The problem is that most tech workers want incompetent workers fired, since they make other workers lives more difficult. The field also moves fast enough that credentialization is not particularly helpful. In fact, it can be harmful.

Unions would call for rules like "10% of new projects must be in COBOL" to help older workers that don't want to re-train.

German style unions aren't as opposed to guaranteeing worker performance, I'm not really sure why. That might fly, but keeping it German style would be difficult.

The other option is something along the lines of the WGA/SAG. But individual developers are treated well enough that that isn't seen as worthwhile.

Also there are the problems unions have with corrupt elections and organized crime.

My point is that unions are a mixed bag, and for many tech workers they're a bad deal.

I'm not saying that unions are perfect. I'm saying that it's inconsistent to admit that they can be problematic while still holding that the free market is the ideal.

I'm a libertarian, and I support the existence of unions... but I also support the existence of Right to Work laws. A union should have to work to justify itself to its members, not be empowered by law to collect funds from individuals who do not wish to be in the union. Unions should be shielded from punitive violence by their employers... which I wouldn't even see fit to mention except that history says it needs to be mentioned... but if the employer can "just" hire replacements then the simple truth is that the union is negotiating itself right out of its market, and it needs to be forced to face up to that, not hide behind the government.

Unions are part of the free market, and should remain part of the free market. They should come and go as companies do, and the very fact that so many are The Union for their industry and that the same unions are nearly-permanent fixtures of the landscape is significant evidence that they are themselves artificially-created government monopolies, and I view them with the same suspicion I would any other government-created monopoly.

I think unions can do great things to protect the workers they represent, but I hate that many (most?) of them seem more focused on things like retirement benefits and policies that have the effect of making it difficult to impossible to fire bad employees.

You can do, but die-hard free market types only ever seem to disagree with how unions currently operate, not how corporations currently operate.

I took at job in a grocery store where the union was on strike - the only reason I didn't have to join the union was because they were striking and I was working directly for the corporate HQ. Pay wasn't bad, though I suspect they were having to pay more to get us scabs to come in through the picket lines :)

I'd prefer union places where you could elect to join the union or not. If they actually lobbied for better conditions for union members, and got those, there'd be more incentive to join - you'd be making the union mgrs work for their jobs, essentially.

In terms of "making the union managers work for their jobs," is that really a problem right now? I haven't often heard arguments suggesting unions are just collecting dues and doing nothing. Generally the only anti-union argument I've heard is that unions are too powerful and their members have overly generous compensation.

Huh. Those sort of closed shops are illegal in the European Union, and have been for years, your right to join a trade union must mean you have the right to not join a union. Needless to say, unions and socialists in EU were not so happy with that.

It's weird to think that part of the USA have more union friendly than the EU

Perhaps it would be possible for an employer to offer separate union and non-union contracts with different pay rates (employers can already sort of do this by outsourcing) but the issue here is that not all union issues are about contracts.

For example , a union might negotiate for a factory to provide extra safety measures at the employers cost. All employees union or not would get the advantages provided by this unless the employer provided separate more dangerous machines for the non union workers to use.

I'm no expert, but I know that in at least some jurisdictions a union-endorsed strike carries protections against worker dismissal.

And the law gives company owners protection against personal liability, and taxes companies different from personal income, while it also prohibits employers from having an unsafe workplace, child labor, and practicing various types of discrimination.

We are far from a free market. I agree with the earlier poster - I think a free market enthusiast should also want unions.

Laws enforcing a requirement to purchase from a cartel are about as far from a free market as you can get.

Saying free market supporters should favor unionization is like saying free market supporters should oppose net neutrality. In a free market, net neutrality is certainly something to oppose, but in the world we live in it's necessary to counteract the government granted duopoly held by Verizon/Cable.

I'm hard pressed to think of any advocate of a free market who wants this law in place.

But a closed shop arose not from legal statute but by an agreement between the company and the union. There's no need for government involvement, except to settle contract disagreement.

In fact, it's quite the opposite! Closed shops are illegal in the US, under Taft-Hartley Act, though they are legal in some other countries. Union shops are legal, except where the states have prohibited that practice.

The question to the audience is, shouldn't a free market advocate want to reduce both the laws which give unions specific power AND those which take power away from unions?

If your concern is about monopoly powers, well, 1) that's a restriction of free trade, so our hypothetical free market advocate might not want those restrictions either, and 2) why aren't they regulated under anti-monopoly laws, rather than specific anti-union laws?

As to the net neutrality issue, well, that's a mixture of morality and an abuse of monopoly power. I believe you're only focusing on the latter issue for now. (And I think our government is and has been entirely too closely intertwined with business, and especially big business, for too long, which has allowed these abuses to grow.)

