3 ms·

I mean I just did. Your comment is just plain wrong in the face of the cited right to work law for Michigan. Any “requirements” would be this year alone due to

I mean I just did. Your comment is just plain wrong in the face of the cited right to work law for Michigan. Any “requirements” would be this year alone due to the legality of the statute. It’s your turn to present something other than opinions posed as fact, blatant misinformation or in this response of yours an ad populum appeal that leads me to believe you have spent 0 time actually researching this. How do you square the right to work law in Michigan with your previous claim that Michigan ford shops are “all union” by requirement and not by the workers choice to unionize. How would that even be legal to force someone to join a union in right to work state? Hint: it isn't legal and therefore your claim is 100% provably wrong.

adam_arthur 3y ago
A corporate monopoly is a company that consists of people freely choosing to work together, yet it is still a monopoly. There is no mandate to join the company A monopoly is not a monopoly due to it being enshrined or mandated by law, it is because it has market power far exceeding that of any current or future competitor. Because it is uneconomical to compete with them A deeply embedded labor union, even if nominally optional to join, is still a monopoly on labor because there is no incentive for an individual auto-worker to break off from the union. They have 0 individual bargaining power unless they are part of the union. Ford cannot go out and hire an entire set of "scabs" overnight to run their plants, because they lose too much collective domain knowledge and its too costly to do so. This makes labor unions such as UAW directly comparable to what a corporate monopoly looks like. It is a direct and clear analogy. Right to work is irrelevant here. Your entire counterpoint is based on misunderstanding the definition of a Monopoly. Anyway the semantics of what a "monopoly" is are subjective (is Apple or Google one?). This discussion is about "effective monopolies" and the economic impact when one body has enough market power that alternative options are not realistic, even if nominally available.
- cristiancavalli 3y ago
  Sure you can move the goal posts, but just so we have a record of the actual history: You proffered a point: “ If Ford wants to invest in these plants or hire more people, they must hire them from the union. There is no competing, alternative union, or mechanism to hire non-union labor into this plant, thus making the UAW a local monopoly on labor supply for those plants.” Which I proved incorrect because it’s simply not the case nor could it have been based on Michigans own laws (up until this year that is). Michigan was a right to work state up until this year so yes Ford can and does hire non union which doesn’t even speak to its massive 3pp parts maker network which is largely not unionized and acts as another way to employ non union personnel. You can say Ford can’t hire scabs but they do as do others: https://labornotes.org/2023/09/scabs-deployed-gm-parts-distribution-centers https://labornotes.org/2023/09/scabs-deployed-gm-parts-distr... https://theintercept.com/2023/10/10/uaw-auto-strike-stellantis/ https://theintercept.com/2023/10/10/uaw-auto-strike-stellant... You can also say they can’t hire non union workers and yet even in the US only many ford employees are not unionized: “ Ford has about 173,000 employees worldwide, about 86,000 in the U.S. Of the 86,000, about 57,000 are represented by the UAW. About 33% of Ford employees are UAW” https://www.barrons.com/articles/ford-stock-uaw-gm-stellantis-5f043ff4 https://www.barrons.com/articles/ford-stock-uaw-gm-stellanti... I’m not responding to your other “points” because they lack any form of citation. I was interested to see if there were actually union requirements to get a Ford job in Michigan and from my research I can’t see that and your claims fail to speak to that question in an substantive way beyond you espousing your opinion. I never made a claim about unions being good or bad — you imply value judgements in your conclusions but those are your own and without citations they are as useful as a hole in the head. You can keep on making “logical” conclusions but they lack any substance because you can’t properly execute a coherent line of argument as you fail to support your previous claims even when given multiple opportunities to present a cogent case. I guess “everybody knows” though is enough for your purposes. Also your definition of monopoly in this case fails to actually support your point. Here is an actual definition of a monopoly: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/definition/monopoly https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/definition/monopoly You miss the important “unique” qualifier to the product or services. UAW or any other union does not offer a unique product as labor is a fungible asset. In right to work states there is no singular unique provider of labor and therefore it is not a monopoly unless you can prove that one has to join a union to work at Ford which is not the case.

adam_arthur 3y ago

A corporate monopoly is a company that consists of people freely choosing to work together, yet it is still a monopoly. There is no mandate to join the company A monopoly is not a monopoly due to it being enshrined or mandated by law, it is because it has market power far exceeding that of any current or future competitor. Because it is uneconomical to compete with them A deeply embedded labor union, even if nominally optional to join, is still a monopoly on labor because there is no incentive for an individual auto-worker to break off from the union. They have 0 individual bargaining power unless they are part of the union. Ford cannot go out and hire an entire set of "scabs" overnight to run their plants, because they lose too much collective domain knowledge and its too costly to do so. This makes labor unions such as UAW directly comparable to what a corporate monopoly looks like. It is a direct and clear analogy. Right to work is irrelevant here. Your entire counterpoint is based on misunderstanding the definition of a Monopoly. Anyway the semantics of what a "monopoly" is are subjective (is Apple or Google one?). This discussion is about "effective monopolies" and the economic impact when one body has enough market power that alternative options are not realistic, even if nominally available.

cristiancavalli 3y ago
Sure you can move the goal posts, but just so we have a record of the actual history: You proffered a point: “ If Ford wants to invest in these plants or hire more people, they must hire them from the union. There is no competing, alternative union, or mechanism to hire non-union labor into this plant, thus making the UAW a local monopoly on labor supply for those plants.” Which I proved incorrect because it’s simply not the case nor could it have been based on Michigans own laws (up until this year that is). Michigan was a right to work state up until this year so yes Ford can and does hire non union which doesn’t even speak to its massive 3pp parts maker network which is largely not unionized and acts as another way to employ non union personnel. You can say Ford can’t hire scabs but they do as do others: https://labornotes.org/2023/09/scabs-deployed-gm-parts-distribution-centers https://labornotes.org/2023/09/scabs-deployed-gm-parts-distr... https://theintercept.com/2023/10/10/uaw-auto-strike-stellantis/ https://theintercept.com/2023/10/10/uaw-auto-strike-stellant... You can also say they can’t hire non union workers and yet even in the US only many ford employees are not unionized: “ Ford has about 173,000 employees worldwide, about 86,000 in the U.S. Of the 86,000, about 57,000 are represented by the UAW. About 33% of Ford employees are UAW” https://www.barrons.com/articles/ford-stock-uaw-gm-stellantis-5f043ff4 https://www.barrons.com/articles/ford-stock-uaw-gm-stellanti... I’m not responding to your other “points” because they lack any form of citation. I was interested to see if there were actually union requirements to get a Ford job in Michigan and from my research I can’t see that and your claims fail to speak to that question in an substantive way beyond you espousing your opinion. I never made a claim about unions being good or bad — you imply value judgements in your conclusions but those are your own and without citations they are as useful as a hole in the head. You can keep on making “logical” conclusions but they lack any substance because you can’t properly execute a coherent line of argument as you fail to support your previous claims even when given multiple opportunities to present a cogent case. I guess “everybody knows” though is enough for your purposes. Also your definition of monopoly in this case fails to actually support your point. Here is an actual definition of a monopoly: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/definition/monopoly https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/definition/monopoly You miss the important “unique” qualifier to the product or services. UAW or any other union does not offer a unique product as labor is a fungible asset. In right to work states there is no singular unique provider of labor and therefore it is not a monopoly unless you can prove that one has to join a union to work at Ford which is not the case.