by hilzoy
Via Nathan Newman at TPMCafe: Unite Here is launching a campaign to raise wages of hotel workers in upcoming contract talks. These are good times for hotels: according to the Wall Street Journal (12/8/05; sorry, subscription required):
“Despite a flurry of devastating hurricanes as well as higher prices for gasoline and airline tickets, the hotel industry is set to post record profit this year followed by at least two more years of solid growth, an industry report predicted.
Robust business and leisure travel, combined with slow construction of new hotels, have given hotel operators vast pricing power and allowed owners to reinvest capital in their properties, according to the report prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers’ hospitality-and-leisure practice, set for release today. (…)
The industry is expected to earn $20.8 billion before taxes this year, nearly a 25% increase over last year, PricewaterhouseCoopers said. It expects growth to remain strong but to slow to about 21% next year and about 18% in 2007.
“The last two years were extraordinary,” said Bjorn Hanson, managing partner of the firm’s leisure practice. “Though 2006’s growth won’t be as high, we usually don’t have three years where we have the combination of rate and occupancy growth that we have right now.” Increases in nightly rates, especially in the upper echelon of hotels, have driven the industry’s success, he added.”
Times are not so good for the people who leave the little mints on pillows, though. According to Unite Here (pdf), the average wage for housekeepers is $8.67 an hour, which comes to an annual wage of $17,340. (The poverty level for a family of four was $19,307 in 2004.) I went to the Bureau of Labor Statistics to check their figures; I couldn’t find them (the site is pretty complicated, and there are a number of different wage reports), but I did find this (pdf): it lists the average wage for “maids and housemen” as $8.34 an hour. (I believe this excludes people employed in private households.)
Cleaning hotel rooms is hard work, even if you don’t stop to think about the various unsavory messes left by inconsiderate guests. And $17,340 a year is a pitifully small amount of money. (Just try to imagine raising kids on that.) The average union wage is $13 an hour, which comes to $26,000 a year. That’s hardly princely, but it’s a lot more than non-union housekeepers make; and it makes a huge difference.
Unite Here has made it easy for those of us who travel for business or pleasure to support them. Here’s a page that lets you find union hotels, and here’s another that lists hotels currently under boycott. Bookmark these pages and use them: going to hotels that are unionized is a simple way to make the world a better place for people who work hard every day, and who deserve to make enough to raise them above the poverty line. And if every business traveller who thought that hotel workers should be paid a decent wage acted on that preference, hotel workers’ wages would rise really quickly. This is a very, very easy way to do good for people who deserve it.
You can also sign up to support the campaign here.)
Some of our conservative readers might balk at this. I don’t think they should. The driving force behind market economics is people deciding what to buy or sell, and to whom, depending on what they want out of the transaction. One of the beauties of a market economy is that it is generally a very good way of transmitting information about consumer preferences to producers. It’s easy for consumers to make some of their preferences known: people tend to prefer fresh to rotten produce, and as a result we do not see displays of decomposing fruits and vegetables when we go to the supermarket.
Other preferences, however, are harder to act on. Most of us have preferences that relate to values: given the choice, for instance, I would rather pay more for something that was produced by salaried workers than pay less for one that was produced by slave labor. However, information about how to act on some of these preferences is hard to come by. If you think that being unionized either leads to higher wages or is a good proxy for them, and you prefer to patronize hotels that pay their workers a decent wage, then the Unite Here page is a way of allowing you, the consumer, to make your preferences heard, thereby correcting a market failure.
And if any of our conservative readers have problems with unions generally, ask yourself whether those problems affect this case. I, for instance, have seen enough mean, arbitrary, and crazy bosses to appreciate the need for some organized way to counteract them, but I have also known people who were unable to fire genuinely incompetent people because of union grievance procedures.
It might be tricky to decide, in some cases, whether the protection from mean or crazy supervisors outweighs the increased difficulty of firing people who are unwilling or unable to do their jobs. However, it’s easiest to make this argument against unions when you’re talking about professions in which there are large differences in talent or competence, and in which a lot turns on having the right people in place. (Teachers, for instance.) But it’s hard to see that it works in the case of the people who clean hotels.
On the one hand, problems with a hotel worker’s job performance are comparatively easy to document clearly, so if someone is not doing his or her job, that fact will be pretty easy to demonstrate. (In this respect, they are very different from teachers: what makes a good teacher is often a matter of judgment, while what makes a person who cleans hotel rooms bad at her job can often be illustrated with photographs.) On the other, since hotel work requires no training and has very little prestige, hotel workers are likely to be at the mercy of their supervisors to a much greater degree than workers like teachers.
A union is just an organization that allows workers to bargain with employers as a unit, thereby giving them more power than they would have as individuals. If a given union is corrupt or in some way counterproductive, then so be it. But hotel workers would seem to me to be exactly the sort of case in which collective bargaining makes the most sense.
If I were running a hotel, and wanted to do right by those who I employed as housekeepers, it would not be the salary I’d raise. I’d provide free community college courses so that they’d be able to get themselves a job that is actually good.
The idea that unskilled labor should provide a comfortable living is an unsustainable one.
Jonas: since when is $26,000/year “a comfortable living”?
It was for me quite some time ago! Just as a single guy, however. Definitely not comfortable for a single-income family.
That being said, I stand by my assertion that it is a better use of everyones time, effort and resources to help those in unskilled jobs get skilled ones to raise their standard of living.
I agree, other things equal. In the meantime, why not do this, since it takes virtually no time at all?
I think that ifa person puts in a day’s work, then they should get a living wage. It is, after all, a big hunk of their life that they are giving to their job. Also, if the person is getting a living wage, he or she can go spend the money which is good for other workers in other parts of the economy.
I’m a special ed teacher. My students are good people, willing to work. I don’t think they belong on the trash heap just because they have learning disabilities and will most likely never be more than minimally competent at basic academic skills.
I don’t think people should be written off just because they are restricted to “unskilled” jobs. After all, the hotel would benefit from having responsible, reliable staff and they are more likely to get, and keep, workers of good character if they pay a decent wage.
Hilzoy,
I’ve got a multitude of issues with unions, and I don’t think in the grand scheme of things it’s particularily helpful. I’m not going out and fighting unions but I’m not going to help them either.
Lily,
You can, of course, force employers to do this. However, you can not force employers to hire as many people as they otherwise would, so I think you help the few at the expense of the many.
I remember this kid in my elementary school who was in special ed – none of us as children could figure out exactly why he was in there – in fact, he seemed very smart. In retrospect, he probably had a minor learning disability and didn’t have wealthier parents who could fight for him.
The good news is I saw him years later as an adult, and he has a a giant thriving business of lunch carts and restaurants. And the best part was he hired a lot of the kids who he was in class with.
Sadly, I doubt his story is common amongst former special-ed kids who dropped out of high school.
I’m not writing them off because they have unskilled jobs, in fact I’m confident that most of these workers would thrive in skilled ones, if given the chance.
You are 100% correct, and it’s the myopia of stingy business owners that they can’t see how much they do undervalue their employees, and how much money they lose by not treating them with more respect.
I have followed up on some of our graduates and those that got into an apprenticeship or on-the-job training are doing well. . Some got into good paying but low skill union jobs and are also doing well. Their prosperty is helpful to everyone.
I understand that some businesses, especially small ones, face a trade-off between the number of employees and the amount paid to each. Hilzoy’s information doesn’t idicate that the hotels are facing that trade-off. Their trade-off in the more common big business one of less profit or less big checks at the top for higher pay at the bottom. That is a trade-off they can afford to make.