Is an employer a sort of monopolist? I believe they are. While there are exceptions (IT in the Bay Area during the dot-com era being an obvious one), for many people it is not easy to quit and easily find new employment. Otherwise Nevada wouldn't have a 10% unemployment rate. The problem with monopolies though isn't that they are monopolies, but that they can abuse their monopoly power.

You rightly pointed out that unions can abuse their monopoly power. But so too can companies.

So the modified question to the audience is: shouldn't a free market advocate want to reduce both the laws which give unions specific power AND which take power away from unions, so long as there is no abuse of the monopoly power?

Unfortunately, the easy answer by an anti-union person is that unions are, by definition, an abuse of monopoly power, so this question has no real utility. And I can't come up with a better phrasing.

Yes. I'd love to scrap all laws relating to unions and have the law treat them as worker-owned consulting companies.

Is an employer a sort of monopolist? I believe they are. While there are exceptions (IT in the Bay Area during the dot-com era being an obvious one), for many people it is not easy to quit and easily find new employment. Otherwise Nevada wouldn't have a 10% unemployment rate.

Can you explain this claim? What prevents any employee from leaving and selling their labor to another willing party?

Many people find it difficult to leave and find higher paying work, but that just means their current employer is paying them at or above market [1].

Unemployment is (according to Keynesians at least) a mismatch between employee's desired wages and market wages. It has nothing to do with monopoly power. A simple way to test this - is unemployment higher in sectors with a smaller number of firms?

[1] A common reason for this is the accumulation of firm-specific knowledge. That is to say, an employee's value to the employer is X+Y, where X is general knowledge (useful to all employers) and Y is useful only to the current employer. I.e., X is general programming, Y is knowledge of a specific legacy system. This is a situation with both a monopoly and a monopsony - the employer can't find outside employees with legacy system knowledge and the employee can't find outside employers with that specific legacy system.

There are many organizational forms. I wouldn't choose a company. It should be a cooperative, as described at http://www.sba.gov/content/cooperative . "Not all cooperatives are incorporated, though many choose to do so." And "Democracy is a defining element of cooperatives. The democratic structure of a cooperative ensures that it serves its members' needs."

"Can you explain this claim? What prevents any employee from leaving and selling their labor to another willing party?"

Sure. You mentioned Keynesians. Quoting the Wikipedia section about cyclical/Keynesian unemployment: "With cyclical unemployment, the number of unemployed workers exceeds the number of job vacancies, so that even if full employment were attained and all open jobs were filled, some workers would still remain unemployed."

In that scenario, there are few willing parties to sell one's labor to. How is that not structurally similar to a monopoly? An employer in that situation can abuse their monopoly power, and take advantage that the switching costs for the employee to get another job are so high. In short "you take a 5% cut in pay or I fire you and hire the next person who walks in that door." It doesn't even need to be said: "you will take a 5% cut in pay" implies "or you'll have to quit and find another job."

We don't need to be in a Great Depression for that to happen. Or do you think the 2009-2010 spike to 14% unemployment rate for Michigan was all due to people deciding to stay unemployed while holding out for higher paying work?

Using a similar calculus to your model, the switching cost for an employee includes [1] the difficulty of finding a nearby job, or moving and feeling uprooted (and finding new schools, new job for the spouse, etc.), [2] potentially being called a 'complainer' or 'quitter' or labeled 'unable to handle heat' by members of the community or black-balled by industry, [3] the lost wages/opportunity cost between quitting one job and starting the next, [4] the basic stress of having to get up to speed with a new job, meeting new people, and understanding the new social environment, [5] the emotional impact of looking for a job and getting a bunch of 'no's (My Mom got her EE degree, as a 50 year old woman, and tried looking for a job. The many 'no's she got became quite discouraging. People may stay with a job, with its external torments, than deal with the internal.)

You may object, and saying that if a person stays after a 5% pay cut then it shows that the job was priced above market rates. However, I would consider that practice an abuse of monopoly power.

Further, there's a Gambler's ruin issue to quitting, with the employer taking the role of the casino. It might be that a person has a job lined up, moves across the country, only to find that the position is soon no longer there. If that person's unlucky (as what happened with my Dad when I was little), then that could happen twice in a year. (We moved in with his parents for a few years while my parents built up savings again.)

When someone quits, they take the admittedly small chance that they may end up sleeping in a car or other situation drastically worse than what they would had had, should they stayed. While the likelihood that the employer will have correspondingly large negative impact when an non-key employee quits is significantly, even laughably, smaller.

This too makes the employer/employee relationship more unbalanced, and so open to abuse by the side of the employer.

Or do you think the 2009-2010 spike to 14% unemployment rate for Michigan was all due to people deciding to stay unemployed while holding out for higher paying work?

