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Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Timesian labor economics.

The NY Times editorialsts opine about labor economics:

The Labor Agenda

...The first and biggest test of Mr. Obama’s commitment to labor ... will be his decision on whether or not to push the Employee Free Choice Act in 2009. Corporate America is determined to derail the bill, which would make it easier than it has been for workers to form unions by requiring that employers recognize a union if a majority of employees at a workplace sign cards indicating they wish to organize [eliminating the secret ballot vote unions often lose]...

The measure is vital legislation and should not be postponed. Even modest increases in the share of the unionized labor force push wages upward, because nonunion workplaces must keep up with unionized ones...
I guess we can ask the workers of Detroit about how this has worked out for them, eh? How their wages have been boosted by the UAW. Those we can find who still have jobs...
Detroit, the nation's poorest big city, is the poster place for a central city in a free fall, having lost half its population over the last 50 years, with no end in sight. Motown's economic losses have exceeded even those of its population. From 1970-2000, the city shed more than half its jobs... [Detroit Free Press]
Less anecdotally, Andrew Biggs charts the relationship between the degree of unionization of the work force and labor's share of national income, internationally, and finds ...
there's no strong statistical relationship between one and the other... The split between workers and owners seems pretty much independent of whether the workers are union-represented or not.

This seems strange given that we know that, in the U.S. at least, unionized jobs pay more than non-unionized ones, even within the same industry. The question is, who is "paying" for these higher wages? It might be other workers...
Like, maybe, the non-UAW workers (and former workers) of Detroit?