It is worth wondering why people are working for lousy pay as maids. Possibly some of them are too lazy, dumb etc. to get any other job. More likely they don’t speak English well, or are working two jobs to support their kids. In those cases they would not be able to take advantage of the chance to get training for a better paying job. That’s why their current job needs to pay better.
Two typos in my post, argg.
However, if all they’re doing is increasing wages, the responsible and reliable aspects don’t necessarily follow. This is the root of my main issue with unions: they offer higher pay without assuring a higher quality of employee. I don’t know what unions are like these days, but the union I worked in back in the early 1980s had the workers responding to higher pay with complaints and displays of power. Some of the people I worked with in a largely unskilled position would talk about the new conversion van they’d just bought, and practically in the next breath would complain about how they were getting overworked and underpaid. From my point of view, coming from non-union jobs, neither of those was true, relatively speaking.
That, and: having a more responsible, reliable staff would actually have to be worth the extra money, wouldn’t it?
Slarti: the main point is just to allow collective bargaining, making some slight gesture to level the playing field. (As opposed to allowing an individual hotel worker to bargain with Hyatt International.) It would of course be nice if unions could also provide better workers — and ponies! In the case at hand, though, it’s about raising income above poverty levels, so I odn’t think conversion vans will be an issue for a while.
Slarti,
It’s my guess that is worth it. I recently saw some report from Dominos Pizza that was showing how much money they lost from turnover and training – it was astounding.
That being said, I’m unaware of any union that it is worth it for an employer to deal with – even if you are willing and able to be generous to your employees.
I think that if a person puts in a day’s work, then they should get a living wage.
I think the problem is defining what constitutes a living wage. Should we really expect a single paycheck to provide for a family of four?
Let me put it this way: when I decided to start having people come to clean my house every two weeks, I checked first to make sure that they were paid a decent wage by the agency I was using, and that they had health insurance. By a decent wage, I meant: a wage that struck me as fair, not exploitative. Why? Because I didn’t want to go with an agency that didn’t do that. I was willing to pay more, if need be, though as it happens the first place I checked worked out (and the people who clean my house confirm it.) I wasn’t thinking that they had to be paid millions; I just wanted to know that the people whom I was asking to clean my toilets were not getting paid minimum wage (or something not much better.)
To me, staying in union hotels is exactly the same. And I don’t think we need to define “living wage” in this case: whatever it is, $17,340 a year is not it. $26,000 a year is not very much — I mean, if you pay $1000/month in rent, which (where I live) is not much, that’s almost half your earnings in rent alone, never mind the food, utilities, etc. — but at least it’s a lot better than $17,340. I wouldn’t begin to wonder whether we’d gotten into decent wage territory at this point.
And whether or not we should expect a single paycheck to provide for a family of four, the fact is that a lot of people don’t really have a choice in the matter. If your husband walks out, or gets in an accident, then that one paycheck will have to do, whether we should expect it to or not.
Jonas:
Okay. Now, who do you advocate should be hired to be the maids and janitors? And while you, the employer/owner of your hotel, are providing these free college courses for the manual laborers, what do you think should be done about their families when they, say, have to chose between paying for rent, paying for adequate food for their children, and paying for health care for their families?
These are serious, not trick, questions. I’d like to know what you, and those who feel unions are not the answer, and that paying other than what-the-labor-market-will-let-you-bear believe are the answers to these questions.
Slart?
Could you offer a sentence or two defining what you consider “comfortable” to be?
And what you consider an appropriately “uncomfortable” living for unskilled labor, please?
Slart:
I’m not following the connection between these two sentences. Could you unpack that a bit more, perhaps?
I don’t know what a conversion van is, I’m afraid, but don’t most people tend to complain that they’re over-worked and under-paid? Most non-professionals, at least? I’m unclear what the point of this anecdote is intended to demonstrate, other than what I re-stated as a question.
Is there something about not being in a union that leads to non-professional, or particularly to unskilled labor feeling satisfied and and not complaining? If so, could you elaborate on that point? If not, then what distinction or point are you intending to make, exactly?
You seem to me to be indicating — though I may just be misunderstanding — that people not being in an union, or not supporting unions, leads to some sort of better outcome overall for all, but I’m afraid I’m not following the steps by which we get there, assuming that is a correct description of part of what you’re trying to say, which, of course, it may not be at all.
Thanks if you can find time to elaborate on this.
I’m with Gary. What a surprise. The problem with Jonas’ declaration that everyone should get an education and get a skilled job is that no one has figured out how to run an economy that doesn’t include a lot of unskilled positions. Take the subject of this discussion: hotels. How do you plan to run them without unskilled labor?
Some various thoughts.
I’m interested in where people think we draw the line between a job that doesn’t provide a living wage and one that does. I’m quite comfortable in putting Mickey D’s on one side and housekeepers on the other, but precisely where do we draw that line? There is some linkage between the age expected, the amount of responsibility and the possibility of a career path, so I think that a McDonald’s entry level position has the possibility of shift manager and so on, whereas there is no possibility for the housekeeper.
Also, I am reminded of Albert Brooks character’s younger incarnation in Broadcast News who, as a precocious overachiever graduating high school early, delivers a biting valedictorian speech and is then punched out by guys in letter jackets. After they finish up, the character delivers the biting rejoinder ‘You’ll never make more than 19,000 dollars a year.’ and as they walk away, one says ‘19,000. Not bad.’ (as a bit of synchronicity, Gary has a link to an interview with Albert Brooks here)
In another bit of synchronicity, Steve Gilliard presents his thoughts on this discussion by quoting a section of Reservoir Dogs. As may be expected with both Gilliard and Tarantion, the excerpt would blow right past the posting rules here.
No warranty, express or implied, is included with these remarks…
“…(as a bit of synchronicity, Gary has a link to an interview with Albert Brooks here)”
And a quote from Brooks’ “Aaron Altman” character from Broadcast News on my blog’s sidebar, near the bottom of the quotes.
I didn’t mention Broadcast News in my comments on Brooks, since I was talking there about him as a writer and director, not as an actor, but Broadcast News has, ever since it came out, been one of my favorite movies, for a long list of reasons, particularly including the smart writing, the theme about the dumbing down of, um, broadcast news, the terrific cast and acting, James Brooks’ snappy dialogue, one of Holly Hunter’s best roles ever, William Hurt, and Brooks. And do I identify well with elements of both Brooks’ character and Hunter’s character? What do you think?
A digression, I know, but I’m just waking up.
I also like Resevoir Dogs, that screenplay, and that scene. Yeah, Steve Buscemi’s Mr. White has some valid points; but the damn waitress shouldn’t be forced to suffer because of his indifference and desire to go his own way; he’s entitled to go his own way, but when he’s benefiting from the social system he’s living in (by getting the coffee and not having to pay a price that would include paying a tip if you doesn’t want to), and he decides to not tip just because the waitress did an okay (not a bad) job, he’s cheating her in a way that advantages himself just because the social/financial structure allows him to do so.
This is being “not very nice.”
When he says “she can quit,” well, he can go somewhere to get a cup of coffee where the “gratuity” is part of the bill, and there’s no out. They both have a more or less equal choice there, all other things being the same.
Besides, if you don’t tip anywhere you expect to come back to (not really the situation in RD, to be sure), you may wind up suffering from that decision, upon your return, in ways you may not even be aware of.
I love it when people argue that “unskilled” labor doesn’t deserve a living wage. It’s the same argument that parents make for their precocious children–those who aren’t gifted and talented don’t deserve admission to college.
We all desire a living wage for our labor, whatever form it takes. If “unskilled” labor meant “unnecessary” labor then there wouldn’t be a demand. But there is. There is a huge demand for housekeepers, farmers, childcare, delivery people, etc.
