Tag: labor

Protection from Us?

On Labor Day, National Review pointed out that less than 10 percent of all U.S. workers currently belong to unions.

This percentage has been declining for decades. Even during the Biden administration, when the president and his puppeteers did their best to pump up unions, the percentage declined.

In the private sector, only 5.9 percent of workers are union members.

This is great news because unions are typically bad news. By using government-sanctioned force to compel membership and extract wage rates above the market rate, collective bargaining reduces the number of workers who can be employed in a company or industry — thereby distributing wealth from the many to the fewer — and makes firms less efficient.

Only long-run increases in economic productivity enable wage rates to be permanently and generally increased in real terms.

Now, a union devoting itself only to helping workers cope with problems in the workplace — problems like an abusive supervisor or gratuitously dangerous working conditions — would be fine. But unions as we know them don’t confine themselves to such support and often don’t even offer it. Union bosses prefer to secure above-market wages perhaps because they can then siphon off some of those “rents” (as economists put it).

Meanwhile, unionism is still going strong among public employees. Although government workers constitute only about 15 percent of U.S. workers, these workers “make up about half of the population of union members,”National Review reports.

Who are these government workers protecting themselves from?

Well, from you and me, basically.

We might pay them less and we might fire them more often — if we could.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Illustration created with Krea and Firefly

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ideological culture subsidy

Slackers, Unite!

International socialists may once have rallied around “workers, unite!” but today’s young “communists” are embracing a Non-Workers movement, demanding free stuff and/or a Universal Basic Income (UBI).

This came to mind reading a recent New York Times’s op-ed, “Work Is a False Idol,” and an earlier report, “These Chinese Millennials Are ‘Chilling,’ and Beijing Isn’t Happy.” A new movement in China and elsewhere, known as “Lying Flat,” extols indolence.

Instead of a career? Working hard?

Do nothing!

Sounds like early retirement.

Very early retirement, for this is a young adult malaise.

Cassady Rosenblum, who took the trouble to author the op-ed, quoted a poem that asked “what is it you plan to do/ with your one wild and precious life?” and answered: “Sit on the porch.”

This “Lying flat” slacker movement reminds me of a novel I haven’t read, but whose theme has stuck with me, nonetheless: Ivan Goncharov’s Oblomov. It is about a young nobleman who spends the book recumbent, or so I’m told.

“Oblomovism” was a cultural obsession before the Soviet Revolution and a problem afterward. If no one produces, how could anyone consume?

With the character Oblomov, his lethargy merely drained the capital of his family’s aristocratic past.

With the hero of the new “Lying Flat” movement, Luo Huazhong — author of the mortal classic, “Lying Flat Is Justice” — he lives off odd jobs and his savings. So far, at least, self-sufficient.

With Ms. Rosenblum, it’s her parents’ porch, and, thereby, their savings.

Think of what would happen were a UBI put in place. More horizontal living and less production (for redistribution).

Oblomovism triumphs and we all lose.

After all, “Lying flat” is the perfect term for the ultimate in do-nothingism: what you do in a coffin.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags labor, responsibility, socialism, work

free trade & free markets general freedom national politics & policies

Subminimal Morality

He’s been at the job fourteen years. Congress may kill it.

Matt Thibodeau has disabilities that severely limit how productive he can be and thus how much he can contribute to the bottom line of his employer, Associated Production Services.

Under a longstanding exception to the federal minimum wage, Matt is paid $3.40 an hour for tasks like shrink-wrapping and assembling packages. The rate makes his employment feasible. (The current federal minimum is $7.25.)

Some congressmen want to scrap this exception to the mandatory minimum, calling it unfair and “out of date.”

“I felt like they were being targeted because they couldn’t speak for themselves,” says Matt’s mom, “and so that made us parents even more determined to speak for them.”

What’s out of date, or was never justified to begin with, is Congress’s federal minimum wage regulation.

Any mandatory minimum wage discourages employers from hiring persons not yet productive enough to justify the cost of being employed at the dictated minimum. It prevents low-skilled workers — on the outs of the economy — from getting a foot in the door.

Some employees initially paid only a few dollars an hour will soon improve their productivity and earn a higher wage. Others, like Matt, simply cannot advance further but can provide steady, conscientious labor within the compass of their abilities.

That’s fine. Each party to such an arrangement benefits. And his work enables Matt to be productive and valued, which is tremendously important to him.

As it is important to all of us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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too much government

Unnatural Disaster

California, gig, economy, regulations, freelancing, labor, employment,

Just get rid of it.

