In this increasingly globalized world, each country is still different. You can't expect swedish workers to accept that you treat them like american workers just because your company is big.
I really like this part:
> Even postal workers will stop delivering mail to Tesla
> average folks get fired immediately for not doing their job. A job that they agreed to do.
The entire point of a union is that you have enough collective agreement so that the company can't just fire everyone who pushes back. They can fire one person, or even many, but what if half of the workers are pushing back?
> also, mail workers don't "own" mail delivery.
They may not own it, but they do control it. Good luck getting your mail if every mail worker collectively decided to stop working.
Important context which I could not find mentioned in TFA: A key reason for the sympathy strikes is that Tesla brought in scabs which is a big no-no in Scandinavian labor markets.
We're enjoying a very labor-friendly market, but there are many examples in certain periods where unions locked up good, well-paying jobs behind exclusionary, nepotistic, and racist membership practices.
So I would be happy to distinguish between a scab who is looking to make a quick buck and a strikebreaker who was never eligible for a union job in the first place. Depends on the context.
In Europe, typically, a collective bargaining agreement is agreed between the company and the unions - and then it applies to all workers, union member or not.
But unions don't have any say in who gets a job. There is no such thing as a "union job".
There's an obvious need to "use that term", given that it's in answer to a question from someone who didn't know what the slang term meant. So clear communication is one reason.
But otherwise, yeah, if you want to disagree with people by calling them derogatory names, you're right: "strikebreaker" just doesn't have the same ring to it.
hardly call it stealing. they decided to no longer work for the previously agreed upon compensation package. the employer found new employees that would do the work they need done.
no one stole anything. I agree and encourage unions and collective bargaining, but a strike breaker is hardly a thief, they are just a worker who needs money like the guy striking
> They steal their livelyhood, it's not a misunderstanding. Should not be legal anywhere.
If you're no longer working your job, it's no longer your livelihood. That's your right of course, but you don't own a job anymore than the company owns you.
Is the world really that black and white? An unemployed person got a job, is he supposed to decline because someone else didn't want to go to their job because collective bargaining is more important than having a job?
In a society with healthy unions and strike protection, there is also a functional unemployment system. Staying on unemployment benefits another month, earning 80% of your previous salary, allows the potential scab to stand in solidarity with the strikers, and would be the moral decision. Not to mention the strategic decision, as there will be real social and employability costs to choosing to cross a strike line.
Is there a reference to the scabs? I am not seeing that anywhere in the article. It just says that Tesla doesn't have a signed labor contract with its mechanics - it doesn't appear that there is any strike or dispute. So it might not be "scabs" in our sense of the word.
> One can only imagine what would happen if the Finnish government tried to ban sympathy strikes in the same way the US government has here.
Although it's not quite on the level of US bans, the new Finnish government is currently trying to restrict sympathy strikes and political strikes, so we'll see how that goes. Trade unions are already throwing jabs with 1-day strikes and uppercuts are probably coming next year.
On one hand, that is epic. On the other hand, it means the union has leached a monumental amount of capital out of the workers and industries they are involved with. A union should not have that much cash in the bank.
We should use this term more often against the corporations exploiting the workers.
I am somewhat ambivalent towards unions - they can sometimes be a blessing or a curse to the workers. It really needs some regulation to ensure they serve the workers rather than serving the ones willing to play union politics.
But I am not at all ambivalent on corporations. Their only mandate is profit, and they will exploit (i.e.: leech from) workers as much as they can. It's their mandate, the very thing they exist to do.
What I mean is that having a runway where your union members can do literally nothing for 500 years and continue to get paid would suggest there is a monumental amount of cash sitting in a bank. I agree that unions need a rainy day fund, but this seems egregious. If they had said 10 or 20 years, that would make more sense to me.
It's likely that not every union member is striking, it is probably a sectoral union, e.g. the Swedish Dockworkers Union. There is still a lot of other dock-work to do besides unload Teslas, one would assume. So the union has 500 years of funds but that's for some small fraction of the workers.
Of course they don't. The profits would be directed to those that own it.
I've worked for companies whose CEO had wealth that was way higher than 500x my yearly salary.
And even still, that was a misinterpretation on your part. It is a partial strike, only against Tesla. The dockworkers are still servicing other companies.
That is the fund for the whole nation, they can keep strikes up forever since the strike is just a small part of their workers. This is how unions can compete with capital and politicians on an equal ground.
> A union should not have that much cash in the bank.
Why not? They've clearly been able to leverage it to negotiate better terms for their members. Their members are better off for the union having the warchest.
There are ~250k members of IF Metall, that makes it US$ 4k per member.
That isn't a monumental amount of capital to ensure worker protections when needed, how do you think the union could keep a strike if it doesn't have money in the piggybank to cover members salaries if required?
Corporations are an abstraction. Groups of workers however have always existed, have always comprised the vast majority of people in societies and have always had shared interests.
An interesting side-note: this would never happen in the US as the ILWU is actively hostile to other unions, specifically any in the AFL-CIO. So the solidarity between unions in Sweden is on another level.
Let’s not assume Tesla treats its workers badly though. I’ve talked to Tesla workers and they were very happy.
The union is just butthurt that Tesla is not unionized and has happy workers.
You’ll find plenty of negative media if you look, but there are reasons those stories get planted and promoted, reasons having little to do with truth.
If this were the case, it would be newsworthy in itself. Every strike involves the membership voting on whether they will. I'd wager it is 99%+ of union bylaws. Additionally, it is in NLRB laws (I know this is in Sweden), but given that US union laws are some of the weaker in the developed world...
> the Smith-Connally Act requires 30-day notice of an intention to strike and required that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) conduct a secret-ballot vote among the members of the bargaining unit on the major issues in bargaining prior to the strike.
A union leadership that says "We know you guys are totally happy but you know what, you have to strike anyway" is not leadership that stays long - even if they have the ability to unilaterally to do so.
You might see it as a cop out, but I'd argue the onus is on you to show that there was no vote, and workers are happy but having to strike anyway.
Yes, I understand there's usually a union vote before a strike. To clarify, you said, "Tesla's "happy workers" had to vote on it and decided to."
In a sense, that's probably true. But also maybe members of IF Metall at large voted on this, not just Tesla workers. After all, IF Metall stopped union members at other service shops than Tesla from working on Teslas. If so, then it could be that there indeed were "happy Tesla workers" who voted against it but must abide the union rules. We know there are service technicians working for Tesla who are unhappy with the strike ( https://www.na.se/2023-11-16/tesla-ar-den-basta-arbetsgivare... ).