I think our real dilemma is in measuring what wage is necessary to sustain a basically decent standard of living, and that gets even more uncertain as we slide into a global economy.
I think the problem is defining what constitutes a living wage. Should we really expect a single paycheck to provide for a family of four?
Why not? It did when I was growing up, and my father was an NCO in the Army.
Of course, various disclaimers about housing and medical care apply in my case. Still, dad-supports-the-family was the standard model for a long, long time.
I went to a parent conference at the lady’s job last year. We met at McD’s, where she worked her first shift. After a day at McD’s she went to work as a nurse’s aide in a nursing home. She had three children under twelve years old. She only saw them on the weekends. The twelve year old cooked, cleaned, and took care of the younger kids. On the weekends the whole family went to the grocery by bus. No health insurance, of course.
That’s the kind of person that works for lousy pay at an unskilled job. Now explain to me why it is wrong for her to join a union and get a raise.
Now explain to me why it is wrong for her to join a union and get a raise.
She needs to be punished for her poor life choices and her children shown why they need to stay in school and get good grades.
J. Michael Neal,
My notion of education while working unskilled jobs does not presume that it is an instant transformation. In fact, it would take quite some time. There will be people without high school diplomas, illiterate people, and so on.
And I am not enough of a idealistic dreamer to believe that were such programs to be implemented and successful, we would run out of unskilled labor. Oy, we should have such problems.
Gary,
Is J. Michael’s interpretation of your statements correct? I couldn’t figure out how to read it – I thought maybe you might have meant who will be working these jobs – i.e. young single people vs. older single parents.
To tell you the truth, I’ve let my hostility towards unions unnecessarily disparage raising wages somewhat. In my fantasy hotel (which you all would receive preferential rates and free upgrades, btw) I’d probably have a six-month period upon hiring that would be at market wages, and then assuming they did well, begin both the investment in education and a better wage. This could actually make just business sense as opposed to being a compassionate act, as if there’s anything I’ve heard from employers it’s how hard it is to find reliable and competent employees. If you know your housekeeper shows up every day on time and works hard, that person is probably a better bet for becoming a shift manager than some unknown quantity straight out of college.
Liberal Japonicus,
You’re absolutely right, and it’s the lack of mobility in unskilled positions that is the big problem here. Although I have seen statistics that working unskilled positions as a teenager greatly increases a uneducated persons likelihood of being able to support themselves further down the road in a decent job.
Should we really expect a single paycheck to provide for a family of four?
If we’re serious about family values and the importance of parental involvement in their children’s lives, we should. I’ve always found it ironic that conservatives never seem to see the connection between market Darwinism and kids increasingly growing up on their own.
Unions have outlived their legitimate purpose
hilzoy has a post up at Obsidian Wings extolling us to patronize unionized hotels to help raise wages of hotel workers. I started to write a comment there, and then said what the heck – I may as well get…
The premise behind skilled workers deserving more is often quite peculiar. I think the basic assumption is that a skilled laborer contributes more to the economy, and so his/her employer, and society should reward this. My first jobs were ‘unskilled’ at a fast food joint, where I cooked real food for real people and made $4.50/hr. Later I worked as an aerospace engineer, taking taxpayer money to build completely useless and poorly designed hardware for about $30/hr with 2 hour lunch breaks and lots of internet surfing (no it wasn’t a government job, and oddly enough I got a lot more done than other people at the company). Nearly everyone I worked with thought they were overworked and underpaid. I thought it was fascinating that 16 vs 12 years of school could give you such a profound sense of superiority.
Jonas: My notion of education while working unskilled jobs does not presume that it is an instant transformation. In fact, it would take quite some time. There will be people without high school diplomas, illiterate people, and so on.
And while you’re fostering this, your employers are expected to struggle along on minimum wage?
In my fantasy hotel (which you all would receive preferential rates and free upgrades, btw) I’d probably have a six-month period upon hiring that would be at market wages, and then assuming they did well, begin both the investment in education and a better wage.
Fine, Jonas, you’re a terribly nice person and would be a wonderful employer. Now, what’s your problem again with unions using their bargaining power to make all employers behave like you, even the employers who are naturally mean-spirited and nasty people, not generous and kind like you?
Unions are destroying our economy. They’re the reason we lose jobs to Asia and Mexico where there are no unions. In a free market, workers are paid what they deserve. With a union, they are paid what they can extort.
Leonidas: that’s just wrong about market economies. In any market transaction, the buyer wants to get the lowest price possible, other things equal, and the seller wants to get the highest price. They bargain, and each tries to get the best deal he or she can. You might call that ‘extortion’, but it’s the basis of market economics.
Markets do not give people what they deserve, unless you’re using ‘deserve’ in an incredibly narrow sense. (E.g., the sense in which “what I deserve” to be paid is, by definition, what I contracted to get in exchange for my labor.) In any other sense than that, markets give people what they want to buy, at the price they’re willing to pay for it, if a seller can be found at that price. Desert has nothing to do with it.
As for unions destroying our economy: do you have any, you know, evidence for that claim?
Leonidas: here’s an excellent post on why markets do not reward desert, based on the ideas of Friedrich Hayek.
Jes,
I conceded that point to Gary already. Absolutely not.
You don’t seem very excited to have to admit what a benevolent hotel owner I would be 😉
I’m sure lots of Hotel owners are mean-spirited and nasty. And Unions usually wind up being just as greedy and short-sighted as the owners. Meanwhile, non-union competitors will eat their lunch while they fight amongst themselves. It just doesn’t work.
Case in point: compare United Airlines – which is not just unionized, but owned by the employees – to JetBlue, which is non-union. United – which has been bankrupt for quite some time, has the Mechanics, Flight Attendants and Pilots unions all fighting over the dead carcass of the company. Meanwhile, here’s JetBlue:
It’s not usually the wages and benefits that do Union companies in – it’s the ridiculous work rules and unrealistic guaranteed benefit pensions that do. And until I see Unions mature enough to understand that, I’m not going to think they’re solving the real problems involved.
You do seem to be working with the b/w concept that if a business fails, it must be because the workers were unionized, and conversely, that having a non-unionized workforce guarantees success. Would you care to explain the reasoning behind these beliefs, with the evidence that no non-unionized business has ever failed because management were greedy, and no unionized business has ever succeeded against non-unionized competition?
Absolutely not. The JetBlue example I gave is a company that not only is business-savvy but understands the value of its employees. It is not a greedy and short-sighted company, and it does not have to deal with greedy and short-sighted unions. This seems like the best possible outcome – competitive in the marketplace, and workers treated and compensated well.
Bad company and greedy union? Hopeless for everyone involved. Bad company and a union with reasonable demands? Still hopeless, because management is clueless.
My notion of education while working unskilled jobs does not presume that it is an instant transformation. In fact, it would take quite some time. There will be people without high school diplomas, illiterate people, and so on.
And I am not enough of a idealistic dreamer to believe that were such programs to be implemented and successful, we would run out of unskilled labor. Oy, we should have such problems.
I have no doubt that you are correct. Which means that you will perpetually be paying employees minimal wages that they can’t really live on. At the same time, the expenses of that education that you are providing means that, by your own arguments, you are in danger of being run out of business by those with lower labor costs.
Jonas: Bad company and a union with reasonable demands? Still hopeless, because management is clueless.
*grin* I was going to cite Enron at you, but I guess I don’t have to…
J Michael Neal: At the same time, the expenses of that education that you are providing means that, by your own arguments, you are in danger of being run out of business by those with lower labor costs.
Quite. Which is why benevolent employers (though generally a good thing!) do not and cannot substitute for a legally-mandated minimum wage that will mean someone working forty hours a week can support their family, and a good union that enables a good worker to negotiate with their employer on more even terms than “market forces” permit.
