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This article could be summarized as: "Things were better for working people when this country had strong unions." A response could be summarized as: "Times, th

by hooande 13y ago

This article could be summarized as: "Things were better for working people when this country had strong unions." A response could be summarized as: "Times, they are a' changin'" * There are 50% more people in the US than there were in 1965, the year used as an example in the article. Up to 316MM from 194MM [1]. This means more people competing for jobs, which weakens the power of unions. Many of those people are immigrants from countries where the US dollar goes a long way. It's hard to bargain when there are dozens of applicants lined up, many of which have at least a two year degree. * Market consolidation happened. This means that workers can't easily move to another job if they don't like their wages. Consolidation also means more competition with big enemies and fiercer battles for margins. Small companies have room to negotiate. Big companies live and die by quarterly earnings reports, and lowering wages is always a convenient go to. * Unions cause obvious financial problems. Most unions do far more good than harm. But there are multiple examples of cutting open the golden goose. Many unions have collectively bargained too well, nearly bankrupting their employers with poorly calculated pensions and benefits. Once a union fights hard to earn a concession they can almost never give it back, no matter how damaging it becomes. Unions are not bad things. Corporations have a fiduciary responsibility to get as much work out of employees for as little compensation as is practical. It's good to have that balanced by organizations who have a responsibility to their members to get as much from the corporation as is practical. The lack of unions and organized labor isn't what's ailing the middle class of this country. Capitalism is a greedy optimization function. At the extremes it doesn't do "middle". Not to discuss a different topic, but ideas like basic income combined with increased automation could be like a collective bargaining for every citizen. By making work effectively optional, employers will lose some of their leverage and employees won't have to be on the defensive. [1] http://www.multpl.com/united-states-population/table http://www.multpl.com/united-states-population/table

EliRivers 13y ago
This means more people competing for jobs, which weakens the power of unions. It also means more jobs, which lowers competition for jobs.
rayiner 13y ago
> Corporations have a fiduciary responsibility to get as much work out of employees for as little compensation as is practical. This is a myth. Under the prevailing (Delaware) law, corporations actually have a lot of leeway in this regard. If corporate executives wanted to pay more, they would be totally entitled to do so, and lawsuits wouldn't be able to stop the practice. What they would have to worry about is the private equity companies. An otherwise functioning business paying higher salaries than absolutely necessary could be a ripe takeover target.
- Crito 13y ago
  Even if it were true, it would not be a tall order for a company to tell their shareholders that paying their employees more, or giving them more PTO, allowed the company to ultimately extract more value from the employees. A world in which this strong notion of fiduciary responsibility actually exists is not a world where Google pays their devs minimum wage. They would still pay them more than is "naively necessary" despite this hypothetical fiduciary responsibility.
jedmeyers 13y ago
Productivity is much higher now, compared to 1965, thanks to automation.
Guvante 13y ago
> Corporations have a fiduciary responsibility to get as much work out of employees for as little compensation as is practical. Only in the current backwards mindset that your employees are an expense. Properly managed people are capable of amazing things, and can be turned into an asset easily. In theory the prevalence of white collar work should make this easier, but the stock market has turned everyone into thinking of just the next quarter. And honestly you will never get a raise out of an employee in the first quarter.
- waps 13y ago
  Only for unsolved problems, and only if you can actually afford it (both mostly mean competition is limited or non-existant). Otherwise, that won't work. It's a matter of time (decades, probably, but limited) until IT work turns into that as well. There was a time when helpdesk work was a well-paid satisfying job. Unions were merely a consequence of effectively 100% employment, and a pretty horrible one at that. We're returning to the middle ages, it's as simple as that. I don't mean technologically (the middle ages weren't all that primitive, they had knowledge, they just didn't have any economic application for it in a lot of places. But look at the cathedrals and trading houses they built : the problem was not that know-how had disappeared entirely, it just wasn't useful in 99% of places). I mean the employment situation : 95%+ unemployment (if you don't count subsistence farmers, and you shouldn't).
  - Guvante 13y ago
    > Only for unsolved problems, and only if you can actually afford it (both mostly mean competition is limited or non-existant). You are taking a very naive viewpoint of work. If you abstract everything away, of course it is impossible to find value in your employees. Lets take a simple example, say a Walmart employee who stocks shelves. Walmart will figure out how efficient they think a person should be, lets say they determine it should take 20 minutes to stack a shelf. Now lets take Bob, Bob can do a shelf in 15 minutes without too much effort. Unless Walmart finds a way to encourage Bob to go above and beyond, Bob will never do 15 minute averages, why would he? By treating Bob as an expense you have thrown away 33% of your capacity. The difficulty becomes finding the Bobs and deducing how to encourage them properly.

by hooande 13y ago

EliRivers 13y ago

This means more people competing for jobs, which weakens the power of unions. It also means more jobs, which lowers competition for jobs.

rayiner 13y ago

> Corporations have a fiduciary responsibility to get as much work out of employees for as little compensation as is practical. This is a myth. Under the prevailing (Delaware) law, corporations actually have a lot of leeway in this regard. If corporate executives wanted to pay more, they would be totally entitled to do so, and lawsuits wouldn't be able to stop the practice. What they would have to worry about is the private equity companies. An otherwise functioning business paying higher salaries than absolutely necessary could be a ripe takeover target.

Crito 13y ago
Even if it were true, it would not be a tall order for a company to tell their shareholders that paying their employees more, or giving them more PTO, allowed the company to ultimately extract more value from the employees. A world in which this strong notion of fiduciary responsibility actually exists is not a world where Google pays their devs minimum wage. They would still pay them more than is "naively necessary" despite this hypothetical fiduciary responsibility.

jedmeyers 13y ago

Productivity is much higher now, compared to 1965, thanks to automation.

Guvante 13y ago

> Corporations have a fiduciary responsibility to get as much work out of employees for as little compensation as is practical. Only in the current backwards mindset that your employees are an expense. Properly managed people are capable of amazing things, and can be turned into an asset easily. In theory the prevalence of white collar work should make this easier, but the stock market has turned everyone into thinking of just the next quarter. And honestly you will never get a raise out of an employee in the first quarter.

waps 13y ago
Only for unsolved problems, and only if you can actually afford it (both mostly mean competition is limited or non-existant). Otherwise, that won't work. It's a matter of time (decades, probably, but limited) until IT work turns into that as well. There was a time when helpdesk work was a well-paid satisfying job. Unions were merely a consequence of effectively 100% employment, and a pretty horrible one at that. We're returning to the middle ages, it's as simple as that. I don't mean technologically (the middle ages weren't all that primitive, they had knowledge, they just didn't have any economic application for it in a lot of places. But look at the cathedrals and trading houses they built : the problem was not that know-how had disappeared entirely, it just wasn't useful in 99% of places). I mean the employment situation : 95%+ unemployment (if you don't count subsistence farmers, and you shouldn't).
- Guvante 13y ago
  > Only for unsolved problems, and only if you can actually afford it (both mostly mean competition is limited or non-existant). You are taking a very naive viewpoint of work. If you abstract everything away, of course it is impossible to find value in your employees. Lets take a simple example, say a Walmart employee who stocks shelves. Walmart will figure out how efficient they think a person should be, lets say they determine it should take 20 minutes to stack a shelf. Now lets take Bob, Bob can do a shelf in 15 minutes without too much effort. Unless Walmart finds a way to encourage Bob to go above and beyond, Bob will never do 15 minute averages, why would he? By treating Bob as an expense you have thrown away 33% of your capacity. The difficulty becomes finding the Bobs and deducing how to encourage them properly.