Not really, gdp is a snapshot of current activity, but the market cap is a guess of the amount of money the company will throw off in total, adjusted for time and risk.
Market cap is not that at all, that's why Twitter's market cap was 44B and now undefined because its not on the market.
Market cap is the price of the last share trade times total number of shares. Company's current performance and prospects don't really change that much from day to day but you can have large market cap changes because what you are observing is just live betting.
Nope, each buyer has its own motivations. People usually sell when the price increase to their liking in the casino. Shares are traded all the time, not just on the days of dividend payments day. Tesla so far never paid dividends anyway. Maybe there are people who bought shares and don't trade them and wait for a payout, but if you look at the volumes traded you can easily see that they are a very small minority.
You sell when you think the company is overvalued, you buy when you think it is undervalued. Some might treat it as a casino but those are not the big players, as treating it as a casino will most likely lose money and not be profitable.
Paying dividends is just moving money from the company's bank account to the share owners, it doesn't have anything to do with the value of the rest of the company.
> that's really out of topic since we are discussing public markets
You said the market cap is “undefined.” That is incorrect. Market cap is price per share times shares outstanding. If a company has shares, its market cap is defined by at least one among several metrics.
It’s actually fundamentally germane to your argument, since in private markets one doesn’t have “large market cap changes because what you are observing is just live betting.” What input you use as “price” is the relevant bit, with the CNBC reductive convention of price = last trade being the source of your problem, not market cap per se.
I disagree, it illustrates the current betting market. It doesn't have to do anything with the company as long as the company isn't striken off the market.
I think you say the same thing as I do: the current betting market (company valuation) seems to be a bit out of touch with reality (company's actual value, that is something along the lines: assets - liabilities + expected revenue*time)
We probably don't disagree but I reject the premise of "fair value" for a stock price.
It's not different than Bitcoin price at all, there's no fair value but a price that you think it will increase or decrease. The price, thus market cap can be anything, if Musk can convince his believers to HODL you can end up with market cap larger than the Worlds GDP with trade volumes smaller than a single product they sell.
The speculative aspect of stock prices is a reflection of the time-value of money / discounted future cash flows. This concept does not exist for bitcoin pricing.
GDP is “per year” and market cap is just some absolute number, better to compare annual revenue or sth.
I mean why one year? Why not 10 months and 8 days? Why not a decade? It’s totally arbitrary and you can only use GDPs to compare with other GDPs (or other annual totals).
Interesting. How is this in Norway? I assume tesla fights union's there also. The culture and value system where union employers and the government is working together is standing really strong in Norway. Could this spread to the Norwegian Market? How big is the Norwegian Market for tesla now? Some years ago it was significant, but I assume the rest of the world is catching up and that its not that important anymore?
Recent blog post about unions that I found interesting:
>Let’s say a nation is concerned about poverty. So it passes a law that says the rich will have some of their money redistributed to the poor. But instead of a progressive income tax used to fund cash payments to the unfortunate, the government decides that wealthy people who happened to be born in the spring will give their money to poor people whose birthdays are in the summer. Moreover, this redistribution won’t go to anyone who is too poor. You have to already have a job to qualify, and a certain kind of job at that. In fact, you are going to make the poorest of the poor worse off through the policy. Finally, instead of cash payments that they can spend on whatever they actually need, the recipients of aid get gift cards to Bed, Bath, and Beyond.
>I think, regardless of how they feel about the redistribution of wealth, most people would find this to be a pretty stupid policy for reasons that are self-evident. Yet this is similar to how laws protecting organized labor function, which in effect involve the “right” of workers in an industry to form a cartel that prevents other people from being hired by an employer...
I wonder if the highly unionized Swedish economy is part of why Sweden has trouble assimilating immigrants. Native Swedes enforcing a cartel to prevent new arrivals from competing in low-wage occupations.
I live in Norway, and as far as I know the reason for the immigration problems in sweden is mostly related to taking in a lot of immgrants, much more then other countries did (compared to swedens population) over a long period and then failing to integrated them. Basically creating ghettos. In addition to this the government was to slow with providing additional resources when needed (like severally years ago)
If it was duo to unions you should see the same in Norway.
Both the right and the left in the Scandinavian countries largely agree that unions are a good thing. But we also have a sosial safety net to help people.
"Failing to integrate them" could be because they struggled to find jobs, due to unions acting as a cartel and shutting competitors out of the labor market.
If Norway accepted fewer immigrants, that means that fewer jobs for immigrants are needed. If you accept a lot of immigrants, you'd like to have employment opportunities for _all_ of them. Unionization could cause this problem by lowering demand for unskilled workers, who are no longer profitable to hire due to union bargaining.
If jobs for immigrants were plentiful, maybe government support wouldn't be necessary.
Swedish unions do not mandate membership, and do not "prevent other people from being hired", unless they're talking about speculative indirect effects like "setting a minimum salary kills jobs".
Members and non-members work together at the same companies, and the collective agreements between the unions and the employer organizations apply to all employees, not just members.
"A key reason for the sympathy strikes is that Tesla brought in scabs which is a big no-no in Scandinavian labor markets."
Sounds like an attempt to prevent other people from being hired.
Re: setting a minimum salary -- suppose we set the minimum price of burgers at $100/burger. Do you think that would cause people to buy fewer burgers? I don't think "minimum salary kills jobs" is speculative; I think it should be the default hypothesis. Force the price of something to be high and people will purchase it less. Force the price of labor to be high and unemployment will increase. Especially for low-skilled immigrants whose main way to compete is willingness to work for low wages.
> Especially for low-skilled immigrants whose main way to compete is willingness to work for low wages.
A race to the bottom, exploitative labour market is not what we want here in Sweden.
Preying on someone's desperation to work for lower wages than what collectively we think is fair is pure exploitation. The labour market in Sweden is quite free and mostly deregulated, the main pillar of the foundation for it being fair is for employers and employees to engage in negotiations, unions play a key role in regulating the labour market to set a minimum threshold.
You are just advocating for allowing exploitation of immigrants.
Imagine a man who is crossing a desert and is dying of thirst. I'm short on water, but I offer him just a cup of mine anyway. You say: "Put your water away. That's not right. That man should have as much water to drink as he wants. By offering him a cup of water, you are supporting his death by dehydration."
