Seriously, do you think that's how it happens? Is that bluster, naivety, or what?
"He sonny, do you want to eat dirt or accept our below healthy subsistence wages?" seems closer to how it goes. People don't work for low wages because they can't bargain, they work for low wages because the alternative is for them not to work and the government won't mandate a Living Wage.
It's not fair because people who have less resources, from birth usually, are in a far worse bargaining position and usually don't have the occasion to negotiate their wages. The only chance they have to create leverage is to unionise and force the company to decide whether to waste 20% of their workforce and do a massive employment and training drive (or suffer a strike, or ...) or to accede to paying a, for example, inflation matching wage increase.
Why not assume they're genuinely curious to learn rather than attack them? It gives better conversation.
Like pbhjpbhj, I doubt that randomdata was as incredibly naive as he sounded. I took it as a rhetorical device. But using that device here amounts to either denying the malfeasance that can occur when people with wildly differing power levels negotiate or saying that the exploitation of workers is fine because market outcomes are always right.
The former is not a credible position; history provides too many counterexamples. The latter is a sort of reptilian free-market fundamentalism that often hides behind rhetorical devices because "might makes right" it not a moral standard most people will openly subscribe to.
I have to wonder if anyone actually read my comment, or just saw the word union and started replying with their stock responses.
I absolutely agree with you on this one but it just isn't practical. As we have seen time and again, this is not what happens in real life. Everyone wants to "add value" to the economy. Whether you own real estate in San Francisco or you own the only Internet cables to the home, history shows that you WILL use your position to demand a "fair price" for your "contribution" towards the society. In other words, everyone engages in rent-seeking even as we continue to say how it is horrible. We want perfect competition in the market for our suppliers and we want to be the sole provider with 100% discretion in pricing when it comes to our consumers. That is how the world works.
Is the management of labor unions a little inefficient? Absolutely but so is management of corporations. If management was efficient, we'd see close to 100% of economic gains of a corporation go to its investors. However, we see time and again that the "entrepreneurs" and the "hard working" and "risk-taking" executives will demand a very high price for their "work". It may not formally be a union but it sure feels like it when it comes to executive pay!
My comment emphasized the need for unions, so if you disagree with my points, are you saying that unions aren't necessary?
I will say, though, that I don't see it as necessary to reply to somebody who ignores the substance of a comment, picks out one sentence, and misinterprets it.
You don't find it necessary, but you felt compelled to anyway? Weird. The problem here is that you haven't even addressed the topic at hand. You went on some tangent that was irrelevant. All I could do was grasp at one small part of your comment that seems like it may have been somewhat relevant to try and salvage the discussion.
I do blame myself for not articulating my point to you, but since you even seem unsure of what I was trying to convey, you'd think you'd ask questions to try and understand instead of just starting to push your own off-topic agenda down my throat.
But I understand how emotionally wrapped up people get in this which prompts them to throw all rational behaviour out the window. I'll forgive you.
I do though, have a great distaste for jacksassery, so you and your faux forgiveness can take a hike. That's yet another rhetorical technique, yet again used poorly.
Either way, deep down, the discussion really doesn't have anything to do with unions at all. I'm not sure if you simply failed to grasp my comment and thought that attacking my character instead of doing the normal human thing of asking for clarification would lead to helping you understand, or if you are simply a troll and did not care about the subject at all and were just looking for someone to take out your aggressions on.
Either way, HN is not the place for that type of behaviour. I'm not sure what you are getting all emotional about if it is not unions, but whatever it is, it is clearly present and causing you to loose sight of thoughtful and meaningful discussion. Dial that back and maybe we can gain something from this exchange. Something tells me that I'll get another several paragraphs of ad hominems instead, sadly.
Perhaps most here find your points tired and emotionally fueled which is why they choose instead not to engage?
The funny part is that if you're genuinely curious about the topic, you can do some introductory research yourself. The information you seek is a single Google search away. To demonstrate:
And literally the first option in the search I linked ("walmart unfair wages") will lead you straight to the answer.
Did you actually read my comment? Because it seems like you didn't read my comment.
