On this Labor day it seems like a good time to discuss what labor in general and unions in specific have to look forward to.
There’s been some very good labor news recently, for example, the UPS strike:
UPS Teamsters have won their biggest wage boost in decades: at least $7.50 an hour over five years for every current UPSer, and more for the lowest-paid. Even the 1997 strike only boosted part-time wages 50 cents (equivalent to 95 cents today) over five years.
The agreement would also end the forced sixth workday for drivers, create seventy-five hundred new full-time inside jobs, and eliminate the second tier of drivers — reversing the infamous concession in the 2018 contract.
There is also a desperation effect: there has been a lot of inflation, often higher than reported (I’d judge food inflation at the check-out where I live to have been about 66% over the last 3 years and rent inflation c.40% or so.)
A lot of unions have been having successful strikes and many non-union businesses have had to raise wages to attract workers. Anti-worker forces are fighting back, with variable success. In Britain striking is likely to be near-illegal soon, and this is something Labor agrees with the Conservatives on. Laws in some US states allowing younger teenagers to work in food processing plants and so on are also an attempt to break the power of workers.
This power is based on Covid. Covid killed a lot of “essential” workers (with restaurant workers in particular taking it on the chin) and Long Covid has moved a pile more workers off the table and will move more workers over time.
This leaves those who remain in a stronger position: in a market economy without strong pro-worker laws wages are almost entirely based on the supply of workers versus demand. This can be specific, where particular types of skilled workers are short, but for non-skilled workers its mostly aggregate.
From about 1979 Federal Reserve and ECB policy has been to raise interest rates to crush the economy any time workers began to make wage gains, but this time it isn’t working: both because the shortage is real and because the West is, though marginally, trying to decouple from China, meaning China’s mitigating effect on goods inflation is decreased. There aren’t a lot of truly cheap places left where you can easily move production because most remaining cheap places aren’t politically stable and pro-US.
In Europe the news is more mixed because Europe is shedding industry due to anti-Russia sanctions. England, having de-industrialized is now losing its developed nation status.
The pressure on the workforce will continue: Covid is still around, Long Covid and sub-perceptual organ damage will continue to increase and will continue to have an effect on the labour force, not just reducing it from what it would have been, but making a lot of people, while not disabled, less able and worse at their jobs.
There are, of course, things the ruling class can do about this. In Canada we’re bringing in about a half-million new immigrants a year (which has caused a housing crisis), in a nation of 40 million. There’s the child labor law changes and the anti-union laws.
The right is going to make some hay on this, because immigration does increase the work force and thus put downward pressure on wages. If the right were simply to stop being anti-union and anti-worker in other ways, they’d clean up. Up here in Canada, I despise the conservatives, but I have friends who are now homeless because of the housing crisis caused by the Liberals immigration policies.
In the further future, immigration will continue to be the big issue. Climate change refugees will be massive in number and hard to stop (I full expect so many machine-gunning refugees stories by 2035 that it’s “dog bites man.) Elites will want to let enough in to crush local efforts to raise wages.
So we have a window to do the best we can to improve wages. After that, things will become more difficult. Inflation will continue to be an issue (there’s a small chance of deflationary depression) because climate change will lead to real shortages of raw materials, especially food and water.
Of course, if climate change were treated as the emergency it is, there would be a ton of work available, a WWII style mobilization. And that’s the best possible future at this point: a mobilization to deal with climate change properly.
We’ll see if we do, and do it while we still can, before too much civilization collapse.
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