That's the position that you are taking with respect to migrants from developing countries. An "exploitative" job in the Swedish economy would be a big upgrade from their options back home, yet you still deny it to them out of a high-minded sense of "altruism".
> That's the position that you are taking with respect to migrants from developing countries. An "exploitative" job in the Swedish economy would be a big upgrade from their options back home, yet you still deny it to them out of a high-minded sense of "altruism".
I am an immigrant from a developing country, living in Sweden, gladly I've been here long enough to also be a citizen. I'm extremely glad there are provisions which did not allow employers to exploit me when I was hired, I'm glad I was paid in line with what natives/locals were.
There's no altruism in allowing exploitation of immigrants, it seems you are not considering that allowing it also creates a counterpoint that depresses salaries of locals since there's a pool of labour willing (and allowed to) to be paid less for the same skillset and competence, your prerogative is, ultimately, mostly beneficial to employers while leaving breadcrumbs to immigrants, and depressing local salaries.
>I am an immigrant from a developing country, living in Sweden, gladly I've been here long enough to also be a citizen. I'm extremely glad there are provisions which did not allow employers to exploit me when I was hired, I'm glad I was paid in line with what natives/locals were.
Easy for you to say, given that you actually got a job. That's how these labor restrictions work: they're nice if you can find a job, but they create an underclass of people who can't find one.
> Easy for you to say, given that you actually got a job. That's how these labor restrictions work: they're nice if you can find a job, but they create an underclass of people who can't find one.
No restrictions in the labour market will create lots of exploitative behaviour, it will depress wages, I simply don't understand how you do not understand this, even more since you were the one citing "microeconomics" further up in the thread.
You are advocating for labour exploitation, paying people less than what's fair due to their desperation, not based on their merits and a level playing field to all. You are actively advocating for this. Don't you see any reasons a society does not want to allow that to creep into the labour market?
If Jack only produces $8/hr worth of value through his labor, and the government says employers must pay Jack $10/hr or more, Jack won't be able to get a job.
Minimum wage laws encourage employers to trim the least productive workers from their payroll. The least productive workers are disproportionately the poorly educated, those suffering from health conditions, etc. Minimum wage laws hurt those who are least able to advocate for themselves.
"Exploitation" and "fairness" are a matter of opinion. There's no objective way to define that stuff.
There's no minimum wage in Sweden determined by the government through laws. I thought you had understood that, unsure why you are bringing minimum wage laws in a discussion about the Nordic model in Sweden.
No, that's a reaction to the employer trying to circumvent the strike. It's an attempt to ensure that the strike is effective, and wouldn't normally happen.
(also, the sympathy strikers object to the hiring of other people _to do the strikers' tasks _, not hiring in general.)
> Force the price of labor to be high and unemployment will increase.
If you don't, there will be a race to the bottom and people won't have a liveable wage.
Besides, Tesla is claiming that their compensation is better than the the collective agreement's minimum, and if that's to be taken at face value, clearly the agreement's cost of labor isn't too high.
>No, that's a reaction to the employer trying to circumvent the strike. It's an attempt to ensure that the strike is effective, and wouldn't normally happen.
>(also, the sympathy strikers object to the hiring of other people _to do the strikers' tasks _, not hiring in general.)
A mafioso could tell you "We broke his legs to ensure that people stay quiet. It wouldn't normally happen. It's fine for him to talk to the cops. Just don't talk to the cops about us."
>If you don't, there will be a race to the bottom and people won't have a liveable wage.
People looking for jobs will prefer to accept a job that has a higher wage. So you could just as easily argue that there will be a race to the top, as businesses compete over workers until businesses can no longer make a profit.
People in this thread are comparing Norway to Sweden. One way of interpreting the median income data I linked is, if Sweden adopted the sort of capitalist approach you see in the US or Switzerland, the increased economic dynamism would be the equivalent of discovering $1.5 trillion in oil wealth, from the perspective of the median worker.
I suggest reading up on basic microeconomics until you can explain concepts like "supply curve" or "demand curve". This book teaches you the approximate contents of an undergrad micro class in a way that's fun and entertaining: https://www.amazon.com/Cartoon-Introduction-Economics-I-Micr... Then you'll have an idea of why the "race to the bottom" and "race to the top" scenarios aren't actually happening.
This is a non-sequitur and non-argument, there are many, many other differences between the labour market in Sweden, and the EU compared to the US to rely solely on that fact as a reason for higher median income.
> People in this thread are comparing Norway to Sweden. One way of interpreting the median income data I linked is, if Sweden adopted the sort of capitalist approach you see in the US or Switzerland, the increased economic dynamism would be the equivalent of discovering $1.5 trillion in oil wealth, from the perspective of the median worker.
There's nothing in what you shared that support this, at all. Sweden also ranks higher in economic freedom than the US [0].
>In a regular employee-employer relations there is a big difference in negotiating power.
Not necessarily, it depends on the state of the labor market. You remember a few years ago when the Valley was incredibly hot. Workers had a lot of negotiating power despite being non-unionized.
All Swedish comments here from both immigrants and locals shows them apparently enjoying the unions' work and the backpressure put on the companies. Which is the point of any agreement: I give you my work under my conditions, you pay me under your conditions, and both sides must meet somewhere in the middle. And lo it's even done without government involvement - we talk about negotiations between unions and the company. So although your intention was to be against the union, you're basically making their same point.
I don't actually agree with unions, but not for the "usual" reasons. Unions are a scotch-tape fix to a broken economic system, which gives enormous powers to the capitalistic class at the expense of all others.
The correct solution is to fix the actual system. All large companies should be by constitutional law (controlling) majority owned 1/n by their workers. All this exploitation will disappear because workers will obviously not exploit themselves, but also will be incentivized to work hard for their own future.
when a company goes from small to large, original owners lose their ownership? Wouldn't they stop themselves from becoming large in order not lose their ownership .
wouldn't that defeat the whole point of gp's proposal of worker owned production ( vs capital owned ) . Why does worker ownership not matter in small companies?
To answer your original query, we can add other incentives to the system if larger firm size (by employee number) is beneficial in certain industries. Perhaps, the most straightforward way would be to not have a cliff for the minimum size where the 50% bound kicks in, but some linear function of number of workers. Since, larger firms often have a competitive advantage, this would increase the equilibrium size.
> Why does worker ownership not matter in small companies?