Nominal wages have increased during the recession. If employees were willing to take a pay cut to become employed, that shouldn't have happened.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/ECIWAG

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/ECICOM

I'm not actually a Keynesian myself - I tend to subscribe to recalculation theories for this particular recession, though I definitely believe sticky nominal wages definitely play a role. But I appeal to Keynesian theories in this discussion since many union supporters tend to profess support for Keynesian economics (while oddly supporting institutions which create wage stickiness).

An employer in that situation can abuse their monopoly power, and take advantage that the switching costs for the employee to get another job are so high.

Your theory yields no reason an employee can't do the same thing. Replacing a worker also involves transaction costs, and rather high ones (look at the price of a recruiter).

Once a person is hired, there are switching costs on both sides. You have yet to demonstrate any structural difference between them.

For "basic survival" I mean "under our cultural expectations." I don't want the US to be 80% Hoovervilles, even if that does get us to near full employment. That's the extreme conclusion, but is it not fully justified by that simplified analysis?

I am quite of the view that we should first decide what we want to get from our economy, and adjust the market rules to improve the changes of reaching that goal and to minimize the changes of catastrophe.

My observation is that people want security, expressed monetarily as reduced personal or family risk. Sticky wages reduce risk. Health insurance reduces risk. Protection from capricious management decisions reduces risk. Higher wages reduce risk by being able to build up a larger savings, though in practice few do that so this isn't all that secure. I believe the risk issue here is analogous to the Gamblers Ruin, in that people with low income and low savings are more at risk to statistical fluctuations which can expose them to greatly reduced living conditions.

Then, as a moral question, how do we use Keynesian economics (or any other economics model) to reduce the risk? We can have legal systems to review contract violations, we can have wage freezes (both up and down), we can have increased worker protections, etc.

Okay, so the Keynesian model says that this increases unemployment. So what? One response is that we shouldn't have these restraints on the market. Another response is that we have increased government support, to minimize the sharp edges of being unemployed. A third is that we look to the churches, or other NGOs, to provide the social safety net, and a fourth is to look toward unions or unemployment insurance. A fifth says to look towards extended families and friends.

The Keynesian model says nothing about the morality of the choice. It only suggests the likely consequences.

"Your theory yields no reason an employee can't do the same thing."

I didn't say they couldn't. I was elaborating on why an employee couldn't easily quit and move to another job. Stories abound about people using their employment position to get special perks. I got basement parking for one job, with the management cars, rather than parking with the rest of the employees in the lot 3 blocks away because I complained and because I wasn't trivially replaceable. Then again, I complained because management decided to move the company to a place further from where I lived, and I had no part in that decision. So it's a complicated issue.

But my theory says that I have less power over the company than they have over me, because I am closer to living out of my car, should my personal decision to quit prove disastrous, than the company is in going bankrupt because they decided to fire me.

Agreed. As I said, I'm not a Keynesian. I'm glad you agree that monetary and fiscal stimulus will often be ineffective.

If employees want to reduce risk, why would they want sticky wages? Sticky wages increase risk of having your wage cut to $0.

I'm also curious - you acknowledge that given higher wages, employees choose to spend the money on consumer goods rather than mitigating their risk. Why would they do this if risk reduction is their primary goal? It seems as if you are incorrect about what people actually want.

But my theory says that I have less power over the company than they have over me, because I am closer to living out of my car, should my personal decision to quit prove disastrous, than the company is in going bankrupt because they decided to fire me.

This is true, but irrelevant. To determine "market power" in any model I've seen, the correct comparison is dollar amounts on both sides.

Also, your point about transaction costs does show that there is wiggle room (for both employees and employers) on wages/benefits. That's a far cry from monopsony or anything even remotely close. Perhaps you can clarify your position - how large (in $) do you think transaction costs of changing jobs actually is?

I never said that. Obviously a stimulus of $100 will be ineffective, but you can draw no conclusion about "often" (or "rarely") from what I wrote.

> Sticky wages increase risk of having your wage cut to $0.

Based on the research I did yesterday, and described in http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4963624 , "In a baseline New Keynesian model, labor market frictions render real wage rigidity potentially irrelevant for the dynamics of inflation." and "The mechanism emphasized by Hall (2005) and Shimer (2005) that helps the search and matching model fit the facts, appears to have a neutralizing effect in sticky price models."

The search and matching model is the one I hand-waved here. Inflation isn't the same as unemployment, so this quote isn't directly transferable. But it seems that wage stickiness or lack thereof doesn't have as much effect on the economy. Instead, it increases the volatility of hiring and job creation costs.

I referenced the paper of Krausea and Lubikb, http://www.tau.ac.il/~yashiv/kl_jme2007.pdf . It includes a term for what I've been saying is a cultural morality to have sticky wages. "We employ a version of Hall’s (2005) notion of a wage norm to introduce real wage rigidity. A wage norm may arise from social convention that constrains wage adjustment for existing and newly hired workers."

