child clueless as to how the world really works?
It’s only standard practice if it says so in the agreement. As indicated by the next part of your post, you do not know what a partnership is.
Northern Piper already described what is a partnership. If partnership does not have a written agreement, then the model rules (or whatever the jurisdiction calls them) will apply. This notion becomes very important when people acting in concert suddenly find themselves in a bad situation and the relationship needs to end.
I believe you’re right. That’s why the child advocacy groups are lobbying for strict criminal consequences for strawmen.
By the way, I don’t believe in any Cato conspiracies. I do believe they have supreme confidence in their own magnificent intelligence. That’s why I suggested they do it. I’m sure they’d be happy to tell each one of us what we’re really worth.
Strangely enough, you’ve just demonstrated that some unions don’t “artificially” push up wages or whatever. So it’s not a “union problem,” then, is it?
Additionally, there seems to be a pretense here that the sole function of a union is to artificially inflate wages.
Furthermore, I think that it’s a dubious proposition that anyone can be guaranteed freedom from obsolescence no matter what they do. There aren’t guarantees. That’s why employees are better off with unions as advocates and with governments that offer social welfare programs such as subsidized or free education, retraining, health care, etc.