1. Small business owners also exploit their workers but this is partially solved by (a) competition between small firms, and (b) labor laws.
2. The reason labor laws are often ineffective is that the capitalist class, who owns large businesses, pays off federal/provincial politicians to change laws so their exploitation is legal, or to weaken enforcing agencies. Fixing the ownership of large firms will reduce worker exploitation in both small and large firms.
3. Stock-market listed companies are especially bad at worker (and customer) rights because they have to continuously grow. By ensuring that such companies are majority-owned by workers, the bad effects of the stock-market will be reduced (though not eliminated). Small companies are rarely listed.
4. Companies usually start small. Always starting as a co-op would make many businesses non-viable. And I don't see how society will be improved by family-owned restaurants or mom-and-pop shops operated as co-ops. So let the small companies continue to be owned by their founders.
Moreover, the capitalist class also lobbies for other legal/executive changes that transfer wealth from the worker class to the the capitalist class. That is a larger political problem that is solved by reducing the power of the capitalist class with these worker-ownership measures.
Funnily enough, Sweden came close to doing this in the 70s, forcing joint ownership of firms by employees. Unfortunately, it fell apart, and the whole country went down a more neoliberal path after the assassination of Olaf Palme and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
That solution doesn't work in practice because a nontrivial number of those workers are perfectly willing to exploit others for their own personal gain. Turns out people have flaws.
Unions are the best compromise anyone's found between capital and labor.
The system cannot be "fixed" because the winners of it have so much resources that they will not let it be fixed, undermining democracy itself if that's what it takes. Barring a revolution this is what we'll have for the rest of our lives.
Illegal or just fireable? It’s freedom of expression and gather. Also, can’t fire everyone if they all work together. The air traffic controllers where left put to dry by every other union and Regan had the military to fill in.
In Australia, Latvia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, the United States, and the United Kingdom, solidarity action is theoretically illegal, and strikes can only be against the contractual employer.
How does that even work? I am, and should be, free to not show up to work for any reason I choose. If I'm legally required to work, isn't that forced labor?
You certainly would, but you wouldn't suffer criminal penalties. I was talking about the idea that it's illegal, not saying that there wouldn't be some sort of consequence.
"If I'm legally required to work, isn't that forced labor?"
Not if you signed a contract declaring that you will show up.
So a strike is in one way organised contract breaching - but one that is allowed under certain circumstances under the bigger contract, the state laws (which you accept by being in that state).
I think we may be running into the weeds of pedantry here, but here goes...
(Speaking about how things are in the US. I don't know how they are elsewhere.)
Contract law is about how to interpret and adjudicate contracts when there is a dispute between the parties in the contract.
Nothing about that means that violating a contract, in and of itself, is illegal. You aren't going to suffer any criminal penalties for failing to adhere to your contractual obligations.
What you may do is suffer whatever penalties that the contract specifies will happen if the contract is violated, and the legal system is also geared to work out and enforce such things. But that's a world apart from the notion that violating a contract is "illegal".
> Nothing about that means that violating a contract, in and of itself, is illegal..
Its a violation of legal rights for which there are legal remedies. Claiming that its not a violation of law (the original upthread claim) is... well, as wrong as it is for any other violation of civil law. (“illegal" adds more complications because “illegal” has multiple overlapping senses, it can apply to any violation of law, or it can be used to refer specifically to criminal violations.)
> What you may do is suffer whatever penalties that the contract specifies will happen if the contract is violated
No, contract law itself specifies penalties for contract violations. Contracts may attempt to specify damages for certain violations as a replacement for the usual calculation of actual damages (“liquidated damages” provisions), but contract law governs when these will be given effect instead of the usual assessment of actual damages. It is neither necessary for there to be a specified penalty in the contract for one to be applied, nor will a specified penalty automatically be applied.
"Illegal" means "a violation of law". That's automatically a question of criminality. Contract violations are not a violation of law, they're a violation of a legally-binding contract. Violating a contract isn't illegal in any meaningful sense, but doing so will incur whatever penalties the contract specifies will happen if it's violated. Those penalties are enforced through the legal system, but that doesn't mean that a law was violated. Only a civil agreement.
> Yes, even then. A contract violation is not a violation of law. My question is about it being illegal.
Breach of contract is a violation of civil (but not criminal) law. It's illegal but it's not a crime. The question is more of enforceability and of compensation due, if any.
No, it's still not illegal. It is not a tort, which is a "civil wrong". Contract law is about breach of duty and remedies. You would not be forced to do the thing, generally, but may be required to compensate for the breach.
It's arguably not a sympathy strike - Tesla employees are not striking in Sweden. So it's more a form of political expression. So in the US it would probably fall under a different set of rules.
I’m told that Sweden charges 25% VAT on not only the total price, but also on the total of freight charges, insurance, handling costs, and the 10% customs duty. That’s bonkers. So maybe not more than other imported cars but still crazy high. And also I could have outdated info but I understand they took away EV tax incentives in 2022.
If you’re seeing a lot of them it’s probably people who got a chance to try driving one. And who also realize the TCO over time makes up for the initial price.
Oh yes, having a car in Sweden is very expensive. And yes, the current government did remove the EV incentives. My point is just that that's not a positive or negative against Tesla compared to other brands.
Volvo Cars was sold to Ford in 1999 when Volvo AB decided to focus on commercial vehicles, there's no financial trouble except the one that Ford went through during the 2008 crisis...
> When the global economic crisis of 2008 threatened the US automakers, Swedish authorities became concerned about the fate of Volvo, should Ford file for bankruptcy. These concerns mounted after repeated mass-layoffs at Volvo. In December 2008, Ford announced that it was considering selling Volvo Cars. Initially, a sale price of US$6 billion was reported.
Your conjecture has no basis in reality, it was not due to unions creating higher costs, it was the mess the USA created for the world in 2008 that prompted the sale of Volvo from Ford to Geely.
That’s a pretty broad brush you’re using. My experience is mostly with the IBEW and so won’t be applicable in all cases. But, the employer gets a flexible, locally licensed work force. They can hire as many people as they need off the union book (no need for lengthy recruitment, skill assessment, and compensation negotiation) on demand and they can lay off electricians as a job winds down. Each local contract will be different, but I think it’s common for benefits to be handled by the union as well. Moreover, the union runs its apprenticeship program so they handle a growing and evolving workforce.
