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The United Auto Workers have gone on strike: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/us-auto-union-strike-three-detroit-three-factories-2023-09-15/
What happens if Ford and GM simply say: "okay, you're fired"? This seems to have quite a few benefits, mostly that they can get rid of union workers and remove the threat of another strike.
I'll admit that unions sortof confuse me. I didn't grow up around them and have always wondered the mechanism by which everybody gets to quit their job but then demand extra money to come back. Are the people running factory machines inside of Ford and GM (or starbucks, or a hollywood writers room) really that highly skilled?
It should be noted that Tesla is not unionized, and will not be a part of this strike. Do you guys think there is a chance that the government tries to force Tesla to stop making cars during the strike to make things more fair?
I'll be honest about my feelings towards unions: I don't get it at all, and I think I'm missing something. I do think that workers should have an adversarial relationship with their employer, but it seems to me like unions have all but destroyed the american auto industry. I think you'd be insane to not just fire anybody who joins a union on the spot. I don't get how places can "vote to unionize". Why does the employer not simply fire the people doing the organizing? Sure you can all vote to make a starbucks union, but...I just won't hire anybody in your union.
The question there (setting aside laws and the like) is, what if there aren't enough people to hire otherwise? Remember that unemployment is pretty low in the US currently, so are there enough people you could actually attract, in the area you need them, for the lower wages you are refusing to hike? With the skillset you need, and all at the same time so you don't have to shut down anyway because you need at least a 100 or 300 or 3000 factory workers all at the same time? And then you need to train them, and who is going to train them with your experienced staff just been fired?
That's a gamble in and of itself. And the more people are in the union, or who won't work as scabs (because they are in an affiliated union or something) the harder it becomes. Now if truckers refuse to deliver to you because they are crossing a strike line and so on. A strike is a balancing act where labor does hold some cards, because replacing them will cost time and money, and a short term shock can kill a company. They leverage that in exchange for better conditions.
Recruiting large numbers of new workers is very expensive and it takes time your cash reserves may not be able to support.
Firing everyone who tries to unionize (again ignoring laws for the moment) would be a signal that you want to hamstring the power of labor. Which is entirely reasonable for an employer to do, but then it is also entirely reasonable for labor to move to an employer who doesn't if available. If you can manage it and keep your staff then you win, but if they have other better options you lose.
Then of course labor can elect politicians who put in place anti union busting laws which is also entirely reasonable for them to do, leveraging their numbers for advantage. And employers can leverage their advantage (wealth) to lobby politicians for anti-union laws. Whomever is more effective gets an advantage and so round we go. That's what it means to have the adversarial relationship you spoke of. Employees using the options they have available to try and better their conditions, with Companies doing the same.
End of day unions steal from other workers. They only have market power if there is a bottleneck. Longer term you can just hirer other people. But in a constant cost business they just drive up prices for everyone else.
Or since this is the auto industry and exposed to free trade they end up bankrupting their firm and everyone just buys a cheaper Japanese car.
There is always a bottleneck. This isn't the early 1800s; even unskilled labour isn't that unskilled, and a mass of people quitting means a shock in training, logistics, production, and many other things. This isn't 'stealing' from anyone, and people both are and should be free to do so.
I disagree, some industries have short term bottlenecks but medium term they can hire and train.
And yes I will stick with its stealing. It violates market principles.
This wont be true in many locations. Lost of autoworker jobs are located in mediocre areas and yet require decent intelligence to even perform the tasks. Getting average IQ people to relocate to work in a factory in the middle of nowhere at a workplace that just fired everyone for demanding a raise is a short and long term problem. The genius of the original locations of these places is they sopped up labor that was bleeding out of farms that were increasingly mechanized (fewer workers per acre) while also having high fertility. That's not nearly as true anymore, there aren't all sorts of white boys pouring out of farms that need semiskilled work.
Or you just build a new factory, hire people there, and then shut down the prior one…
That is a waste of capital, if you can avoid it you should. If an economy can avoid it, it should craft labor rules to.
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Building factories anywhere near population centers is almost impossible in the US.
Depends on which population center, honestly. Dallas-Fort Worth has new factories opening semi-regularly.
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There are lots of things violating the market principles of spherical cow land that nobody would call stealing. It isn't helpful, and it makes stealing look better more than it makes unions look bad.
It is a government enforced quasi cartel. Cartels are the sine qua non of anti competitive behavior except for the labor carve out. It is really bad policy and we don’t need to resort to spherical cows.
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That’s just like your opinion. If it costs the average consumer money it feels like stealing to me.
Your feelings are an extremely poor substitute for argument and thought. Lots of things we don't consider theft cost consumers money; blessedly, consumers' purses aren't the be-all and end-all of the world, and tend to be weighed against other pressing matters.
Ok so you don’t like my frame. It doesn’t change what unions do which is theft. They don’t abide by market forces. If you want to propose something similar I will agree it’s theft.
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