We know that Walmart forces employees to work off the clock. They've settled multiple class-action lawsuits about this. This of course, goes by a name. It's called wage theft. Even before the theft, we know that Walmart pays their employee literally poverty wages. This is evident this time a year, when you go to a Walmart and see a barrel sitting out front marked for food donations for Walmart employees. On top of that, Walmart is essentially government subsidized, because they encourage their employees to sign up for welfare as part of their on-boarding process.[0]
So now of course, why would anyone put up with this? Quite simply, there's no other choice. Yeah, these people are unskilled and left far behind in the economy, but that doesn't mean that someone with a full time job should live in poverty. This doesn't mean that a multibillion dollar multinational megacorp, should be getting 6 billion dollars a year in taxpayer payroll subsidies.
[0] http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2014/04/15/report-w...
If Walmart employees can't support themselves and wind up taking advantage of charity - either privately or through the state - isn't this also the system working as intended? Systems are in place to help low income individuals. These are low income individuals. It strikes me as strange moral reasoning to say the low market price of unskilled labor is Walmart's fault.
It strikes me as particularly strange moral reasoning to charge the use of welfare in this case to Walmart's account and call it a subsidy. That would only make sense to me if the people earning that wage would do better if Walmart wasn't there. I don't think that's the case, though. Unskilled labor doesn't pay that well whether you're flipping burgers, delivering pizzas, stocking shelves, or waiting tables. It's not the fault of the companies offering those jobs - it's just what that sort of labor is worth.
But Walmart should just pay them more, everyone deserves a living wage? I don't think I agree. I think there is room in the economy for second incomes, for student jobs, for seasonal work. Not everyone is a single head of household, and if you don't have the skills to be one, often you just - don't move out. We have no shortage of help - private charities that do vocational training, societal safety nets to keep things from getting too bad, most people get by with help from friends and family until they can make it on their own. I think there's nothing wrong with that.
One of the things I would be concerned with is insisting that Walmart pay its employees more. That will surely come in the form of raising prices, and the very low prices at Walmart are a boon to low income folks - both those who work at Walmart and those who don't. I am skeptical that making Walmart less efficient will help the communities it's in, compared with the social safety nets and private charity - generally provided by the better off. Forcing Walmart to pay higher wages strikes me as taking from the poor to give to the poor.
On the contrary - the folks I know who work at Walmart are content with the situation and doing ok. They know they could go get a vocational degree or something and make better money as a welder or something. They don't want to. It's an odd job between stages of life, not a career, and good enough for the moment. If there are enough people like this to run a whole business that hugely benefits the poor by offering goods at low prices, isn't that system on the whole a good thing?
Alternatively, we keep it as is and more and more people's labor goes to zero (eg. driverless cars). One way or another, the wealth needs to flow to the people or there will be unrest. With unrest, people may elect someone with radical changes in mind and then you really won't like your situation (eg. a fascist government like Russia where the top guy simply takes your stuff on behalf of the people - but the people never actually see a dime of it). A little course correction here to balance things out will go a long way to keeping the social fabric together.
So it seems possible to give each worker an extra $100/month. But now you have to sell this to the shareholders, which may include institutional investors managing retirement accounts. Good luck figuring out that mess.
Having a job and being stuck on charity is not the system working as designed. A system working as designed wouldn't need charity at all, and certainly would be needed for those that are working and are still indigent.
I really find it odd that you think paying more would be "taking from the poor to give to the poor". Walmart and the Walton family are extremely profitable and wealthy. They can easily absorb the the cost with negligible real impact. They could even start by not paying a stock dividend.
The question isn't about some teenager. It's about the person that isn't. It's about the person working two or three jobs. You can't say that Walmart benefits the poor when they famously pay just enough to shop only there.
I suggest you get out of your bubble, because the people I know that work at Walmart, Dollar General (do you even know that store?) are heads of households. These people are screwed. Not just by Walmart but by the entire economy.
That's a rather aggressive and insulting way to attempt to make your point.
Disclosure -- I am married to Dove. We live in 80219 [0]. Median income here is a little under half of the state average. More than a third of the adult population has less than high school education; less than one third has ever been to college.
