Who is his employer? Has he signed a contract someone that requires him to pay this money? Does he get a paycheck? You cannot compare what an independent contractor or self-employed proprietor does to what an employer that must obey labor laws does. Those who own their own businesses often work long hours and don’t take any wages. That doesn’t mean that Wal-Mart can treat its workers the same way.[quote=“nox, post:81, topic:32156, full:true”]
They. Can. Quit.
You would rather deny them the opportunity to do something they want?
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Formally speaking, everyone can quit. That’s not an excuse for failing to follow labor laws.
Nobody in life is guaranteed the opportunity to do something they want. I want to punch my boss in the face sometimes. The law doesn’t let me do that. I’d like to sell one of my kidneys, but the law doesn’t let me do that, either. Id like to drive really fast like I can in Germany, but the law says no to that, too. Laws that work for the benefit of society almost always place limitations on things some of us might otherwise like to do.[quote=“nox, post:85, topic:32156”]
Collective bargaining is weird. It protects the people in the collective but harms those outside of it. It changes the situation from one of “X work is worth Y dollars” to a blackmail situation of “we’ll all quit at once”.
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The negotiations are never about x work being worth y dollars, but about how cheaply you can replace z worker. In fact, there’s no such thing as “X work is worth Y dollars,” at least not in the sense you’re using it. There may be productivity per hour, but this says nothing about how much workers will be paid. Maybe one hour of work adds $100 in value to the company. The employer would like to pay as little as possible and keep the gains of trade for himself, while the workers would like to see as much of the gains as possible. If the employer can pay $10, then he gets to keep the other $90 in productivity gains, while if the worker gets $90 then the employer only gets to keep $10. Any accepted contract between labour and the employer is beneficial (and could be anywhere between minimum wage and $100), with the actual wage being paid determining who gains the most… but there’s no straightforward situation where x work is worth y dollars, as though this will dictate “fair” pay.
Collective bargaining attempts to rebalance the system to how it might have existed hundreds of years ago. Think of auto manufacturing. Three big three might employ (or have employed) hundreds of thousands of workers at any given time. Auto workers thus have three employers to chose from, while the employers have hundreds of thousands to chose from. The manufacturers could turn down hundreds of employees who ask for too much, but employees could only turn down two offers. Collective bargaining essentially brings parity in the number of workers and employers, as would have been more typical in historical times when there was more theoretical bargaining equality.
