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From: mjk@tty3b.UUCP (Mike Kelly)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: The Sub-Minimum Wage Again
Message-ID: <469@tty3b.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 18-Aug-84 16:41:09 EDT
Article-I.D.: tty3b.469
Posted: Sat Aug 18 16:41:09 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 19-Aug-84 04:06:03 EDT
Organization: Teletype Corp., Skokie, Ill
Lines: 84

simard@loral (Ray Simard) vs. kelly@tty3b (Mike Kelly):

>why the implication
>that corporate management is unconcerned with anything but
>their balance sheets?  What should they do; operate businesses as
>social welfare agencies, and if there's a profit here and there,
>well, that's nice too??? 

There's a contradiction here, Ray.  First, you seem hurt that I think
that  management is concerned only with profits, then you say, "besides,
how can they be concerned with anything else?"  Briefly: most managers
*are* concerned (at least in their work) only with profit margins, and
you're right, the system forces them to take this stance.  Of course
businesses aren't run like social welfare agencies.  They are run just like
what they are: producers of profit for the owners.  Any other result is
coincidental to the real purpose of businesses.


>Subminimum jobs would serve one purpose: to allow persons chronically
>unemployed to experience the shift from an orientation around
>despair and hopelessness, to productive use of time and exposure
>to the work environment.  Those who are alert can then move up
>as their talent and experience grow.

Let me rephrase this: subminimum wages would let persons chronically
unemployed be employed *on management's terms* to gain experience.   If
the purpose is to provide jobs, there is no need to do so at subminimum wages.
But, as you pointed out above, the purpose is *not* to provide jobs.  The
purpose is to provide profit, and in order to do that, subminimum wages are
necessary.

>Unions have made a valuable and necessary contribution to the well-being
>of the worker.  By offsetting the imbalance of power that once was held
>by the owners and managers of business and industry, the unions have
>accomplished enormous improvements.  But the power balance can often
>swing in unusual and destructive ways.  Union leaders have of late
>fostered the image of worker and management as adversaries, breeding
>animosity and contempt on both sides that in the end hurts both.
>Ownership, management and labor together make a business run, and you
>cannot improve the lot of one by hurting the others.  It is the prosperity
>of the unit that creates the prosperity of the individual components.

There is no need for union leadership to "foster the image" of worker
and management as adversaries.  Management has done a wonderful job of
driving home to workers just how adversarial their relationship is.  Most
companies in America have not accepted trade unions as part of the economic
system, and there is an ongoing attempt to literally destroy trade unions,
through such tactics as moving production abroad, supporting anti-union
legislation here, and simply stonewalling union negotiations.  In industries
such as auto and steel where unions have some measure of power, the companies
have set as a long-range goal the elimination of union power through such 
tactics as out-sourcing (which allows them to transfer production from their
own unionized shops to non-union shops) and sharply cutting wage scales for
newly hired workers; this undermines support for  the union by new workers and
gradually reduces the number of union activists among workers.  And don't forget
that when the industry was in trouble, the union made massive concessions --
the steelworkers gave management concessions worth $4 billion in the last
round of negotiations a few years back.  In return, they are slapped in the
face with huge increases in management salaries.

>Kelly:
>The advocates of abolishing the minimum wage ... say that it's OK for 
>people to be starving if that's what the market produces.
>
>Simard:
>If that's "what the market produces" then nothing in the world will
>keep people from starving.  What the market produces is goods and services
>that people are willing to pay for.  Labor is required to create those
>goods and services.  The only way that anyone is ever employed is that
>*first* a profit-making entity exists that is able to sell whatever
>the worker produces.  This is not by design, nor is it an example
>of heartless capitalism, it is as much a fact of life as gravity.

Let's tell the truth.  Economics is not physics and the rules of the
market are not physical laws.  It is absurd to say about any social system
that "nothing in the world" will change its outcome.  Perhaps slavery is a
"natural" system, feeding as it does off man's worst character.  It, however,
does not exist any longer in most of the world.  And it doesn't exist because
some people were wise enough to realize that social systems can be changed by
people because people invented them in the first place.  Your statement that
the only way people are employed is that "*first* a profit-making entity exists"
reflects your own priorities, not some natural law.  Please be honest about that.

Mike Kelly