In the last four years, in addition to our nuclear family, we've had the following live in our house:
- a fresh college graduate, working as a tutor in the public schools
- teen parents and their infant; the mom worked at WalMart and the dad at another grocery store
- my divorced sister and her elementary-aged son; she worked part time as a substitute paraprofessional in special ed classrooms
- my sister who was doing just fine on her own until her building was bought out from under her, and couldn't find an affordable place where she was able to practice her religion (can't find roommates who keep kosher; here she has room to set up her own mini-kitchen.)
My parents live one zip code over, in a slightly less poor but still very poor area. My mom works at WalMart; my dad is disabled; they also have two adult children and two non-relatives living with them, including one who prefers the pronoun "they" and one who goes by the nickname "Hobo Joe".
Why am I saying all of this? Because this is the "bubble" we live in. And when well-meaning people look in from the outside and say "minimum wage should be a living wage" and "people shouldn't be able to be partially government-subsidized and partially earning a wage", I think they don't realize what that approach actually entails. It basically guarantees my mom would be unemployed and 100% on government benefits, because nobody is going to hire a 66 year old woman who spent 30 years out of the workforce raising children. It means that people like "Hobo Joe" can't get an entry-level job and are therefore going to live their entire lives on government benefits, instead of slowly becoming more independent. Yes, these people are screwed by the economy -- but trying to make entry-level employers like WalMart pay more makes them even more screwed.
You don't help people climb the ladder by kicking out the bottom rung. You help them by making the transition from unemployed to entry level as smooth as possible, by making it so that a person can make a partial transition where they have a mix of both, and by eliminating "cliffs" that they have to jump over in order to improve their situation.
And which of those options is better?
This is self-evidently untrue. You are confusing basic economic models with empirical conditions. While simple models of things like supply and demand are essential to understanding economic conditions, over-reliance on them is like thinking that being able to work simple problems of gravitation is all you need to know about aeronautics.
You are assuming a particular kind of bargaining relationship, the closed shop, that is actually illegal in many jurisdictions. You're also way overestimating the negotiating power of of the individual employee, or (put another way) ignoring the vast economic disparity between the parties and the resulting lack of leverage for the non-specialist employee.
When shareholders pool their capital and hire managers to run the business, is it a loss of freedom for them? Hardly, they can choose to sell their interest in the business if they no longer want to own it, or take a more active role if they are unhappy with the performance of their economic agents. Why are you so averse to low-level employees doing the same thing with their wages - essentially hiring the union to negotiate on their behalf?
On one side of the table, there is Walmart: a large group of well-monied people that pay lawyers, lobbyists, PR teams and think-tanks to level the playing field in their favor.
On the other side, there is you: an individual person who can only bring their time and skill to the table and needs to eat.
Unorganized labor is great for Walmart. If you don't like their terms, there is a large pool of qualified applicants that will take whatever employment they can get.
If Walmart's terms aren't really that great for everybody, where huge swaths of people are not being paid fair market compensation for their productivity then, individually, workers have no option for change.
> I really don't know how you can get any more fair than that? Everyone equally has the ability to decide what works for them and are free to move on when it doesn't work.
People are not being paid fair market compensation for their work that they would be if they were able to bargain collectively the way Walmart is able to. An individual has little recourse against the might of many people who want to pay them as little as possible.
If capital is allowed to consolidate wealth and power into a corporation, labor should be able to collectively negotiate with it. Unions can serve to to bridge the gap of uneven power at negotiations.
> A union has no bargaining power if it has competition, of course.
A union is under the same market forces as anybody else. If it has competition, it must compete.
> A union actually takes away a worker's room to negotiate
Depends on the union. Some allow for negotiation, some have a scale which you can work with.
That's why I found the use of the parent's words so interesting.
You are afforded no freedom or fairness in that situation, just what Walmart wants to offer you.
Fair implies room for compromise or a lack of unequal advantage from both parties. In this case, Walmart has all the say in how your employment is handled.
A fair fight assumes that participants are on an equal footing. If Walmart shows up with a tank and you've got your bare hands, that isn't fair.
This is what I mean by fair. Fairer compensation can be ascertained by both parties through a fairer negotiation.
Unions raise the minimum standards for negotiations and conditions, whether you are a member or not.
Many unions allow for up-negotiation or work within a pay scale. Walmart has a scale too, so does your employer, except neither bottom out. Ask for compensation above the top bound of that scale and you will be laughed out of the room. A union forces an employer to raise the bottom for up-negotiation or a pay scale and negotiate for a higher top bound. Bonuses exist outside of the scale.
