The right way and the wrong way to increase your income (get a pay "rise")
Free Trade: improve your performance, become more valuable, fill more need, become less replaceable.
Fair Trade: play the victim card, demand higher wages even though your value is declining, drive up (labor) costs so your gang profits at the expense of all consumers and society generally.
Of course a shift in technology is an ever growing factor, and will probably be the single most important factor, but wage stagnation began before it was the . . .
No, changes in technology or in other production factors came earlier, causing wage stagnation to those workers who did not adjust.
New technology and more cheap labor have always been the main factors, and there is nothing new about wage "stagnation." All these same complaints about low wages go back to the 19th century, and even earlier. The ups and downs in the numbers don't give evidence what particular factor caused which up- or downward shift in the employment numbers, regardless of Left- or Right-wing ideology claiming one way or the other.
A major cause has to be the increasing replaceability of certain workers, i.e., the declining need for them = their declining value. Politicians pushing the wage level up artificially causes reduced jobs, while the market wage declines due to higher supply of workers. The wage "stagnation" is inevitable and can only continue, until the labor unions can figure out how to repeal the law of supply-and-demand, like Joshua figured out how to make the sun stand still.
. . . wage stagnation began before it was the greatest factor, including in industries where mechanization is still not a large factor, construction, repairs, etc.
That's not how a market works. There's spillover. If a type of job is eliminated, these will switch to other professions pushing down wages. construction workers and janitor type jobs are typically the types of jobs people switch to. So you're just arguing against yourself now.
That's not what I meant, not even close.
Here is
an example;
Nothing here or from any other labor union talking-points list addresses this basic principle: you cannot improve production by driving up wages above the level necessary to attract the workers needed. If the wage level is forced up higher, it must necessarily result in some reduced production and lost jobs.
We have one case in history where the wages were driven up enough for us to see the result -- the case of Samoa -- and the lost jobs and reduced production was so great that it was easily recognized, and even the pro-labor crusaders had to admit that it did more harm than good.
But there's no case of the opposite, i.e., of empirical facts showing any net benefit from driving up the wage level. The union and pro-labor propaganda never has any facts to show how artificially-higher wages did anything but net harm. You can always point to some good happening to someone somewhere, no matter what is done to the wage level to drive it higher or lower, but there's no causal connection between forced-up higher wages and net economic improvement, i.e., for the whole economy.
Employers have every incentive to increase the wage level in those cases where there is a need to attract some workers because of supply-and-demand. I.e., any real need for higher wages, in this or that case, is automatically met by employers who do what is necessary to attract the needed labor.
''Unions should be prepared to take unlawful industrial action to win bigger pay rises because Australia’s laws make protected action too hard for workers, an influential unionist has argued.''
Every country has laws putting limits on how far labor unions can go. Collective bargaining is a form of anticompetitive behavior and restraint of trade, which is illegal for companies to do. The antitrust laws in the U.S. were once enforced against labor unions, which are cartels doing the same damage to the economy which companies do when they combine or collude to set prices and production levels.
There is no economic argument why collusion by companies is bad for the economy but collusion by wage-earners is good for the economy. Of course in many cases it's good for those producers doing the collusion.
It's best if ALL producers have to compete with each other rather than combine to fix their prices and terms at levels which reduce competition between them. Labor unions are granted more latitude to engage in anticompetitive acts, but every nation puts limits on it at some point. Because unions are cartels, they have to recognize that they are not granted unlimited freedom to engage in collusion. Small independent contractors are theoretically prohibited from engaging in price-fixing, but some of them probably do it anyway (and the harm is minor). And states define the limits on unions, in laws, allowing them to hold meetings (illegal for companies) to set terms.
The phrase "laws make protected action too hard for workers" is subjective -- There's no objective standard for setting the limits on cartel behavior of unions. Laws against unions were much more restrictive 100 - 200 years ago, when unions were mostly illegal. In the early 1800s labor meetings to demand higher wages were illegal and were usually broken up, and arguably this might have been better for the economy, because it's better if ALL producers have to compete rather than collude with each other to set their terms.
However, it's probably easier to allow some union organizing activity, governed by regulations, because it's too difficult to police all the workers and forbid meetings. So the laws are enacted to impose rules controlling how far they can go, protecting those workers not sympathetic to the union demands. Workers who want to compete are entitled to protection from the aggressive workers engaging in class warfare against the employers.
If your higher union income is due to suppressing workers who are willing to work for less, then that extra income is not earned in the competitive marketplace, but is surplus income, higher than the real value of the workers. And that artificially-high labor cost results in net damage to the economy, despite the benefit to certain workers who succeeded in getting their demands met (at the expense of the rest of the economy).
In Australia wages have stagnated for four years despite continued economic growth and improved labour productivity in part because . . .
The higher productivity is due to improved technology created by scientists and engineers, not by the workers who operate the machines. Higher labor "productivity" means higher value of the machines, produced not by the workers. It does not mean higher worker value, but often lower worker value because it means fewer workers are now needed in order to produce the same output as before.
