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American companies are suppressing wages for many workers

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Re: American companies are suppressing wages for many workers

#91

Post by pixl97 »

wfo wrote: post #23

Interesting the authors cite unionization as an effective protection against this in the past but do not recommend it as a remedy for the future. The problem with simply passing laws as they suggest is that those laws once in place will be opposed by everyone with power simultaneously and forever, with no powerful organized collective force to defend them it is just a matter of time until corporate power grinds them…

The current problem with unions is labor arbitration. Unions were great when transportation was slow and expensive and communication didn't move at the speed of light. Now capital is more important than labor, and capital can be moved almost freely and at the speed of light. Labor on the other hand is stuck in it's national borders, and much of it has a huge amount of debt.

Giving a union the power to shut down a production line doesn't do much good when a new line can be setup overseas in hours. Corporate power has to be fought at the state and nation level

Re: American companies are suppressing wages for many workers

#92

Post by pixl97 »

charmander_IRL wrote: post #47

Why are low skill non-competes bad? You can just lateral into another low skill job in an unrelated industry. It’s not as if you have a huge amount of human capital sunk into sandwich prep.

>It’s not as if you have a huge amount of human capital sunk into sandwich prep.

Then why in the blue fuck does Subway need a non-compete in the first place?

NC's are suppose to help a company maintain the value in investing in its employees so they are less likely to leave, or to keep said employees from taking customers. In the low value end this make no sense. There is little to no investment in the employee, and there is little risk of the employee taking high value customers.

Re: American companies are suppressing wages for many workers

#93

Post by randomdata »

emodendroket wrote: post #48
randomdata wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, unionization in Canada is still as strong as the strongest years in the US. Despite that, wages are every bit as stagnant as the US and, looking at income data, there is a lot of mirroring between the two countries. The substantial decline of unionization in the US is one thing, but what is Canada doing wrong?

Isn't Canada just as affected by off-shoring of work to countries with weaker labor standards and lower wages?

I would say yes, but I am not clear how that relates to the original claim. Are you trying to suggest that this problem is beyond the capabilities of unions?

Re: American companies are suppressing wages for many workers

#94

Post by emodendroket »

randomdata wrote: post #93
emodendroket wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Canada just as affected by off-shoring of work to countries with weaker labor standards and lower wages?

I would say yes, but I am not clear how that relates to the original claim. Are you trying to suggest that this problem is beyond the capabilities of unions?

The globalization of markets presents a real problem for unions which have more of a national or regional focus. I'm not going to say it's beyond the capability of unions to address somehow, but I do think it has reduced their leverage substantially.

Re: American companies are suppressing wages for many workers

#95

Post by eesmith »

randomdata wrote: post #73
nullymcnull wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious as to where you are getting the idea that "unionization in Canada is still as strong as the strongest years in the US". That's pretty much the opposite of my personal experience and observations, and it's not the consensus I've been hearing (which is that organized labour has been at an absolute nadir in the past few decades, as much in decline as in the US). Unions have shrunk, membership are down, poli…

> I am curious as to where you are getting the idea that "unionization in Canada is still as strong as the strongest years in the US" Based on the share of the workforce that is represented by unions. Canada is currently at ~30%, the US peaked at ~30% and is at less than 10% today. > Unions have shrunk, membership are down, political clout is down, and a newly unionized company is a rare bird indeed. Unionization is…

When you say "represented by unions", do you mean the unionization rate or the coverage rate?

In terms of unionization rate, in 2016 Canada was at 28.4% [1]. By comparison, the US peak was 34.8% in 1954 [2] . (It is now 10.7% [3], which is slightly higher than 10%, not less than.)

While the "~" can justify a rounding to the nearest 10% instead of 5%, that ended up hiding a difference of 6.5%, or 1/5th of the total unionized population. From what I can tell, the current rate of around 28% corresponds to the US unionization rate in about 1970 [3], and not its peak in 1954.

The US peak of 34.8% is closer to the Canadian peak of 37.9% in 1984 than it is to 30%, and corresponds to the Canadian unionization rate in 1991 [1].

The coverage rate for both countries is of course higher. For 2017 in Canada it was 30.4% [5] and in US is was 11.9% [3].

[1] "http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/170908/cg-a003-eng....

[2] "At their peak in 1954, 34.8% of all U.S. wage and salary workers belonged to unions" - http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/02/20/for-american... .

