I asked a genuine question. Would you with a straight face tell a high school graduate to purposely count on union organizations to provide them throughout their long adult career? It’s a yes or no answer.
I understand all the positives of unionization etc. We’ve all heard them. What I’m trying to do is channel this ideology into one specific scenario of how you prepare a child for the adult world. Do you frame the idea of union as a “bonus” situation or the very foundation of his livelihood?
No strawman … just tell me honestly how you would explain to a child how unions should fit into his worldview for his best chance at success in life.
Liberals, Libertarians, Republicans, Fascists, Atheists, Creationists, all have supreme confidence in their own “magnificent intelligence.” Water is wet. The sky is blue, etc.
You are the one that tells the world what each one of us is worth via your purchasing preferences. When citizens (including liberals) pay $10 for a movie ticket instead of $10 at a local playhouse, they (in aggregate) are saying a movie star is worth more than their neighborhood stage actor. Market wages are not dictated from the “top down” from a mysterious council. Market wages are determined from the “bottom up” by everyday people like you and me via our purchasing choices.
It’s not strange because I deliberately put in that counter example. For teachers and the NFL football players, the union doesn’t circumvent equilibrium because there’s not a competitive alternative.
For auto workers, it does. Nothing strange about. Just use some common sense and look around to see if your wage makes sense and is sustainable.
There are no absolute guarantees. That is true. The sun may not rise tomorrow. It has been there for the last 5 billion years but that is no guarantee that it’s going to be there tomorrow. The only thing that is 100% certain is that we are uncertain.
However, there are relative guarantees. I believe the knowledge inside your brain and motivation to continue improving is a better guarantee than the one that can be provided by a union. Do you disagree with the relative strengths of those 2 guarantees?
You understand all the positives of unionization etc. Thus, you are stripping all context and reasonability and constructing a ridiculous, artificial scenario, based a pair of false alternatives that forces one to conclude that unions are harmful.
The market for labor is not exactly comparable to the market for consumer goods and you know it. For one, for any individual, there are a lot fewer potential purchasers in the marketplace, making it much more like an oligopoly than a competitive market.
OK. Let’s leave aside what is or is not a true partnership. My point is that for purposes of this thread, in which what counts is the relative bargaining power of the employee versus the employer, a partnership situation in a large law firm is functionally equivalent to a corporation elsewhere, from the perspective of a non-managing partner.
To the extent that switching jobs is a major change for a lot of people, it’s not a commodity-like market.
I do not agree. That seems on its face fundamentally incorrect. The non-managing partners have far more bargaining power (as indeed do senior associates) than most union-type employees. For one, partners bring in business, and can very easily move laterally from firm to firm (and in many cases do so); many clients consider themselves clients of a specific partner rather than the firm as a whole.
OK, but that seems to be a new point, unrelated to the partnership structure.
You’re saying that lawyers in general tend to have strong personal relationships with their clients, such that they can take their clients with them. If that’s the case, then they do indeed have more bargaining power on an individual level.
A lot of corporations have “non-compete” agreements, that prohibit soliciting business from the firm’s clients, but perhaps this is not done in the legal field.
The (former) partner doesn’t have to “solicit” the business. You seem to forget that the clients have freewill and can just transfer their business to the other firm that the partner moved to. The clients of course are not bound by the “non-compete” agreements.
Sorry, life is not structured to provide convenient lifetime employment. You have to adapt to the situation. What’s the alternative? Whine about it?
Right, but it makes it harder for the partner to pull off. The company is not going to just sit around waiting for client to switch. They get their replacement team out there ASAP, including, if possible, some members of the current team that the client is familiar with, and so on. Meanwhile, the partner is legally constrained from doing much more than waiting for the phone call.
Sorry, I have no idea what point you’re trying to make.
I believe the labor market is a competitive market. The very reason I even exist and I’m able to type this post on a computer vs sleeping under a highway bridge is testament to the fact that labor is a competitive market! What does lifetime employment or not having lifetime employment have to do with it?
