Quote:
Originally Posted by ferrets_bueller
The concept of some form of an international labor union for unskilled workers isn't viable. Too many workers willing to work at subsistence wages because the alternative is not to subsist.
And if by chance a stable rising class of unskilled labor takes a foothold and union formation is viable, those jobs can be shipped to....now what is the word I'm looking for??....oh, yes... a shithole country. The ability to shift production anywhere to on the globe isn't going away.
Too many forms of governments around the world vehemently oppose the concept of labor unions. In states where the government is the final arbiter of what organizations are permitted...China and Russia being examples...the government claims to speak for labor, and an independent labor movement is viewed as a threat. In hard left socialist states, .... what's left of them... the same is true. Go ahead and start a union in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, and the like. Those countries will squash an independent labor movement like a cockroach.
Labor unions now seem to work best in democratic, mixed socialist/capitalist societies where there are other factors that bind the country together. One of those factors, like it or not, is often ethnic homogenesis...or tribalism, if you will. I'm not saying that is necessarily a good thing, but it appears to me to be true.
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It doesn't have to be one union, and it could be other protections, from minimum wage to government supervised and set wages.
The key is that there is absolutely nothing that makes an hour of work in the Philippines worth less than an hour of work in China, and an hour of work in China worth about the same as an hour of work in Mississippi, and an hour of work in Mississippi worth half what an hour of work in Massachusetts is worth.
The only differences are macroeconomic and political ones: Mississippi has chosen to be a low wage economy with minimal protections for workers; Shanghai has chosen to be a higher wage economy, and the Philippines really don't have much of a choice because they're stuck with a colonial legacy that limits their options.
But working protection for unions into trade agreements, for example, helps move toward the even playing field, and we don't have any choice anyway, it is just a matter of how long it takes to get there.