The “it” is AB‑5, the absurd new law attacking California freelancers.

And those articulating the good riddance are the “151 Ph.D. Economists and Political Scientists in California” who have signed an open letter to California Governor Gavin Newsom and the state legislature.

The lawmakers who last year foisted the measure on Californians pretended that they were doing gig workers a big favor by making it impossible, in many cases, for companies to hire them for regular short-term jobs.

After the legislation passed, many independent contractors quickly lost work — lots of work. For example, Rev, which produces transcripts and captions, said goodbye to all of its freelancers based in California. Many other companies — reluctant to be prosecuted for the crime of engaging in voluntary economic relationships between consenting adults — also ended relationships with freelancers.

Apparently, the anti-gig lawmakers did not realize that losing one’s means of paying for food and rent is not that helpful.

Tornadoes, hurricanes, and pandemics have a way of highlighting the importance of the economic and other institutions that make human survival and civilization possible.

AB‑5 is like a natural disaster in its effects … but not natural.

“By prohibiting the use of independent contractor drivers, health care professionals, and workers in other critical areas,” the open letter explains, “AB‑5 is doing substantial, and avoidable, harm to the very people who now have the fewest resources and the worst alternatives available to them.”

The solution is “suspend AB‑5.”

It was always the solution, the obvious solution.

But now it is even more obvious.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets too much government

The Anti-Worker Ism

California, socialism, labor, progressivism, Democrats

Progressives who lean socialist used to hide their worst intentions. Now they are letting it all hang out.

There have always been overt socialists in the U.S., of course. They would sometimes protest the reluctance of fellow travelers to fully embrace socialism’s moniker. But the sentiment “Ah, screw it, let’s just admit we want to destroy everything currently in existence” seems on the ascendance. Even a few major Democratic candidates for president are on board.

Exhibit 112 is the new nationwide push to stomp the gig economy.

Especially freelancing.

This follows Exhibit 111, the recent and so far successful push to stop independent contractors from engaging in voluntary transactions in California. (Many lawsuits are underway.)

After scanning the coiled legalese of 111 — I mean AB5, California’s law — many companies decided that ending relationships with California-based freelancers was prudence with a capital P. And that rhymes with G, and that stands for Golden. Which the Golden State used to, uh, B.

Not every self-employed person has been thrown out onto the street. There are carve-outs. Actually, the only known victims are taxi drivers, cleaners, nurses, comedians, writers, editors, musicians, transcriptionists, citizen initiative petitioners, etc., etc.

The crackdown on non-9-to‑5 work arrangements has also resulted in much gnashing of teeth by gig-seekers of all ideological stripes.

Obviously, then, such massive destruction of economic freedom must be inflicted on the federal level too. So House Democrats put AB5’s gig-killing provisions into Exhibit 112, that is, into HR2474, pending legislation.

Democratic candidates for president Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders have endorsed the California statute, a national version, or both.

Ludwig von Mises had a word for this. He called socialism “destructionist.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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initiative, referendum, and recall too much government

The Gig Is Up

California, gig, freelance, law, control, interference, intervention, labor,

Eventually, champions of government intervention, of all forms of thwarting independent judgment and killing dreams, find themselves under assault. From the public.

And you don’t need an economics degree to grasp why.

Initially, an intervention prevents other people from pursuing projects, getting jobs, earning a living. Then, finally, government meddling goes a step too far. Maybe lawmakers had “good intentions,” but hey! This is me now!

Your legislation needs tweaking!

This is where we are in California’s attack on the so-called gig economy. Hatched to “protect” Uber drivers or some such nonsense, Assembly Bill 5 makes it massively harder for companies to classify freelancers as independent contractors. After it was signed into law, many companies — from blogs to transcription services — told California-based freelancers adios.

Millions of people lost work and options.

What walks of life are affected? All.

“California’s new gig worker law is … threatening all performing arts,” complains Brendan Rawson at CalMatters.org. California has “overreached.” Gotta nip-and-tuck that otherwise “worthy” bill! Use only the magic arbitrary intervention in our lives that works!

Not everybody now being hurt was previously okay with pushing other people around, of course. I’ve never been a fan. One of my missions is defending the right of citizen initiative. Well, AB5 makes it much harder and more expensive for petition campaigns to hire people for such gigs as collecting signatures for an initiative in California.

AB5 attacks earning a living, speaking freely, associating freely, and petitioning one’s government freely. Maybe the law will be rescinded. But there’s more mischief where that came from.

So let’s protect other people’s freedom … and stop the overreach before it reaches us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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