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> As many argue, wages are only set by supply and demand. Most of the time that I see people invoke "Econ 101" concepts, they are wrong. Supply and demand does

> As many argue, wages are only set by supply and demand. Most of the time that I see people invoke "Econ 101" concepts, they are wrong. Supply and demand does not account for the power imbalance between workers and leadership, which unions specifically attempt to address. It does not account for the class differences between workers trying to make ends meet and the board of directors who believe they deserve much higher pay than workers. We are free to change the perceived value of workers through the power of worker solidarity - ensuring that individual workers are not so easily replaced to keep wages suppressed. You can simply say "it's supply and demand" and do nothing to support the workers whose labor is so clearly needed for our economy to function, or we can support collective bargaining rights to make sure that individual workers are not crushed under the power of company leadership. How you view this is up to you, and not a simple fact of natural laws of economics.

WalterBright 3y ago
> Supply and demand does not account for ... Yes, it does, in each scenario you presented. > We are free to change the perceived value of workers through the power of worker solidarity It's more like using the power of government to ensure the company has no alternative to the union. Company leaders have no actual power over the workers. They cannot force anyone to come to work. They cannot have you arrested. They cannot confiscate your property. They cannot beat you. They cannot prevent you from accepting a job at another company. They cannot prevent you from leaving. They cannot extort, libel, slander, blackmail, or threaten you. They cannot put a hit on you. All they can do is offer you money in exchange for your labor. That's it.
- astrange 3y ago
  > They cannot prevent you from accepting a job at another company. They can totally do that with a non-compete clause. Just not in California.
  - sib 3y ago
    I'm pretty sure that there is no US state where a company can "prevent you from accepting a job at another company." In some states, and in some circumstances, they may be able to prevent you from accepting a job at a competitive company.
    - TaylorAlexander 3y ago
      Clearly a competitive company counts as "another company".
      - sib 3y ago
        Yes - but not every other company - so they have not prevented you from working at another company...
        TaylorAlexander 3y ago
        This seems like a bad faith reading of the english sentence here. The phrase "every other company" was not used. Obviously they can depress the value of worker's wages as a whole if they can prevent you from working at the competition - because a worker with a specific skill set will be best utilized at companies which are in the same field, and so generally in competition with one another.
        sib 3y ago
        Not within the context of the long list of things that the OP listed companies can't do...
        astrange 3y ago
        Most people with skills are only really capable of working at competing companies.
        sib 3y ago
- nicoburns 3y ago
  Having control of money is power. A kind of power that everyone needs, and many workers (who are typically poorer than company leaders) don’t have secure access to.
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    Having skills someone with money needs is power, too.
- TaylorAlexander 3y ago
  > It's more like using the power of government to ensure the company has no alternative to the union. Unions absolutely do not need the government to exist. It is only through government attempts to control and curtail unions that the government has involved itself in unions. See for example the Taft-Hartley act: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taft%E2%80%93Hartley_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taft%E2%80%93Hartley_Act
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    > Unions absolutely do not need the government to exist. That's absolutely correct. But in America, the unions use the government to tilt the balance heavily in their favor.
    - TaylorAlexander 3y ago
      What makes you say that? The Taft Hartley act I linked to significantly weakened union power in this country. In other countries like Germany unions have much more power and representation.
      - nickpp 3y ago
        Unions help politicians get elected. Said politicians repay the favor.
whatshisface 3y ago
My econ 101 talked about the difference between commodity and illiquid markets which explains the difference between worker and CEO pay. The CEOs are coming from a restricted group of insiders and can't be replaced because of their relationships which make them unique. Workers in the sectors most often unionized have few distinguishing characteristics from the perspective of the company and are thrown around by the same laws as the price of corn. The black death is a well-documented example of a restriction in the labor supply raising the price of labor and improving the wellbeing of laborers. There is no indication anywhere that supply and demand is wrong about the job market.
- listless 3y ago
  This is so obviously the right answer, I can’t believe its not upvoted more. To be clear, I stand with the union on the principal of their argument. However, the principals of economics itself, much like gravity, do not care about the nobility of your cause. It seems to me that what the union is asking for is that the corporation act more like a benevolent force than one that is restricted by market pressures. Of course, you could use the power of government as one poster mentioned to force this issue, but those violent delights have violent ends.
  - smutlord2099 3y ago
    "but those violent delights have violent ends." You talk as though the US isn't steeped in regulation. All modern capitalist nations are. Without regulation, you get absurd instabilities as we saw until the New Deal. If someone's selling you a simple explanation, they're likely wrong.
  - TaylorAlexander 3y ago
    > It seems to me that what the union is asking for is that the corporation act more like a benevolent force than one that is restricted by market pressures. I disagree. The union is simply changing the market pressures that the corporation experiences. There is no benevolence required when you are faced with a strike. You either negotiate acceptable terms, or you have to deal with the consequences.
conradev 3y ago
> Supply and demand does not account for the power imbalance between workers and leadership, which unions specifically attempt to address. You’re both right. Power dynamics and supply and demand are interrelated. Most forms of human organization involve hierarchy. Even co-ops have a CEO and that CEO makes a multiple of base worker pay. What that multiple is and how it gets decided is a fair question: in co-ops, voting rights are built-in, but for private corporations you need collective bargaining
Ndndjdndj 3y ago
[dead]
drewcoo 3y ago
> Most of the time that I see people invoke "Econ 101" concepts, they are wrong. It's not that they're wrong. Worse, they're thought-stopping. They're mantras we all know and we are trained to "accept their wisdom" and stop questioning.
hgdfhgfdhgdf 3y ago
I have bad news for you. Those workers who demand 40% wage increases and 32 hour work weeks will be "easily replaced" by auto factories in the South who have right to work laws.
- TaylorAlexander 3y ago
  This is why global worker solidarity is so important.
  - elforce002 3y ago
    Interesting. What's that if I may ask?
  - edgyquant 3y ago
    It’s also unrealistic. Different workers in different nations have different cultures and compete with each other for a scarce supply of buyers.
    - SequoiaHope 3y ago
      > Different workers in different nations have different cultures and compete with each other for a scarce supply of buyers. This is a description of the status quo of capitalist competition, but is not a fact of nature. We can arrange our economies to work in cooperation with one another, rather than in competition. Competition is used specifically to depress all worker wages for the benefit of the ownership class, and we do not have to accept that at face value.
  - ummonk 3y ago
    Why would workers in the global south feel any solidarity towards workers in the wealthiest country on earth who earn global top 5% wages?
    - orange_joe 3y ago
      well, the unions pushed for wage requirements in the auto industry within the USMCA (NAFTA2) and required Mexico to (effective) legalize unions alongside lots of other rights enshrining measures. So Mexican workers benefited greatly from the work of these unions.
mr_toad 3y ago
> Supply and demand does not account for the power imbalance between workers and leadership Supply and demand is the imbalance. The workers, individually have no control over supply. The whole point of a union is to control the supply of labour and shift the balance of power.

