Except the groups they represent are different. Executives represent the shareholders and labor organizers represent labor. Even if you say a large part of the benefits are lost due to corruption in both cases, it shapes where the remainder ends up.
> Except the groups they represent are different. Executives represent the shareholders and labor organizers represent labor. Even if you say a large part of the benefits are lost due to corruption in both cases, it shapes where the remainder ends up.
But you have to compare it to the alternative. The question is whether the incremental amount the union gets from management over what the employee would have gotten for themselves is more than the overhead/corruption cost of the union.
For shareholders of public companies there is little choice. If you own $1000 each worth of a hundred different companies, you're not going to have the time or incentive to manage them all properly yourself (and neither is any other individual shareholder), so the benefit of hiring a board to do it is worth the cost.
The math is a lot different when you only have one employer and you're getting ~100% of your income from them. In that case people have a strong incentive to do their own research and try to get the best possible employment for themselves. It's the same reason most companies with a single owner are owner-operated.
About the only thing a union is going to get you is leveraging its monopoly power, which only works against monopolistic employers that have enough margins to pay you more without themselves becoming uncompetitive and also individually represent too much of the industry to just let everyone walk out and hire all different low level employees.
This is why, for example, unions worked well for workers in the dominant era of the Big Three American auto companies, and much less well now that they have aggressive competition from Japan, Germany and Korea.
But their cars are a lot better now. A lot more people died back then. Other people wrote scathing books and passed new laws. Uncompetitive markets are terrible.
Unions claim to represent labor, but due to a confluence of laws, there's no guarantee that they actually do, as pointed out above. Even within a union, politics exists, and those who are influential and important are able to extract resources away from those who are viewed as dispensible.
Actually they don't. They either represent a political organization or some other interest group. The workers only take a passive role in the whole process.
This is a misleading statement. Labor organizers represent a labor union that's trying to organize those workers -- usually with the goal of having that newly established union join up with the union the labor organizers represent, but they never have to. The new union could join up with any other, or set off on their own.
Saying "a political organization" is misleading because it evokes an image of a super-PAC or something else overtly political, and saying "some other interest group" glosses over the reality that, yes, you could call unions interest groups that represent their workers for collective bargaining, but again, that's misleading.
The fair way to phrase this is "Labor organizers represent a union that's trying to unionize a new workplace," but that obviously sounds less sketchy.
And the workers take a verrrrry active role in the process, especially any that become involved in the organizing themselves, up to and including being fired (illegally, because firing someone for labor-related activities is not allowed).
* Not a union member, but I hate seeing anti-union and anti-labor tropes trotted out, especially on a group that usually prides itself on accuracy.
AnthonyMouse|7 years ago
But you have to compare it to the alternative. The question is whether the incremental amount the union gets from management over what the employee would have gotten for themselves is more than the overhead/corruption cost of the union.
For shareholders of public companies there is little choice. If you own $1000 each worth of a hundred different companies, you're not going to have the time or incentive to manage them all properly yourself (and neither is any other individual shareholder), so the benefit of hiring a board to do it is worth the cost.
The math is a lot different when you only have one employer and you're getting ~100% of your income from them. In that case people have a strong incentive to do their own research and try to get the best possible employment for themselves. It's the same reason most companies with a single owner are owner-operated.
About the only thing a union is going to get you is leveraging its monopoly power, which only works against monopolistic employers that have enough margins to pay you more without themselves becoming uncompetitive and also individually represent too much of the industry to just let everyone walk out and hire all different low level employees.
This is why, for example, unions worked well for workers in the dominant era of the Big Three American auto companies, and much less well now that they have aggressive competition from Japan, Germany and Korea.
But their cars are a lot better now. A lot more people died back then. Other people wrote scathing books and passed new laws. Uncompetitive markets are terrible.
chimeracoder|7 years ago
Unions claim to represent labor, but due to a confluence of laws, there's no guarantee that they actually do, as pointed out above. Even within a union, politics exists, and those who are influential and important are able to extract resources away from those who are viewed as dispensible.
refurb|7 years ago
You last sentence is true for any human organization. Politics exist and those with power sometimes take from those who don’t.
That includes unions.
geezerjay|7 years ago
Actually they don't. They either represent a political organization or some other interest group. The workers only take a passive role in the whole process.
Frondo|7 years ago
Saying "a political organization" is misleading because it evokes an image of a super-PAC or something else overtly political, and saying "some other interest group" glosses over the reality that, yes, you could call unions interest groups that represent their workers for collective bargaining, but again, that's misleading.
The fair way to phrase this is "Labor organizers represent a union that's trying to unionize a new workplace," but that obviously sounds less sketchy.
And the workers take a verrrrry active role in the process, especially any that become involved in the organizing themselves, up to and including being fired (illegally, because firing someone for labor-related activities is not allowed).
* Not a union member, but I hate seeing anti-union and anti-labor tropes trotted out, especially on a group that usually prides itself on accuracy.