. . . stagnated . . . in part because wage growth from enterprise agreements has been in decline since 1998.
translation: the workers have become less valuable and thus have less bargaining power than before, due to changes in the way business is done. Wages decline when the workers' value declines, due to changing conditions, including business finding better ways to produce. Workers (or any other producers) who cannot adjust to the changing conditions are less valuable and can expect their incomes to decline.
Lyons seized on the “wage crisis” to argue that employers give low pay rises “because they can” and . . .
translation: because the bargaining power of those workers has declined due to their declining value. Thus the employers "can" give less due to the declining leverage of those workers because of their declining value. It's only because of this declining worker value (due to many factors) that employers "can" do this.
. . . give low pay rises "because they can" and that unions need to see the stagnation as an opportunity to organise and “aggressively position collective action and . . .
No, anticompetitive cartel behavior is not what they "need to" resort to in response to their declining market value. Anymore than this is what businesses "need to" do if they are becoming less competitive and thus less valuable. Rather, what all producers "need to" do is improve their performance, to become more competitive and thus more valuable or MORE needed rather than LESS needed, or less replaceable rather than more replaceable as in the case of these workers experiencing low pay rises.
But if producers follow this labor leader's recommendation, then all producers will just resort more and more to anticompetitive behavior, becoming less productive but more aggressive at assaulting and crushing their competitors.
. . . and “aggressively position collective action and unions as the way to win pay rises and end wage theft”.
It's no more THEFT than when a syndicate crime boss accuses a company of "theft" for not coughing up the demanded protection payments. Aggressive criminals and other sociopaths always think it's "theft" when their demands are resisted or they fail to beat their victims into submission. The criminal mentality tends toward the worldview that anything standing in their way -- e.g., competitors who perform better, also better crime avoidance techniques -- is something immoral which is "stealing" from them. Like striking workers imagine that the replacement workers are "stealing" their jobs.
Lyons labelled enterprise level bargaining “a failure” compounded by “very tight restrictions on industrial action [and the] absolute legal prohibition of secondary boycotts or solidarity actions”.
To the labor leader anything is "a failure" if it protects consumers, and thus the nation, from the damage of the artificially higher costs imposed by the striking workers. So the "failure" of the union to thwart the market is a benefit or success to the society in general which profits from the higher level of competition.
Workers were “atomised”, leading to greater use of contracting out and labour hire to drive down wages.
translation: If it saves on labor cost, it's a crime against the working class -- there should be a law against it. Nothing which improves the company performance and service to consumers should be legal if it could result in higher pressure on workers to improve and become more competitive.
Lyons called for “genuine collective bargaining” including acting “outside the formal system” of protected industrial action.
translation: The right of workers to inflict harm onto consumers must not be abridged. Those workers must be protected against anything requiring them to improve as a condition for pay increases. Companies must not be "protected" from aggressive actions by workers to intimidate them into paying them higher than their market value. It's their God-given entitlement to be paid more than their value, whatever they have to do to gain those higher wages.
Lyons told Guardian Australia that unions “absolutely” should be prepared to take unlawful industrial action such as walkouts.
translation: to take violent measures against replacement workers, and commit crimes against anyone else, including customers who buy the company's products -- no one has any right to stand in the way of the striking workers on a crusade to drive up their wage level higher than their market value.
"If the formal system for getting a pay rise doesn’t work, we’re entitled to ignore it,” he said. “The alternative is to concede we’re not going to get a pay rise and that’s not acceptable.”
translation: The end of higher wages justifies any means, no matter how criminal or violent or aggressive or injurious to society. Anything goes if the alternative is that their demands would not be met.
Furthermore:
''Although it’s rarely celebrated, the right to strike is a fundamental human right enshrined in international law. The right to strike is closely associated with the right of employees to collectively bargain with their employer and also with the rights of freedom of association. For workers, this usually means the right to both join a trade union and to be an active participant in it. In any health check of the right to strike, invariably it is necessary to also examine the capacity of employees to collectively bargain through the unions they belong to. They are inextricably linked.''
''But when it comes to the right to strike, Australia is a backwater. The ILO has been a constant critic of Australia’s failure to comply with its international legal obligations arising from the severe restrictions it imposes on collective bargaining and the right to strike. The criticisms have gone unheeded. Industrial action, including strike action, is dying out. The number of employees whose employment is governed by collective agreements is receding at a rapid rate and the proportion of employees who are union members has collapsed to the point of existential crisis for trade unions. Union density hovers at a pitiful 14.5% of the workforce.''
This kind of whining simply describes the plight of the uncompetitive as far back as one can go in economic history, indicating how the economy generally is made better off (despite the uncompetitive whining ones), as the uncompetitive have pressures put on them to improve their performance rather than rely on Crybaby Economics or on cartel activism like guilds trying to suppress production by non-member competitors who might profit by means of their superior performance (including lower cost).
It's good for all consumers, or society generally, that the producers/workers experience these pressures to improve their performance, though it provokes the crybaby outbursts from those less competitive and their activist crusaders such as the above true-believer labor leader zealot who can't understand that it's the whole society who is supposed to benefit, not just his band of crybabies.
