DO UNIONS AND PRO LABOR POLICIES HURT CONSUMERS MORE THAN CORPORATE GREED
Even politicians on the right and especially some talk radio hosts on the right like Tucker Carlson or Joe Rogan and most MAGA Republicans are also trying to portray themselves as champions of the disappearing middle class, working people and fearing election losses do not dare to challenge the unions or openly advocate taking away healthcare or labor protections from millions of workers.
The truth is : no one is truly advocating the interests of the consumers – both parties pretend they don’t see the elephant in the room , which is the glaring fact that nothing hurts consumers more than organized labor and ever expanding labor protections.
HOW UNIONS AND LABOR PROTECTIONS HURT CONSUMERS?
What stands in the way the most to meeting our needs as a consumer? High labor costs for companies that transfer all of those high costs to us, the consumers and lack of employee accountability for mistreating customers.
When at the behest of labor unions and labor rights activists blue state legislatures unanimously vote to increase minimum wage, only small businesses attempt to protest (unsuccessfully) – consumers are silent even though it hurts consumers THE MOST – because due to minimum wage increases we are going to pay higher prices and also due to minimum wage increases we will be deprived of competition between businesses because many of them will be forced to shut down or move to red states and only the big ones will survive monopolizing the market.
When blue state legislatures voted to give employee status to Uber and Lyft drivers instead of them being an independent contractor and not being a liability and higher cost for uber and Lyft we get fewer uber and Lyft cars available, we get higher prices and we get driverless Waymo with higher prices pushing out uber and Lyft unable to compete with driverless Waymo because robots luckily don’t have rights.
When grocery store workers unionize and their wages and benefits go up, grocery chains cost of labor/cost of doing business goes up and get transferred to us so who pays the higher prices as a result? US, CONSUMERS!
When nurses union and ever expanding labor protections at hospitals provide better “working conditions”, benefits and high salaries to the nurses, we, the PATIENTS suffer the most : hospital s need to stay profitable so those higher labor costs get transferred into our medical bills, there are fewer nurses being hired, and existing nurses have no fear of losing their job or being punished due to patient abuse because they are in high demand and protected by those unions.
When motion picture industry SAG members organized strikes for many months extorting more rights, higher compensation and job protections what did we get as an audience for all those movies and shows? Higher Netflix fees and fewer good shows to watch!
SPOILED ENTITLED MILLENNIALS and GENERATION Z AS LOW QUALITY BAD CUSTOMER SERVICE LABOR FORCE
Millennials grew up in the pro-labor climate with a new poisonous concept of employee rights totally eclipsing the concept of employee duty of loyalty and good work ethic to employer and duty of good customer service to the customers, clients and consumers.
Millennials and generation Z don’t appreciate the value of having a stable job, they jump from one job to another in a matter of few months thinking it contributes to their professional growth. They think they are doing their employer a favor by working there while half-assing what they do, being negligent , spending most of their time on their phone, giving bad attitude to employer and customers and always relying on taxpayer funded social safety net between the jobs. Nothing will happen to me if I lose my job – I’ll just take a break collecting unemployment benefits, and get forbearance for student loan payments while getting medical for my health needs, or maybe get some money from my parents !
The younger the employees now the less respect they have for or loyalty to the employer that feeds them, they have no fear of losing the job, and on top of it there is always willingness to sue the boss under the fake pretext of some fabricated employment law violation.
CONSTANT THREAT OF EXTORTIONIST EMPLOYEE LAWSUITS TAKING ADVANTAGE OF DRACONIAN ANTI-EMPLOYER LABOR LAWS RAISES PRICES TOO!
As far as lawsuits go, ALL employees in California, young and old, but especially those who could pretend they have been discriminated against based upon race and gender, are inclined to sue employers taking advantage of draconian labor protections. The constant threat of being sued by employees under a pretext of employment law violations, fake sexual harassment, discrimination and wage and hour claims adds to high cost of doing business in California – which gets passed on to us, CONSUMERS as well ! In addition, cost of workers compensation coverage also gets passed on to CONSUMERS by employers – and fake and semi-fake workers compensation claims are a lucrative industry for unscrupulous workers and their attorneys.
Based upon draconian labor laws , California employers have to deal with constant extortionist lawsuits from greedy and disgruntled employees fired for poor performance to the point that employment insurance companies fled the state just like fire insurance companies so employers can’t even insure themselves against these frivolous lawsuits ! Employers can’t go to trial no matter how frivolous and egregious employee lawsuit is because juries made up of employees and bleeding heart liberals would always side with the employee, so they settle for hundreds of thousands of dollars. The cost of litigation or threat of litigation ALSO gets passed on to CONSUMERS.