J. Michael Neal,
What I’m arguing is that you can probably be competitive while paying your employees well and offering them very good benefits (see JetBlue, American Apparel, etc.) But you simply cannot be competitive if you have an adversarial Union out to get as much as they possibly can and preventing you from firing non-productive workers.
Jonas: As I understand it, a lot of the problem with the older air carriers has more to do with workers having accumulated seniority and thus having to be paid a lot, plus having a retired workforce on pensions — none of which a company like JetBlue, which hasn’t been around all that long, has to deal with.
And (also iirc) the pensions aren’t entirely due to the unions: in some companies (iirc, GM), really short-sighted management gave pension guarantees because they didn’t have to pay them immediately, and thus could satisfy the unions without affecting their current cash flow.
Oops.
If I understood what “unpack” meant with any precision, I might be willing.
Assuming you wanted me to elaborate, this: if a union’s sole purpose is to inflate the wage of the worker beyond that which would result in a free market, what is the incentive for an employer to consent to a union shop?
Hilzoy, same response goes to your collective bargaining comment upthread. If all a union does is increase labor cost, why would an employer not cut the union off right at the start?
Forgive terseness; pizza just got here. Sadly, the delivery boy is non-union.
“If I understood what ‘unpack’ meant with any precision, I might be willing.”
You seem to have managed.
“Assuming you wanted me to elaborate, this: if a union’s sole purpose is to inflate the wage of the worker beyond that which would result in a free market, what is the incentive for an employer to consent to a union shop?”
First off, that’s obviously not a union’s sole purpose. It’s not in a union’s interest, in most cases, to put the business out of business. It’s in their interest to keep the business going, and to allow for sufficient profits for the business to grow and hire more unionized workers. And unions have plenty of other interests, some of which directly benefit the employer, and some of which do not, although some of those interests are apt to be of long-term benefit to both employer and employee. Obviously, there are plenty of examples of unions having fought for conditions that are and have been of long-term benefit to the employer which the employer was too short-sighted to see until after they’d been put into effect for some time (for instance, seeing that the employees have sufficient nutrition so they have sufficient energy to work, or seeing that the employees receive medical care, so they are able to show up more reliably for work and better able to do their jobs; seeing that employees have good reason to feel loyal to their employer, in hard times as well as good, and so on and on).
But in answer to your question, there could be, there are, manyincentive; given that, and the length of time it would take to begin to list them all, it might help me select some appropriate, shorter, answers if I knew what the goal/point of the question was intended to elicit.
But, more importantly from my point of view, are you seriously suggesting or asserting that employers in the contemporary U.S. marekt — let’s specifiy hotel owners/operators, to be a bit more specific — are operating in a “free market”?
Are you suggesting that employers do not, in fact, operate in a market crammed full of various incentives and constraints as set by government, by law, by regulation, and by market conditions set by yet other governments affecting their own internal and external markets?
If not, why discuss some non-existent fantasy-land conditions as if they had anything to do with actual reality taking place in this country, in this past century and now, in the actual market of reality?
“If all a union does is increase labor cost, why would an employer not cut the union off right at the start?”
Alternatively, if all owners/employers do is cut down on wages as much as they can manage, why would employees not wish to band together to protect their interests, right at the start?
What either wishes, as opposed to what we think we as a society should set as the best set of policies, might not be particularly interesting or relevant, in any case. I’m interested in coming up with policies that make our society as reasonably good and fair — which includes having the most realistic policies that most accurately reflect our best understanding of economics, and a desirable rate of growth, of course — as is realistic. I’m, myself, not particularly interested in the psychological states of workers or management, or what the abstract ultimate wishes of anyone are. YMMV, or not; I have no idea.
Meanwhile, backing away a bit from such abstractions, are there any other relevant questions we might reasonably wish to consider in setting national policy as regards wages, working conditions, and management/union relations besides the non-existent “free market”?
Are there any other considerations that you would find admissible to such discussions of desirable policy besides, say, theoretical efficiencies for the market? I ask, because I don’t know, so please forgive me if I start out with some basics before trying to move upwards toward aspects of the relevant issues that are dependent upon shared foundational assumptions.
LJ asked: “I’m interested in where people think we draw the line between a job that doesn’t provide a living wage and one that does. I’m quite comfortable in putting Mickey D’s on one side and housekeepers on the other, but precisely where do we draw that line?”
I think that’s a useful question. I think reasonable people can and will certainly differ, but establishing some general boundaries that most of us agree upon, if that’s possible, or at least as few limited sets of shared postions on such boundaries, would be very useful to further discussion.
Laura: “I think our real dilemma is in measuring what wage is necessary to sustain a basically decent standard of living, and that gets even more uncertain as we slide into a global economy.”
I largely share the position you’ve stated, but before discussing such a dilemma we’d first have to establish if most everyone agrees, or not that a “basically decent standard of living,” for everyone is a desirable goal, or if, say, establishing the most “efficient” market for wages, even if it means that, well, too bad, some people will just have to starve, and others will just have to suffer badly and improve their marketable skills if they want
a “decent standard of living,” is a higher priority.
This is, of course, to a large degree the root issue in establishing whether one thinks a minimum wage, any minimum wage, is desirable or not. Certainly many argue that it is not, after all. Not me, but many. I don’t know where Slart stands on that, for instance (I hope he will forgive me if he has many times before stated his position here and I’ve not noticed or have forgotten).
Jonas: “My notion of education while working unskilled jobs does not presume that it is an instant transformation. In fact, it would take quite some time. There will be people without high school diplomas, illiterate people, and so on.”
But are you also pre-supposing that we should be expecting everyone, or most everyone, to eventually become skilled workers? In “some time”?
Because that certainly doesn’t strike me as a realistic goal to reach in the next thirty years, and it doesn’t strike me as sensible to base suggested or desirable policy upon unrealistic conditions.
“Is J. Michael’s interpretation of your statements correct?”
He didn’t say anything I disagreed with, at any rate.
“I couldn’t figure out how to read it – I thought maybe you might have meant who will be working these jobs – i.e. young single people vs. older single parents.”
That, too.
Even if we offer everyone in the country (legal, illegal, whatever) an infinite amount of money purely for educational needs (but not for, say, health insurance, food for the needy, rent support, wage support, anything else), there are going to be a significant number of people unable or uninterested in pursuing such educational possibilities (even setting aside the question of who we’d get to fill all the unskilled labor jobs our society utterly depends on). Agreed? No?
“In my fantasy hotel (which you all would receive preferential rates and free upgrades, btw) I’d probably have a six-month period upon hiring that would be at market wages, and then assuming they did well, begin both the investment in education and a better wage. This could actually make just business sense as opposed to being a compassionate act, as if there’s anything I’ve heard from employers it’s how hard it is to find reliable and competent employees.”
Okay, good, we’re getting somewhere towards narrowing the range of what we believe is best policy.
Jonas to LJ: “You’re absolutely right, and it’s the lack of mobility in unskilled positions that is the big problem here.”
But it’s not just that. It’s the fact that in the next few decades, at least, we’re always going to have a significant number of people who are effectively unable to gain desired skills, or who are uninterested in trying. What should we do about them? Presumably not just let them starve and die of diseases and conditions they can’t afford to have treated, I hope?
And on the other border, presumably we shouldn’t give everyone a million dollars, given the resulting inflation problems, if nothing else, and setting aside “desert.”
So in-between those borders, where do you set your preferred boundaries? Slart?
“Although I have seen statistics that working unskilled positions as a teenager greatly increases a uneducated persons likelihood of being able to support themselves further down the road in a decent job.”