> employees choose to spend the money on consumer goods rather than mitigating their risk

Because people don't make fully rational economic decisions. You might as well ask why so many people smoke, even with the knowledge of how it affects their health, or ask why I've stopped exercising despite knowing its positive benefits. Why did the banks make so many subprime mortgages? Why did so many people agree to them even with high chances of not being able to pay?

If you want, I think you can model things like "I really wanted a new computer" as a random external event akin to an unexpected medical problem or broken plumbing, and bring the analysis back into the rational hypothesis.

> To determine "market power" in any model I've seen, ...

Really? The Krausea and Lubikb paper says "The parameters describing the household are standard. We choose a coefficient of relative risk aversion σ = 2." A constant relative risk aversion implies a decreasing absolute risk aversion, so the more money one has the more willing one is to take risks.

This makes it sound like many economic models - or at least those based on the search and matching model - include risk taking as part of the analysis. Can you square my observation with your statement? Perhaps it's because their model isn't used to determine market power per se?

> your point about transaction costs does show that there is wiggle room

I'm afraid I've lost the point of this thread. I say that employment can be viewed as a monopoly, and more importantly, that an employer can abuse those monopoly powers. And yes, an employee, and especially a union of employees, can be viewed as a monopoly and also abuse its monopoly powers.

You do not believe this is the correct analysis, and you believe that the various economic models back you up.

Do these quotes help show that economist have considered my hand-waving models in much more depth?

- There are search-and-matching frictions in every sector and firms post vacancies in order to attract workers. The cost of posting vacancies and the matching process generate hiring costs. Moreover, search-and-matching frictions generate bilateral monopoly power between a worker and his firm, as a result of which they engage in wage bargaining. -- http://restud.oxfordjournals.org/content/77/3/1100.full

- A specific class of models argues that wage rigidity might arise in the context of risk- averse workers and risk-neutral firms. In a seminal contribution, Thomas and Worrall (1988) develop a model with self-enforcing wage contracts whereby risk-neutral firms provide insurance to risk-averse workers. In their model agents cannot commit, but contacts are nevertheless self-enforcing due to an extreme reputation assumption, ac- cording to which an agent who reneges on a contract is forced to trade on the spot market forever after. Efficient contracts are contained in a certain interval and when- ever the wage leaves this interval, the agents update the wage by the smallest possible change that puts the wage back into the interval (i.e., on the bounds of the interval). Rudanko (2009) embeds this kind of model into an equilibrium model of directed search with aggregate shocks. In her model a constant wage emerges if both agents can fully commit, in which case the risk-neutral firms provide insurance to risk averse workers through optimal long-term wage contracting. In contrast to Hall (2005), her micro- founded model of perfect wage rigidity does not lead to a substantial increase in the cyclical volatility of unemployment. -- http://www.econ.upf.edu/eng/graduates/gpem/jm/pdf/paper/Pape...

The description model of Rudanko sounds like your statement - that wage rigidity leads to increased unemployment during recessions - isn't necessarily true.

Quoting from her site at https://sites.google.com/site/leenarudanko/ : In this paper I develop a tractable extension of a Mortensen-Pissarides style matching model that allows for risk averse workers with limited ability to smooth consumption. I show that this leads to a form of equilibrium wage rigidity. This rigidity arises because the inability of workers to smooth their consumption across unemployment and employment spells changes how unemployed workers value wage offers, and hence also the offers that employers find profitable to make.

Aren't these quotes in opposition to what you've been describing, and more in line with the ideas I've described here?

That's not saying that the model is right, or that I'm right, only that there are economic models which agree with my views, so my views are not outright rejected by economic theory, while you think they are.

I'm afraid I've lost the point of this thread. I say that employment can be viewed as a monopoly, and more importantly, that an employer can abuse those monopoly powers.

The standard model says this is correct within the transaction cost interval. I agree with this model, which is why I asked you: "how large (in $) do you think transaction costs of changing jobs actually is?"

I.e., if the transaction costs are $3k, monopsony/monopoly models might explain why someone's wage is $51k vs $53k, but they don't explain why it is $50k vs $25k.

I disagreed that your examples of Hostess/etc were related to this model, since the price changes there were far larger than any reasonable transaction cost I could think of.

Near as I can tell, Rudanko isn't doing anything different from this.

Also, you were correct that I should have said risk-adjusted dollar costs should be used to determine market power. Note, however, that risk-adjusted dollars are not the same thing as P(bankruptcy), which you seem to be using.

To conclude, I think your parameter choices are wildly off (e.g., to make your ideas work, I think you need transaction costs proportional to wages). I strongly recommend actually writing down your models (with numbers and math) to clarify your views.

