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It depends on how you’re measuring effectiveness. In terms of salaries, the only effective tool unions have to increase them is their ability to exclude people
by AmericanChopper 6y ago
It depends on how you’re measuring effectiveness.
In terms of salaries, the only effective tool unions have to increase them is their ability to exclude people from employment. You can see this having a great effect with the ALPA, AMA and Bar Associations, who have all succeed in making becoming a pilot, doctor or lawyer incredibly expensive, difficult and time intensive. Regardless of the true underlying motives, their success in keeping people out of the professions is why they’re all so highly paid. This is also why union organisers believe they should have the right to prevent non-union members from seeking employment in a company they are striking against (and call such people scabs).
The more ordinary trade unions are typically much less successful in having any significant impact on salaries, because their only meaningful tool for constraining supply is the temporary impact of striking.
Unions also usually serve as a levelling mechanism, where CBAs aim to reduce the difference in remuneration between the more productive and the less productive members of staff. So whether that’s effective for any particular person would depend on how productive they are, potentially having a negative impact, positive impact, or little impact at all.
The single area where unions can easily have the most positive impact is in enforcing compliance with employment laws. It’s much harder for employers to skirt employment law when employees have union representation (unless the union in question is one of the many “yellow unions”, who primarily protect the interests of employers over employees). The flip side of that is that it is of course much harder to fire poorly performing employees (try firing a corrupt cop for instance).
- ihm 6y ago> In terms of salaries, the only effective tool unions have to increase them is their ability to exclude people from employment. This is not true. Capitalists and managers often take large profits and salaries that could go to workers instead.
- AmericanChopper 6y agoMarket economies set prices by supply and demand. If enough candidate employees are willing to work for less than the union is demanding, then the union has almost no leverage to have their demands met. That is unless they can use regulation to exclude non-union members from employment, like lawyers, doctors and pilots have accomplished. Striking can have an influence on supply, but it’s influence is very limited by the fact that striking can at best represent a temporary disruption to business. How much an employer could potentially afford is not relevant as long as there is somebody willing to do the job for less.
- andrekandre 6y agonot only that, but many times they give the execs at failing companies millions of dollars in pay raises... https://www.dallasnews.com/business/retail/2020/07/16/us-justice-department-lawyer-files-motion-to-deny-neiman-marcus-executive-raises/ https://www.dallasnews.com/business/retail/2020/07/16/us-jus... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-04/bankruptcy-is-a-jackpot-for-ceos-helming-failed-oil-companies https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-04/bankruptc... https://www.bizjournals.com/newyork/news/2017/11/22/bankrupt-toys-r-us-pays-ceo-bonuses.html https://www.bizjournals.com/newyork/news/2017/11/22/bankrupt...
- AmericanChopper 6y agoJust imagine how good it would be if the CEO of Walmart were to give his entire compensation to his employers instead. Each of them could be earning an additional $9.50... per year, or about 0.45 cents per hour. For Amazon you’d be looking at about 0.09 cents per hour. For Microsoft you’d be looking at an astonishing 7.9 cents per hour. The idea that CEO compensation has some sort of impact on employee compensation is just a myth. It’s irrelevant anyway, because that’s not how wages are set. Please explain why you think a company would choose to pay a union member more than a non-union member would be willing to do the job for.
- andrekandre 6y agoi dont think that was the point i was trying to make...