In the United States, the oldest traditional trade unions are trade unions, such
as carpenters, plumbers, plasterers and other workers'unions. They are also
skilled and well-paid workers like doctors. Recently, the fastest-growing unions
— indeed, almost the only ones that have grown — are those organized by
government workers, including primary and secondary school teachers, police
officers, health workers, and various other government employees. New York
City's municipal workers' unions showed their strength by pushing the city to
the brink of bankruptcy. The case of primary and secondary school teachers and
municipal employees illustrates a general principle that has been clearly
demonstrated in Britain. Their unions do not deal directly with the taxpayers
who pay their members' salaries, but with government officials. The looser the
relationship between taxpayers and the government officials with whom unions
deal, the stronger the tendency for government officials and unions to collude
with each other at the expense of taxpayers-another example of some people using
other people's money for third parties. This is why unions of municipal workers
in large cities such as New York are more powerful than those in smaller cities,
and why unions of primary and secondary school teachers are becoming more
powerful as government control of school activities and education funding
becomes increasingly centralized and divorced from local government. The British
government nationalized more industries than the United States, including the
coal industry, utilities,
bottle
blowing machine, telephones, and hospitals. In Britain's nationalized
industrial sector, trade unions are generally particularly strong and labor
problems are the most serious. The same causality is reflected in the strength
of the United States Postal Workers Union. Assuming that strong unions have
higher wages for their members, the obvious question is: Do members get higher
wages because the union is strong, or is the union strong because the members
get higher wages? Union defenders claim that higher wages for members strengthen
the union, and that when all workers are members,
Beverage
packing machine, all workers will receive higher wages. However, the
situation is much more complicated. A union of highly skilled workers can
undoubtedly raise the wages of its members, but people who are paid well anyway
are in a good position to organize a strong union. Moreover, the ability of
unions to raise the wages of some workers does not mean that widespread unionism
will raise the wages of all workers. On the contrary, this is the root cause of
the misconception that strong trade unions can win benefits for their members,
first and foremost, at the expense of other workers. The key to understanding
this is to understand the most basic principle of economics, the law of demand:
the higher the price of something, the fewer people are willing to buy it. Make
a certain kind of labor more expensive, and the job opportunities provided by
that labor will be reduced. By making carpentry more expensive, fewer houses
will be built,
PET
blow moulding machine ,
juice filling
machine, and those that are built will use building materials and methods
that do not involve much carpentry. Air travel will become more expensive by
raising the wages of airline pilots. Fewer people will fly, so there will be
fewer jobs for airline pilots. Conversely, if the number of carpenters and
pilots is reduced, they will get higher wages. By reducing the number of
doctors, they can charge higher fees. A successful union can reduce the number
of jobs it controls. As a result, some people who hope to get such jobs on union
wages will not be able to achieve their goals. They were forced to turn
elsewhere. More workers will seek other jobs, driving down wages for those jobs.
Universal unionization will not change this situation. This means higher wages
for those who find employment, and at the same time, more unemployment for
others. It is more likely that there will be strong unions and weak unions, and
that members of strong unions will receive higher wages at the expense of weak
union members, as is the case now. Union leaders often say that wages can be
raised by reducing profits. This is impossible: there is simply no margin to
raise wages. About 80% of the entire national income of the United States is
currently spent on wages, salaries and small concessions. More than half of the
balance is used to pay rent and interest on loans. Corporate profits-a point
often made by union leaders-total less than 10% of national income. This is the
profit before tax. After tax, corporate profits are about 6% of national income.
Even if all the profits are invested, it is almost impossible for everyone to
receive high wages. Moreover, this is tantamount to killing the goose that lays
the golden eggs. Minimum profits provide an incentive to invest in plant and
machinery and to develop new products and new methods. This investment and these
innovations have increased the productivity of workers in recent years and have
prepared the necessary resources for high and high wages. Raising the wages of
some workers is bound to harm others. Nearly three decades ago, one of us
estimated that, on average, about 10-15% of workers in our country, through a
union or an organization like the American Medical Association, have their wages
raised by 10-15%, while another 85-90% of workers have their wages reduced by
about 4%. Recent studies have shown that this is still largely the case. The
wages of high-wage workers are getting higher and higher, while the wages of
low-wage workers are getting lower and lower. Milton Friedman, On the Influence
of Trade Unions on Economic Policy, in David McCord Wright, ed., The Influence
of Trade Unions (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1951), pp. 204-234. More than a
decade later, H. g． Lewis, after more detailed and extensive research, arrived
at the same estimate, in American Unionism and Comparative Wages (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1963), p. 5. All of us, including people who are
highly organized by unions, are indirectly harmed as consumers by the impact of
high wages for union members on the price of consumer goods. The price of the
house was too high for everyone,
water
bottle packaging machine, including the carpenter. Unions prevent workers
from using their skills to produce the most valuable things, and workers are
forced to work in less productive ways. For all of us, the total amount of goods
available is less than it should be.
gzxilinear.com 