I cannot come to the same conclusion as you with regards to unions taking away fair compensation and room for negotiation for those reasons.
Do you by fairness strictly mean the initial compensation being offered, but not what the workers believe is a fair compensation after-the-fact?
Do you by freedom strictly mean individual freedom to bargain, but not the freedom to organise and bargain collectively?
Fair means everyone is operating in their own interests, as they choose, which can include expecting more in the future. I did ask in the comment what is more fair than that, and you didn't mention anything when you initially replied, so presumably you agreed with that part.
Freedom means that everyone is able to operate in their own interests, as they choose. Collective bargaining locks some people out of operating in their own interests. This part should be obvious. A union cannot function when there is competition. The business would simply fire everyone and go hire those who are not part of the union otherwise. That is less freedom.
But, like I said, less freedom and fairness is a good thing here. There is no reason to shy away from it. Unions have done wonders for the public.
The competition is individuals sourced through a variety of means or other unions.
Typically unions provide a degree value over other options to both parties, hence why you join one as a worker and you sign contracts with one as an employer.
Unions exist in the same market as the rest of us and must compete as well.
> The business would simply fire everyone and go hire those who are not part of the union otherwise. That is less freedom.
And break a contract they freely chose to sign with a union?
You're either too vague in your comments or I'm just living in such a culturally different place on this subject that I just can't understand what your points are.
We seem to have different definitions of fair and freedom. For example it's usually in peoples interest here to join a union rather than to not join one. And that's excluding the factor of solidarity with your fellow workers.
Furthermore, firing people for being in an union is blatantly illegal where I live.
Exactly. You take away worker's freedom and fairness to improve the situation. Freedom is what causes the problems that unions attempt to solve.
When people are free to operate any way they want, in a fair market with no restrictions, they will undercut others to everyone's detriment, be that through accepting lower pay, willing to take greater risks in dangerous jobs, and so on. Again, a union takes away their freedom to do those things, and takes away the fairness that treats everyone in the same way, so that everyone else doesn't feel like they also have to do those things.
> Furthermore, firing people for being in an union is blatantly illegal where I live.
There is another freedom lost. Do you still not see how freedom is a bad thing here? Surely you agree that not being able to fire people for being in a union is a good thing, even though it comes at the cost of less freedom?
> I'm just living in such a culturally different place on this subject that I just can't understand what your points are.
Possibly. Are you an American by chance? It get the impression they place such high value on freedom and fairness that anything else they like must also be free and fair, without even taking the time to think about what that actually means. I see several comments here where people are getting upset at the idea that unions aren't free or fair, even though there is no reason to be. It is perfectly okay to not always be completely free or fair.
I've already explained that freedom to join a union is as much a freedom for me as to not do it. It's just a matter of tactics.
Also regarding freedom of firing an employee for joining a union. That "freedom" is only rendered possible by suppressing other peoples freedom of joining a union, so no, I don't agree with you.
I'm not from the states.
I'm not even sure if you're arguing against or for unions anymore. Or if you are just trying to get to an objective definition of freedom and fairness that you can build upon to say that unions are inherently bad in some right-libertarian philosophical way.
But that only further emphasizes how flawed the use of "fair compensation" by the OP was. Glad to see you are starting to make the same points I was.
> That "freedom" is only rendered possible by suppressing other peoples freedom of joining a union, so no, I don't agree with you.
Why can't you be free to join a union while also allowing the employer the freedom to fire you? This isn't binary.
> I'm not even sure if you're arguing against or for unions anymore.
Deep down, the topic isn't really about unions at all, so I'm not even sure what difference it makes?
Although I did explicitly state that the message was meant to be pro-union, as I figured some overly emotional people would take the opening the wrong way (and still did anyway). I am now left wondering if you actually read the comment at all?
> to say that unions are inherently bad
I don't quite understand where you are even going here? Suppose we did agree on what free and fair mean. Then what? All we can conclude is that unions take away freedoms and fairness. How do you take that and turn it into unions being bad? I don't see the leap you are making here.
Answering this would inevitably leads us down a never ending philosophical discussion ("What is freedom? Is it an act of freedom to fire someone if it's made possible by an institution based on servitude?") that's subjective anyway.
