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That's because depressed wages are caused by the drive for ever increasing profits.
by grecy 9y ago
That's because depressed wages are caused by the drive for ever increasing profits.
- sp332 9y agoYes but the workers have a drive for increasing profits too, and there are more of them. So that's not really a good explanation.
- toomuchtodo 9y agoWorkers have less power to increase wages than corporations have to increase revenue and profits. This has occurred, arguably, because of right to work laws and the reduction in organized labor (which previously negotiated wages with more power).
- aantix 9y agoIs that true? A corporation that relies on 50,000+ employees to deliver a service or product, and those employees collectively stop working?
- toomuchtodo 9y agoI don't entirely grok your question, but it sometimes does take walkouts to exert force to obtain wage concessions (teacher strikes, pilot strikes, etc). Teachers striking in several states are exerting enough force to obtain meaningful wage increases. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/04/the-teachers-strikes-have-exposed-the-gops-achilles-heel.html http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/04/the-teachers-st... https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-teachers-strikes-are-becoming-a-nationwide-movement-1522584001 https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-teachers-strikes-are-becomi...
- leadingthenet 9y agoThis is where an understanding of power structures and hierarchies helps.
- sp332 9y agoExactly. Drive for profits doesn't have much explanatory power.
- danans 9y agoMore workers only equates to more leverage if they can collectively exert control to suppress production, like via a strike. Apart from that, more workers who are mostly interchangeable have lower leverage to increase their wages.
- aylmao 9y agoIt's not a _complete_ explanation, but I agree with @grecy and have to expand on your response. > the workers have a drive for increasing profits too Whereas companies tend to have increasing profits as their only and primary goal, for workers it is not their only drive or the only factor they need to consider. If jobs leave my city, I can't just pack up and follow them; I need to think about my family, my kids, their school, their friends, my house, etc. Companies are much more flexible because as entities they don't have the same moral obligation people have towards other people and themselves. This is especially true for big companies. The bigger the company gets the more impersonal it becomes, and the more leverage it has because individual employees contribute less and they can invest more resources into hiring.