[3] http://unionstats.gsu.edu/All-Wage-and-Salary-Workers.htm . The BLS gives the same unionization numbers for 2017 (but no coverage numbers) at https://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm .

[4] http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/170908/cg-a003-eng....

[5] https://www.statista.com/statistics/442980/canada-union-cove...

Re: American companies are suppressing wages for many workers

#96

Post by turc1656 »

No-poaching agreements are very clearly illegal and should have resulted in immediate charges being levied against a metric shit-ton of people as the only way that works with all these franchises is if many people are involved. The DOJ has formally acknowledged these practices are illegal and a serious violation of existing laws: https://www.justice.gov/atr/file/903511/download Well...it's been nearly 18 months since that announcement. Why haven't I seen a whole bunch of people get charged with felony antitrust violations, as per the DOJ's own statements about its intent to "proceed criminally against naked wage-fixing or no-poaching agreements"?

Where are the handcuffs?

Re: American companies are suppressing wages for many workers

#97

Post by notheguyouthink »

humanrebar wrote: post #84
notheguyouthink wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's actually a really good point. I argue for full time employment frequently, especially in retail. It's, imo, a terrible place to work with a lot of scummy tactics against employees. I'd still say employers need to be held accountable for how they treat part time workers though. For example, they can drop your hours to next to nothing, forcing you to leave the job rather than firing you. They can juggle your par…

> I'd still say employers need to be held accountable for how they treat part time workers though. Sure. I just think the best people for that job are the workers themselves. Making less of life dependent on full time employment will give employers less leverage over employees. > ...even if things like benefits were fixed, holding two or three part time jobs can be extremely difficult. It can be. But it can also be s…

> It can be. But it can also be simple. You could work Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays for one boss and Saturdays for another.

Sure, but that assumes you have the power to dictate your schedule. That right there depends on some respect from employers to employees.

Clearly I'm biased as I have seen disgusting things in retail. In the examples I've seen, they want you 7 days a week, regardless if they will actually pay you on those days.

This is made worse by the job market that gives employers quite a bit of bargaining power. Why take the employee who only wants to work Mon/Wed/Fri, when there's someone else willing to take whatever they can get?

Re: American companies are suppressing wages for many workers

#98

Post by humanrebar »

notheguyouthink wrote: post #97
humanrebar wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd still say employers need to be held accountable for how they treat part time workers though. Sure. I just think the best people for that job are the workers themselves. Making less of life dependent on full time employment will give employers less leverage over employees. > ...even if things like benefits were fixed, holding two or three part time jobs can be extremely difficult. It can be. But it can also be s…

> It can be. But it can also be simple. You could work Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays for one boss and Saturdays for another. Sure, but that assumes you have the power to dictate your schedule. That right there depends on some respect from employers to employees. Clearly I'm biased as I have seen disgusting things in retail. In the examples I've seen, they want you 7 days a week, regardless if they will actually pa…

For what it's worth, I'm actually agreeing. I'm saying we've been too hung up on hourly wages and not focused enough on employers externalizing costs (business risks, logistics risks, career viability risks) on employees. Some simple things, like requiring a retainer or salary for mandatory schedule availability, have simple legislative solutions.

Re: American companies are suppressing wages for many workers

#99

Post by dlwdlw »

_m8fo wrote: post #3

And why wouldn't they? It's time to bring back mechanisms, legal or otherwise, to prevent this from happening again. Usually the collective workforce of a company has significant leverage over a company, but with the advent of globalization, the "gig economy", and technological unemployment in some ways this leverage is harder to capitalize on, or even worse, nonexistent. I don't know if there's any empirical proof f…

I think this is emergent behavior rather than something with a malicious source. Profit seeking is one reason but it could also be to remain competitive.

There are so many people in China and India (and allover the world but these 2 have the largest populations) that are smarter, more creative, and much more driven than us in the US that it's inevitable that we regress towards the median.

Our lifestyles are maintained primarily through moats dug a long time ago. However technology continues it flattening rampage making each human equally valuable by unlocking more and more of their potential. What was gated physically and socially is not so anymore due to the ubiquity of computers and the internet.

Ironically it's the executives making these decisions by seeing the equality in all humans. It's not that they can't reduce their own salaries and bonuses but if there are willing and driven people, by denying them they are basically giving charity to the "middle class" that expects them to do so without a thanks. In this situation it's the middle class demanding more without seeing that they are actually asking for charity that results in a schism between the ideal and reality and all the dehumanization that comes with it.

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