Please take nationwide and worldwide reality into account. How does leveraging union power to get General Motors to pay a higher wage “even out” the playing field when the ENTIRE PLAYING FIELD includes companies like Honda & Toyota that don’t pay union wages. This is nonsensical.
Did you agree with F-P’s point that the cost associated with changing jobs is a factor that disproportionately affect employees (as opposed to employers)?
“Perfectly competitive market” is a term with meaning in economics. Perfectly competitive markets work differently than competitive markets that are not perfectly competitive. The extra costs to the employee associated with changing jobs make this market not perfectly competitive.
You tell me. You brought up “lifetime employment.”
What makes you think that what happens in the automotive industry is in any way representative regarding the value of unions generally?
What makes you think that “artificially inflated wages” is in any way the overriding effect of unions or, indeed, the primary question when considering whether union activity is beneficial?
I’ve already outlined in previous post #48 and agreed that you can certainly start a union. Ok, now what? Is that all you got? Having a union membership is your ultimate ace up your sleeve? Your thinking is constrained only to unionization? Your fallback is wages negotiated by union support? Like I said before, I guess you get what you deserve then.
I’ve tried to explain that there is a better fallback plan than a union. It’s your true skills that you carry in your brain. You are certainly free to ignore this approach at your discretion…and likewise, you get what you deserve.
For the record, I don’t think unions are evil. I never said anywhere that unions are evil. Instead of thinking of union as “good” or “bad”, just open your eyes and really take a good look at the reality of today’s market conditions. The market forces during post World War II that favored conditions for unionization are no longer there. We live in a situation where jobs (especially blue collar jobs) have less openings than the number of willing applicants. That is the reality of today’s equilibrium situation. You can certainly try to create unions in defiance of that new reality but you’d be a fool to believe that it is sustainable. If you do fall for it, then what I can say… you get what you deserve.
I guess we’re on completely different wavelengths then. I don’t think the desire for lifetime employment has any relevance.
F-P said changing jobs is a hassle. I responded that life can’t provide lifetime employment. This factor has nothing to do with competitive market. I don’t know what else to say to that.
Ok, educate me. What is the PRIMARY OBJECTIVE of a union if it’s not wages + benefits. (And benefits are really just another form of wages.) Workplace safety? Limited hours? Job title categories? Those seem secondary importance compared to wages. From what I’ve seen, the overwhelming vast majority of time & energy spent on negotiating union contracts is the topic of wage + benefits.
Well I’m talking about white collar professionals here. And, as noted in the OP, I’m thinking more about a more equitable distribution of company profits rather than eating into them. studies have found that the ratio of CEO compensation compared to average worker compensation has increased enormously over the past couple of decades, and I’d like to even it out. Nothing uncompetitive about that.
I wouldn’t agree with it. There is a cost to business, well documented by HR and accountants, that show the cost of trying to bring an employee up to speed. Business which are very nimble, which are flexible to market demand, have the very serious problem of employee turnover. Large corporations have a serious problem with this issue. Business demands often require action this instant, or as my VPs like to say, “yesterday.” All else being equal, while it may be true that the employee suffers in greater relation to the company for being fired, the company suffers a greater overall cost in replacing Fred.
Lack of perfect markets – and there is a theory out there that there is never a perfect market, at least on the macro scale – means that there is inefficiencies which affect all actors, absent any collusion (i.e. illegal activity) or intervention (e.g. government intervention) on the market which make makes certain actors suffer less.
It’s uncompetitive if other companies don’t do it as well.
Well, I’ve asked the following question before but I’ve never gotten a good answer.
Why don’t you and acsenray and other like-minded folks get together and create a company that incorporates all your good ideas. The number of people on this planet that think like you probably outnumber the greedy capitalists by a ratio of 99-to-1. Probably more like a 999-to-1 ratio.
