4 ms·

"One big problem, in the Teamsters’ view, is that the bus companies are constantly seeking to underbid one another for contracts. " Yeah, if only they didn't c

"One big problem, in the Teamsters’ view, is that the bus companies are constantly seeking to underbid one another for contracts. " Yeah, if only they didn't compete with each other ... "“That hampers their ability to pay these workers decently,” Mr. Aloise said, “and that keeps pulling the common denominator down.”" I'm not even sure what he's suggesting?

DanBC 12y ago
> I'm not even sure what he's suggesting? Company A and B make bids based partly on what they pay their drivers. Company A wins. Company B lowers their pay in order to be more competitive. Company B wins the next bid. Company A lowers pay to be competitive. I think that's what he's saying. I'm not sure how true it is. Competitive tendering does have some flaws but I'm not sure that's one of them.
- DannyBee 12y ago
  "I think that's what he's saying. I'm not sure how true it is." So uh, they lower their price to compete and to what the market will bear. Isn't that how it is supposed to work? If it isn't enough to live on, people will do something that lets them live (In theory. In practice, people just complain about the high cost of living wherever they are, instead of moving to places where there are jobs available and lower cost of living)
  - pm90 12y ago
    Moving is not as easy as you make out to be. People choose to live in a place for other reason than just monetary: their family might be in SF, they might have been born there etc. You can't just turn your face and say, "Hey this is how the market works. Deal with it". Because when the number of people disgruntled with this system reaches a certain point, bad things will happen.
    - DannyBee 12y ago
      "People choose to live in a place for other reason than just monetary: their family might be in SF, they might have been born there etc. " Their are consequences to this choice. The consequence in this case is "it is hard to find a job that pays well enoguh to live there". "You can't just turn your face and say, "Hey this is how the market works. Deal with it"." I agree this is true. However, literally not a single person in this thread has given a solution to this problem that works over the long term. "Because when the number of people disgruntled with this system reaches a certain point, bad things will happen." Yes, revolutions happen. This does not generate a long term stable situation where everyone can live where they want either :) (in fact, revolutions tend to redistribute land, and often people who were living in places the longest get kicked out!) "Bad things" just kind of proves the point. If someone had come up with a viable solution, these bad things would never happen. But they happen in places all the time. They effectively reset the clock on some problem, though they often have some nasty side-effects.
  - DanBC 12y ago
    But the market provides a generally terrible experience. These private buses want a better than the market experience, but don't want to pay enough to cover the costs involved. In the context of immensely rich companies who have extravegant perks it seems weird for them to be nickle and diming on this one perk. Driving buses is very stressful - so much so that it reduces length of life. Driving the price down to what the market (of drivers) will bear leaves you with sub-optimal drivers. Cost of Living is definitely skewed in some cities - london, SF, etc. Do you really want your bus driver to have a one hour commute before they start work? Other low paid jobs - cleaners, store clerks, teachers, low rank nurses and care assistants - these people are all needed by the city but can't afford to either live in the city nor live outisde it and commute in. Being a cleaner is probably lousy, but being a cleaner with a two hour commute to get to your minimum wage job must really suck. Your answer touches on the concept of people as "rational economic actors" but that doesn't happen in the real world, just like we don't have spherical cows in the fields. People have many reasons for staying at a sub-optimal location or in a sub-optimal job and using those sub-optimalities to screw them out of a bit more money is
peterjancelis 12y ago
Like so many unions, they want to limit the supply side (laborers) so the wages can go up. Or force a minimum wage so employers hand pick the better skilled employees anyway. So of course no union will say it out loud but the economic effect of their policy is to shut out the less skilled workers to artificially benefit the more skilled workers.
- rtpg 12y ago
  >So of course no union will say it out loud but the economic effect of their policy is to shut out the less skilled workers to artificially benefit the more skilled workers. Or to raise prices for FB and co. The lever works both ways.
- Alupis 12y ago
  More skilled workers? My father has worked in management for 20 years at our city's municipal public transit system, and can very honestly state the union keeps the lowest skilled and least deserving employed. Petty in-house suits vs management because they want them to work, or suing management because management picks up a wrench and tries to help out the motor pool. Or suits among each other because someone did another's job. The insanity goes on. The union sucks worker's pay (not optional btw in most places, even if you don't want it). They don't help anyone, only spur in-fighting. Argue for and provide yearly wage increases regardless of work performance (even during years when the company takes massive losses due to market turndown). How about we check and see how much the union rep's are taking home per year? Probably an awful lot more than the workers they are "representing" (not to mention it's the worker's money the rep is pocketing). It's simply a scheme now-days. More anecdotal evidence? How about the Raley's Supermarket worker union? I've known several people who have worked there in different capacities. Raley's, the company, will terminate an individual's employment if they do not agree with, sign up with, and pay mandatory dues to the worker union. Why? Well that's because that is the agreement the worker's union strong-armed the management union into years ago (probably because it means any non-mgnt employee now is obligated to pay a portion of their hard earned paycheck directly to the union). What does the Raley's worker union fight for and represent their members for? Better hours? Nope. Better pay? Yep, yearly mandatory increases regardless of performance, and regardless of how the company as-a-whole is doing. More anecdotal evidence! How about the forced shutdown of Hostess which left 30,000 workers without any job, pension or benefits! The Teamsters (the Teamsters!) at least had the sense to strike a deal with Hostess mgmt, but the Baker's union did not care about anything other than more money (even though Hostess was on the verge of bankruptcy!). Well, without a deal to freeze all pay increases for two measly years, Hostess was left with no choice but to close up shop and leave 30,000 employees out in the cold. Fat lot of good the unions did here. Ya, unions are a relic of the past. Sorry, no sane person will work 20 hours a day for $0.50 an hour, even without a union "representing them". There is no point to unions anymore, especially in a competitive marketplace. Competition will always trump standardization.