It's my impression that the skilled trades unions (electricians, ironworkers, steamfitters, etc.) are different from e.g. the UAW. UAW is not running an apprenticeship program for autoworkers. UAW members are not employed as needed on demand by the auto manufacturers. Unions like the UAW exist almost completely as a collective bargaining organization for employment contracts with big automakers.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any insight into the UAW. I hope they add value in some way. Unions should adapt to the needs of the sector they’re in so I do expect it’s fairly different from the trades. There’s skilled labor still involved at some level.
My point was just to highlight that unions can and, in some cases are, beneficial to the employer even in the US. That’s not to say all unions are great. These discussions tend to lack nuance.
They trust the certification body. Either you demonstrably know the electrical code or you don’t. And the union requires its members to have their licenses (save for apprentices — but they can wash out).
Imagine how much time we could all save if an impartial body certified developers can do breadth first search or reverse strings. No need for all of those phone screen and first round interview questions.
I haven’t been involved with hiring with other industries, so I can’t really say. Given the way I’ve seen story points get distributed or people moved around after layoffs or a reorg at tech companies, I suspect many industries treat their employees as interchangeable, cookie-cutter or otherwise. For many skilled industries beyond software development we also rely on certification: Professional Engineers, medical doctors, pilots, etc.
This isn't true as a blanket statement in the US. There certainly have been, and probably still are, bad union organizations (just like anything else), but that's an indictment if those particular organizations, not unions in general. There are also good ones.
I think you're referring to a quote from a union leader. The general thought is that a well-paid, satisfied workforce is better for the company. We're not talking maximizing profits/IPO in the short term.
You are being downvoted but I see you are merely quoting the article and the individual who stated that Swedish unions benefitted both employees and employers. My guess is those downvoting and commenting did not in fact read that paragraph.
Generally there have been quite few major labor conflicts in Sweden because when you have signed a collective bargaining agreement the unions can only strike to enforce it.
Also turns out that an organized instead of vulnerable and exploited workforce is quite productive
In the long term, unions (and pro-society policies in general) benefit the employer by ensuring a cybernetically stable supply of labor.
Most employers obviously aren't thinking that far ahead, though. They would rather cut corners (import cheap labor), and then be surprised when there are systemic failures in their labor supply.
We're gradually seeing that hit in America as the global USD goes under, the well-endowed Boomers retire, and USA is a less appealing immigration destination.
I've not heard that claim before today (though it is in the article), but I guess one benefit to the company is that the general population can more easily afford the products the company makes.
I wasn't asking in an anti-union stance. I'm actually curious.
Of course I understand the general purpose of a labor union. But I also understand that there are many situations where a union is unnecessary and actually detrimental to the labor force.
For example, if I pay all my employees the same wage I make and pay for the same insurance and retirement plan I have, would it be beneficial to my employees to join a union? Sure, this hypothetical is extreme, but it's just to examine the idea.
Is a union a good thing if there are no abuses from which labor needs to be protected? So why do these employees want a union? What are the benefits if there are no abuses? If there are abuses, what are they?
I'd really like to know the specifics. I'm not arguing that there could be no benefit. I'm asking what the benefits are in this specific case. I expect that there are some but I don't want to assume what they are.
I hope that you will understand that my question was not as belligerent as yours seems to me.
> For example, if I pay all my employees the same wage I make and pay for the same insurance and retirement plan I have, would it be beneficial to my employees to join a union?
Two questions:
How would you know that everyone has the same ? Only the boss knows without a union.
Also, if everyone has the same retirement and insurance plan but they are not good plans or the pay isn't good, are they not getting ripped off ?
> Also, if everyone has the same retirement and insurance plan but they are not good plans or the pay isn't good, are they not getting ripped off ?
Um. Not necessarily. If I sell you a car that has no tires and no engine, are you getting ripped off? Not necessarily. So I'd like to know the specifics of this case.
FWIW, I understand that just because my employees have the same compensation as I do, it may still be unfair. If I have no job responsibilities and they have to perform death-defying tasks, they might benefit from a union.
Then again, they might benefit even more from quitting and finding a different job.
You could equally flip your questions: If you only do things that your employees like, then why would you care if they have a union or not? In that case, the only thing a union would do is ensure that this state persists, which definitely is beneficial to employees.
Even a company that's great to work for today is just one leveraged buyout or restructuring away from worker's hell.
Sadly, HN isn't a place to ask questions about second-order effects in politics anymore. Unions are basically legal cartels / mafias, and people will honestly think there are no effects on labour markets, prices or employment and everything is pure upside, wealth generated out of thin air.
> everything is pure upside, wealth generated out of thin air.
Isn't this also how companies perceive job cuts and wage reduction? Forget about Henry Ford's idea of having a population that can actually afford to buy your products, just keep cutting labor costs.
Edit: Or stock buybacks. Just as long as "the line goes up" for now doesn't matter if you run the whole ship into the ground in the future.
What about Blackrock? Their representatives sit on many boards in a single industry. Same with large VCs. It's not as structured as unions, but each board is not a completely independent entity either.
This is actually a good point, and is detrimental for similar reasons: concentration of power, reduction of competition and increased fragility of the whole system ("too big to fail").
Well, i have something you might want to hear about. It's called investment funds and weirdly competition between companies started to fall as investment fund rose up. They also are present at a lot of different director board or committees.
Yes, board members are strictly segmented by business sector, by law. I mean, god forbid we could have someone on the board on an aerospace company, a car manufacturer, and an internet behemoth! /s
In this increasingly globalized world, each country is still different. You can't expect swedish workers to accept that you treat them like american workers just because your company is big.
I really like this part:
> Even postal workers will stop delivering mail to Tesla
Edit: deleting my comment. didn't add much value to the conversation.
The entire point of a union is that you have enough collective agreement so that the company can't just fire everyone who pushes back. They can fire one person, or even many, but what if half of the workers are pushing back?
> also, mail workers don't "own" mail delivery.
They may not own it, but they do control it. Good luck getting your mail if every mail worker collectively decided to stop working.
The point of a union is to be able to push back on your employer, so that fighting for better conditions isn't a special privilege.
German?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/faxin...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strikebreaker
So I would be happy to distinguish between a scab who is looking to make a quick buck and a strikebreaker who was never eligible for a union job in the first place. Depends on the context.
But unions don't have any say in who gets a job. There is no such thing as a "union job".
But otherwise, yeah, if you want to disagree with people by calling them derogatory names, you're right: "strikebreaker" just doesn't have the same ring to it.
