You mentioned 1877. Have you seen the book, “1877: Year of Violence” by Robert V. Bruce? It’s from the 1970s and is an excellent review of and why events played our as they did. The year was an explicit lesson to people who founded the IWW 30 years later.
I am a new reader, and I appreciated this piece. I think it is great to see workers banding together to push back against the inhumanity late-stage capitalism encourages.
The question I have is what, if anything, is to keep the CEOs and stockholders from just passing these wage increases into the customer? I know very little about labor unions and strikes, so I was wondering if there explicit terms within contracts that dictate where the raises come from? Or how does that work? Feel free to just point me the direction of some reputable sources!
You raise an important question. Especially in this era when the cost of living has spiked, none of us want to see prices go up. And I think if union contracts do lead to higher prices, American's historically high approval of unions may be subject to erode.
I hope you don't mind me chiming in. I don't have Joshua's expertise, but thought I'd weigh in with a couple of thoughts while we await his response.
In general, if we accept your premise that late-stage capitalism encourages inhumanity, one way that manifests is that companies will generally charge as much as they can for something. I'm sure this is a naive statement on my part, but not all companies have room to increase their prices to meet higher labor costs, because they already are charging as much as customers will pay (before pushing back), confounded by factors like levels of competition.
More importantly, I think it's important to consider the possibility — and I know this is hard to accept when everything seems so expensive — is that exploitation of labor has suppressed consumer prices for many years. The most obvious example of this is Amazon, which can discount almost all its books and promise overnight delivery by exploiting fulfillment center workers.
(Personally, I've never heard of terms within contracts that dictate where the raises come from. Those would make for a much more difficult negotiation. But perhaps Joshua has additional light to throw on this.)
I'm really not naive about the tendency of CEOs and shareholders to hoard as much money as they possibly can and always look for other ways to cut costs or defray expenses (e.g. labor). Just thought I'd offer some food for thought.
You mentioned 1877. Have you seen the book, “1877: Year of Violence” by Robert V. Bruce? It’s from the 1970s and is an excellent review of and why events played our as they did. The year was an explicit lesson to people who founded the IWW 30 years later.
Oh no I haven't! Thank you I love a good book recommendation
I am a new reader, and I appreciated this piece. I think it is great to see workers banding together to push back against the inhumanity late-stage capitalism encourages.
The question I have is what, if anything, is to keep the CEOs and stockholders from just passing these wage increases into the customer? I know very little about labor unions and strikes, so I was wondering if there explicit terms within contracts that dictate where the raises come from? Or how does that work? Feel free to just point me the direction of some reputable sources!
Thank you again for your labor!
You raise an important question. Especially in this era when the cost of living has spiked, none of us want to see prices go up. And I think if union contracts do lead to higher prices, American's historically high approval of unions may be subject to erode.
I hope you don't mind me chiming in. I don't have Joshua's expertise, but thought I'd weigh in with a couple of thoughts while we await his response.
In general, if we accept your premise that late-stage capitalism encourages inhumanity, one way that manifests is that companies will generally charge as much as they can for something. I'm sure this is a naive statement on my part, but not all companies have room to increase their prices to meet higher labor costs, because they already are charging as much as customers will pay (before pushing back), confounded by factors like levels of competition.
More importantly, I think it's important to consider the possibility — and I know this is hard to accept when everything seems so expensive — is that exploitation of labor has suppressed consumer prices for many years. The most obvious example of this is Amazon, which can discount almost all its books and promise overnight delivery by exploiting fulfillment center workers.
(Personally, I've never heard of terms within contracts that dictate where the raises come from. Those would make for a much more difficult negotiation. But perhaps Joshua has additional light to throw on this.)
I'm really not naive about the tendency of CEOs and shareholders to hoard as much money as they possibly can and always look for other ways to cut costs or defray expenses (e.g. labor). Just thought I'd offer some food for thought.
Those are excellent points to consider Bob, thanks for chiming in!