> Although I did explicitly state that the message was meant to be pro-union
You're first paragraph is so obviously anti-worker that I've assumed your pro-union stance to be false.
> I don't quite understand where you are even going here?
I made a punt based on previous experiences with people discussing in a pseudo-philosophical manner. My bad.
Huh? Maybe if you attach objective meaning to the word fair, but you said couldn't be done and would lead to a never ending philosophical discussion.
But within the context of my position that has held that a fair market is not desirable for employees, that would tell you that the first paragraph is very much pro-labour. Fair is clearly bad.
What do you hope to take away from this discussion? You originally asked why Americans see unions as having negative outcomes. How are these talking points codifying an answer to that question in your mind?
I'm calling your definition of fair according to that first paragraph an anti-worker definition of fair. I'm not saying that it's objective. My definition, whatever that may be formalized to, may well be an anti-business definition by your standards.
> What do you hope to take away from this discussion?
At this point I'm just trying to answer you. Maybe I'll get more replies to my question, albeit unlikely at this point.
I will point out that fair carries connotations in economics.
"Fair market value (FMV) is, in its simplest expression, the price that a person reasonable interested in buying a given asset would pay to a person reasonably interested in selling it for the purchase of the asset or asset would fetch in the marketplace. To establish FMV, it must be assumed that prospective buyers and sellers are reasonably knowledgeable about the asset, that they are behaving in their own best interests, that they are free of undue pressure to trade and that a reasonable time period is given for completing the transaction."
This point is interesting: "free of undue pressure to trade". If there is no undue pressure from a union, why are places like Walmart so afraid of them? No pressure.
> At this point I'm just trying to answer you.
But what do you take away from it?
Given that this is no economics site and that no parent gave reference to FMV you should probably be more explicit if that's your definition of fair.
Excluding that, that quote is so far from reality that it's pointless to even consider - you even quote the important part. Surely you should be able to put that part into the context of a worker?
> why are places like Walmart so afraid of them?
Ehm, profits?
> But what do you take away from it?
Why does this matter to you?
Well, we were talking about economics. I wouldn't find it necessary to hold back technical jargon on a forum not specifically about tech if the topic in question was tech.
> and that no parent gave reference to FMV
And what do you think compensation represents, exaclty? That's right, someone's established market value.
> that quote is so far from reality that it's pointless to even consider
What quote? Fair market value? What formal definition do you go by?
> Surely you should be able to put that part into the context of a worker?
Yes, although we've already discussed that to death, surely? Without a union, each person has the fair opportunity to make their own choices to their own benefit, including undercutting the next guy to ensure getting the job over the next guy. With a union, the people must be employed under the terms of the union, and do not have fair opportunity to make their own choices for their own benefit, like undercutting the next guy to secure the job.
This is a good thing. Fair is harmful. You don't want the next guy undercutting you, as that's what drives down value, reduces compensation, encourages you to take dangerous risks, and so on. I still find it difficult to fathom that you are in support of a fair labour market where anyone can do those things. We have a long history before unions to see what happens when the market is fair. It's not pretty.
> Ehm, profits?
But there's no pressure, right? Walmart doesn't have to change a thing if they don't want to. With no pressure, why would profits change? The market is fair, according to you, after all.
> Why does this matter to you?
Because it might help me figure out where you are coming from. Are you anti-union? I'm staring to get the impression that you are. Why do you support a fair market when the downsides are abundantly clear?
How can you possibly think I'm anti-union? This is just dishonest and pointless. Thanks for the discussion so far, but I'm leaving it here as it's obvious we won't get much further and you're cherry-picking and twisting half of the words I'm using.
Fair compensation is the result of many actors all competing in a market without restriction. This is often bad, as when competition is fierce, those many actors will drive down value to almost nothing, leaving low pay, willingness to do dangerous acts, etc.
The union improves on fair compensation by setting terms that the people must follow. No longer fair, but a much better situation for employees.
> room for negotiation
You can always try it out for yourself. Find a unionized job, sell yourself to the bosses, and then clinch it with a sweetheart offer of $10/hr less than everyone else is being paid. See how far you get and report back to us. Something tells me you'll soon realize that your negotiating room is gone. And that's a good thing!
