1. “ The real meat to this law isn’t the card check. It’s the mandatory arbitration.”

It is also likely that in some cases arbitrators will set the contract wage at a level above that employer’s competitors. Also, do you mean to imply that unions never negotiate in bad faith.

2. “You know what I meant by “pocket the profit.” You were claiming that the employer would be willing to hire more people than is needed to complete a job effectively, just because.”

I never made the claim that the employer would just hire people for the sake of hiring people. You implied that I made that claim, but I was claiming that employers would use that money for additional employees (you assumed I meant on that same specific jobsite), and for other capital improvements and purchases for that matter.

Also, I’ve worked for development and construction companies for 10 years (as outside or internal counsel). Profits are indeed used to pay salaries of other staff members, outside and internal counsel, capital acquisition employees, accountants, property managers and many other employees. Again, profit is used for these purposes and to act as equity in other transactions and projects.

There is also a return on investment to the bank (in the form of interest), and equity to the equity partners (or dividends to shareholders of a public company). They get this for the risk of the venture. Given the recent downturn, there really isn’t a whole lot of return on equity for most large construction/development projects. It isn’t moneybags being hidden from employees.

3. “If the work is needed, people will pay for it.”

Really. It is much more likely that if wages increases beyond the ability to pay (in the case of manufacturing), those jobs are headed out of the country. As for development, most likely if labor costs are too high, that project simply won’t be done, and the money spent on a project in a right to work state.

4. “I see this argument trotted out frequently when it comes to tradespersons, clerical staff, janitors, manfacuring workers, etc.—-but seldom mentioned for say, physicians or attorneys. Why so much complaint for a 2% raise for the working class, yet no argument at all on lawyer fees? I say that the so-called burden of that 2% raise has no effect on the labor demand, since it still takes x number of people to do a job.”

Obviously you haven’t been watching the white collar job market. Attorneys are being fired left and right. We routinely take a harder negotiating position with our outside counsel on fees than we did in the past. We are frantically trying to cut all costs across the board, including legal costs. I’m not applying a different standard to the legal community, I believe in fee competition as well.

5. “When employers pay wages below the self-sufficiency standard, everyone else gets to subsidize that, with the profit remaining the in the employer’s pocket. Or perhaps you haven’t noticed the shift of wealth from the bottom to the top?”

The income gap is primarily a statistical phenomena based on the switch from measuring per capita income to measuring household income. On a per capita basis, the gap is not nearly as large.

However, you are still operating under the assumption that employers will employ individuals regardless of labor costs. I also think you are ignoring the importance of profit in the economic system.

Let me ask this: Should employers still be required to pay below your self-sufficiency standard if the business is operating at a loss, or there is no profit?

6. “Ok, now I gotta say, I’ve been sorely disappointed in this thread. There’s been a hell of a lot of silence here, save for the wealthy white men who have been voaclly opposed to the Employee Free Choice Act, perhaps because they know this means more power for people unlike themselves.”

You are making a lot of assumptions without any knowledge about me or my financial condition whatsoever. My opposition to the EFCA has absolutely nothing to do with apportioning more power to people unlike me. As a matter of fact, I really, sincerely want all people to do as well as possible. I want to see people succeed. I want to see businesses do well, provide goods and services at an affordable rate, make a profit and employ as many people as possible.

There’s been a hell of a lot of silence here, save for the wealthy white men who have been voaclly opposed to the Employee Free Choice Act, perhaps because they know this means more power for people unlike themselves.

This thread has become so ridiculous that my gold monocle popped out of my eye and I dropped my cigar wrapped in $100 bills. I’ll have to get my manservants to sweep up the ashes. Zounds!

This is a fine example of what I brought up earlier—that the existance of Jimmy Hoffa and his ilk, who are statistically a fraction of one percent of labor (corrupt and/or mobbed up), is used to describe labor as a whole.

But back to the point of the Employee Free Choice Act:

1. It does not eliminate the secret ballot. it provides the choice of the secret ballot to the workers, not the employers. See, as the law stands now, employers have the right to voluntarily recognize a union upon majority card check. Most of them don’t, but they have the right. It’s the workers who don’t have that right.

2. The real meat to this law isn’t the card check. It’s the mandatory arbitration. As the law stands now, an employer can stonewall, hem-haw around, and generally bargain in bad faith, and then at the end of the year—-hey, screw you! No contract!

For one reason, the profit is used as equity on the next construction job.

You know what I meant by “pocket the profit.” You were claiming that the employer would be willing to hire more people than is needed to complete a job effectively, just because. This is the same argument used against the minimum wage. And it’s not true.

Do you think that increases labor costs, decreases or increases labor demanded?

