It is. Labor providers are organized and connected in all sort of structures, ranging from golf club memberships and industry associations over questionably-legal wage fixing deals to ~~outright bribing~~ donating to politicians. In contrast, just about 10% of US workers are unionized [1].
This disparity is the reason behind a large part of wage stagnation and other areas where employment conditions are far behind of what has been achieved and fought for in Europe.
Absolute wages are higher in the US than in Europe.
Wages have not stagnated in the US, either. What measures of inflation do you use to come to that conclusion? The labour share of GDP has been roughly stable over the last few decades.
> Absolute wages are higher in the US than in Europe.
They are, but do not forget that in Europe, our take-home wages already have healthcare, social security and pension contributions taken care of, and our housing and general cost of living (e.g. groceries) are also vastly lower than in the US.
> They are, but do not forget that in Europe, our take-home wages already have healthcare, social security and pension contributions taken care of, and our housing and general cost of living (e.g. groceries) are also vastly lower than in the US.
Well, Europe is big. Cost of living differ between different places.
You can look at measures like 'disposable income' or similar metrics.
Doesn't really matter too much what specific metric you use, US incomes are higher.
Thanks for the source you linked to. To quote them:
> Changing the price deflator used to adjust wages for inflation can boost measured wage growth. But wage growth would still lag far behind growth in economywide productivity, [...]
They are either using difference inflation metrics for productivity vs wages, or their definition of 'far' is different from mine.
Since 1950, the amount of compensation going to labour has fluctuated around 59% - 65% of total GDP in the US. A fairly narrow range; and no reason to say anything like 'lag[ging] far behind'.
Because we are looking at a ratio, it doesn't matter how or even whether we adjust for inflation here.
So all productivity improvements that make it into GDP also make it proportionally into wages. You can't really ask for more, can you?
Whether wages have stagnated is then a question of whether real GDP has stagnated. And, alas, unions aren't really known for driving productivity in the US. Just the opposite.
Of course, you can argue about median vs average. And that's a very valid discussion to have.
More accurately: employers are forbidden by many different mechanisms to join forces, are actively watched to prevent the formation of monopolies, and punished when they do, and are often restrained in many other ways by regulations.
Labor is not only allowed to collaborate in order to form monopolies and cartels, but is also legally protected when it does.
Please do explain how this disparity is in favor of employers.
It is in spite of these differences that employers have great leverage, not because of them.
It's plain to see that the inherent coordination problems facing workers are much harder than the ones facing managers. It's plain to see that a capitalist is far better positioned to negotiate a labor contract than someone trying to feed their family.
Please explain how history has repeatedly shown capitalists more ready, willing, and able to exploit their position. See the recent labor price-fixing scandal in the tech industry for one relevant example.
"It's plain to see that the inherent coordination problems facing workers are much harder than the ones facing managers"
It is not plain to me. Employers are just people too, but if they try to conspire with other employers they must do so in secret lest their conspiracy be discovered and punished. Your example of wage fixing in the valley shows this in action perfectly. Yet if employees want to do the exact same thing for the exact same ends (manipulating labor prices), they are not only allowed to do it in the open, conferring great advantages, but they are also protected by the government from any sort of retaliation. They may even be allowed to use company property to organize with!
It's pretty clear therefore that labor has the advantage here.
"Please explain how history has repeatedly shown capitalists more ready, willing, and able to exploit their position"
It hasn't. That's a Marxist trope, not an accurate reading of history. History is full of businesses going bankrupt or being outcompeted because of rising labor costs, or indeed, being exploited by unions. The history of Detroit is a good example of that, or the entire British auto industry. Alternatively, look at all the software companies struggling to compete with FANG-boosted wages. It's hardly an environment where capitalists are exploiting the workers.
Coordination problems go up in complexity by the square of the number of actors. Since employers meaningfully participating in the labor market average many more than one employee, and employees average somewhere around one employer, employers start at a very significant structural advantage, particularly large employers. The scant legal protections you mention serve to help equalize this disparity, but it is laughable to suggest that they somehow put employees out ahead.
The history of labor is full of people killed and injured by police and other thugs-for-hire by capitalists who couldn't be bothered to care about anything but their profits.
"Coordination problems go up in complexity by the square of the number of actors"
Yeah? Then how comes unions are often bigger than companies, sometimes containing entire industries? This "fact" sounds made up. People are not random graphs.
As for violence, the history of unionism is full of union thugs beating up scabs, management, and anyone else who got in their way. Anyone can play the game of "long ago some people were violent". It's not relevant to today's situation.
This disparity is the reason behind a large part of wage stagnation and other areas where employment conditions are far behind of what has been achieved and fought for in Europe.
[1]: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm