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Unionization is a correction of the market if anything, as labor has a buyer's market. Both by the immediate need of survival by the seller, and a similarly hig

Unionization is a correction of the market if anything, as labor has a buyer's market. Both by the immediate need of survival by the seller, and a similarly high rate of exploitation at competing jobs that limits real choices. And arguably an actual monopsony/oligopsony, but that's besides the point. Edit: It's an interesting admission when you basically say that Amazon's worker productivity depends on coercion.

minsc__and__boo 6y ago
Correct. Unionization is a product of the free market, where suppliers collaborate together to increase their selling power.
ActorNightly 6y ago
>Unionization is a correction of the market if anything, Nope. Injecting money into lower end income levels, through things like raising the minimum wage to $10-11, or social welfare programs, causes every company paying minimum wage to slightly bump up their salaries - thats a market correction. Unionization is economically equivalent to rent control, which is not a market correction. The reason why rent control doesn't work is you basically people who cannot otherwise afford to live in an area, and artificially increase their net worth. Of course they want to stay in the area, which decreases availalbe housing supply, prevents building of new housing supply, e.t.c and so on with cascading effects. With unions is the same thing. People who are not worth $15 an hour because are slow are artificially inflated, and now they get put into a job that is hard to fire from, which then in turn leads to companies less likely to hire people, which decreases labor supply, and has other cascading effects. >It's an interesting admission when you basically say that Amazon's worker productivity depends on coercion. As is the case for any non-protected unskilled labor position, of which there are plenty. Amazon perhaps does more metric collection and expects a higher throughput, but they also pay accordingly. And people don't have to work at Amazon if they don't want to. Its interesting though that people chose to focus on Amazon when talking about this, instead of all the companies that share similar working conditions. Kinda shows you where your priorities are, which is not in discussion of things that could benefit the lower income class.
- james4k 6y ago
  Amazon is in the spotlight right now because of their very loud anti-union efforts and being the second largest employer in the US. Excluding the Department of Defense, but that's a digression. You're right that Walmart should be in the overall discussion, but they aren't the ones in a unionization vote happening at this very moment. And it's weird to conveniently act like the discussion of issues that benefit low income workers haven't been core political topics, like the $15 minimum wage you keep bringing up.
- AussieWog93 6y ago
  >People who are not worth $15 an hour because are slow are artificially inflated, and now they get put into a job that is hard to fire from, which then in turn leads to companies less likely to hire people, which decreases labor supply, and has other cascading effects. To be fair, plenty of huge companies hire all kinds of people that provide zero or negative value to the bottom line. Most of these positions are white collar, well paid and non-unionised: purchasing officers, university administrators (with the exception of that one person who actually does everything), sprawling HR departments, "Agile" project managers that can't code, the "management class" as a whole etc. Interestingly, the more "dead weight" employees a company has, the faster they will hire more. Using your own brand of "individual actors maximising value" economic theory, it's pretty easy to see how this is the case. The people making these hiring decisions don't actually have any rational incentive to increase the profitability of the organisation, but will receive both increased job security and political power through appointing dead weight hires. So that's what they do.

minsc__and__boo 6y ago

Correct. Unionization is a product of the free market, where suppliers collaborate together to increase their selling power.

ActorNightly 6y ago

>Unionization is a correction of the market if anything, Nope. Injecting money into lower end income levels, through things like raising the minimum wage to $10-11, or social welfare programs, causes every company paying minimum wage to slightly bump up their salaries - thats a market correction. Unionization is economically equivalent to rent control, which is not a market correction. The reason why rent control doesn't work is you basically people who cannot otherwise afford to live in an area, and artificially increase their net worth. Of course they want to stay in the area, which decreases availalbe housing supply, prevents building of new housing supply, e.t.c and so on with cascading effects. With unions is the same thing. People who are not worth $15 an hour because are slow are artificially inflated, and now they get put into a job that is hard to fire from, which then in turn leads to companies less likely to hire people, which decreases labor supply, and has other cascading effects. >It's an interesting admission when you basically say that Amazon's worker productivity depends on coercion. As is the case for any non-protected unskilled labor position, of which there are plenty. Amazon perhaps does more metric collection and expects a higher throughput, but they also pay accordingly. And people don't have to work at Amazon if they don't want to. Its interesting though that people chose to focus on Amazon when talking about this, instead of all the companies that share similar working conditions. Kinda shows you where your priorities are, which is not in discussion of things that could benefit the lower income class.

james4k 6y ago
Amazon is in the spotlight right now because of their very loud anti-union efforts and being the second largest employer in the US. Excluding the Department of Defense, but that's a digression. You're right that Walmart should be in the overall discussion, but they aren't the ones in a unionization vote happening at this very moment. And it's weird to conveniently act like the discussion of issues that benefit low income workers haven't been core political topics, like the $15 minimum wage you keep bringing up.
AussieWog93 6y ago
>People who are not worth $15 an hour because are slow are artificially inflated, and now they get put into a job that is hard to fire from, which then in turn leads to companies less likely to hire people, which decreases labor supply, and has other cascading effects. To be fair, plenty of huge companies hire all kinds of people that provide zero or negative value to the bottom line. Most of these positions are white collar, well paid and non-unionised: purchasing officers, university administrators (with the exception of that one person who actually does everything), sprawling HR departments, "Agile" project managers that can't code, the "management class" as a whole etc. Interestingly, the more "dead weight" employees a company has, the faster they will hire more. Using your own brand of "individual actors maximising value" economic theory, it's pretty easy to see how this is the case. The people making these hiring decisions don't actually have any rational incentive to increase the profitability of the organisation, but will receive both increased job security and political power through appointing dead weight hires. So that's what they do.