In some cases, at least, sure. But, to be a bit more concrete about an example, what to do abouot a 30-year-old, a 40-year-old, a 50-year-old, a 60-year-old, who is only semi-literate? How about one who is semi-literate, and, frankly, just not very bright in verbal skills or logical skills, or maybe in much of any form of skills/intelligence? (I’ll leave a discussion of what to do about those with other problems, such as mental problems, emotional problems, drug/alcohol abuse problems, and the like, as an issue for a separate discussion, for now.)
You started off in this thread, Jonas, saying “The idea that unskilled labor should provide a comfortable living is an unsustainable one.”
Setting aside the discussion of definition of “comfortable” for the moment, what’s the minimal acceptable living for unskilled labor, in your view? Slart?
I second Jes’s queries of 01:04 PM, as well, to you both.
“I conceded that point to Gary already. Absolutely not.”
Okay. Slart?
“I’m sure lots of Hotel owners are mean-spirited and nasty. And Unions usually wind up being just as greedy and short-sighted as the owners.”
Without discussing “usually,” I’ll certainly stipulate “sometimes.”
And, naturally, I agree that being greedy and short-sighted is bad (in the sense of being self-defeating in the long run, at the least, setting aside moral questions, not that we really should, in fact, set aside moral questions, in my view), whether you are a union or an owner.
But presumably we can take some limited steps to restrain some of the worst possible acts by both unions and employers, in the knowledge that we won’t be acheiving perfectability nor trying, and that is, of course, in fact what we already do. So stating these as absolutes is irrelevant; what’s relevant is simply narrowing down the practicialities of what’s most effective and desirable to get to a reasonable and practical desirable policy. Right?
“Meanwhile, non-union competitors will eat their lunch while they fight amongst themselves. It just doesn’t work.”
See, though, here you’re going from an extremely abstract position that describes a problematic aspect of both labor and employer — greed and short-sightedness — but you wind up decrying the problematic aspect of one side, and only admitting of the extreme argument, to boot — that employers who agree to any demands of organized labor at all will result in “non-union competitors [who] will eat their lunch” so that “[i]t just doesn’t work” — but, poof, the problems of what greedy and short-sighted owners/employers do to employees has magically suddenly vanished from your argument.
But the problem is still there, in reality.
And, getting onto a matter that is more subjective than I’ve yet discussed, so long as we’re only discussing problems that make an employer somewhat less than ideally competitive, but still allow for some growth and significant profit sufficient to keep the business going (mind that postulate, please), I’ll less concerned, myself, about the problems of employers not Absolutely Maximizing Profit than I am about masses of people who can’t afford to decently feed their children, pay rent on a decent place to live, and simultaneously see to it that their family has adequate health care.
Slart, where do you stand on which you think is the more important consideration?
I’ll try to come back to subsequent comments in a future coment, as this one is growing over-long, and I have other stuff to get to, myself.
Hilzoy,
Absolutely. But the bizarre insistance upon seniority being respected above all else is one of the ways Unions wind up making businesses dysfunctional. People should get raises, of course, and perhaps extra benefits over time, but significant improvements in pay should have to come from significant improvements in productivity or increases in responsibility.
Meanwhile, I doubt JetBlue is doing a defined-benefit pension – it’s probably a 401k, which makes far more sense.
This is exactly why I’m arguing the greedy company vs. greedy union dynamic isn’t getting us anywhere.
Gary,
Given the rate at which our public schools crank out uneducated and unskilled people, I don’t think we have much to worry about. This isn’t the end times – young people (and hopefully immigrants) are still starting their working lives.
No. A significant number of people not interested in pursuing lucrative opportunities? I can’t even hazard a guess as to how much such people there are, but I would definitely not describe it as significant. I’m sure many unskilled people don’t pursue educational possibilities based on the burdens on time and finances, as well as – perhaps most importantly – an impression that success would still be unlikely. I’d say that good social and charitable programs along with reasonable employers could go a long way towards changing that view.
Again, I really don’t know how many of these people there are – an environment with more opportunities will likely motivate a lot of people currently uninterested to become more interested. And I’m not buying that there will be more opportunities in a strong-union, high-minimum wage world.
Of course not. Starvation and death is not particularily prevelant these days, but there is a lot of suffering – which employers, the government and charities could do much, much more to remedy.
I don’t really believe there is such a thing. What’s the minimal acceptable wage for a teenage-dropout living at home with his parents? Clearly less than what we’d like to see an uneducated head-of-household making. Does that mean that Unions and minimum wage laws should price our dropout out of the labor market? No. And there’s no guarantee that the teenager wouldn’t get the good union job or high minimum wage job over our suffering parent. So what good is it?
I don’t trust either unions nor employers to know what steps to take policy wise – and given they are the ones that would develop these policies because of the $$ they’re lining politicans pockets with – I’m not holding my breath.
You’re right. I believe that better behaved owners/employers can defeat the greedy ones over time in the marketplace. I may be far too idealistic as of today, but the labor shortage that’s likely to emerge as Boomers slowly retire will probably be one factor that makes my perspective far more popular amongst business owners.
Me too. It’s only if you’re going to look to employers exclusively to completely solve your litany of problems that this is a big deal. My argument is they are not doing nearly enough to address it currently. But they are also not the only ones that have to. And Unions shaking them by the ankles to make money fall out of their pockets doesn’t solve these problems either.
“But the bizarre insistance upon seniority being respected above all else is one of the ways Unions wind up making businesses dysfunctional.”
It’s certainly an arguable a metric, and it certainly presents some clear flaws. I wouldn’t, myself, make it a do or die negotiating point.
But it does have several virtues, along with flaws, that you neglect to state. Most of all, it’s an inarguably objective standard; it admits of no favoritism, no bias, no subjectivity.
There’s a lot to be said for that.
Further, it helps compensate for the extremely serious problem the market presents to the aging worker: the older you are, the harder it is to find a new job.
Further, it rewards loyalty, and offers an incentive for your employees to stay with you, the employer, for the long term, so you can count on their known skills and valuable experience, which by definition you won’t get with newer workers. So it’s a stablizing factor for both sides of the bargain.
But, as I say, I agree that it has its down side, as well, and I wouldn’t, myself, make it necessarily a non-negotiable demand; generally speaking, I’m not much for issuing ukases as to universal specifics for how I think labor/management union contracts should be written; circumstances vary, and should ultimately control, although I think certain basic principles of fairness (on both sides) and minimal decent conditions of work for the employee should be adhered to.
“No. A significant number of people not interested in pursuing lucrative opportunities? I can’t even hazard a guess as to how much such people there are, but I would definitely not describe it as significant.”
I wouldn’t hazard a guess as to number, either, at least not without doing some research and offering, at best, a rather broad range of numbers.
But I guess we have a sticking point if you believe that the number is not significant, that, say, there aren’t at least a few hundred thousand, or even a million or more, adult people in the U.S. employee pool, or who desire employment, who are, nonetheless, not capable or not all that interested, in pursuing many many many specific types of education or training, and some major fraction of that number of people who are either incapable of or unwilling to — for any of a number of reasons — pursue greater education or training than they presently possess.
Naturally, to attempt to demonstrate the existence of such a number of folk existing in the numbers I suggest, I’d have to do a bit of poking around. So I may come back to this, or may not.
“…s well as – perhaps most importantly – an impression that success would still be unlikely.”
Yes, that’s certainly also a significant factor, but I don’t believe it’s at all the only significant factor in such cases. A significant number of people, you know, simply don’t want to change. Period. For any number of psychological reasons. Whether this is “rational” or not is besides the point; it just is.