SUMMARY
In California we have a spoiled, entitled and expensive labor force that costs us CONSUMERS lots of money we pay in the form of higher prices for everything. In addition to that we get poor customer service from employees who can abuse us as customers with impunity.
It is time for CONSUMERS to REALIZE that our enemy number one are NOT “evil corporations” or especially small businesses around the corner – our enemy number one are the unions and labor protections for employees ! Obviously, most of us are also employees with all those rights and privileges but there must be an understanding that those employee rights and privileges and benefits do not come from private sector companies – they come from our own pockets !
Private companies must stay profitable to survive in a healthy capitalist society so once they get taxed or regulated excessively and labor costs become too high, they charge higher prices to stay profitable, they leave the state to red states or they shut down altogether !
This is something your politicians will never tell you when they advocate for “better living wages”, “better working conditions”, “employee rights” etc…
CAVEAT NUMBER ONE
IF we finally wake up and REWIRE consumer protection agencies and consumer advocacy to fight against employee rights and for reduction of minimum wage, we must remember that we can only benefit from lower prices when there is fierce competition between businesses for our money! In order for us to benefit financially and also get better customer service BOTH employees AND businesses must be held ACCOUNTABLE. So while unions are being decimated and labor protections are getting reduced all those MONOPOLIES must be BROKEN UP TOO ! We don’t want Walmart and Amazon to take over all retail, we don’t want Kaiser type HMOs to take over healthcare industry, we don’t want restaurant chains to dominate restaurant industry, we don’t want Google to dominate online – as consumers we can only benefit when both monopolization of industries and employee rights and wages are downsized ! Removing labor protections and getting rid of the unions won’t help us, CONSUMERS and will only help large corporations to make more money if those corporations are not broken up and if small businesses are not protected from unfair competition by large monopolistic companies ! The whole point of anti- monopoly legislation was to protect CONSUMERS from monopolistic corporations dictating their rules and prices to CONSUMERS , to provide us with a FAIR CHOICE .
CAVEAT NUMBER TWO – DEVILS’ ADVOCATE ARGUMENTS
The first thing that liberal progressive will say in response to this: “are you advocating a path back to Dickens style 19th century sweatshops?”
Are you trying to bring us back to wild capitalism of the early 20th century where workers were barely surviving, living in squalid conditions and suffering abuse by employers?
Well…. labor market today would not allow this to happen because our manufacturing sector is quite limited and most modern jobs by definition are not blue collar jobs where horrible working conditions are even possible. There are many professional jobs where employers are actually competing for higher quality employees offering them higher quality working conditions and better wages VOLUNTARILY.
We have labor shortages in many industries too.
Unlike in the 19th century or early 20th century our aging demographics point to labor shortages giving labor natural advantage in negotiating decent working conditions and better wages JUSTIFIED however by the value of the employee to the company and to its customers.
Our social safety net must be downsized to relieve taxpayers from sponsoring parasites unwilling to work, but its not going to be downsized to the point of full extinction, only to the point of greater employee accountability and being more affordable to taxpayers.
So there is little risk of going back to 19th century Dickensian world (not to mention we have the luxury of using Dickensian world in underdeveloped countries like Bangladesh to provide us with cheaper goods for example and there is nothing wrong with that – as long as wages and living conditions are market based there is no such thing as “ exploitation” . IF someone doesn’t like the salary or living conditions offered to them, there are always other jobs available – there is no moral right to hurt employers private property rights by forcing employer pay more or provide better working conditions than market justifies! .
CONSUMERS MUST WAKE UP!
WE live in a world where CONSUMERS who pay for everything have the least amount of power.
Consumers simultaneously make the economy work and sustain the self-serving bureaucracy but are absolutely powerless against greedy unions, monopolistic companies and draconian labor laws that make us spend more money on things that should cost a lot less and make us suffer abuse by employees protected by draconian labor laws.
This seems UNFAIR.
Until we realize our POWER as CONSUMERS to vote pro-labor candidates out of office, our POWER to advocate for rolling back labor protections for negligent employees with bad attitude, our POWER to ORGANIZE as CONSUMERS against UNIONS and pro-labor legislation, our POWER to fight and boycott monopolistic companies, we have no right to complain about high prices or abuse by workers in the service industry or low quality products made by unionized labor.
For CONSUMERS it is time to STAND UP for ourselves and STOP TRUSTING our pro-labor politicians who brainwash us into believing that labor interests and our consumer interests are somehow one and the same and are aligned. LABOR interests and CONSUMER interests are IN CONFLICT – and we must understand it first and foremost! Nothing hurts us more as consumers than expanded labor protections, higher minimum wages, and unions. UNDERSTANDING IT is the FIRST STEP to CONSUMER POWER.