Misconception: If It Weren’t for Unions and Government Regulation All Workers Would Be Little Better Off Than Slaves
ByThe following appeared in an online forum:
If it was up to the companies, men/women/children would still be working from dawn to dusk for slave wages in unsafe conditions. If they got hurt because of the company’s negligence they would be fired and thrown out into the streets.
From what I can gather, the above is a common sentiment among socialists and communists. But it is in fact false. If I were operating a business in a market where all my competitors are heartless employers who work their employees for slave wages in unsafe conditions, I would just have to do a simple thing to drive everybody out of business and become a very wealth man: Offer better working conditions.
Unless my mean competitors changed their heartless ways, they’d all lose their employees, who’d be more than happy to work for me now. Therefore, universal slave labor is an unsustainable state in a free market, especially for workers who have some skills.
2 Comments
May 15th, 2010 at 5:50 pm
So then explain why it took an entire social movement to get these better working conditions? Why capitalists join forces whenever there has been an effort to improve work conditions?
If I’m following your logic correctly, any company that provides a safe workplace, benefits, and so on to its workers would be effectively undermining their competition, correct? Then why hasn’t this happened? That would be because the primary focus of capitalists is to their investors, not their workers. That is, to maximize profits. Profits are much lower when you begin to meet workers demands, that’s why outsourcing is becoming so popular.
Capitalists currently outsource millions of jobs annually to countries with lower working standards(thus lower costs and higher profits), that are close to slavery, such as China, India, Vietnam. Your argument here goes against the entire history of labor.
May 15th, 2010 at 8:44 pm
Not to totally dismiss the role of work force regulations, however, no law says a worker should be paid more than minimum wage, yet somehow nearly all get paid more, even those who are not unionized. Why is that?
It has. Perhaps not to the extent that socialists would want, if they want workers to have 10 hour work-weeks and retire after 10 years with full pensions…
Wouldn’t undermining the competition be beneficial to investors’ profits?
Some jobs are outsourced, but most cannot be. And in many instances, companies that outsource run into problems due to quality, language, and time zone differences. And while certain individuals are hurt by outsourced jobs, outsourcing does not result in a total net loss of jobs. Other jobs take their place. Up until the current recession (whose impetus had nothing to do with outsourcing) we’ve had full employment despite the outsourcing.
Outsourcing is akin to automation in many ways. Technology has caused many jobs to be eliminated, yet it has not shrunk the number of available jobs overall.
And China, India, Vietnam, those countries whose workers “are close to slavery,” just all happen to be socialist/communist nations. You should be happy that their workers have such great systems that look out for their needs.