Now, mind, you are incredulous when you say this (or so I take you to be, at least): “A significant number of people not interested in pursuing lucrative opportunities?”
Now, all other things being the same, I’d agree. That is, if it’s a matter of going up to people and saying “I will touch you with my magic wand, and you will henceforth be getting 5 times your present wage,” relatively few would say no.
But since that’s not on offer, and it’s more a matter of offering something along the lines of “if you are willing to spend several nights a week for the next couple of years making a major effort to stretch your mind in a way you are unfamiliar with and find painful and uncomfortable and utterly unfamiliar, and you have to do this on top of your present job(s) and supporting your family while you are at home and on top of anything else you want to do with your remaining time, including leisure and relaxation and maintaining your sanity,” yes, I think there are a significant number of people who won’t sign up for that automatically.
Again, this may not be the best long-term decision they are making, but will it happen? You may not agree, but I think it will and does, quite a bit.
“I’d say that good social and charitable programs along with reasonable employers could go a long way towards changing that view.”
Yes, to some degree, I agree. But are you then supporting governmental programs, or governmental financial support or incentives for such private programs, or merely purely private programs? Again: Slart? Anyone who identifies as a libertarian or conservative?
“And I’m not buying that there will be more opportunities in a strong-union, high-minimum wage world.”
Certainly one of the arguments against a minimum wage is that it overall lessens the number of jobs offered. And all things being the same, I certainly agree that that’s a legitimate concern that has to be acknowledged and dealt with.
But I think, again, that this is a matter of considering within a range of moderation, rather than with absolutes or extremes (neither of which are you, Jonas, offering in this discussion; however, many libertarians and conservatives will and do state absolute opposition to any minimum wage at all, so I feel I must deal with that as part of any discussion).
I don’t think, for instance, as I already indicated, that offering $1/hour or $2/hour, to go to an extreme, minimum wage in our society/economy in the U.S. to adults who need to support themselves, let alone a family (but single people, I like to think, are important to, particularly since I am one) is sufficiently useful, even if we have “more jobs” with such a minimum wage than we do with, say, a $4/hr or $6/hr minimum wage, much though I agree that we would, of course, have more jobs if employers were legally allowed to offer $2/hr wages to adults.
And, as I said, going to an absurd other extreme, mandating that everyone get a minimal $30/hr wouldn’t maximize the benefit to society, either. So I’d say the best policy answer is somewhere in between there, and then all we’re doing is arguing relatively trivial specifics: is the idea compromise $5/hr? $7/hr? $10/hr? $12/hr? $14/hr? Should we have different rates in different states, or not? Differentials within states, and/or within different fields, and/or within different kinds of work? And so on. Such questions are considerably less important than establishing general principles we can largely all agree upon, I think, much though the difference in practice to most given people and families between an $8/hr take-home pay, and a $12/hr take home pay is really quite large in changing quality of life (and therefore of society as a whole if made a universal rule of law, or even a prevalent one) of most given people.
“Of course not. Starvation and death is not particularily prevelant these days, but there is a lot of suffering – which employers, the government and charities could do much, much more to remedy.”
Again, good that we agree on that, but we’re already utterly out of the libertarian consensus, I think, and also out of the consensus of many conservatives, I’d venture to say, though I wouldn’t dream of offering numbers or guesses at percentages.
“I don’t really believe there is such a thing. What’s the minimal acceptable wage for a teenage-dropout living at home with his parents? Clearly less than what we’d like to see an uneducated head-of-household making. Does that mean that Unions and minimum wage laws should price our dropout out of the labor market? No. And there’s no guarantee that the teenager wouldn’t get the good union job or high minimum wage job over our suffering parent. So what good is it?”
So we can offer some differentials. I also would agree, pre-emptively, that the simpler a system is, the better it is, so we also want to try to minimize the complications. Would you agree that that’s also a valid and relevant principle to include?
But we already do differentiate in our minimum wage laws by state. And we do differentiate by minors and adults. And we do differentiate between certain kinds of work (baby-sitting, tip-dependent work) and other kinds of work (hourly, salaried), in our employment laws. Do you believe we should eliminate those existent differentiations in our employment laws? If not, then you already would seem to be agreeing that they have some worth and a point.
And what good is it? Well, we keep some pressure on employers to keep wages for most adult work above $2/hour (for non-tip-based work, at least), and then we try to compensate and help the unemployed in other ways, such as with unemployment benefits, and other social services (again, I favor Milton Friedman’s negative income tax, as proposed by Daniel Moynihan and Richard Nixon, though not at the expense of wiping out all social programs as well; but those are separable discussions).
“…I don’t trust either unions nor employers to know what steps to take policy wise….”
Well, we can either let them settle in via the market, within parameters, by letting them bargain with each other, or we can mandate all the conditions by law, or we can find something in between the two. (Guess which I favor?)
Or we can say that employees should have no legally protected right of free association and mutual contract and no right to then bargain as a collective with employers. I’m not clear how that fits into free-market theory as we actually practice it, but I don’t want to digress too far into abstract discussion, either.
But it seems to me that having government establish fair ground rules for people to bargain with each other in the marketplace is as valuable a good to society as it is for
having government establish fair ground rules for people to buy and sell stock to each other. Naturally, the details are things reasonable people will disagree with, but what’s wrong with the principle?
“…and given they are the ones that would develop these policies because of the $$ they’re lining politicans pockets with….”
That’s absolutely an extremely important and valid concern, but it’s really going off into a separate discussion of the problems of money in the political system, and what is and isn’t corruption, isn’t it?
“I believe that better behaved owners/employers can defeat the greedy ones over time in the marketplace. I may be far too idealistic as of today….”
I’m afraid that very possibly you are, indeed, and, alas, at the expense of other people’s well-being, if you were were to vote in favor of, to go to an extreme, there being no legal protections for allowing workers to organize in unions. (Note, I’m not saying that anything unions want to do should be legal, nor that there shouldn’t be legal limits on what unions can do, or mandate on their workers, or be able to demand of employers; that’s an entirely different question.)
How do you feel about this statement? “I believe that better behaved unions can defeat the greedy ones over time in the marketplace. I may be far too idealistic.”
If you disagree with the first sentence, on what basis would you say that it’s an untrue statement about unions, but not about employers?
“My argument is they are not doing nearly enough to address it currently.”
So there’s another starting point of agreement between us, and some of us. Good.
“And Unions shaking them by the ankles to make money fall out of their pockets doesn’t solve these problems either.”
I’m certainly not arguing, and I’m sure Hilzoy is not arguing, and neither would you find, I think, a general plurality of “liberals,” arguing, that unions are magical organizations that can’t be corrupt or greedy or wrong-headed or stupid, or that unions can’t behave badly and stupidly and self-destructively. Of course they can do all that, and of course, sometimes they do. And that has to be dealt with, and specifically to some degre, in law, as well.
But that’s no reason to inherently oppose all legal protection and support for unions any more than the the fact that employers can equally be stupid, greedy, self-destructive, short-sighted, etc., means that employers should inherently have no protection and support in law.
And if you agree with that, then, again, we’re just down to arguing details, rather than arguing absolutes (which I would contend are silly, and often simply based upon emotional prejudices, on both sides) that Employers Are All Evil or Unions Are All Evil.
Are we getting anywhere?
Slart?
This sounds an awful lot like endorsement of further screwing with the market (by manipulation of the labor supply) with the intent of achieving some sort of justice. I’m wondering, though, what screwing with the labor market has to do with the hotel supply market. Any ideas? I suspect you’re going to think this is an irrelevant question, so consider that in order to justify manipulating the labor market, those inclined toward such manipulation might want to explain it in terms of regaining something lost.
