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Teeqoz on 06 July 2017
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Superman4 said:
Teeqoz said:
You could get completely rid of the minimum wage if more American workers were unionized. I mean jesus christ, only 10.7% of the American work force is unionized. That's ridiculously low. If more people became members in labour unions they would have a much better bargaining hand when it came to wages.

Unions are why jobs are going overseas. Just pay a lawer to represent you and you will spend your money better. Union dues pay the employees of Unions, State and Federal laws dictate labour law. Unions do fight for higher wages and benefits and in turn companies charge more for their products, the employee gets a higher wage and gets to give the union dues which eats into their take home pay.

The jobs that are going overseas will go overseas regardless. US low-skill workers in movable industries can't compete with those workers from China/India/etc, and no one can compete with robots.

As for wether it's worth it, on average, unionized workers make 10-30% (varies between types of jobs and age groups) more than non-unionized workers in the US. The highest premium is for low skilled jobs, because people in higher skilled jobs on average have more leverage to negotiate pay, but even for them they benefit around 10%.

People that make $10 an hour will make about $20000 a year working normal shifts, which would be bumped up to about $23000 (on average) for the comparable unionized worker (using a reasonable estimate of 15% better pay). Meanwhile, union dues for such a worker would only be around 350$ a year.... So it is definitely worth it.