Even as a frenchmen, I don't think strikes are sacred.
You don't have to agree with any political movement out there.
And the strike is a right. A job is not. You already can't be fired for striking which is huge.
Wanting other people that have no dog in this fight to accomodate you doesn't seem reasonable.
And framing that the way you do is more virtue signaling and pandering than debating.
no one stole anything. I agree and encourage unions and collective bargaining, but a strike breaker is hardly a thief, they are just a worker who needs money like the guy striking
I need a house and you do too. Let me live in your house since we both need it.
If you're no longer working your job, it's no longer your livelihood. That's your right of course, but you don't own a job anymore than the company owns you.
https://mattbruenig.com/2021/09/20/when-mcdonalds-came-to-de...
Although it's not quite on the level of US bans, the new Finnish government is currently trying to restrict sympathy strikes and political strikes, so we'll see how that goes. Trade unions are already throwing jabs with 1-day strikes and uppercuts are probably coming next year.
[0] https://yle.fi/a/74-20051635
"Our strike fund is enough to keep this up for 500 years."
We should use this term more often against the corporations exploiting the workers.
I am somewhat ambivalent towards unions - they can sometimes be a blessing or a curse to the workers. It really needs some regulation to ensure they serve the workers rather than serving the ones willing to play union politics.
But I am not at all ambivalent on corporations. Their only mandate is profit, and they will exploit (i.e.: leech from) workers as much as they can. It's their mandate, the very thing they exist to do.
I've worked for companies whose CEO had wealth that was way higher than 500x my yearly salary.
And even still, that was a misinterpretation on your part. It is a partial strike, only against Tesla. The dockworkers are still servicing other companies.
Why not? They've clearly been able to leverage it to negotiate better terms for their members. Their members are better off for the union having the warchest.
That isn't a monumental amount of capital to ensure worker protections when needed, how do you think the union could keep a strike if it doesn't have money in the piggybank to cover members salaries if required?
Please, don't be a corporation apologist.
Because if so, we clearly need to deal with the individual billionaires long, long before we work our way down to any unions.
More seriously, seeing labor in other countries is waking me up to the need for NLRA reform in the US. It was great in 1935, but we can do better.
Very cool /s
The union is just butthurt that Tesla is not unionized and has happy workers.
You’ll find plenty of negative media if you look, but there are reasons those stories get planted and promoted, reasons having little to do with truth.
No. The union leadership didn't unilaterally decide to go on strike. Tesla's "happy workers" had to vote on it and decided to.
So perhaps they're not as happy as you'd believe.
I can't find information that confirms this.
> the Smith-Connally Act requires 30-day notice of an intention to strike and required that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) conduct a secret-ballot vote among the members of the bargaining unit on the major issues in bargaining prior to the strike.
Source: https://ecommons.cornell.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/bf5d...
A union leadership that says "We know you guys are totally happy but you know what, you have to strike anyway" is not leadership that stays long - even if they have the ability to unilaterally to do so.
You might see it as a cop out, but I'd argue the onus is on you to show that there was no vote, and workers are happy but having to strike anyway.
https://www.google.com/search?q=can+a+union+strike+without+a...
In a sense, that's probably true. But also maybe members of IF Metall at large voted on this, not just Tesla workers. After all, IF Metall stopped union members at other service shops than Tesla from working on Teslas. If so, then it could be that there indeed were "happy Tesla workers" who voted against it but must abide the union rules. We know there are service technicians working for Tesla who are unhappy with the strike ( https://www.na.se/2023-11-16/tesla-ar-den-basta-arbetsgivare... ).
Market cap is the price of the last share trade times total number of shares. Company's current performance and prospects don't really change that much from day to day but you can have large market cap changes because what you are observing is just live betting.
Yes, and those bets are guesses on how much the company will return as the poster you responded to said.
Not sure how volumes traded says anything about buy and hold investors. It could just be a single stock traded a billion times?
It’s still absolutely on a market, down to being valued and trading. It’s just not on a public market.
You said the market cap is “undefined.” That is incorrect. Market cap is price per share times shares outstanding. If a company has shares, its market cap is defined by at least one among several metrics.
It's not different than Bitcoin price at all, there's no fair value but a price that you think it will increase or decrease. The price, thus market cap can be anything, if Musk can convince his believers to HODL you can end up with market cap larger than the Worlds GDP with trade volumes smaller than a single product they sell.
The speculative aspect of stock prices is a reflection of the time-value of money / discounted future cash flows. This concept does not exist for bitcoin pricing.
I mean why one year? Why not 10 months and 8 days? Why not a decade? It’s totally arbitrary and you can only use GDPs to compare with other GDPs (or other annual totals).
Define "wokeness" before we can continue.
>Let’s say a nation is concerned about poverty. So it passes a law that says the rich will have some of their money redistributed to the poor. But instead of a progressive income tax used to fund cash payments to the unfortunate, the government decides that wealthy people who happened to be born in the spring will give their money to poor people whose birthdays are in the summer. Moreover, this redistribution won’t go to anyone who is too poor. You have to already have a job to qualify, and a certain kind of job at that. In fact, you are going to make the poorest of the poor worse off through the policy. Finally, instead of cash payments that they can spend on whatever they actually need, the recipients of aid get gift cards to Bed, Bath, and Beyond.
>I think, regardless of how they feel about the redistribution of wealth, most people would find this to be a pretty stupid policy for reasons that are self-evident. Yet this is similar to how laws protecting organized labor function, which in effect involve the “right” of workers in an industry to form a cartel that prevents other people from being hired by an employer...
https://www.richardhanania.com/p/why-labor-unions-are-evil
I wonder if the highly unionized Swedish economy is part of why Sweden has trouble assimilating immigrants. Native Swedes enforcing a cartel to prevent new arrivals from competing in low-wage occupations.
I live in Norway, and as far as I know the reason for the immigration problems in sweden is mostly related to taking in a lot of immgrants, much more then other countries did (compared to swedens population) over a long period and then failing to integrated them. Basically creating ghettos. In addition to this the government was to slow with providing additional resources when needed (like severally years ago)
If it was duo to unions you should see the same in Norway.
Both the right and the left in the Scandinavian countries largely agree that unions are a good thing. But we also have a sosial safety net to help people.