I prefer no boundaries. I submit that “living wage” is subject to opinion. If you want to put it at the poverty line, fine, but that’s an arbitrary place. Put it to a vote? Still arbitrary.
Acceptable to whom? You? Me? The guy who’d work for less?
I have no idea what you’re asking, here.
Well, I’m all James Tiberius Kirk on this issue: non-interference, unless it’s absolutely necessary. I don’t think that this particular example of hilzoy’s exceed’s the Enterprise’s threshold of emergency. If you want to rip away protections, subsidies, incentives, etc for the industry in reprisal, I’m all for that. Rip away.
Of course, I haven’t worked a minimum-wage job for oh, a quarter century-plus, so you may discount my opinion in the matter accordingly.
It’s not that I don’t agree with anything you say, Gary; on the contrary, it’s nearly axiomatic that companies (in general) tend to be myopic where labor relations are concerned. So, too, have unions. Why not effect change in both?
“This sounds an awful lot like endorsement of further screwing with the market (by manipulation of the labor supply) with the intent of achieving some sort of justice.”
To me, it sounds an awful lot like the conversation might or might not later arrive at that point, but that meanwhile what you’re quoting and replying to was a question. Which — and I may have just missed it — you seem to have completely avoided answering.
“I’m wondering, though, what screwing with the labor market has to do with the hotel supply market. Any ideas?”
Sure. As soon as there’s no screwing around with the marketplace as regards employers, and their incentives, subsidies, tax advantages, tariff advantages, rent-seeking, and regulartory environment, I’ll consider similarly not screwing around with the labor market. Meanwhile, why one side should get lots of legal advantage (and some disadvantage) while the other side should be all hands-off, I don’t know.
“I submit that “living wage” is subject to opinion.”
Certainly. That’s what democracies do.
“If you want to put it at the poverty line, fine, but that’s an arbitrary place.”
In the sense that any law whatever is arbitrary, sure. More arbitrary than 95% of existing U.S. and state laws? This is extremely unclear to me. Of course, it’s quite possible that as a libertarian you would prefer to eliminate 95% of U.S. and state laws. I’d actually agree with you on some, possibly even up to, hard to say, but maybe even 50%, conceivably even more; we have an awful lot of laws, so it’s really extremely difficult to say. It’s probably fair to suspect that I’d like to eliminate a significantly lesser percentage of them than you do, though (not because of the number, of course, but on the specifics).
“Put it to a vote? Still arbitrary.”
And, yet again, the theory of democracy.
“Acceptable to whom? You? Me?”
You. Your vote, as a citizen, and hypothetically were you in a legislature, or in Congress.
“Well, I’m all James Tiberius Kirk on this issue: non-interference, unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
I’m thinking you probably want to go with Captain Jean-Luc Picard, if I understand you correctly. I don’t understand you to be suggesting that your preference is that we should have a non-interference policy that is violated at the whim of the Captain, which is pretty much every week. Whereas the TNG-generation practice is to actually let people die so as to uphold the abstract theory. You may not be familiar enough with the Trek oeuvre to have the details at your fingertips, perhaps, though perhaps you do.
“…it’s nearly axiomatic that companies (in general) tend to be myopic where labor relations are concerned. So, too, have unions. Why not effect change in both?”
I don’t recall writing anything to suggest I believed anything in contradiction to your query.
Slarti: “This sounds an awful lot like endorsement of further screwing with the market (by manipulation of the labor supply) with the intent of achieving some sort of justice. I’m wondering, though, what screwing with the labor market has to do with the hotel supply market. Any ideas? I suspect you’re going to think this is an irrelevant question, so consider that in order to justify manipulating the labor market, those inclined toward such manipulation might want to explain it in terms of regaining something lost.”
You seem — and I don’t mean to mind-read, so if this isn’t what you mean, just take what follows as addressed to some hypothetical Slart-prime, not identical with you, who did mean this — that collective bargaining is screwing with the labor market. I think that’s wrong. It’s just bargaining, which is the heart of market economics. I can, if I want, bargain with a car dealer: in so doing, I am not ‘screwing with the car market’ — as though it exists in some ‘correct’ state before I start bargaining, and then is distorted by me. I am doing what consumers do.
Take it one step further: suppose I represent a car rental agency, and so I am able to bargain not just for one car at a time, but for a whole bunch of them. I will probably get a better deal, because I am a much bigger buyer. Is this ‘screwing with the market’? I don’t see how — nor do I think that it would somehow be better if car rental agencies had to bargain one car at a time.
Now suppose that you and I and some of our friends decide to try to achieve the sorts of savings that car rental agencies get by teaming up. We are, collectively, going to buy twenty cars (let’s say), and it seems to us that if we bargained as a unit, we’d get a better deal. Are we ‘screwing with the car market’, or just exercising our power as consumers in an intelligent way? And is there any reason to regard this as tampering with the way things ought to be, as opposed to our making a particular choice as consumers? I think the latter.
(And note that this latter view tends to lead to less government interference, since taking collective bargaining as a distortion of some otherwise ideal state provides a reason for thinking that government ought to protect the undistorted state.)
To me, unions are basically doing what you and I and our car-buying friends are doing: choosing to exercising market power collectively, not distorting the market. In any given case, I am open to the view that a given union is corrupt, or counterproductive, or whatever. But the idea that there’s something suspect about collective bargaining per se is (I think) at odds with a lot of market economics.
(This might be less true if unions were strong enough to constitute a monopoly — so that no company could defy them by hiring non-union people. In this case, it would not be special — it would present the same challenges as, for instance, pharmacy benefit managers might if they controlled enough purchases. (PBMs are companies that manage drug purchases for some hospitals, drug stores, etc., and negotiate for lower drug prices based on market power.) But unions are not anything like that strong now.
Finally, the action I recommend here is a straightforward use of market power: choosing to stay at hotels that pay a decent wage. As I said in the post, markets work best when consumers have, and can act on, all the factors they want to take into account in deciding what to buy. And we, as consumers, get to decide what factors those are — it’s not as though there’s some canonical list of OK reasons to decide to buy a product that includes (e.g.) self-interest but not moral considerations.
I want to stay at hotels that pay their housekeepers more. (At least in the world we live in. I would not feel this way if hotel housekeepers were paid millions.) Absent information of the sort available on the web page I linked to, I’d have to call around and make sure, which is a lot of trouble. Now, taking unionization as a decent proxy for good pay, it’s easy.
I therefore see this web page as analogous to nutritional labeling of food: without nutritional labels, I’d have to do lots of research to figure out what to buy, if I care about that stuff; with them, it’s easy. Similarly here.
This sentence:
“As I said in the post, markets work best when consumers have, and can act on, all the factors they want to take into account in deciding what to buy.”
should read:
“As I said in the post, markets work best when consumers have, and can act on, information about all the factors they want to take into account in deciding what to buy.
Sorry: “no”. What the question has to do with anything in the discussion, you haven’t made clear. Stipulating that the hotel business enjoys a whole lot of largesse from communities, the federal government, you name it…what’s that got to do with the labor market?
See, I’m all about not making things even more screwed up. If your contention is that the hotel industry gets far too many handouts: by all means, have at them. What having at them has to do with collective bargaining is not clear to me; maybe you can “unpack”, so to speak.
No, Picard had a way higher threshold of emergency than did Kirk. As I see it, Picard would wait until it was practically too late to do anything to take action. But granted, this is silly, since I cannot see either of them breaking Federation rules to come to the rescue of hotel maids. And of course I wouldn’t be sacrificing the guy in the red uniform in the name of collective bargaining, so perhaps Picard it is.