WalterBright 3y ago

> Supply and demand does not account for ... Yes, it does, in each scenario you presented. > We are free to change the perceived value of workers through the power of worker solidarity It's more like using the power of government to ensure the company has no alternative to the union. Company leaders have no actual power over the workers. They cannot force anyone to come to work. They cannot have you arrested. They cannot confiscate your property. They cannot beat you. They cannot prevent you from accepting a job at another company. They cannot prevent you from leaving. They cannot extort, libel, slander, blackmail, or threaten you. They cannot put a hit on you. All they can do is offer you money in exchange for your labor. That's it.

astrange 3y ago
> They cannot prevent you from accepting a job at another company. They can totally do that with a non-compete clause. Just not in California.
- sib 3y ago
  I'm pretty sure that there is no US state where a company can "prevent you from accepting a job at another company." In some states, and in some circumstances, they may be able to prevent you from accepting a job at a competitive company.
  - TaylorAlexander 3y ago
    Clearly a competitive company counts as "another company".
    - sib 3y ago
      Yes - but not every other company - so they have not prevented you from working at another company...
      - TaylorAlexander 3y ago
        This seems like a bad faith reading of the english sentence here. The phrase "every other company" was not used. Obviously they can depress the value of worker's wages as a whole if they can prevent you from working at the competition - because a worker with a specific skill set will be best utilized at companies which are in the same field, and so generally in competition with one another.
        sib 3y ago
        Not within the context of the long list of things that the OP listed companies can't do...
      - astrange 3y ago
        Most people with skills are only really capable of working at competing companies.
        sib 3y ago
nicoburns 3y ago
Having control of money is power. A kind of power that everyone needs, and many workers (who are typically poorer than company leaders) don’t have secure access to.
- WalterBright 3y ago
  Having skills someone with money needs is power, too.
TaylorAlexander 3y ago
> It's more like using the power of government to ensure the company has no alternative to the union. Unions absolutely do not need the government to exist. It is only through government attempts to control and curtail unions that the government has involved itself in unions. See for example the Taft-Hartley act: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taft%E2%80%93Hartley_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taft%E2%80%93Hartley_Act
- WalterBright 3y ago
  > Unions absolutely do not need the government to exist. That's absolutely correct. But in America, the unions use the government to tilt the balance heavily in their favor.
  - TaylorAlexander 3y ago
    What makes you say that? The Taft Hartley act I linked to significantly weakened union power in this country. In other countries like Germany unions have much more power and representation.
    - nickpp 3y ago
      Unions help politicians get elected. Said politicians repay the favor.