I am unable to calculate that, nor provide a good estimate. People do strange things for love. Does it always make economic sense? No.

What is the transaction cost of forcing your kids to leave school and boy/girlfriends if the job change requires moving? What is the transaction cost of asking your husband to quit his job and leave the church where he's been a deacon for the last 10 years? I once talked with someone who loves the sea, and couldn't think of leaving away from it. What's the transaction cost, were she your wife, to move her to a better paying job in Oklahoma? Does that include the costs of divorce, should she find that she loves the sea more than you?

What is the economic cost of being considered a "failure" and a "quitter", or "not a team player" by your neighbors and ex-coworkers? Of being disowned by your family for switching from Jehovah's Witness to Southern Baptist? Of being the sole outspoken atheist in a small Bible Belt town?

These can be estimated, certainly, but those estimates feel like post hoc parameter fitting. "If person X won't switch to another job which pays $3k more, then the price on staying is worth at least $3k." With enough parameters you can fit anything.

Can you tell how the various economic models include these factors into the cost model? How do they estimate these various costs I've outlined?

Going into semi-obscure New Mexico history, in the 1950s the 82-year-old John Prather was offered $200,000 for his mule ranch in southern NM, so that White Sands Missile Range could be expanded. The price was well above the going rate for the land, but he was the last hold-out. He was one of the last of the US pioneers to the American West, and he wasn't going to leave. Period. He would rather die in a gunfight than move.

Americans liked the romantic idea of one of the last pioneers still living the old ways, which put pressure on the Army and the police to not force the issue. They gave up, and Prather stayed there until he died.

What would you say is the transaction cost for him to move? Obviously staying there was worth more than $200,000 to him. Was it $5,000,000? Was there any amount of sum which would have gotten him to move? If no such number exists, then can you even use an economic model for this event?

BTW, in our other thread I asked this of you: do monopolies (or cartels, for that matter) ever abuse their monopoly (or oligopoly) powers? If so, do you use moral guidelines to determine what constitutes abuse?

In practice this almost never happens. Employers are very reluctant to cut nominal wages, even if they could afford to hire more workers that way and get a more economically efficient outcome. This phenomenon is called "sticky wages" and is believed to be a significant cause of unemployment in recessions.

In summary, the relationship between unemployment and labor pricing power is believed, by many economists (most notably Keynsians but also e.g. market monetarists) to be about the opposite of what you said - stickiness of wages causes greater unemployment, rather than unemployment causing downward pressure on wages.

I was using that as an example. It could be "work fewer hours", "reduce health care", "have no chance for promotion", "laid off" or other things where the employer has control over an employee's future.

However, as to "almost never happens", here are some recent examples:

- In the recent Hostess/Twinkie news, "Though he imposed an 8 percent pay cut for all Hostess workers, Gregory Rayburn’s monthly $125,000 pay — or $1.5 million a year — will remain unchanged" http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/12/04/1278131/hostess-...

- An undated article but likely from 2008 (not recent, but I wanted the last quote): "The company will slash executive compensation up to 50%, cut many employees' pay as much as 15% and offer voluntary buyouts to its 25,000 workers.", "Ohio-based AK Steel, aks for instance, said on Dec. 3 it would implement an indefinite 5% pay cut for salaried workers, including the CEO and executive officers. ", ... ""It's not common, but in each recession it seems to be picking up speed … as proactive employers figure out that it's very expensive to lay people off and then go back and hire them," Lingle says." ( http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=6514494&page=1#.... )

- more about the steel industry: "the world's largest steelmaker and among the largest in the U.S., has told the union it wants to cut wages and benefits for all workers by more than $28 an hour, or 36%, from an average $77.40 in 2011 and eliminate retiree health care for anyone hired after Sept. 1. The steelmaker also wants the "unilateral right" to cut wages during periods of reduced operations and to schedule 32-hour work weeks." http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000087239639044409790457753...

- (Ireland, 2012): "The Labour Court has recommended that construction workers should accept a pay cut of 2.5%. It comes on top of a 7.5% pay cut introduced some years ago.". I believe the pay cuts would have occurred earlier had the unions not been involved, but that's conjecture.

- 2012: "Scranton, Pa., slashes workers' pay to minimum wage" and in defiance of a judge's order: http://www.nbcnews.com/business/scranton-pa-slashes-workers-... .

- 2012: "Muskegon school employees take pay cut to save their jobs", http://www.mlive.com/news/muskegon/index.ssf/2012/10/muskego...

- 2012: "Madawaska School Committee backs off teacher pay cut decision". The school board decided to make the cuts, then "general counsel warning that the proposal could “constitute an unlawful refusal to bargain in good faith” and open the school department up to litigation" caused the board to reverse their decision.

- 2012: a first account of how the person adjusted to a spending cut: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/first-person-pay-cut-taught-pe...

