alt Hacker NewsThe trouble with unionization is that it doesn't really address supply and demand, just bargaining. There are a dozen un-pulled levers available to bring aggregate labor supply and demand in balance. Overtime law, vacation policy, retirement policy, education funding, tax law (this is a big one -- taxes are obscenely lopsided on the labor/consumption economy vs the capital/investment economy), and so on. We need to pull those levers instead.
Yep, it's going to be a helluva fight.
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> The trouble with unionization is that it doesn't really address supply and demand, just bargaining. There are a dozen un-pulled levers available to bring aggregate labor supply and demand in balance. Overtime law, vacation policy, retirement policy, education funding, tax law (this is a big one -- taxes are obscenely lopsided on the labor/consumption economy vs the capital/investment economy), and so on. We need to pull those levers instead.
All those other levers are political policy levers, correct? Besides bargaining, unions can also do political organization and lobbying.
The result of unioninzing includes pulling those levels.
Major state interventions that altered labor supply or rebalanced wealth (eg such as standardizing the 8-hour workday, establishing public pensions, or funding universal education) were won through waves of union mobilization and working-class political pressure.
It's not one or the other. Unionization is literally (figuratively) the hand that pulls those levers.
Why instead?
All those should absolutely be addressed (especially taxes), but organizing labor could be both a powerful way to push for those changes, as well as a force to maintain better labor/capital balance going forward.