If the work is needed, people will pay for it. I see this argument trotted out frequently when it comes to tradespersons, clerical staff, janitors, manfacuring workers, etc.—-but seldom mentioned for say, physicians or attorneys. Why so much complaint for a 2% raise for the working class, yet no argument at all on lawyer fees? I say that the so-called burden of that 2% raise has no effect on the labor demand, since it still takes x number of people to do a job.

how do you define “self-sufficiency”.

Self-sufficiency is the ability of a person to meet their basic needs without public or private assistance. It is based on the objective costs of housing, food, utilities, health insurance, child care, and transportation for a given area. The federal poverty standard is inadequate as it is based on the cost of food, and formulated during a time when the norm was a one-worker household with a stay-at-home partner. In this day and age, it’s housing costs that have skyrocketed, and both child care and transportation (which in most places means “car”) is necessary. If you really want an idea of what I’m talking about, visit this site.

When employers pay wages below the self-sufficiency standard, everyone else gets to subsidize that, with the profit remaining the in the employer’s pocket. Or perhaps you haven’t noticed the shift of wealth from the bottom to the top?

Ok, now I gotta say, I’ve been sorely disappointed in this thread. There’s been a hell of a lot of silence here, save for the wealthy white men who have been voaclly opposed to the Employee Free Choice Act, perhaps because they know this means more power for people unlike themselves. You know, there are nine labor posts on Feministe, and I wrote four of them. What’s up with that? Where is the Feministe community of commenters?

I’d like to ask the community here—are you intimidated by labor posts? Do you feel unsure of or uneducated about the issues? Why do so few people respond to labor threads?

I’ve seen no evidence that labor is somehow immune from the abuse of power.

Exactly. Jimmy Hoffa, champion of the powerless, right?

You asked:

“Why wouldn’t the employer just pocket the profit by only hiring the number of people it requires to do a job? “

For one reason, the profit is used as equity on the next construction job. Banks just don’t loan 100%. Equity comes from profits on prior deals for the most part, unless you have some joint venture partner with a large amount of funds. Profits are also used for expansion, which in turn hires more workers. It can also be used to pay shareholders for their investment in the form of dividends, which can then be invested in other economic activity, which creates jobs. You seem to be focusing on the seen, but forget the unseen positive externalities.

Also, I don’t by the Marxist exploitation of labor analysis. The labor theory of value has been demonstrated false on hundreds of occasions. I highly recommend the chapter on Marxian economics in “Economic Theory in Retrospect”.

Regarding labor costs, you still haven’t answered my question. Do you think that increases labor costs, decreases or increases labor demanded?

You also wrote:

“You seem to be against unions, but I have yet to see you speak against corporations or employer organizations or other group efforts to use power to keep workers subordinate (surely you don’t believe that workers willingly accept wages below the cost of living for the hell of it, right?).”

I speak against corporate welfare quite often actually, but that wasn’t the point of the post. I’m against coercion as a general principle, whether it is against workers on the behalf of employers, or against employers on behalf of workers. I believe in free exchange, provided one’s rights aren’t violated. For instance the government may enforce anti-discrimination rules.

You also implied that I have a religious faith in free markets. I think it is more accurate to say that I distrust unfree markets. Given the large number of economic calculations in what amounts to a subjective system (both supply and demand side), along with the complexities of a modern division of labor economy, I know of no algorithm or program that can allocate resources more efficiently to meet the demands of 300 million people than the market. Also remember than any such program or central economic coordinator would have to take in all opportunity costs as well for a given action or the setting of a price. Furthermore, government actors traditionally carries disparate rent seeking into such programs. I n essence, nobody is smart enough to do it. For further reading, I would recommend Hayek or Mises.

You wrote:

“Prove to me, with concrete examples, that my claim of “race to the bottom” is polemic. Show me that in the absence of unions, wages don’t fall to a level below self-sufficiency.”

I would answer, how do you define “self-sufficiency”. Self-sufficiency is a way of sneaking in a normative judgment to an empirical issue. I’m talking about wages that clear based on demand for labor and supply for labor. It may be greater than the point where marginal revenue per worker equals marginal cost per worker, but just be equal to that wage.

You wrote:

“Unions will always be necessary as long as there is still a difference between employer power and employee power. In the absence of unions, employers abuse power. ”

I’ve seen no evidence that labor is somehow immune from the abuse of power.

How so? That certainly isn’t what research conducted by the Economic Policy Institute has found. When unions raise wages for union members, it raises the floor for their nonunion counterparts as well. In the absence of unions, those same employers do not voluntarily award their nonunion workers more money, nor do they hire more workers than is needed to get the job done (and certainly not to give workers more breaktime!).