- 2012: "Detroit police see pay cut in checks despite judge's order" http://www.freep.com/article/20120826/NEWS01/120826033/Detro...

I think this is enough to establish that, while uncommon, it is no hen's tooth.

My thesis is that some employers can be viewed as a monopoly provider of jobs. But monopolies in and of themselves are not a problem - it's the abuse of monopoly powers which is the problem.

"Abuse" is almost by definition a question of morality, not of economics. It may be better for the economy (more prosperous, shorter recessions, or some other measure) should we once again allow child labor. Indeed, I've heard more than one person argue that a reason for banning child labor was to raise wages for adults by introducing a shortage of workers. But the bans stay because of moral reasons, and we export our morality to other countries when we demand that our clothes and other items not be made with child labor. Even if the economics of that country would be better with more local child labor.

The morality comes into play here because part of the reason people work for a company is to reduce personal economic risk. As a consultant, my income is highly variable, and it's stressful when that income is low. Even when my income is high, I can't make the same economic decisions as someone who is salaried and with the same monthly salary as my average, because of the Gambler's Ruin issue I mentioned. There can be and have been times when my savings became quite low, and I was seriously considering getting a salaried job. While now, my income is quite above my average.

A salaried job is an exchange of services for money. The general expectations are given in the contract, the law, and the general culture. One of the employee expectations is that the salary will generally be stable, and it will be more stable for government jobs than at a company. People will go into civil service for that increased (perceived) stability, even though it doesn't pay as well.

But unlike, say, overtime pay, this stability is not usually part of the contract nor (in the US) the law. A company can unilaterally decide to cut wages and/or benefits on employees. I've shown examples where that has happened this year. The abuse comes in when companies start breaking both the explicit and implicit promises which are part of the employer/employee relationship. If pay cuts becomes more frequent, then there will be increasing outrage, and the implied stability will be made explicit in either the law, or the contract, ... or people will accept that they have no control over their month-to-month wages. I think the latter is bad for us as a culture.

You and the economists may be perfectly correct in saying that "stickiness of wages causes greater unemployment." What action should be taken from that observation? Should there be laws which prevent stability clauses in a contract, in order to reduce unemployment levels? Or should there be a basic stipend so people can be unemployed for longer while they search for a job with higher stability levels?

This thread started in part because of an observation that in many places in the US there is a broadband duopoly with AT&T and Comcast. In and of itself, this is okay, so long as they don't abuse those power. The recent "Data Caps Help Carriers Rake In Huge Profits" (e.g., http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/19/report-data-caps-help-carri... ) gives an example of what I would call an abuse of that duopoly power.

I've carefully said "broadband duopoly." There are other ways to get access to the internet, including some 3 million people who use dial-up for AOL. Monopoly law is careful about defining a market before looking to see if there is an abuse of monopoly powers.

I assert also that employment should also be subject to a similar market segmentation analysis. If there's only one factory in town, paying $45/hour, and the other jobs are retail and fast-food paying $10/hour, then those are different employment markets. Yes, someone could quit the factory and start working at the DQ, but someone could also quit with AT&T and switch to AOL dial-up. The local factory has a monopoly on high-paying jobs for the area, and can (and does!) use that market advantage.

My thesis is that the same analysis used to identify monopoly abuse in the market should also be used to identify monopoly abuse in employment relationships. No, employers aren't necessarily monopolies, nor do they necessarily abuse their monopoly if they have one. But I think the parallels between monopoly abuse and unilateral change of employment conditions are close enough that the former has bearing on the latter.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with monopsony buying power - there is nothing preventing Hostess employees from finding alternate employment except the fact that Hostess still pays them more than their next best alternative.

If your theories about employer monopsony power had any relation to the real world, then we would simply not observe wage stickiness.

Your claims about a monopsony on "high paying jobs" is also nonsensical - by this logic, walmart has a monopoly on "low priced goods". You are conflating price point with category of good, which is incorrect.

Now, you might have an argument if you actually want to discuss specific specialized jobs - e.g., statin chemist or algebraic topologist. An argument about monopsony power might actually apply here. But applying it to drivers, machine operators and burger flippers is silly.

Besides, if Hostess cuts wages from $40 to $10 and gives up their monopsony power, isn't that a good thing? By definition, they no longer have the ability to abuse their monopsony.

"there is nothing preventing Hostess employees from finding alternate employment except the fact that Hostess still pays them more than their next best alternative"

And your point is that it's moral for Hostess to keep cutting wages until people start leaving for other positions?

