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Union households tend to have $100k more in wealth than nonunion families

businessinsider.com

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Re: Union households tend to have $100k more in wealth than nonunion families

#81

Post by fakedang »

constantcrying wrote: post #23
jollofricepeas wrote: post #5

This is basic economics. The rise of income and wealth inequality is directly tied to the weakening of collective bargaining, corporate consolidation and globalization. Source: https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/labor-unions... . Unionized workers are the only real backstop against corporate interests.

>Unionized workers are the only real backstop against corporate interests. This is only true if you yourself do not possess greater bargaining power by having certain rare skills, that are in demand. Which is why the report shows that higher educated people benefit far less.

Funnily enough, even if they don't call it explicitly, some of the highest paying professions in the world - consulting, finance, law, medicine - all have pseudo-unionized structures in place. The only difference being uniformity in pay, which is a feature I've mostly seen only in US unions.

Re: Union households tend to have $100k more in wealth than nonunion families

#82

Post by pandaman »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #72
constantcrying wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The overall bargaining power is greater, sure. But the relative power isn't. They can always just leave and work somewhere else, a union literally does not have that option. As an individual it is far easier to negotiate of you have an in demand skill. Which is obvious if you look at the study in the OP. College educated people benefit far less from unionization, they can negotiate for their own.

What happens when your education is no longer relevant to the market? And you’ve had kids and don’t really have the time to retool and level up your skills to regain your leverage. Or your industry becomes saturated with highly skilled people and your leverage is steadily reduced in ways you can’t address. Virtually no one is special enough to avoid some or even all of this.

As I am approaching the retirement age, I don't see this happening. I actually can't even imagine education expiring somehow or marketable skills needing "retooling". But even if these scenarios all happened, you are basically advocating that somebody still have to provide highly paying job for you even though you don't have an education or skill and there are plenty of people who are higher skilled than you? Would you hire somebody like that to do work on your house or, perhaps, you'd like to receive medical treatment from a doctor like that? If not, why others should hire you?

Re: Union households tend to have $100k more in wealth than nonunion families

#85

Post by throwaway11460 »

nobodyandproud wrote: post #68
throwaway11460 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both can be true at the same time. Companies both treat senior engineers as expendable and will fire them on a whim - while paying them whatever they dictate and rehiring them few months after the layoffs for 1.5x compensation. I'm happy being expendable. It means I can just pick up my things and go somewhere else whenever I please - any place I go has some spot for me and will pay me many multiples of the national a…

> I'm happy being expendable. > It means I can just pick up my things and go somewhere else whenever I please. You are conflating expendability with redundancy.

Two sides of the same coin, IMHO

Re: Union households tend to have $100k more in wealth than nonunion families

#86

Post by constantcrying »

forgotmyinfo wrote: post #69
constantcrying wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Unionized workers are the only real backstop against corporate interests. This is only true if you yourself do not possess greater bargaining power by having certain rare skills, that are in demand. Which is why the report shows that higher educated people benefit far less.

Ah yes, as everyone knows, "having a trillion dollars" is famously no match for "being able to code".

Yes. No trillion dollar company can tell me to work for them. If they want to employee me I have all of the bargaining power I could possibly have.

Re: Union households tend to have $100k more in wealth than nonunion families

#87

Post by CuriousCosmic »

latency-guy2 wrote: post #75
CuriousCosmic wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think happens when a company is losing money? It's not like the shareholders are just eating that loss out of the goodness of their hearts. Instead there are layoffs, cancelled projects, and pay cuts. All of those are workers bearing the cost of the losses.

Are discounts then customers pilfering the pockets of the workers? Combo deals? How consistent is your ideology really?

> Are discounts then customers pilfering the pockets of the workers? Combo deals?

No. That's marketing. Marketing is a strategy used to help turn a profit. Giving away that profit to shareholders makes absolutely no contribution to the ability of a business to turn a profit. Those aren't remotely close to similar.

Re: Union households tend to have $100k more in wealth than nonunion families

#88

Post by billy99k »

willcipriano wrote: post #36
constantcrying wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also known as inflation.

No. Independent from that. Jobs that require more skill or jobs that are more difficult have to offer more to get people to work for them. Raise the bar at the bottom and all wages will go up, otherwise workers will "demote" themselves. This is a distinct effect from prices raising and workers asking higher wages to counteract inflation (if they could do that why aren't they?).

"Raise the bar at the bottom and all wages will go up"

The people at the bottom might be making more, but they won't have spending power for very long because the cost of everything will go up. This cycle will just continue forever, unless the government starts fixing prices, which never leads to a good outcome.

When fast food workers wages are raised, we might see a few dollars more for meals. When you raise the wages in every other industry, it has a cascading effect. Just look at the number of jobs between products on the store shelf and how it gets there. Delivery, trucking, packing, shipping, etc. In this one example, it would raise prices 10X.

Re: Union households tend to have $100k more in wealth than nonunion families

#89

Post by CapstanRoller »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #66
CapstanRoller wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument doesn't match reality. We don't need hypotheticals here: McDonalds workers in EU countries earn significantly more than their US counterparts, yet a Big Mac costs the same of just a few pennies more.

>… yet a Big Mac costs the same of just a few pennies more. What? Do you not know how to check Big mac prices online in other countries?

Don't you know how to check?

Danish McD's workers earn $20/hr+ but their Big Mac costs just 80 cents more.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/28/business/international/li...

Re: Union households tend to have $100k more in wealth than nonunion families

#90

Post by kentrado »

harimau777 wrote: post #29
redeeman wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Corporate profits are unpaid wages. what about corporate losses then?

A lot of leftist argue for worker owned businesses. Wouldn't that mean that losses would effectively be owned by the workers?

And what's wrong with that?
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