Why mess around with all this unionization nonsense? Form your own company with your own rules. Just create a company that does that following:
[ul][li]owners are paid less than line workers[]profits go to employees first and shareholders last[/li][li]100% subsidized gold-plated health benefits[]100% contribution to pension plan[]8 weeks vacation[]lifetime employment[*]100% college tuition [/li][li]100% free day care[/li][li]reimbursement for MBA or Masters[/li][li]15% raises every year[/li][/ul]
You wouldn’t even need a “layer” of a union between employees and the company because the company you’ve formed already provides all the benefits that a union would’ve had to negotiate for! A lot more efficient wouldn’t you agree? Actually, you could create a company that offered more than any union in any industry offers. That’s the beauty of dictating the rules of your very own company.
Again, people with your mindset overwhelmingly outnumber the “fat cat CEOs.” You’ve got overwhelming strength in numbers. What’s stopping you from creating a company that’s so obviously logical?
Go to your state website and download the PDF form. Fill it out, file it with the Secretary of State and bingo, you have now formed your company.
I’m just a stupid idiot. The fat cat CEOs are just stupid idiots. Go form a company and prove me and everyone else that they are wrong. Show that “market equilibrium” is just a bunch of bullshit economics doublespeak.
No, but you’re quite good with false dichotomies and apparently have connections with a farmer, because you use straw very liberally.
And, so far your arguments have been exceedingly dishonest. Neither I nor anyone else has painted a picture of some kind of a Marxist paradise.
You asked me to look at the real world. Does it escape you that in the real world there are plenty of examples of (1) unionized workplaces, and (2) unionized white collar workplaces that don’t fit your hysterical stereotypes.
Whether unionizing happens in any particular place depends on a lot of circumstances, foremost things like government policy, accidents of history, cultural hegemony, etc. In most circumstances, a union is simply a small part of the overall picture and can play a constructive role as a buffer between a powerful commercial enterprise and a single employee.
And you sir, have a habit of skipping almost all questions I’ve asked.
I asked you several questions which I will restate as genuine. I was genuinely curious as to how you would frame the concept of unionization in the 21st century to a high school graduate. I won’t restrict your answer to “two false dichotomies” as you call it. Go ahead and give it your best eloquent freeform answer. I would really like to know what intellectual toolkit you give a child before he faces the real world.
You and I can go back and forth on this union labor issue but we’re just two old and bitter debaters. I’m much more interested in your sendoff speech to an innocent high-school kid describing how unions should be viewed in relation to success in life. Please indulge me. As a courtesy, I won’t comment on or criticize your answer. I’d just like to know what advice you’d give.
Of course there are unionized white-collar workplaces. I already listed an example of one without being prompted from you. But that is irrelevant to this discussion.
Have you lost sight of the original motivation behind this thread? Let me quote OP as a reminder:
The idea is to use unions to pay white collar workers more than what they would get without the union.
The theme I’ve repeated several times is you can’t expect to sustain any wins from union negotiation victories if it flies in the face of market equilibrium.
Which part of this concept do you disagree with?
“a small part of the overall picture” — I don’t understand what you mean by that.
Btw, I also asked you earlier what the PRIME OBJECTIVE of a union is and you skipped that question too. Maybe you meant your sentence above to be the answer. If so, it’s very vague and wishy washy. One could also say a Human Resources director “can play a constructive role as a buffer between company and single employee.”
And I have to ask again… why all this fixation on organizing a union? Why not just get a bunch of likeminded people like yourself and form a company with the economic rules you dictate? Just think of forming a company as a type of “super” union. You can even add the word “UNION” to the company name… like “Western Union” or “Union Pacific Railroad.” Please explain why this is not an option?
But there are plenty of proven business models out there - open up a coffee shop - start there. Want more white collar than retail, open up an IT or business consulting firm. These are really low investment businesses with easily replicated business models that will allow you to see if your theories work.