Although, come to think of it, Kirk did tend to do better (or at least, more (ahem) broadly and frequently) with the ladies.
Sure. And by extension, the dealer has a right to refuse the price offered, and sell instead to parties that are less bargain-minded, yes?
Or perhaps I’ve completely misunderstood, and collective bargaining is really and truly open to all parties.
Sure, that works. But do I picket the manufacturer if he raises the price? Or do instead shop around for a better deal?
I’d agree with that, right up until the analogy falls apart. Or maybe you DO picket the dealers and manufacturers if you consider their price to be unfair, keeping other customers from exercising THEIR purchasing power?
I can go with that. As an individual, you’ve got total power over who you buy from. You even have a lot of power to sway the opinions of others.
Purely in good fun: did anyone have that International Ladies Garment Workers Union song go through their head, just now?
But in a wider sense, possession of information IS powerful. The last decade has brought the buyer much more in the way of power; one can, from one’s living room, locate a dealer who’s willing to sell you the car one wants at the lowest price. Or whatever widget one wants to buy. Ditto for the job market, just to be complete.
“No, Picard had a way higher threshold of emergency than did Kirk. As I see it, Picard would wait until it was practically too late to do anything to take action.”
What was he waiting for in Homeward, where he left a race to die? Why did the Federation not aid Bajor during the Cardassian occupation? Why did Sisko withdraw from DS9 when the Cardassians were later supplying weapons to Bajor? Why did Picard not interfere in The Klingon Civil War? Where was the “practically too late” in any of this?
“But granted, this is silly, since I cannot see either of them breaking Federation rules to come to the rescue of hotel maids.”
If the hotel maids were ruled by a computer, you can bet your sweet bippie that Kirk would be there breaking that computer (and Prime Directive) with a handy paradox faster then you could say “sterilize! sterilize!”
“And of course I wouldn’t be sacrificing the guy in the red uniform in the name of collective bargaining, so perhaps Picard it is.”
By TNG-era red uniforms were what Command officers wore. Security wore yellow.
I did suggest you might not want to get into the details of Trek with me. But I have to focus on the most important topics first.
Pfaw. I have no doubt that you’re more intimately familiar with Star Trek, but this one was rather obvious.
Slarti: But do I picket the manufacturer if he raises the price? Or do instead shop around for a better deal?
Supposing that you and 19 of your friends decide to club together to buy 20 cars from a car manufacturer in order to be able to bargain collectively – and it worked: you all got a car at a much lower price than any of you would have done had you bought cars as 20 individuals. Suppose this became a widespread practice, documented on the Internet, with advice on how to find 19 people who also wanted to buy a car and how to set up the deal. Suppose that this became a fairly common way to buy cars.
Suppose then, that in reaction to this, all the car manufacturers get together and decide that they will not sell to individuals except as individuals – that they won’t permit collective bargaining of this kind, because although the car industry is doing well since more and more people are buying cars, they can see that they would make even more profit if all these people were buying cars as individuals, rather than collectively bargaining for them in groups of 20, and so they want to put a stop to this practice. In a Republican America, they would presumably have someone bribe the right senators to pass a law making this kind of collective bargaining illegal: in a democratic America (note the small d) they might simply agree between themselves that they’d not sell to any group of people who were trying to bargain with them collectively.
That is a business reaction to unions. I can’t see that it has anything to do with “the free market”: it has to do with powerful corporations putting short-term profit ahead of long-term value.
Sure. It’s fairly common for powerful corporations to put short-term profit ahead of long-term value, I’d say. If collective bargaining was put forth as a negotiation for enhancement of the bottom line, long-term, then I think there might be a bit more receptiveness to it. For all I know, that might be the case in this context.
Slarti: If collective bargaining was put forth as a negotiation for enhancement of the bottom line, long-term, then I think there might be a bit more receptiveness to it.
Not under the economic system which measures “success” in terms of “share price rises every quarter”, it won’t. Again, this has nothing to do with “the free market”, it has to do with a change in the way success in business is measured. According to Wall Street standards, a successful business is one with a rising share price: an unsuccessful business is one with a steady or falling share price. Under those circumstances, collective bargaining that drives down short term profits even if all concerned can see it’s good for the long-term health of the industry, is actually threatening.
I don’t think that this particular example of hilzoy’s exceed’s the Enterprise’s threshold of emergency.
Depends. Given how small the populations were on the planets the first Enterprise visited, I’d say that the number of hotel staff raising families on starvation wages probably does exceed NC-1701’s level of emergency, if considered as the population of a Trek planet who are being ruthlessly exploited. 🙂
Of course, it’s easy to see that supporting yourself and two children on $17,340 does not constitute an emergency when it’s not you or your children suffering from it.
FWIW: unions in the Netherlands are on the whole (not always) less polarized. One of their goals is long term employment for the workes, so it is in the workers interest that the firm they work for will exist in a few years. Which means that the wages (& increasements) they ask for depend on the profit the companies make.
It is usually the shareholders that have the short-term profit vision.
“…but this one was rather obvious.”
Indeed. As it says: “In the Next Generation and later series, redshirts are known as yellowshirts, as that is the new color of the security department.”
“Given how small the populations were on the planets the first Enterprise visited,”
I believe you are referring to the “Captain Pike and Captain Kirk’s Enterprise,” or “NC-1701,” not either the first “Enterprise” in the Star Trek universe (which is the former British sloop captured on May 18th, 1775, just as it was in Real Life), nor the first starship Enterprise, the NX-1.
DM: “FWIW: unions in the Netherlands are on the whole (not always) less polarized. One of their goals is long term employment for the workes, so it is in the workers interest that the firm they work for will exist in a few years. Which means that the wages (& increasements) they ask for depend on the profit the companies make.”
I’m unclear how this is different from unions in the United States. (Where, incidentally, as a point I direct towards Slart, not you, CEO compensation isn’t, as a rule, remotely tied to yearly profit, it turns out, but tends to instead grow at a vast rate, regardless of whether profit is large or small.)
Oopsie. First starship Enterprise, NX-1, link should have gone here.
Being Kirk, needless to say, the color of the shirt would be obvious. Unless of course we’re traversing into meetings between Kirk and Picard, which (IMO) is not a good place to be.
Gary:
I am having a busy time at the moment, so not much time for googling. This article may give an idea of what I mean.
On the whole we have a negotiation/exchange/consensus culture (and that included the unions) and my impression has always been that the US favors a challenging/competitive/”I win, you lose” kind of culture.
Thanks for the pointer, dutchmarbel.
However, looking at the most recent figures in Table 1, for “workers involved, per 1000, in lockouts and strikes,” in 1990-1995, it lists the US as having “3,” and the Netherlands as having “6.”
So apparently there’s twice as much labor strife in that period in Holland as in the U.S.
Neither of which is remotely a contender for Italy’s 168, or Germany’s 22, Denmark’s 23, or Britain’s 10.
Going back to the 1980-1989 figures, to make sure we don’t have a fluke, we see that Holland the US tie for 4, whereas Italy has 409, and the UK 44, Denmark 27, France 25, and Sweden 10.
How any of this demonstrates that the U.S. has more confrontational labor relations than Holland, or Europe, eludes me, I’m afraid.
It also says that in the Netherlands “Also there is no legal system for mediation and arbitration in the private sector.” That seems to be a significant negative, not a plus, doesn’t it?
Perhaps I need to reread it in the morning; I’m rapidly fading out just now, and signing off for the night. G’night.
The idea that unskilled labor should provide a comfortable living is an unsustainable one.
The idea that slavery should not be brought back is an unsustainable one.
The idea that Don Q can come back and post in defiance of his having been banned is an unsustainable one.