Calpundit
comments on
the California supermarket strike-cum-lockout, noting, among other
things, that
- if corporations -- or entire industries -- are routinely
allowed to bargain on behalf of a large number of owners and
shareholders while workers are allowed to represent only themselves,
no honest bargain is possible. Individual workers have no leverage in
such a situation, and wages are inexorably pushed to subsistence
levels.
(Which is an old argument -- see below -- but I digress).
Regarding supermarket workers, though, there's a bit of a problem
-- it isn't so much that the handwriting is on the wall for them, as
that the self-service checkout stations are on the floor, slowly
creeping into several Shaw's owned supermarkets around here. There
aren't very many yet, but we've all seen how these trends start. (In
response to this point in his comments, the Calpundit himself notes
that shelf-stocking jobs aren't going away soon. It's more proper to
say that they aren't going away yet -- autonomous robots are
getting cheaper and more capable, and "empty pallet x onto shelf y"
isn't that hard a job. Not now, not next year, but in ten years or so
automated restocking is likely to be cost-effective, even cheap).
So, sooner or later, those supermarket workers are all going to
need another job, in a different industry. And their union isn't
exactly well positioned to help them get it, since it is a food
service workers' union, tied to the jobs that are going away. Which
is a particular instance of a general problem -- our unions right now
are trade unions, which work only for the benefit of the
members of the union, and not for the benefit of the labor force as a
whole. Which can lead to deals that injure the interests of other
workers -- sometimes even other workers for the same company, as in
the sadly common union contracts which give new hires a different,
lower pay scale than current union members. Just as seriously, it can
add inefficiency to unionized business, as the unions insist on
maintaining unnecessary positions, obsolete work rules, and so forth,
to benefit their workers, at the inevitable expense of the customers
of the business and the economy as a whole.
It would be nice if they took a broader view -- heck, it would be
nice if management took a broader view, as Toyota has, trying to find
new business to find new business for plants and even subcontractors which it
expects to be running short of work in coming years -- but in America, that
may be too much to ask. (Indeed, things were actually worse at the
turn of the last century, when many nascent unions were openly
racist).
Another alternative is for some broader force -- say, the
government -- to do something to defend the interest of the work force
as a whole -- say, passing minimum wage laws -- in order to defend the
interests of the workers in a manner that doesn't set up distorting
effects between one sector and another. Which was one of Franklin
Roosevelt's ideas in the New Deal. Expounding the kind of conservatism
that runs our government these days, it seems Bob Bartley doesn't
like it, though as usual for commentators of his ilk, he isn't letting the
facts get in the way of a good argument. But I'm guessing, he isn't really thrilled with labor
unions either.
So, how to defend the interests of the workers?
Well, here, once again, is Adam
Smith, from the
Wealth of Nations, on what things are like when the workers have
no defense, speaking of current conditions in the Britain of his day
when labor unions were effectively banned:
-
What are the common wages of labour, depends everywhere upon the
contract usually made between those two parties, whose interests are
by no means the same. The workmen desire to get as much, the masters
to give as little as possible. The former are disposed to combine in
order to raise, the latter in order to lower the wages of labour.
It is not, however, difficult to foresee which of the two parties
must, upon all ordinary occasions, have the advantage in the dispute,
and force the other into a compliance with their terms. The masters,
being fewer in number, can combine much more easily; and the law,
besides, authorizes, or at least does not prohibit their combinations,
while it prohibits those of the workmen. We have no acts of parliament
against combining to lower the price of work; but many against
combining to raise it. In all such disputes the masters can hold out
much longer. ...
We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters,
though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this
account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as
of the subject. Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit,
but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labour
above their actual rate. To violate this combination is everywhere a
most unpopular action, and a sort of reproach to a master among his
neighbours and equals. We seldom, indeed, hear of this combination,
because it is the usual, and one may say, the natural state of things,
which nobody ever hears of. Masters, too, sometimes enter into
particular combinations to sink the wages of labour even below this
rate. These are always conducted with the utmost silence and secrecy,
till the moment of execution, and when the workmen yield, as they
sometimes do, without resistance, though severely felt by them, they
are never heard of by other people.
Maybe Bartley thinks that a return to those days would be a good
idea.