My argument is all about morality, not economics. How morality is carried out must acknowledge the economics, but economics does not dictate the morality. I argue that there is a cultural expectation that salaries will rarely decrease, and that expectation is part of the cultural morality. The culture expectation exists, because people get a job in part to reduce risk. Otherwise we would all be contractors, and demand a higher income in order to handle the higher risk exposure. But there's a cultural difference in what it means to be an employee and what it means to be a contractor. Perhaps the distinction is that employees also trade loyalty for security, where contractors only trade services for money. I've not thought so deeply about that distinction.

"If your theories about employer monopsony power had any relation to the real world, then we would simply not observe wage stickiness."

You cannot make the observation "we would simply not observe wage stickiness" and conclude there is a lack of employer monopsony power. You have to show that there are no other reasons which can counteract that effect it, even in the face of monopsony.

Other factors may dominate. As an example, suppose a commandment in the Bible were 'employers shall not reduce the wages of their employees.' If the owners of a company followed Christian principles as well as legal ones then you would still observe wage stickiness, despite the lack of a law to that effect. Even if the employees were all non-Christian and don't care about that law per se, and wouldn't protest if the employer didn't follow that religious law.

As a more real-world example, you can't look at Chik-Fil-A and conclude that there's no market for fast-food chicken on Sundays, or that people won't work on Sundays for fast-food chicken stores.

Researching this now, I am expressing basic aspects of the search and matching model. "Jobs in the Search and Matching model are characterized by monopoly rents, due to the matching frictions that give rise to search costs and unemployment," says http://personal.lse.ac.uk/pissarid/papers/WB_ECMA.pdf .

I see that my morality issue is described as a "wage norm" in http://www.tau.ac.il/~yashiv/kl_jme2007.pdf , starting with "We employ a version of Hall’s (2005) notion of a wage norm to introduce real wage rigidity. A wage norm may arise from social convention that constrains wage adjustment for existing and newly hired workers."

I tried to understand their conclusion. It starts off "In a baseline New Keynesian model, labor market frictions render real wage rigidity potentially irrelevant for the dynamics of inflation." and continues "As one component of real marginal costs, wages, becomes less volatile, the other component, hiring and job creation costs, becomes more volatile. The mechanism emphasized by Hall (2005) and Shimer (2005) that helps the search and matching model fit the facts, appears to have a neutralizing effect in sticky price models."

I read the first part as saying that the baseline New Keynesian model isn't affected by real rage rigidity (but you disagree and say it is, correct?) If my interpretation is correct, then this is an area where non-market forces, like wage norms, can be a stronger influence because they don't directly affect the success or failure of the company.

I read the second as saying that the main effect of wage rigidity is the volatility in hiring and job creation costs. How either the dynamics of inflation or the volatility of hiring and job creation costs affects the unemployment level is beyond my understanding, but from what I understand of the paper suggests that what you see as clear evidence - wage stickiness - does not necessarily imply a lack of monopoly.

"But applying it to drivers, machine operators and burger flippers is silly."

I never said it applied to all employees. I say that employment is sometimes not fungible. You seem to both agree (as for an algebraic topologist) and disagree ("there is nothing preventing Hostess employees from finding alternate employment except the fact that Hostess still pays them more than their next best alternative").

When something isn't fungible, then its scarcity affects its price. You can hardly say that that's surprising. In that case, it's easy for an employer (or, yes, employee) to abuse the advantage. The employer's best alternative to giving in to a demand is to fire the person. The likelihood of the company going out of business while it finds a replacement is low. The employee's best alternative to giving in to a demand is to quit. The likelihood of the employee facing tight financial difficulties is higher.

"by this logic, walmart has a monopoly on "low priced goods""

Every time I've said "monopoly" in relation to jobs I've said that the issue is not monopoly but abusing monopoly power. Can you make the case that Walmart is both a monopoly and abuses its monopoly powers?

Microsoft faced monopoly charges not because it was the only supplier of Microsoft products, and primary supplier for the desktop OSes in the world, but because of claims that it abused its monopoly powers. I think the history of unions shows cases where companies have used abused their employment power, and I think the best model is to say that there is either a monopoly or cartel of employers which made that possible.

"if Hostess cuts wages from $40 to $10 and gives up their monopsony power, isn't that a good thing?"

No, because it's a risk management thing. People become employees partially to minimize long-term risk. Giving up their monopsony power (by going out of business) increases employee risk.

I'm fine with monopoly power so long as it isn't abused. I don't want to force a break-up of Microsoft just because they might abuse their monopoly power, because that breakup could be worse for the employer, the employees, and the customers.

A question for you is - do monopolies (or cartels, for that matter) ever abuse their monopoly (or oligopoly) powers? If so, do you use moral guidelines to determine what constitutes abuse?

I ask because I've talked to ardent free economy supporters who believe in no restrictions, not even to prevent monopoly abuse. Yes, even to the point of wanting to allow child labor and indentured servants. Because I believe we must use morality to guide where we want economics to take us, if you don't also believe in moral restraints on the market then this conversation will go nowhere.

