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From: nrh@inmet.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Unemployment & the minimum wage
Message-ID: <1700@inmet.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 21-Aug-84 00:42:35 EDT
Article-I.D.: inmet.1700
Posted: Tue Aug 21 00:42:35 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 16-Aug-84 01:46:39 EDT
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Nf-ID: #R:idi:-21500:inmet:7800122:000:7729
Nf-From: inmet!nrh    Aug 12 18:58:00 1984

>***** inmet:net.politics / tty3b!mjk /  6:36 am  Aug 10, 1984
>Rick Kiessig writes:
>
> >"[Unions] achieve their
> >effectiveness by creating in effect a monopoly on their services.
> >If they don't get what they want from their employer, they simply
> >stop working.  Even without a minimum wage law, it may well be
> >impossible for a company to go out and hire enough sufficiently
> >skilled people if a union were to strike.  This is also called
> >blackmail.  Do what we want, or else."
>
>If 11,000 highly-skilled air controllers can be fired en masse and
>replaced, this argument just doesn't hold water.  Which, of course,
>was the point of the firing: it sent a message to labor of what to
>expect from the Reagan Labor Department.  

An interesting example.  Do you know of anyone besides the government
who could have done this to their employees?  If governments can
fire people for striking, shouldn't private citizens be able to?

>There are far too many
>other examples of labor being squashed.  

Indeed there are -- for example, it is difficult to find work as an
electrician, hairdresser, truck driver, doctor, or any of dozens of other
professions without being part of the guild or union.  Oddly, this sort
of thing does not hold up well when there is not legislation to back it.
Oddly, labor is always behind such legislation.  

>Further, the law is always
>on the side of corporations in these disputes.  The police -- who's
>salary the workers help pay -- are brought in to enforce the
>corporation's "right" to bring scabs into the plant.  

How intriguing.  When somebody refuses to work, and somebody else would
take the job for the same pay and the same risks, it is somehow not
the employer's right to hire the other person.  This is true if the
employers agreed it is true with the original employees (with neither
side under duress), but false otherwise.

>Striking
>workers are barred from receiving normal subsistence aid, such as
>food stamps and welfare.  

An intriguing question: should workers be paid to strike by the state?
isn't the fundemental trade between the worker's labor and the employer's
money?  Shouldn't welfare (if it must exist at all) be reserved for
those UNABLE to make a living?

>Tell me who's blackmailing whom, Rick.

A hard question.  The employers are offering a certain wage for a certain
job.  The strikers are threatening force and legislative retaliation
unless they can keep their jobs on their terms.  Who's blackmailing whom?

>My big question to those who rail about labor's power is, why aren't
>they millionaires like their bosses, then?   These unions show an incredible
>amount of self-restraint, settling for middle-class incomes if they
>are capable of getting whatever they want.

Poor, middle class laborers.  Union wage earners are paid MORE than
most people.  Milton Friedman points out that 80% of the total national
income of the United states goes to pay wages, salaries, and fringe benefits
of workers.  More than half the rest goes for rents and such, and after taxes,
we're left with profit (about 6%).  In other words, "That hardly provides much
leeway to finance higher wages even if all profits were absorbed.  And that
would kill the goose that lays the golden eggs." (Friedman, "Free to Choose",
pg 224.)

> >"We don't have guaranteed employment in this country.
> >Just because someone has to pay you at least $3.35/hr. doesn't
> >mean that he actually has to hire you.  So if what you were doing
> >isn't worth the government-declared minimum, you lose your job."
>
>"Worth" in what sense?  

"Worth" in the sense that you'd rather have a job done, and give somebody
X dollars, than not have the job done.  

>For years, the work that blacks did on the
>plantations was "worth" exactly nothing.  

No!  It was "worth" something.  That the slaves got PAID nothing is
something else entirely -- their labor was STOLEN.  They were
PRISONERS.  Autoworkers are not chained up at night, and they are
not kept from defending themselves when asked to work, and they
can get another job if they like.  To compare union employees with
slaves is the height of silliness.

>In many companies, the
>work of women is "worth" less than the work of men, even though they
>have exactly the same responsibilities.  What you are paid has very
>little to do with what your work is "worth".  Most people work for 
>whatever they're offered.   The difference between what your work
>is worth (i.e. the value of the products of labor) and what you're
>paid is called "profit" (but not for you).

Ho ho.  The work of women doing a job identical to that a man would
do is with EXACTLY the same (given that their performance is the
same).  


>The point missed here is that the issue is not pay.  The issue is
>jobs.  We are not a poor country that has no alternative but to force
>our unemployed to scape by on bare survival wages.  We are the richest
>country in the world.  

Not per capita.  Look it up.

>Ronald Reagan tells us that there is no military
>item we can't afford.  We are going to spend $1.8 trillion on weapons
>in the next few years.  At the same time, the streets of our cities are
>crumbling.  Our public transportation is feeling the result of years of
>postponed maintenance.   Half of the nations bridges are structurally
>deficient.  Much of the interstate highway system will have to be replaced
>unless repairs are begun soon.  We are told that we can't afford to do
>anything about this; that we can't afford to feed children; that taking
>care of the elderly is "too expensive"; that providing jobs for those who
>want to work is none of our business.

Intriguing.  All these things you'd rather spend money on are public
projects.  Paid for by taxes extracted at (metaphorical) gunpoint.
Doesn't it strike you as tacky to threaten people with guns to 
make them pay you to improve bridges and highways?  As long as
these things are done by government, there will be shortages and
political bickering about how they should be done.  When, though,
was the last time you heard of a candy-shortage?  Of a grocery shortage?
Of an orange juice crash?  Of public complaints about how poorly 
movie theaters are maintained?  There are instances of these things,
but they tend to cancel out.  Why?  Because fixing them is not
a political issue, decided by congressmen dealing with strong
special interests.

>There is no lack of work to be done, and there is no lack of money to
>pay a living wage to those who do it.  What is needed is a change in 
>priorities, a shift away from the appeals to the meanest part of people,
>exemplified by Ronald Reagan's attack on labor, to appeal to the best
>in people.  

Much as I'd love to appeal to the best in people, I'd find it insecure.
Who would dig ditches because they "should"?  Who would do laundry
because it is "for the masses"?  If you really want to appeal to the
best in people, make it so that nobody can regulate WHAT it is that
that others agree upon.  Don't worry -- those others will conspire
to sell you services and goods, as opposed to "a bill of goods".

>Debates on the minimum wage and the value of trade unions
>are over.   We fought those fifty years ago; the old "solutions" didn't
>work then and they won't work now.   It's time to move on to the real
>issues we have to face.

Well, that's real nice of you to try and tell people who disagree with
you that they are behind the times, but I beg to differ.  The 
"old 'solutions'" gave us industrial society.  The trade unions want
import restrictions.  Which is more worthwhile?

P.S.  Just a note to the flamers:  I LIKE trade unions -- so long as 
they exist for collective bargaining, not as a "protection racket".