I was on the Belabored podcast with Sarah Jaffe and Michelle Chen to talk about Labor’s Bill of Rights, labor law reform, bringing the strike back and much, much more.
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4 thoughts on “AUDIO: Belabored Podcast on Rights and Rebellions”
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Labor unions transform “price takers” into “price negotiators.” About 20% of our labor force thrives under what could be described as perfect competition conditions. Perfect competition defined simply as being able to extract pretty much the max the consumer is willing to pay for their input to products and services — never mind all that long winded economic definition, right?
To raise most our workforce to “price negotiators” our coming blue wave Congress simply needs to mandate union certification and de-certification elections at every private workplace; every one, three or five years, plurality rules on the latter.
Should have done decades ago — only way to maintain democracy in America’s unique in all the first world, anti-labor union, labor market. Much of second and third world not fanatically anti-union culture either: Argentina and Indonesia do sector-wide labor contracts for instance.
Bottom 40% of US workforce take 10% share of overall income. Mid 40% plus upper-mid 19% (total 59%) take 67.5%. Top 1% take 22.5% — up from 10% over last two generations. See where this is going?
Newly unionized employees take back 10% share through higher prices for their labor — or they won’t show up for work …
… If McDonald’s can pay $15/hr with 33% labor costs, then, Target can pay $20/hr with 10-15% labor costs and Walmart (bless it’s efficient heart) should be able to pay $25/hr with 7% labor costs.
Bobby Kennedy’s son Chris is running for governor in the Democratic primary in Illinois. His father wanted to fight poverty — I remember something called model cities — but with only half today’s per capita income I’m not sure what he was thinking. Now, with doubling of per capita income it’s should merely be a matter of sloshing it all around better.
The bottom 40% will gently (and persistently) nudge the middle 59% to take back 12.5% of overall income from the top 1% through confiscatory taxes — of the kind we had in the Eisenhower years; and nobody gave it much thought either. With twenty times the personal income going to the same jobs of the top 1% now, this time around we are going to get really serious about confiscation.
Top paid NFLer in 1968, Joe Namath made $600,000/yr in today’s money. Quarterback pays more like $12 million now. Sorry Colin (I’m sure you’re not greedy). 🙂
Why Not Hold Union Representation Elections on a Regular Schedule?
Andrew Strom — November 1st, 2017
https://onlabor.org/why-not-hold-union-representation-elections-on-a-regular-schedule/
Bonus: federally mandated certification and re-certification elections automatically the hottest issue (maybe in a hundred years) because transformative in some way for almost every household. Dreadful for Republicans to defend against as we are stealing a page from their own anti-union (state gov unions) playbook.
This remains a terrible idea, no matter how many hundreds of extra words you devote to it in the comments section of my personal website.
I just read your reply (I don’t know if it it too late for you to read this) and I am shocked. Would you like to explain why it is such a terrible idea. It had better not be a terrible idea — BECAUSE NOTHING ELSE IS GOING TO WORK.
I am reassured that it is Andrew Strom’s propose — drawn from two long (meaning I did not read) PDFs by two pro labor profs. I like to give (very sarcastic) credit to Wisconsin governor Scott Walker for putting the innovation of regularly scheduled elections into practice (his union drubbing version of course).
So please tell me what’s wrong because as far as I can see NOTHING ELSE IS GOING TO WORK.
It’s really not worth my time to refute this idea at length. Also, I think you badly misread a “supposition” that Strom put out there as some sort of roadmap to power.
As for alternatives, feel free to read the thirty thousand or so words I’ve belched forth into the world containing a multitude of ideas.
I don’t believe in silver bullets. There should be a lot of different ideas being advanced. But yours is an exercise in wheel-spinning, cash-burning, power-losing fantastical nonsense.