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TrackBack URL: http://econlog.econlib.org/mt/mt-tb.cgi/190
The author at Tim Worstall in a related article titled Carnival of the Capitalists writes:
COMMENTS (6 to date)
Bill Stepp writes:
As a former factory worker during a couple summer vacations, I must dissent from the view that the ability to operate a machine is a nontransferable skill. Surely a lathe operator or forklift driver can do the same job in more than one company. Skilled machine operators move from factory to factory all the time, frequently making lateral job changes involving the same skill sets, although sometimes moving into management and I would guess even sales on occasion. Posted January 27, 2005 8:03 PM
Randy writes:
It seems to me that labor unions fail for the same reason that all socialist programs fail - free market forces eventually overwhelm them. The reason such programs often appear to be successful is that it takes time for market forces to adapt. It can take years for even small programs like union locals - and generations for large programs like social security - but the free market will eventually adapt. Socialism only works within a free market, and then only temporarily. Posted January 28, 2005 9:49 AM
Lawrance George Lux writes:
The general Worldwide trend remains the decline of Unions. Arnold's comment on generic human capital is valid, but there are other contributory reasons: the transference of power to Corporate structure through aggregation of financial assets, the actual differentiation of human skills, and finally the greatest; the inability of Unions to negotiate with the immediacy and specialized skill as can individual labor and Management. lgl Posted January 28, 2005 12:47 PM
Jeffrey Perrin, CFA writes:
In my blog, OpinionMeister, I link to this article and comment on it. My comments were as follows: The article does not get into the question of why unions have been so successful among local, state and federal government workers, but I think this same analysis fits. How many skills that a government civil-service employee picks up at work could possibly be transferable to the private sector. Posted January 29, 2005 5:47 PM
superdestroyer writes:
Unions have expanded at the government level because all governments are basically right to work states. A federal employee does not need to join a union to work for the federal government. Also, public employee unions are much more limited in what they can negotiate. Wages and benefits are set indepenent of unions most of the time. Public unions negotiate on items such as creating barriers to entry or working conditions. Thus, government workers have less reason to oppose unionization and governments have fewer economic reasons to oppose unionization. Posted January 30, 2005 10:21 AM
David Foster writes:
This analysis is just plain wrong. As Bill points out, plenty of working-level factory jobs are highly transferrable: in fact, one of the primary characteristics of mass production is the ability to train people for assembly jobs in a matter of a couple of weeks. You say you learn to operate the machinery in a particular plant but that knowledge is of no value in another plan: this is strange since totally custom machinery is rare: everybody buys their machine tools, robots, etc from the same companies. Posted February 1, 2005 9:46 PM
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