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I recently had a discussion with a friend of mine about this very topic, but I want to hear other's thoughts. Do Labor Unions generally support minimum wage campaigns, or is there not any legitimate correlation between the two? What are your thoughts on:
- The high correlation of the decline of unionism and the stagnation of American wages? - The shrinking of the middle class? - How Social Movement Organizations and Labor Unions compete/collaborate? - Non-NLRB Sanctioned organization (also known as Militant Organization) being done by Labor Unions? You do not have to provide a source for your arguments, but it's recommended that you do so. Sources both academic and non-academic provide legitimacy to a debate, but blog posts are pretty loving stupid.
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Nov 4, 2015 16:41
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$15 Minimum wage is really a terrible idea. I don't think people realize that higher minimum wages are somewhat to blame for shrinking middle class. The higher a minimum wage the lower the amount of people employed. Yes minimum wage increases are great for the people who have jobs. Minimum wage as an institution should benefit only those between 17 - 19 to fund a growing adults weekends and a college or young adults life before their career start. The higher minimum wage becomes the more competition you have from working aged people (20 - 40). An employer must cut costs down to match the wage minimum. The first thing that usually goes is training costs, the next is hours. Do remember, the government regulates pay per hour not hours per day. Therefore as an employer, if I really wanted to I could just cut your hours by 3 or 4, demand more work from you (Because I have less employees) and fire a shitload of people to make up for the increased minimum.
WAR CRIME GIGOLO fucked around with this message at 17:50 on Nov 4, 2015 |
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Nov 4, 2015 17:48
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Generally if you see labor union opposition to a minimum wage it is due to maintaining the political position of the absolute power of collective bargaining. It is a balance between the social desire to improve wages with the need to promote union bargaining power as supreme.
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Nov 4, 2015 18:02
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LeoMarr posted:$15 Minimum wage is really a terrible idea. I don't think people realize that higher minimum wages are somewhat to blame for shrinking middle class. The higher a minimum wage the lower the amount of people employed. Yes minimum wage increases are great for the people who have jobs. Minimum wage as an institution should benefit only those between 17 - 19 to fund a growing adults weekends and a college or young adults life before their career start. The higher minimum wage becomes the more competition you have from working aged people (20 - 40). An employer must cut costs down to match the wage minimum. The first thing that usually goes is training costs, the next is hours. Do remember, the government regulates pay per hour not hours per day. Therefore as an employer, if I really wanted to I could just cut your hours by 3 or 4, demand more work from you (Because I have less employees) and fire a shitload of people to make up for the increased minimum. Great amount of sources. Weird how economic growth continues in Seattle alongside their efforts to fight homelessness and poverty. http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/21/seattle-economy-worsening-inequality
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Nov 4, 2015 19:06
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LeoMarr posted:Therefore as an employer, if I really wanted to I could just cut your hours by 3 or 4, demand more work from you (Because I have less employees) and fire a shitload of people to make up for the increased minimum. Sounds like this will only apply if you can proportionally increase productivity. If you can get a $15 an hour janitor to be twice as productive as a $7.25 an hour janitor then this is progress. You've eliminated two non sustainable jobs that require government assistance in order to survive and replaced them with a job where someone can actually support themselves and a family if they're frugal.
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Nov 4, 2015 19:43
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LeoMarr posted:Therefore as an employer, if I really wanted to I could just cut your hours by 3 or 4, demand more work from you (Because I have less employees) and fire a shitload of people to make up for the increased minimum. If you could just cut working hours and demand your workers work harder whenever you please why didn't you do that before? The goodness of your heart?
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Nov 4, 2015 19:50
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Dr. Arbitrary posted:Sounds like this will only apply if you can proportionally increase productivity. If you can get a $15 an hour janitor to be twice as productive as a $7.25 an hour janitor then this is progress. You've eliminated two non sustainable jobs that require government assistance in order to survive and replaced them with a job where someone can actually support themselves and a family if they're frugal. why do you think a janitor cant support themselves? arent most people who post on somethingawful employed as computer janitors?