Read more about it here.
And again, the labor legislation that unions were instrumental in passing help all workers, not just union workers. Employer groups were rabidly against the Lilly Ledbetter Act; why is this, if employers are such benevolent souls, hm? Perhaps it is because in the absence of union contracts and union protections, common employer practice is to pay women less money for the same job (despite the fact that practice has been illegal for some time) and give women fewer opportunities for promotion.

Unions provide a counterforce to employer clout that individual workers can never exercise, and that is unlikely to come from any other institution save for those very similar to unions (like community organizing). It isn’t going to come from governmental entities; as in the example I gave above, merely having a law saying that pay disparity based on sex is illegal doesn’t mean employers will follow it, and placing the burden of enforcement on individual workers to hire lawyers and go to court pretty much ensures the same practices can continue carte blanche.

But I do understand why some people are anti-union. Unions provide power to people who would otherwise be powerless. That is a direct threat to people whose standard of living and/or privilege resides in their ability to leverage their power in order to keep others powerless. What I don’t understand, is why after the long, global, historical record clearly demonstrates that state of affairs is not accepted by the majority of human beings, those “power for me but not for thee” folks insist it should be otherwise.

I am asking for a concrete examples of employers hiring more people that it takes to do a job, just because the out-of-pocket cost to the employer is the same. Why wouldn’t the employer just pocket the profit by only hiring the number of people it requires to do a job?

I’m not sure if Ex-Republican is coming back to defend his premises, but this is a non-starter. In most cases, there’s no “number of workers required to do a job,” and in the cases where there is a discrete number of workers beyond which adding another worker would add zero value, it’s very rare that companies actually employ that many workers.

By way of example (and I realize this is very, very simplified), let’s say you have a factory, and that factory has 5 “slots” for laborers (they work some sort of machine, for the sake of this example). The factory owner hires 5 workers at $10 per day, and they each produce $15 worth of output, so the owner pockets $5/day/worker. Even in this case, hiring another worker would add some level of value — maybe each worker could get an extra 30 minute break, and the assistant worker could work the machines in the meantime — if that were to up productivity a modest amount, to $16 per each of the full-time workers per day, it might be worthwhile to hire an additional worker as an “assistant worker,” for $4/day, because each of those full-time workers would produce an additional $1/day, leaving an additional profit of $1 for the factory owner.

But then let’s say the factory’s union contract prohibit anyone who works these particular machines from earning less than $6/day. Then the guy who might have received the assistant job is SOL, because the owner can’t hire him at a price that would deliver value.

That’s not to say that union contracts are undesirable — just that unions ostensibly exist to protect and advocate for members (as they are supposed to), and they frequently do this to the detriment of non-members.

If you are referring to manufactuing jobs, I’m still not clear—why would an employer hire more people than could effectively operate the equipment, or why would an employer purchase more equipment and ramp up production if it were unclear that more people would be purchasing the product? For example, autoworkers. If autoworkers took home twelve dollars an hour (thus, according to your line of thought, more autoworkers being hired—something I doubt), does this mean more people are going to buy vehicles, since more people (again, something I doubt) are employed?

Or…..does reduced purchasing power mean…..less purchasing?

You speak of the “market” as if it is a neutral agent. As if all people are equal under “the market”, with equal political power, equal access to the military power that backs up that political power—-it’s as if you are arguing for workers to have a type of religious faith in “the market”, as if markets aren’t manipulated by those in power. You seem to be against unions, but I have yet to see you speak against corporations or employer organizations or other group efforts to use power to keep workers subordinate (surely you don’t believe that workers willingly accept wages below the cost of living for the hell of it, right?).

Come to think of it, wages aren’t really the area of greatest conflict in contract negotiations. Health insurance and pensions are, along with workplace safety. The historical example points to employers not giving a damn about worker safety, and the laws we have on the books that provide for worker protections can all be traced to the efforts of organized labor, not organized employers. (Employers are organized. Make no mistake about that.)

Prove to me, with concrete examples, that my claim of “race to the bottom” is polemic. Show me that in the absence of unions, wages don’t fall to a level below self-sufficiency.

While you’re at it, since this is a feminist blog, show me that in the absence of unions, employers pay women the same as men. People of color the same as whites.

I’ve been counsel to more common wage determination committees than I care to count.

In which states?

why would a union even be necessary?

Wages are but one facet of working conditions. Unions will always be necessary as long as there is still a difference between employer power and employee power. In the absence of unions, employers abuse power. You might as well ask why we have representative government, as kings, queens, emperors and dictators can all be trusted to act benevolently, as it’s in their best (dare I say, “market”?) interests.