This is completely untrue. There are a lot of people who need to work to eat and pay rent. Often they're backed into a corner where there's literally no other jobs available than Walmart, which means that Walmart can offer any wage they want and the potential employees have no options beyond accepting, or being on the street.
Why would Walmart even want to have workers who walked away from the table during negation, of whom they have no employment agreement and are technically not even employees, working for them? That doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever.
Even ignoring the sketchy legal ground, it seems like a huge liability to have what are effectively random people walking in off the street doing work at your store. I am still dubious that Walmart, or any other business for that matter, would allow this.
Did you know that people who profit from child labor help hungry kids eat?
I would argue that this is where the lack of fairness stems from. In every rural small town I've visited, Walmart is effectively a monopoly.
They're backed by a capital-intensive and incredibly efficient logistics network, and they've leveraged that to put local competition out of business. Consequently, they're the only employer in their industry in that town.
Sure, you could get a job doing something else (if the town has a 'something else'), but that still means there are going to be a large number of jobs controlled by Walmart without competition. And that distorts the local labor market via the disparity in power.
However, they do not. There are many potential (unskilled) workers, and Walmart has all the power. They are more than happy to present an offer and say "take it or leave it" to the individual worker.
Contrast that to the highly skilled market that most HN readers inhabit, and it is scary place to be.
It's an agreement made under duress, we can do better for these people. Don't you agree?
I think this is the core misunderstanding of the left in this area.
Choices are only thought to be voluntary if they are between "good" alternatives, where "good" is measured by the standards of US college educated middle class.
There's simply no evidence that Walmart is a drag on wages compared to retailers it replaces. Quite the opposite actually.
>...The NBER is the largest economics research organization in the United States.[2] Many of the American winners of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences were NBER Research Associates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Bureau_of_Economic_Re...
"Research" can be used to defend any argument in this debate.
The NBER has 3-4 sources of funding and consistently reinforces conservative, monopolistic positions.
Furthermore, just because the paper is on NBER, it doesn't mean the organization did the research. It's just the organization that hosts the paper. If you click through, you can see that the work was done by faculty at Stanford and The University of Michigan.
http://www.nofrackingway.us/2012/11/01/shale-boom-nber-conse...
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/03/walmart-can-afford-15-minimum...
The paper cited is a typical right-wing conservative position that corporate ladders with management positions provide workers with more opportunities for advancement, and thus possibly higher wages.
Mom and pops very rarely have good benefits because they don't have the resources that larger firms have. It's complicated and expensive to set up things like health care plans and 401Ks. This is why the ACA employer mandate doesn't apply to firms with fewer than 50 employees.
Do you seriously believe that any of the floor staff at Walmart have been able to negotiate a separate wage for themselves?
Sure you do. You can choose exactly what you want out of the deal. That's also the problem.
> Do you seriously believe that any of the floor staff at Walmart have been able to negotiate a separate wage for themselves?
No, which is why we advocate removing the fairness. Fair does not equal good. Fair is what leads to this situation.
But since those with homes are just as free to say no to some (esp. the poor), they really might be left to live under a bridge. This is why freedom and fairness can be bad. If we take away freedom, we can allow those people under the bridge to have homes.
What, exactly, is unfair about the current compensation? Walmart pays exactly what they and the employee agreed to at the onset of the employment agreement. Those who couldn't reach an agreement have do not provide work for Walmart at all.
I really don't know how you can get any more fair than that? Everyone equally has the ability to decide what works for them and are free to move on when it doesn't work.
> If workers have room to negotiate
A union actually takes away a worker's room to negotiate. The union becomes the only vendor and, in this case, Walmart would be legally required to hire through that vendor for the defined positions. This is less fair, as now you are managing the supply of labour and actively hindering competition. A union has no bargaining power if it has competition, of course.
While the benefits of a union are clear, the way you try to spin the situation is, to say the least, interesting. A union is beneficial because it takes away the fairness and takes away the freedom to negotiate. Fairness and freedom are what allow people to drive value towards zero, which is where the problems stem from.
I have a feeling this will be taken as an anti-union message, even though it really is a pro-union one. The loss of fairness is a good thing! We have a long history to look back on to see why.