I feel it's important to remember that in the employee-employer relationship, you're peers.That's a false statement whose falseness has been observed by economists since Adam Smith:
What are the common wages of labour, depends every where upon the contract usually made between those two parties, whose interests are by no means the same. The workmen desire to get as much, the masters to give as little as possible. The former are disposed to combine in order to raise, the latter in order to lower the wages of labour.
It is not, however, difficult to foresee which of the two parties must, upon all ordinary occasions, have the advantage in the dispute, and force the other into a compliance with their terms. The masters, being fewer in number, can combine much more easily; and the law, besides, authorises, or at least does not prohibit their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen. We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work; but many against combining to raise it. In all such disputes the masters can hold out much longer. A landlord, a farmer, a master manufacturer, or merchant, though they did not employ a single workman, could generally live a year or two upon the stocks which they have already acquired. Many workmen could not subsist a week, few could subsist a month, and scarce any a year without employment. In the long-run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him, but the necessity is not so immediate.
http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN3.html#I.8.11
Smith continues to further detail the advantages of employers. Not all of the conditions he describes apply fully today (trades unions are no longer illegal), though in practice they largely still hold, particularly in the technology sector (in which trade unions are almost wholly nonexistent).
The law of rent (David Ricardo) states the situation simply: your ability to command a wage from one employer is wholly dependent on your ability to claim as much or higher compensation from another, or by striking out on your own.
Smith also makes the observation that it's not the size of an economy but its growth which tends to produce circumstances most favorable for labour (a growing economy has a larger number of alternative opportunities for labour).