The action that should be taken based on the fact that wage stickiness causes unemployment is at minimum to avoid making them more sticky, e.g. by regulating wage cuts as if they are "monopoly abuse".

The problem being that without unions, labor becomes subject to oligopsony buying power and Ricardo's Law of Rent kicks in.

So if a union lacks market power, an employer is legally free to fire the union employees and replace them with non-union employees at market wages?

The problem being that without unions, labor becomes subject to oligopsony buying power and Ricardo's Law of Rent kicks in.

Can you explain this claim? While it's certainly true in a few narrow fields (chemistry/biotech, various specialized corners of academia), it's hardly true in the economy at large. In what fields do you believe an oligopsony is present?

Quoting from Wikipedia: "The Law of Rent states that the rent of a land site is equal to the economic advantage obtained by using the site in its most productive use, relative to the advantage obtained by using marginal (i.e., the best rent-free) land for the same purpose, given the same inputs of labor and capital."

Where "land" is taken as capital, equipment, and/or alternate business opportunities, the employee's wage-bargaining leverage, in the absence of collective bargaining, is what s/he could make by going elsewhere and starting up a new firm. Where no new business opportunities exist, wage bargaining falls to subsistence levels (employers will pay employees the bare necessities for staying alive).

In the economy at large, the situation still remains true. An employer need pay an employee no more than that employee could claim at another job (or by going into business for him or herself), given the employee's skillset.

Given that skills tend to wed to experience, should the employee transition to a different line of work (at which they are less skilled), unless there is a peculiarly high demand for that work, their wages will fall. Also, the employer's surplus (that is, productivity above wages) is governed by the Law of Rent.

Given collective bargaining, through the threat of withholding labor (with skills that, collectively, the employer would be hard-pressed to replace), a negotiation for total compensation (wages, hours, benefits) in which more of the employee's surplus is distributed to the employee may be arranged.

This is true not just of the employment market, but of most goods markets. There are far more buyers of cars/computers/cheese than sellers. Does this mean that pizza producers have oligopoly selling power?

Your theory is too broad. It applies to virtually everything.

In the economy at large, the situation still remains true. An employer need pay an employee no more than that employee could claim at another job (or by going into business for him or herself), given the employee's skillset.

Conversely, an employee needs to accept as wages no less than the wage he could get from another employer. This is true of any market - a purchaser needs to pay no more than market price, and a buyer needs to sell for no less than market price.

All you are describing is market pricing. Are you claiming all markets are oligopolies or oligopsonies?

A buyer usually has very low switching costs between merchants. That said, yes, there is a great deal of concentration in retail, especially as you go back up the supply chain. For electronics and other advanced goods, there is typically one or a very small set of manufacturers (at least at the component, if not the finished product scale), e.g.: Foxconn for laptops and mobile devices, a handful of disk drive and memory manufacturers, etc. For food, there's a huge level of concentration at the mid-market, through Monsanto, Tyson, Cargil, Con-Agra, etc., despite the huge number of individual food outlets.

While I don't claim that all markets are oligopolies/oligopsonies, a great many are (or exhibit a great deal of concentration, or of market distortions such as healthcare) including many of those comprising a large share of the US economy: health, finance and insurance, utilities, retail. Enough so that what we consider to be the conditions of a free market: economically small buyers and sellers with equivalent information and low switching costs meeting in an open marketplace, are actually met in only a small portion of the economy as a whole.

I have seen references to this many times. Is this true in the States? I was once a teacher (not in the States) and did not have to sign up to any union. Apart from lawyers and medical personel and maybe a few other "special" professions you don't have to belong to a union to offer your services - at least here in the EU.

Unionization is by employer, not by profession, though a few professions (e.g. managers) do lack the ability to gain legal protections by unionizing.

In other words, I don't think it's unreasonable to say "Device X would be desirable in ideal situation Y, but as the current situation is far from ideal, device X currently does more harm than good".

And again, I don't necessarily personally believe that to be true of unions.

  > unions tend to erode meritocratic systems of
  > compensation and advancement

Certainly playing corporate politics can also have an effect, depending on the company, but that's also true in union shops as well.

A union is a cartel. I don't mean that in as a normative statement. Unions may still be worth having, even if they are a cartel in that they workers band together to raise what they charge for their labor.

But, that is the logic by which many "free market" advocates oppose unions.

As in: "if I want to have people working 20 hours per day, with no overtime for less than minimum wage, I should be FREE to do so, and people are FREE not to work for me".

That's the kind of "FREE" the free market stands for usually.

Of course, when all employers follow the same idea, or when people are desperate to find any work to survive (e.g because of a lack of jobs in their city), the latter point about "choice" becomes moot.

-- a fellow cynic.