What?
Personally I don't think "stable labour policy" is more important than allowing people to ask for higher wages and receive or leave, but if I did I'd be more hostile to wage bargaining via collective threats to withdraw labour than individual ones...
There are plenty of companies that know this, and it is the primary source of their antagonism towards unions.
If you're a stellar technician specialised in fixing stuff in the only employer in the only industry in town, sure, the company knows you need that job even more than they need you and so you're poorly paid just like all the other technicians. If you're a stellar software developer and your bosses know it, not so much. You can, individually, take your 10x-more-productive skillset to loads of other high paying companies, and that gives you a much better individual negotiating position than "everyone deserves a raise", especially since your colleagues won't go on strike to help you get a new top salary band at a large multiple of what they're earning even if you really deserve it.
So to get significantly better pay you need to leave anyway (how often do you get counteroffers that meet or exceed the competitors offer). Blaming a union for the thing the company already does seems odd.
Also, company wage setting guidelines are more likely to prioritise "retain and reward the staff we think are best" in the first place. (Obviously unions prioritising things like reducing wage inequality or rewarding the union leaders' core constituency are good for other people's wages instead.) Seems far odder to insist that as companies have some sort of guidelines, unions can take credit for but accept no blame for any of the changes they negotiate whilst formalising them.
Good thing no one said that then!
> One is obviously easier for a company to ignore if it's in their interests to incentivise a staff member than another.
But in this situation, the offer you're getting is going to be no better than what the other company offers, so if your current company can't match, you don't lose anything.
What a strange comment?! Perceived high achievers and high potential talents receive well above company average salaries or salary rises all the time in competitive industries like software, without waiting to see whether that person starts interviewing at other companies and what that offer is! They can't receive well above company average pay offers if the company's collective bargaining arrangement doesn't allow them to offer anything other than the standard union-agreed pay rate even the below average workers get. So they earn less.
If a company is willing to pay a person more than they're willing to pay their average and below average staff, but a union rule forces them to pay everyone with that job description the same, that person is obviously earning less money, not more money. I'm genuinely amazed a concept so simple can generate so many objections
Why would we advocate for this though? You keep making the claim that unions would advocate for more and more restrictive policies.
First it was guidelines, now it's strictly regimented salaries with no room for performance based pay at all.
You're generating objections because you keep changing your argument. Yes, paying everyone exactly the same is probably not a good idea. But no one is advocating for this, so who cares?
It is not me "changing my argument" that you have spent several posts sniping at my arguments without apparently having the slightest idea what collective bargaining is.
Also, a salary agreement between a single individual employee and a huge corporation has by definition a huge power imbalance. Unions reduce that power imbalance. You can argue which is best (full negotiation freedom with massive power imbalance vs. collective bargaining with or without variable/performance pay and a much smaller but still non-trivial power imbalance), but there's no point in just arguing for one skew and ignoring the legitimate arguments for the other.
As I pointed out a very obvious situation in which power imbalances ensure even the best performers would benefit from collective wage bargaining from the very beginning, I'm pretty confident I am not the person in this subthread arguing for just one skew. But I am equally adamant that there are people Google considers [near] indispensable, and most of them are plenty employable enough for wage bargaining to be skewed in their favour, an imbalance not improved by people who want others to see pay rises first taking over negotiations.
Your "by definition" is incorrect. There's no law that requires a collective bargaining agreement to enforce pay maximums (or in fact anything about pay at all!). So please don't tell me that I don't know what I'm talking about.
I think creating an uncertain environment where the majority lives in a myth of being a high performer and salary discussion is frowned upon benefits companies the most.
Look at any professional sports contract. Players usually get bonuses for hitting predetermined stat goals on the field. Look at any teacher contract. Teachers get bonuses for attaining higher education and certifications, or simply taking on leadership roles.
[1] there are some other contract terms that allow for up to 35%, but those require a bunch of other non performance conditions to be met. [2] http://www.espn.com/nba/salaries
Maybe that's what makes it a great example. It shows labor unions are extremely flexible tools that should be configured for the work force they're representing.
Maybe its all these specific arguments against unions, like "seniority based promotions make for incompetent leaders" and "high performance workers are disincentivized", that are actually the examples given in bad faith.
Furthermore, on the topic of compensation, Hollywood has unions and yet top actors still manage to make 10s of millions of dollars per movie.
And of course, we all assume we're far above average high-performers.
Everybody earns much more than minimum wage, and someone (hopefully the high performers, but don't count on it) even more than that. Pushing low compensations against minimum wage limits is simply not plausible, and paying high performers less than market value is a recipe for talent drain.
Collective bargaining is important for working hours, safety, vacation, healthcare, and other important worker rights.
If FAANG-type companies unionize, one can see a possible positive outcome for the smaller competitors, as the quality talent will leave $BIGCO for better opportunities in the smaller companies.
Seniority-based promotion isn't the standard. I'm unionized and any job opening in my workplace must be advertised publicly. Anyone who wants it must apply, qualify, and interview for the position.
> If FAANG-type companies unionize, one can see a possible positive outcome for the smaller competitors
Accurate or not, this really sounds like a win all around!