If Norway accepted fewer immigrants, that means that fewer jobs for immigrants are needed. If you accept a lot of immigrants, you'd like to have employment opportunities for _all_ of them. Unionization could cause this problem by lowering demand for unskilled workers, who are no longer profitable to hire due to union bargaining.
If jobs for immigrants were plentiful, maybe government support wouldn't be necessary.
So much wishy-washiness and absolutely zero concrete information.
I don't think you're proving any points.
It had some terrible side effects of communication in the family for that generation.
Also, would have been cool to be bilingual. Maybe. My family tree makes me quite the mutt.
Members and non-members work together at the same companies, and the collective agreements between the unions and the employer organizations apply to all employees, not just members.
"A key reason for the sympathy strikes is that Tesla brought in scabs which is a big no-no in Scandinavian labor markets."
Sounds like an attempt to prevent other people from being hired.
Re: setting a minimum salary -- suppose we set the minimum price of burgers at $100/burger. Do you think that would cause people to buy fewer burgers? I don't think "minimum salary kills jobs" is speculative; I think it should be the default hypothesis. Force the price of something to be high and people will purchase it less. Force the price of labor to be high and unemployment will increase. Especially for low-skilled immigrants whose main way to compete is willingness to work for low wages.
A race to the bottom, exploitative labour market is not what we want here in Sweden.
Preying on someone's desperation to work for lower wages than what collectively we think is fair is pure exploitation. The labour market in Sweden is quite free and mostly deregulated, the main pillar of the foundation for it being fair is for employers and employees to engage in negotiations, unions play a key role in regulating the labour market to set a minimum threshold.
You are just advocating for allowing exploitation of immigrants.
That's the position that you are taking with respect to migrants from developing countries. An "exploitative" job in the Swedish economy would be a big upgrade from their options back home, yet you still deny it to them out of a high-minded sense of "altruism".
I am an immigrant from a developing country, living in Sweden, gladly I've been here long enough to also be a citizen. I'm extremely glad there are provisions which did not allow employers to exploit me when I was hired, I'm glad I was paid in line with what natives/locals were.
There's no altruism in allowing exploitation of immigrants, it seems you are not considering that allowing it also creates a counterpoint that depresses salaries of locals since there's a pool of labour willing (and allowed to) to be paid less for the same skillset and competence, your prerogative is, ultimately, mostly beneficial to employers while leaving breadcrumbs to immigrants, and depressing local salaries.
Easy for you to say, given that you actually got a job. That's how these labor restrictions work: they're nice if you can find a job, but they create an underclass of people who can't find one.
No restrictions in the labour market will create lots of exploitative behaviour, it will depress wages, I simply don't understand how you do not understand this, even more since you were the one citing "microeconomics" further up in the thread.
You are advocating for labour exploitation, paying people less than what's fair due to their desperation, not based on their merits and a level playing field to all. You are actively advocating for this. Don't you see any reasons a society does not want to allow that to creep into the labour market?
Minimum wage laws encourage employers to trim the least productive workers from their payroll. The least productive workers are disproportionately the poorly educated, those suffering from health conditions, etc. Minimum wage laws hurt those who are least able to advocate for themselves.
"Exploitation" and "fairness" are a matter of opinion. There's no objective way to define that stuff.
(also, the sympathy strikers object to the hiring of other people _to do the strikers' tasks _, not hiring in general.)
> Force the price of labor to be high and unemployment will increase.
If you don't, there will be a race to the bottom and people won't have a liveable wage.
Besides, Tesla is claiming that their compensation is better than the the collective agreement's minimum, and if that's to be taken at face value, clearly the agreement's cost of labor isn't too high.
>(also, the sympathy strikers object to the hiring of other people _to do the strikers' tasks _, not hiring in general.)
A mafioso could tell you "We broke his legs to ensure that people stay quiet. It wouldn't normally happen. It's fine for him to talk to the cops. Just don't talk to the cops about us."
>If you don't, there will be a race to the bottom and people won't have a liveable wage.
People looking for jobs will prefer to accept a job that has a higher wage. So you could just as easily argue that there will be a race to the top, as businesses compete over workers until businesses can no longer make a profit.
The US economy has fewer unions than the Swedish economy, yet its median income is around 30% higher: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-median-income?tab=t...
People in this thread are comparing Norway to Sweden. One way of interpreting the median income data I linked is, if Sweden adopted the sort of capitalist approach you see in the US or Switzerland, the increased economic dynamism would be the equivalent of discovering $1.5 trillion in oil wealth, from the perspective of the median worker.
I suggest reading up on basic microeconomics until you can explain concepts like "supply curve" or "demand curve". This book teaches you the approximate contents of an undergrad micro class in a way that's fun and entertaining: https://www.amazon.com/Cartoon-Introduction-Economics-I-Micr... Then you'll have an idea of why the "race to the bottom" and "race to the top" scenarios aren't actually happening.
This is a non-sequitur and non-argument, there are many, many other differences between the labour market in Sweden, and the EU compared to the US to rely solely on that fact as a reason for higher median income.
> People in this thread are comparing Norway to Sweden. One way of interpreting the median income data I linked is, if Sweden adopted the sort of capitalist approach you see in the US or Switzerland, the increased economic dynamism would be the equivalent of discovering $1.5 trillion in oil wealth, from the perspective of the median worker.
There's nothing in what you shared that support this, at all. Sweden also ranks higher in economic freedom than the US [0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_Economic_Freedom
In a regular employee-employer relations there is a big difference in negotiating power. Unions can mitigate that.
Not necessarily, it depends on the state of the labor market. You remember a few years ago when the Valley was incredibly hot. Workers had a lot of negotiating power despite being non-unionized.
Don't forget there are millions people on visa, in wait-list for green card. They always have been screwed.
The correct solution is to fix the actual system. All large companies should be by constitutional law (controlling) majority owned 1/n by their workers. All this exploitation will disappear because workers will obviously not exploit themselves, but also will be incentivized to work hard for their own future.
when a company goes from small to large, original owners lose their ownership? Wouldn't they stop themselves from becoming large in order not lose their ownership .
Not sure the proposal would actually lead to this outcome, but it is a good outcome in my book.
> Why does worker ownership not matter in small companies?
1. Small business owners also exploit their workers but this is partially solved by (a) competition between small firms, and (b) labor laws.
2. The reason labor laws are often ineffective is that the capitalist class, who owns large businesses, pays off federal/provincial politicians to change laws so their exploitation is legal, or to weaken enforcing agencies. Fixing the ownership of large firms will reduce worker exploitation in both small and large firms.