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Nov 4, 2015 22:21
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Twilight Matrix posted:why do you think a janitor cant support themselves? arent most people who post on somethingawful employed as computer janitors? IT doesn't generally work for minimum wage you doofus, don't play dumb
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Nov 4, 2015 22:29
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Read [url= http://www.amazon.com/Which-Side-Ar...RPY5PZ0BQQ7Q8YW]Which Side Are You On[/url] for a labor lawyers perspective on how unions in America slowly committed suicide. Unions work well in many other places and were significant in America for awhile, but due to very specific historical conditions they're downright worthless for broader American society. Unions used to be able to do poo poo like fight for social security, healthcare, safety regulations, industry wide wage increases, and even influence foreign policy. The idea that an American union would make a serious attempt to participate in civil society is at least 25 years out of date. The SEIU might give a poo poo sometimes, but basically they get their members involved in campaigns in order to gain political influence for the leadership. Strangely enough, this influence doesn't lead to anything like "getting a card check law out of committee" or filling seats on the NLRB or fixing the corrupt mediation system, but it does lead to lucrative real estate deals and consulting gigs for the union leaders. No one knows why.
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Nov 5, 2015 00:21
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Unions should in theory support minimum wage increases because they limit the amount that scabs can undercut the union wage.
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Nov 5, 2015 00:42
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LeoMarr posted:$15 Minimum wage is really a terrible idea. I don't think people realize that higher minimum wages are somewhat to blame for shrinking middle class. The higher a minimum wage the lower the amount of people employed. Yes minimum wage increases are great for the people who have jobs. Minimum wage as an institution should benefit only those between 17 - 19 to fund a growing adults weekends and a college or young adults life before their career start. The higher minimum wage becomes the more competition you have from working aged people (20 - 40). An employer must cut costs down to match the wage minimum. The first thing that usually goes is training costs, the next is hours. Do remember, the government regulates pay per hour not hours per day. Therefore as an employer, if I really wanted to I could just cut your hours by 3 or 4, demand more work from you (Because I have less employees) and fire a shitload of people to make up for the increased minimum. This isn't true.
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Nov 5, 2015 00:59
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PERPETUAL IDIOT posted:This isn't true. you have 10 employees all being paid $10 an hour. Minimum wage increases to $15 an hour. Please explain to me how you make up for a 30% increase in wage for 10 people without cutting costs or increasing your profit margin by making your goods/services higher priced.
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Nov 5, 2015 01:11
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LeoMarr posted:$15 Minimum wage is really a terrible idea. I don't think people realize that higher minimum wages are somewhat to blame for shrinking middle class. Since real minimum wages have been going down as the middle class has been shrinking, do you perhaps mean that lower minimum wages are somewhat to blame for the shrinking middle class? Would perhaps raising the minimum wage be one way to help reverse this trend? I agree.
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Nov 5, 2015 01:18
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LeoMarr posted:you have 10 employees all being paid $10 an hour. Minimum wage increases to $15 an hour. Please explain to me how you make up for a 30% increase in wage for 10 people without cutting costs or increasing your profit margin by making your goods/services higher priced. To argue that a higher minimum wage would automatically reduce hours worked in the economy you'd presumably need to assume that the labour market for minimum wage workers is perfectly competitive (or close to being so). But in practice the huge power differences between employees and employers gives firms the ability to depress worker wages below what they would offer in a truly perfectly competitive labour market. Also your example seems to treat labour as a firm's main cost and the hypothetical scenario you presented doesn't include any managers or shareholders. In addition to raising prices (and this would probably be a good trade off for a higher minimum wage) a firm could always cut the pay of people making more than minimum wage, reduce payouts to shareholders, or take various other cost cutting steps that don't automatically involve reducing the hours worked by minimum wage employees. In the longer run probably the firm would substitute capital for labour and this would eventually reduce hours worked but that's really just another way of saying that increasing labour costs gives companies an incentive to be more efficient and innovative, but I'm not sure that should automatically be considered a bad thing. With all that increased productivity maybe we could even afford a better safety net for the workers getting laid off.
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Nov 5, 2015 01:27
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eSports Chaebol posted:Since real minimum wages have been going down as the middle class has been shrinking, do you perhaps mean that lower minimum wages are somewhat to blame for the shrinking middle class? Would perhaps raising the minimum wage be one way to help reverse this trend? I agree. Please define the middle class for me, and also tell me about how many people in the middle class make minimum wage.
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Nov 5, 2015 01:28
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LeoMarr posted:Please define the middle class for me, and also tell me about how many people in the middle class make minimum wage. Why don't you? It was you who made the connection in the first place. Here, I'll quote it again in case you missed it when you first wrote it and when you quoted me quoting you: LeoMarr posted:I don't think people realize that higher minimum wages are somewhat to blame for shrinking middle class.
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Nov 5, 2015 01:31
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If gas prices were to double, it would logically follow that cars would double their efficiency in order to avoid paying more for gas.