whatshisface 3y ago

My econ 101 talked about the difference between commodity and illiquid markets which explains the difference between worker and CEO pay. The CEOs are coming from a restricted group of insiders and can't be replaced because of their relationships which make them unique. Workers in the sectors most often unionized have few distinguishing characteristics from the perspective of the company and are thrown around by the same laws as the price of corn. The black death is a well-documented example of a restriction in the labor supply raising the price of labor and improving the wellbeing of laborers. There is no indication anywhere that supply and demand is wrong about the job market.

listless 3y ago
This is so obviously the right answer, I can’t believe its not upvoted more. To be clear, I stand with the union on the principal of their argument. However, the principals of economics itself, much like gravity, do not care about the nobility of your cause. It seems to me that what the union is asking for is that the corporation act more like a benevolent force than one that is restricted by market pressures. Of course, you could use the power of government as one poster mentioned to force this issue, but those violent delights have violent ends.
- smutlord2099 3y ago
  "but those violent delights have violent ends." You talk as though the US isn't steeped in regulation. All modern capitalist nations are. Without regulation, you get absurd instabilities as we saw until the New Deal. If someone's selling you a simple explanation, they're likely wrong.
- TaylorAlexander 3y ago
  > It seems to me that what the union is asking for is that the corporation act more like a benevolent force than one that is restricted by market pressures. I disagree. The union is simply changing the market pressures that the corporation experiences. There is no benevolence required when you are faced with a strike. You either negotiate acceptable terms, or you have to deal with the consequences.

conradev 3y ago

> Supply and demand does not account for the power imbalance between workers and leadership, which unions specifically attempt to address. You’re both right. Power dynamics and supply and demand are interrelated. Most forms of human organization involve hierarchy. Even co-ops have a CEO and that CEO makes a multiple of base worker pay. What that multiple is and how it gets decided is a fair question: in co-ops, voting rights are built-in, but for private corporations you need collective bargaining

Ndndjdndj 3y ago

[dead]

drewcoo 3y ago

> Most of the time that I see people invoke "Econ 101" concepts, they are wrong. It's not that they're wrong. Worse, they're thought-stopping. They're mantras we all know and we are trained to "accept their wisdom" and stop questioning.

hgdfhgfdhgdf 3y ago

I have bad news for you. Those workers who demand 40% wage increases and 32 hour work weeks will be "easily replaced" by auto factories in the South who have right to work laws.

TaylorAlexander 3y ago
This is why global worker solidarity is so important.
- elforce002 3y ago
  Interesting. What's that if I may ask?
- edgyquant 3y ago
  It’s also unrealistic. Different workers in different nations have different cultures and compete with each other for a scarce supply of buyers.
  - SequoiaHope 3y ago
    > Different workers in different nations have different cultures and compete with each other for a scarce supply of buyers. This is a description of the status quo of capitalist competition, but is not a fact of nature. We can arrange our economies to work in cooperation with one another, rather than in competition. Competition is used specifically to depress all worker wages for the benefit of the ownership class, and we do not have to accept that at face value.
- ummonk 3y ago
  Why would workers in the global south feel any solidarity towards workers in the wealthiest country on earth who earn global top 5% wages?
  - orange_joe 3y ago
    well, the unions pushed for wage requirements in the auto industry within the USMCA (NAFTA2) and required Mexico to (effective) legalize unions alongside lots of other rights enshrining measures. So Mexican workers benefited greatly from the work of these unions.

mr_toad 3y ago

> Supply and demand does not account for the power imbalance between workers and leadership Supply and demand is the imbalance. The workers, individually have no control over supply. The whole point of a union is to control the supply of labour and shift the balance of power.