As we know, there is a price floor and a price ceiling in a market, represented by the buyer and seller.
What we also know is that the price does not fall perfectly in the middle of that floor and ceiling - it benefits the person with more bargaining power.
A corporation has more bargaining power because it is a massive financial entity comprised of sometimes tens of thousands of people. Non unionized workers show up during a salary negotiation against that? One person with a family to feed and enough savings to survive maybe another 2 months without a job? Gee I wonder how imbalanced the bargaining power is there.
We allowed corporations to incorporate because of the advantages of doing so. We should allow the other half of the labor market-transaction to do the same, not only because it's fair, but because the union side reprents humans, while the corporate side reprents companies, which are not humans. It's kinda insane to want to give these non human conglomerates more power but hey vote with your values.
Unions are the logical outcome of lax labor regulations.
Want worker protections ask for that, no need to burden businesses any further.
The minimum wage is a burden for companies. Walmart having to pay their employees in USD and not Walmart credit is a burden. Workers having a lunch break and bathroom breaks are "burdens" as well.
If you're presenting the argument that cheap products of slave labor is a good thing, then... I'll pray for you.
That's not the case. A union is an organization for extracting rents above those the market would ordinarily bear. Rent-seeking activity --- no matter who does it --- makes society as a whole worse off. Bastiat showed that a long time ago.
When corporations organize to extract rents, we call them cartels and apply strict penalties under the law. Why should employees have a right to use these same tactics? The market for thee, but not for me?
The operative word there is "normally", which makes your claim tautalogical. Unions do increase the cost of labor compared to a market without unions, but this is simply relative. You haven't (and I claim that you cannot) provide a reason that the cost of labor without unions is more natural, and isn't simply unnaturally suppressed by an imbalance in market power between job seekers and providers.
I reject the premise of your claim. The market price isn't just one of many prices from which we should choose arbitrarily. The emergent market price is special. It's the privileged result of price discovery via distributed transactions. Every time in history someone tries to conform the market into an unnatural shape using wage and price controls, the result is shortages and other dysfunctions. The burden of proof isn't on me to show that the market price is the natural one: it's on you to show that in the case of labor we shouldn't have a free market.
You need to show that unions are unnatural before you can claim that they aren't the market price.
We can get rid of collective action for workers when we get rid of it for capital. Until then, if anything we need a shift away from enthusiastically encouraging collective capital while barely tolerating collective labor, to something more equitable and beneficial to the individuals whose government suffers those corporations to exist in the first place, whose interests lie overwhelmingly on the side of labor.
No. A union is a group of people saying "pay us more or we'll shut down your business". That's why unions have traditionally had picket lines and why they've historically used violence against "scabs".
* the State, contracts, corporations, right-to-work law, at-will employment law, etc - all good, natural parts of the market.
* employee unions - bad, unnatural, rent-seeking, deviations from the market.
It's untenable.
> It's untenable
It's quite tenable.
Why can't I democratically decide to associate with and democratically negotiate in a group and freely enter a contract with a third party? Isn't that what a free market is all about?
And unions should be free to go to the negotiating table. But it should be just that. A negotiation. They should offer something of value in exchange for more compensation other than "give us X or we shut down the business".
That's a cartel. Imagine if businesses organized themselves into employers unions and refused to hire anyone above a certain wage?
Cartels are bad. They are anti-free market
Your assessment of antitrust law is also pretty far removed from reality. By that logic, mergers and acquisitions would be illegal in every instance. Or, for that matter, standards bodies. Corporations band together to increase profits all the damn time, and the overwhelming majority of this activity is legal.
Does it inevitably increase prices, or could its millionaire/billionaire execs just maybe own a few less private jets and McMansions?
Anyway, even if prices were increased, what's wrong with a market in which all participants earned a living wage?
Or are the absolute minimum prices that markets can bear something we should be striving for even if it means those at the bottom can barely survive?
Because if prices increase, what you thought would be a "living wage" is no longer a living wage
Google has become a social parasite - one that propels greater and greater wealth inequality. The parasite profits tremendously from public infrastructure and open source - while giving nothing back.
(/s, in case it's not clear)
At the same time, why is it a problem for children to work? I grew up helping my dad out in his job as a handyman. [To be clear, this is legal and not what I'm arguing about.] Not every parent has a job where that makes sense, so working for someone else who does makes sense to me. Sure, there need to be regulations to prevent it from being exploitative and harmful. But right now, the state says that children must be in school x>0 hours a day and working y=0 hours a day. Is that really the right answer for everyone's situation?
Personally, I've decided that the value of x should be smaller and y higher (I'm homeschooling my kids, though admittedly we haven't figured out how to get them meaningful employment.) The idea is not to make them into better pawns of the capitalist state, it's kind of the opposite. I see value in work for making learning more meaningful, for teaching values well beyond what the artificial construct of "allowance" can support, among other things. I haven't actually run up against minimum employment age laws, and don't expect to for a while, but it does seem like a clumsy tool for preventing a variety of harms.
For example, should you have always wanted your children to learn how to build gazebos, all they have to do is be excused from highschool
> FLSA Section 13(c)(7) creates a limited exemption from the youth employment provisions for certain minors 14 through 17 years of age who are excused from compulsory school attendance beyond the eighth grade. This exemption allows eligible youth to be employed inside and outside of businesses that use machinery to process wood products (such as sawmills, furniture manufacturers, garden shed and gazebo manufacturers, cabinet makers and pallet shops) with some restrictions, but does not allow them to operate or assist in the operation of power-driven woodworking machinery.
In addition to the working for parents exception
> The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) provides for certain exemptions. Minors under age 16 working in a business solely owned or operated by their parents or by persons standing in place of their parents, can work any time of day and for any number of hours. However, parents are prohibited from employing their child in manufacturing or mining or in any of the occupations declared hazardous by the Secretary of Labor. Other exemptions to the FLSA are detailed in the links listed below.
There are also many special cases for other traditional occupations of children
> Employment as motion picture, theater, radio, or television actors, working at home in the making of evergreen wreaths, and delivering newspapers are among the jobs exempted from FLSA child labor provisions.
Those do get oddly specific...
> - Youth employed as actors or performers in motion pictures, theatrical, radio, or television productions;
> - Youth engaged in the delivery of newspapers to consumers;
> - Youth working at home in the making of wreaths composed of natural holly, pine, cedar, or other evergreens (including the harvesting of the evergreens).
There are also exceptions to the exceptions...
> Limited exemptions from some of the hazardous occupations rules allow 16- and 17- year-old apprentices and student-learners to perform otherwise prohibited work (hazardous jobs) under certain conditions. The hazardous occupations in which youth may work if the those conditions are met are: HO #5 Power-driven woodworking machines; HO #8 Power-driven metal-forming, punching and shearing machines; ...
> Fourteen and 15-year-olds, however, may be employed in approved school-administered and school-supervised Work Experience and Career Exploration Programs (WECEP) or Work Study Programs (WSP). Such programs allow variations in the rules and permit employment during school hours. WECEP participants may also be employed in otherwise prohibited occupations for which an official exception has been authorized by the Department of Labor.
Four hours a day won't be a problem
> WECEP permits the employment of 14- and 15-year-old youth during school hours and for up to 23 hours per week when school is in session. These rules are more lenient than those permitted by the Fair Labor Standards Act for other similar aged youth not enrolled in WECEP. WECEP also permits variances, on a limited basis, from certain child labor hazardous occupation standards. These variances are approved by the Wage and Hour Administrator on a case by case basis.
(See my sibling comment to yours and the link on that page labelled with the name of this program for citations)