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Nov 5, 2015 01:32
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Dr. Arbitrary posted:If gas prices were to double, it would logically follow that cars would double their efficiency in order to avoid paying more for gas. An excellent rebuttal to the argument that nobody made.
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Nov 5, 2015 01:33
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Dr. Arbitrary posted:If gas prices were to double, it would logically follow that cars would double their efficiency in order to avoid paying more for gas. No, because efficiency has a cost-- vehicles become more expensive to make and performance suffers. You'd expect more efficiency, certainly, but cost of fuel isn't the only variable car makers and buyers consider. And the analogy also fails because labor markets are even more complex.
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Nov 5, 2015 01:42
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How do you respond to places like Seatle , California, Chicago et al. that have higher than Federal Level Minimum wage and the scenario is that more people are not being let off work.
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Nov 5, 2015 01:48
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eSports Chaebol posted:Why don't you? It was you who made the connection in the first place. Here, I'll quote it again in case you missed it when you first wrote it and when you quoted me quoting you: People in the middle class make between 25,000 - 75,000 A year. At Minimum wage you make (This is my own estimate based on one of my employees) around 560 a paycheck, Biweekly that's 1,120 per month x 12 = 13440/year after tax. When I say that the middle class is shrinking because of higher minimum wage what I mean is that the buying power of the middle class shrinks because their money isn't worth poo poo. Artificially increasing your wage hampers innovation and productivity because it reduces the incentives of moving up in the world. Minimum wage increase is great for the people who have jobs, but the people who are unemployed will stay unemployed. And those 30+ year olds who live on minimum wage will continue to do so. There will be more money in the hands of less people because of grand increases. Especially younger generations, I would prefer to have people between 17 - 20 working for minimum wage or slightly above minimum wage, not because of the monetary value, but because of the life skills this promotes. Personally I learned a lot from my first job that I wouldn't have learned otherwise. And in California $15/H (Wage of a starting internally hired supervisor at my company.) makes roughly 22,000/y which is still not middle class by the way. Increasing minimum wage is kind of like printing a lot of money at once.
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Nov 5, 2015 01:53
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LeoMarr posted:$15 Minimum wage is really a terrible idea. I don't think people realize that higher minimum wages are somewhat to blame for shrinking middle class. The higher a minimum wage the lower the amount of people employed. Yes minimum wage increases are great for the people who have jobs. Minimum wage as an institution should benefit only those between 17 - 19 to fund a growing adults weekends and a college or young adults life before their career start. The higher minimum wage becomes the more competition you have from working aged people (20 - 40). An employer must cut costs down to match the wage minimum. The first thing that usually goes is training costs, the next is hours. Do remember, the government regulates pay per hour not hours per day. Therefore as an employer, if I really wanted to I could just cut your hours by 3 or 4, demand more work from you (Because I have less employees) and fire a shitload of people to make up for the increased minimum.  Edit: You do realize Seattle was an expensive place to live long before the minimum wage was raised? This may blow your mind, but Seattle being expensive was the actually the cause for the minimum wage increase rather than the effect. So again:
MizPiz fucked around with this message at 02:01 on Nov 5, 2015 |
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Nov 5, 2015 01:53
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Hollismason posted:How do you respond to places like Seatle , California, Chicago et al. that have higher than Federal Level Minimum wage and the scenario is that more people are not being let off work. https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/seattle
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Nov 5, 2015 01:55
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LeoMarr posted:you have 10 employees all being paid $10 an hour. Minimum wage increases to $15 an hour. Please explain to me how you make up for a 30% increase in wage for 10 people without cutting costs or increasing your profit margin by making your goods/services higher priced. The aggregate effect of a minimum wage increase is a transfer of wealth to poorer people who are more likely to use that extra wealth to materially improve their lives by buying extra goods and services, including those of your theoretical business, thus increasing its profits.
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Nov 5, 2015 01:58
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How come companies aren't leaving in droves to wherever the cheapest places are? Kansas and Wisconsin are gutted hellholes despite them being 'business friendly' and they should be teeming at the brim with companies. Yet they're not. It's almost as if there's more to it than taxes or reducing minimum wage. This is lazy. You're lazy.
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Nov 5, 2015 02:01
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Wouldn't it make more sense to just increase the amount of low-cost housing options, provide good daycare at a fixed price, and remove sales tax for food clothing and medicine? I mean if you have 6 people and 4 homes, you can give all 6 a million dollars but 2 are still going to be homeless. Edit: whoops this is irrelevant. Jonny Nox fucked around with this message at 02:06 on Nov 5, 2015 |
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Nov 5, 2015 02:04
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Jonny Nox posted:Wouldn't it make more sense to just increase the amount of low-cost housing options, provide good daycare at a fixed price, and remove sales tax for food clothing and medicine? It's not either/or.