DanBC 12y ago

> I'm not even sure what he's suggesting? Company A and B make bids based partly on what they pay their drivers. Company A wins. Company B lowers their pay in order to be more competitive. Company B wins the next bid. Company A lowers pay to be competitive. I think that's what he's saying. I'm not sure how true it is. Competitive tendering does have some flaws but I'm not sure that's one of them.

DannyBee 12y ago
"I think that's what he's saying. I'm not sure how true it is." So uh, they lower their price to compete and to what the market will bear. Isn't that how it is supposed to work? If it isn't enough to live on, people will do something that lets them live (In theory. In practice, people just complain about the high cost of living wherever they are, instead of moving to places where there are jobs available and lower cost of living)
- pm90 12y ago
  Moving is not as easy as you make out to be. People choose to live in a place for other reason than just monetary: their family might be in SF, they might have been born there etc. You can't just turn your face and say, "Hey this is how the market works. Deal with it". Because when the number of people disgruntled with this system reaches a certain point, bad things will happen.
  - DannyBee 12y ago
    "People choose to live in a place for other reason than just monetary: their family might be in SF, they might have been born there etc. " Their are consequences to this choice. The consequence in this case is "it is hard to find a job that pays well enoguh to live there". "You can't just turn your face and say, "Hey this is how the market works. Deal with it"." I agree this is true. However, literally not a single person in this thread has given a solution to this problem that works over the long term. "Because when the number of people disgruntled with this system reaches a certain point, bad things will happen." Yes, revolutions happen. This does not generate a long term stable situation where everyone can live where they want either :) (in fact, revolutions tend to redistribute land, and often people who were living in places the longest get kicked out!) "Bad things" just kind of proves the point. If someone had come up with a viable solution, these bad things would never happen. But they happen in places all the time. They effectively reset the clock on some problem, though they often have some nasty side-effects.
- DanBC 12y ago
  But the market provides a generally terrible experience. These private buses want a better than the market experience, but don't want to pay enough to cover the costs involved. In the context of immensely rich companies who have extravegant perks it seems weird for them to be nickle and diming on this one perk. Driving buses is very stressful - so much so that it reduces length of life. Driving the price down to what the market (of drivers) will bear leaves you with sub-optimal drivers. Cost of Living is definitely skewed in some cities - london, SF, etc. Do you really want your bus driver to have a one hour commute before they start work? Other low paid jobs - cleaners, store clerks, teachers, low rank nurses and care assistants - these people are all needed by the city but can't afford to either live in the city nor live outisde it and commute in. Being a cleaner is probably lousy, but being a cleaner with a two hour commute to get to your minimum wage job must really suck. Your answer touches on the concept of people as "rational economic actors" but that doesn't happen in the real world, just like we don't have spherical cows in the fields. People have many reasons for staying at a sub-optimal location or in a sub-optimal job and using those sub-optimalities to screw them out of a bit more money is

peterjancelis 12y ago

Like so many unions, they want to limit the supply side (laborers) so the wages can go up. Or force a minimum wage so employers hand pick the better skilled employees anyway. So of course no union will say it out loud but the economic effect of their policy is to shut out the less skilled workers to artificially benefit the more skilled workers.

rtpg 12y ago
>So of course no union will say it out loud but the economic effect of their policy is to shut out the less skilled workers to artificially benefit the more skilled workers. Or to raise prices for FB and co. The lever works both ways.
Alupis 12y ago
More skilled workers? My father has worked in management for 20 years at our city's municipal public transit system, and can very honestly state the union keeps the lowest skilled and least deserving employed. Petty in-house suits vs management because they want them to work, or suing management because management picks up a wrench and tries to help out the motor pool. Or suits among each other because someone did another's job. The insanity goes on. The union sucks worker's pay (not optional btw in most places, even if you don't want it). They don't help anyone, only spur in-fighting. Argue for and provide yearly wage increases regardless of work performance (even during years when the company takes massive losses due to market turndown). How about we check and see how much the union rep's are taking home per year? Probably an awful lot more than the workers they are "representing" (not to mention it's the worker's money the rep is pocketing). It's simply a scheme now-days. More anecdotal evidence? How about the Raley's Supermarket worker union? I've known several people who have worked there in different capacities. Raley's, the company, will terminate an individual's employment if they do not agree with, sign up with, and pay mandatory dues to the worker union. Why? Well that's because that is the agreement the worker's union strong-armed the management union into years ago (probably because it means any non-mgnt employee now is obligated to pay a portion of their hard earned paycheck directly to the union). What does the Raley's worker union fight for and represent their members for? Better hours? Nope. Better pay? Yep, yearly mandatory increases regardless of performance, and regardless of how the company as-a-whole is doing. More anecdotal evidence! How about the forced shutdown of Hostess which left 30,000 workers without any job, pension or benefits! The Teamsters (the Teamsters!) at least had the sense to strike a deal with Hostess mgmt, but the Baker's union did not care about anything other than more money (even though Hostess was on the verge of bankruptcy!). Well, without a deal to freeze all pay increases for two measly years, Hostess was left with no choice but to close up shop and leave 30,000 employees out in the cold. Fat lot of good the unions did here. Ya, unions are a relic of the past. Sorry, no sane person will work 20 hours a day for $0.50 an hour, even without a union "representing them". There is no point to unions anymore, especially in a competitive marketplace. Competition will always trump standardization.