3. Stock-market listed companies are especially bad at worker (and customer) rights because they have to continuously grow. By ensuring that such companies are majority-owned by workers, the bad effects of the stock-market will be reduced (though not eliminated). Small companies are rarely listed.
4. Companies usually start small. Always starting as a co-op would make many businesses non-viable. And I don't see how society will be improved by family-owned restaurants or mom-and-pop shops operated as co-ops. So let the small companies continue to be owned by their founders.
Moreover, the capitalist class also lobbies for other legal/executive changes that transfer wealth from the worker class to the the capitalist class. That is a larger political problem that is solved by reducing the power of the capitalist class with these worker-ownership measures.
Unions are the best compromise anyone's found between capital and labor.
Guess who of the workers became rich and who stayed poor?
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2388121/world
https://www.politico.eu/article/sweden-gangs-attacks-ulf-kri...
https://www.the-sun.com/news/9332486/executions-bombs-child-...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_action
In Australia, Latvia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, the United States, and the United Kingdom, solidarity action is theoretically illegal, and strikes can only be against the contractual employer.
Not if you signed a contract declaring that you will show up.
So a strike is in one way organised contract breaching - but one that is allowed under certain circumstances under the bigger contract, the state laws (which you accept by being in that state).
Yes, even then. A contract violation is not a violation of law. My question is about it being illegal.
False; contract law is, as the name suggests, law, and there are legally established remedies for violations.
(Speaking about how things are in the US. I don't know how they are elsewhere.)
Contract law is about how to interpret and adjudicate contracts when there is a dispute between the parties in the contract.
Nothing about that means that violating a contract, in and of itself, is illegal. You aren't going to suffer any criminal penalties for failing to adhere to your contractual obligations.
What you may do is suffer whatever penalties that the contract specifies will happen if the contract is violated, and the legal system is also geared to work out and enforce such things. But that's a world apart from the notion that violating a contract is "illegal".
Its a violation of legal rights for which there are legal remedies. Claiming that its not a violation of law (the original upthread claim) is... well, as wrong as it is for any other violation of civil law. (“illegal" adds more complications because “illegal” has multiple overlapping senses, it can apply to any violation of law, or it can be used to refer specifically to criminal violations.)
> What you may do is suffer whatever penalties that the contract specifies will happen if the contract is violated
No, contract law itself specifies penalties for contract violations. Contracts may attempt to specify damages for certain violations as a replacement for the usual calculation of actual damages (“liquidated damages” provisions), but contract law governs when these will be given effect instead of the usual assessment of actual damages. It is neither necessary for there to be a specified penalty in the contract for one to be applied, nor will a specified penalty automatically be applied.
When we are talking about the law, of course one has to be pedantic. Apart from that, the sibling posters expressed my reply very well already.
Breach of contract is a violation of civil (but not criminal) law. It's illegal but it's not a crime. The question is more of enforceability and of compensation due, if any.
I sure seem to be seeing a lot of Teslas around...
If you’re seeing a lot of them it’s probably people who got a chance to try driving one. And who also realize the TCO over time makes up for the initial price.
> When the global economic crisis of 2008 threatened the US automakers, Swedish authorities became concerned about the fate of Volvo, should Ford file for bankruptcy. These concerns mounted after repeated mass-layoffs at Volvo. In December 2008, Ford announced that it was considering selling Volvo Cars. Initially, a sale price of US$6 billion was reported.
Your conjecture has no basis in reality, it was not due to unions creating higher costs, it was the mess the USA created for the world in 2008 that prompted the sale of Volvo from Ford to Geely.
Is this incorrect?
My point was just to highlight that unions can and, in some cases are, beneficial to the employer even in the US. That’s not to say all unions are great. These discussions tend to lack nuance.
Imagine how much time we could all save if an impartial body certified developers can do breadth first search or reverse strings. No need for all of those phone screen and first round interview questions.
I imagine that wouldn't extrapolate to careers where there's a component of soft skill, or hiring for potential?
Also turns out that an organized instead of vulnerable and exploited workforce is quite productive
Most employers obviously aren't thinking that far ahead, though. They would rather cut corners (import cheap labor), and then be surprised when there are systemic failures in their labor supply.
We're gradually seeing that hit in America as the global USD goes under, the well-endowed Boomers retire, and USA is a less appealing immigration destination.
There's no arguing past that.
Let me ask you a question: why do you deserve any respect ? I'm just curious.
I'm not seriously asking, just showing you how your question is bullshit.
Of course I understand the general purpose of a labor union. But I also understand that there are many situations where a union is unnecessary and actually detrimental to the labor force.
For example, if I pay all my employees the same wage I make and pay for the same insurance and retirement plan I have, would it be beneficial to my employees to join a union? Sure, this hypothetical is extreme, but it's just to examine the idea.
Is a union a good thing if there are no abuses from which labor needs to be protected? So why do these employees want a union? What are the benefits if there are no abuses? If there are abuses, what are they?
I'd really like to know the specifics. I'm not arguing that there could be no benefit. I'm asking what the benefits are in this specific case. I expect that there are some but I don't want to assume what they are.
I hope that you will understand that my question was not as belligerent as yours seems to me.
Two questions:
How would you know that everyone has the same ? Only the boss knows without a union.
Also, if everyone has the same retirement and insurance plan but they are not good plans or the pay isn't good, are they not getting ripped off ?
Um. Not necessarily. If I sell you a car that has no tires and no engine, are you getting ripped off? Not necessarily. So I'd like to know the specifics of this case.
FWIW, I understand that just because my employees have the same compensation as I do, it may still be unfair. If I have no job responsibilities and they have to perform death-defying tasks, they might benefit from a union.
Then again, they might benefit even more from quitting and finding a different job.
Even a company that's great to work for today is just one leveraged buyout or restructuring away from worker's hell.
Isn't this also how companies perceive job cuts and wage reduction? Forget about Henry Ford's idea of having a population that can actually afford to buy your products, just keep cutting labor costs.
Edit: Or stock buybacks. Just as long as "the line goes up" for now doesn't matter if you run the whole ship into the ground in the future.
The impact of organized labor has been analysed a lot - have a look at the literature, it isn't trivial.
This is actually a good point, and is detrimental for similar reasons: concentration of power, reduction of competition and increased fragility of the whole system ("too big to fail").