[1] http://www.bankableinsight.com/ways-unions-hurt-the-economy....
[2] http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/03/17/unions-harmful-wor...
If uber drivers unionized and made uber pay them more, then less capital would go to uber and eventually have less workers. Ultimately the return on capital will end up being the same, because capital looks for returns and will move. So in effect, it would only increase wages of drivers as long as it can prevent other drivers from showing up.
For anyone at home that wants to listen to someone that knows more about economy than any of us:
Unions exist to collectively bargain on behalf of workers in markets in which individual workers do not have sufficient bargaining power to achieve the same results. They remain in power in those markets precisely due to their continuing ability to achieve better-than-free-market rates for their members, as evidenced by the death/diminishment of unions in many fields where they are not able to maintain above-market compensation for their members.
They remain in power in those markets due to their legally-granted right to remain in power in perpetuity without periodic recertification or reauthorization elections.
That's not an opinion; that's legal fact, just like saying that the President of the United States is in power because the law grants him that right until January 2021. Unlike government, where politicans have to run for re-election every N years, once a union forms, there is no legal obligation to hold an election to keep them in power. (The process for petitioning for a decertification election is incredibly difficult, and unions are actually granted a great deal of leeway by the law in taking action to prevent these elections from happening. Furthermore, even in cases where they do happen, and the majority votes to decertify the union, the election results may be overturned by the NLRB.)
All in all, if you want to argue the case that unions successfully bargain for better results on behalf of workers, you can't really rely on the fact that they remain in power, because that's already the default - it takes an extraordinary degree of opposition to remove them.
Americans seems to favour "free market" at almost any cost, but you mention that Unions are not free market (for labor) yet they provide better results. So why the "free market" passion?
If you think of labor as a commodity, unions are simply a monopoly of labor. Everyone wants a monopoly of what they sell, and freedom of what they buy, this is no different.
I would be very hard pressed to find a good union case that didnt provoke some sort of restriction on other workes, either by wage fixing, protectionism or supply limiting.
Why not? Google could make half the profit, pay it workers more and still make a boatload of money.
It's not like Google or Apple pay dividends.
Google is currently handing out giant sacks with dollar signs on them to machine learning people far exceeding the meager means of most other companies, and the stock price is rising.
By your logic, shouldn't they be in the crapper for over-compensating these folks compared to what the market value?
Google is paying a lot for talent because of supply and demand - competitors are also paying high rates for the same talent.
(oops, I mean to make capital investments in the company and raise wages for average employees -- since a company in possession of a good fortune must be in want of workers to give raises to!)
Why do you think that it's mathematically impossible for a company to find the money some other way? Any profitable company by definition makes more money than it spends, so it's clearly possible for such a company to pay its workers more without having to reduce costs (i.e. hire fewer workers) or go into debt.
You cant reduce a compnies profits and think that will increase employment.
+ In a free market without monopoly in its industry
Maybe, but it's an approach of looking into the abyss.
> You cant reduce a compnies profits and think that will increase employment.
Have a lot of implicit assumptions about the market that company operates in, assumptions that may or may not be true in the modern global economy.
Depends on the industry. If there's a lot of foreign competition and workers aren't mindful of the health of the industry, they can easily kill it off. That's what happened to steel production in the US.
Globalization increases equality between countries, but it also increases inequality within countries. There are places where unskilled labor pays a couple dollars a day. Doesn't matter what the safety standards are - there isn't anywhere in the US you can survive on that kind of money.
*Some of the steel production in the US. I am certainly not making the argument that the steel industry in the US is as large or vibrant as the 70s or 80s. However, USX still does have several plants open and is doing fairly well. In my slightly knowledgeable opinion, this is because there is such a high up front cost of building a plant (especially a continuous pour caster).
The industry also made a very large shift from producing new steel to recycling scrap to produce slabs. Virgin steel is much harder to work with and produce than its recycled counterpart. This lowers the barrier to entry, increasing competition.
After this shift, I don't think there is any way that the U.S would have been able to compete with Chinese steel regardless of unions. Even if you removed all of the union CBA stuff and just left U.S compensation laws and OSHA, I highly doubt the margins are there to compete in regards to recycled steel.
Doesn't work for Uber, because if half the drivers go on strike, pay will go up for the other half and more people are likely to work for Uber because the bar for entry is so low. Also no, uber would just raise prices. I'm fairly sure it was unions that made it difficult for just anyone to become a taxi driver though - protecting their own income, limiting competition etc.