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Nov 5, 2015 02:11
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Jonny Nox posted:Wouldn't it make more sense to just increase the amount of low-cost housing options, provide good daycare at a fixed price, and remove sales tax for food clothing and medicine? The ideal would be free or very heavily subsidized essentials to living a dignified life. Unfortunately the things we would need to do to allow for that are not politically likely, unlike minimum wage increases which are very popular.
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Nov 5, 2015 02:11
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You might think that the middle class is being squeezed by technological change, the decline of unions and changes in global supply chains but nope, the real cause is overpaid McDonalds and Wal Mart employees squeezing middle class purchasing power. 
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Nov 5, 2015 02:19
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Helsing posted:You might think that the middle class is being squeezed by technological change, the decline of unions and changes in global supply chains but nope, the real cause is overpaid McDonalds and Wal Mart employees squeezing middle class purchasing power. Cite an example of national wage increase stopping the middle class from declining
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Nov 5, 2015 02:23
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Since I never made that argument I don't really feel obligated to support it. It would be nice, however, if you'd actually support the numerous spurious claims that you've advanced.
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Nov 5, 2015 02:26
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LeoMarr posted:Cite an example of national wage increase stopping the middle class from declining They didn't increase enough. Google "wages in the last 30 years" and then tell me the middle class is losing purchasing power because the poors are making away with all the monies.
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Nov 5, 2015 02:28
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LeoMarr posted:$15 Minimum wage is really a terrible idea. I don't think people realize that higher minimum wages are somewhat to blame for shrinking middle class. The higher a minimum wage the lower the amount of people employed. Yes minimum wage increases are great for the people who have jobs. Minimum wage as an institution should benefit only those between 17 - 19 to fund a growing adults weekends and a college or young adults life before their career start. The higher minimum wage becomes the more competition you have from working aged people (20 - 40). An employer must cut costs down to match the wage minimum. The first thing that usually goes is training costs, the next is hours. Do remember, the government regulates pay per hour not hours per day. Therefore as an employer, if I really wanted to I could just cut your hours by 3 or 4, demand more work from you (Because I have less employees) and fire a shitload of people to make up for the increased minimum. unfortunately, this isn't how reality works, so instead of making decisions based on who SHOULD be working minwage, lets make them based on who IS working for minwage LeoMarr posted:Cite an example of national wage increase stopping the middle class from declining the many times the minimum wage has increased significantly in the past, such as:
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Nov 5, 2015 02:31
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Imagine how much stronger the middle class would be today if Lincoln hadn't emancipated the slaves.
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Nov 5, 2015 02:32
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i think, if people make enough to actually live, it's actually bad for america
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Nov 5, 2015 02:33
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Helsing posted:Imagine how much stronger the middle class would be today if Lincoln hadn't emancipated the slaves. This is basic economics my uncle told me he learned in a class. Checkmate, libtards.
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Nov 5, 2015 02:38
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LeoMarr posted:you have 10 employees all being paid $10 an hour. Minimum wage increases to $15 an hour. Please explain to me how you make up for a 30% increase in wage for 10 people without cutting costs or increasing your profit margin by making your goods/services higher priced. Your labor costs are a trivial part of your costs. Say less then 10%.
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Nov 5, 2015 02:40
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http://www.russellsage.org/research/chartbook/real-purchasing-power-minimum-wage-year Ooooooooh, I get it now. Also re: unions is this graph saying the wagesplit is growing inside the UAW too? https://www.unionfacts.com/employees/United_Auto_Workers
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Nov 5, 2015 02:41
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Powercrazy posted:Your labor costs are a trivial part of your costs. Say less then 10%. Cite your sources. I'll only accept information if it's direct from library of Congress and personally signed by the head librarian. Meanwhile let me backup whatever I'm saying with a random google off of Zillow.com. Buckwheat Sings fucked around with this message at 02:45 on Nov 5, 2015 |
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Nov 5, 2015 02:42
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Buckwheat Sings posted:Cite your sources. I'll only accept information if it's direct from library of Congress and personally signed by the head librarian. Meanwhile let me backup whatever I'm saying with a random google off of Zillow.com. He gave a hypothetical company I responded with a hypothetical (correct) answer.
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Nov 5, 2015 03:05
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