heavyladder63There's a steep decline in pay compared to the value workers add to the economy, closely tracking the fall in union membership.
Worker productivity ≠ value workers add to economy.
Worker productivity can also go up by providing better production facilities, ie. investing in productive capital, such as modern machinery, robotics, etc. This has obviously also happened; a worker with a huge specialized production machine can produce as much as a 100 could without.
This is not so say that workers shouldn’t join unions or that workers shouldn’t recieve a bigger/fairer part of the profit. I just think we shouldn’t mislead with stats like that…
It’s not misleading at all. Whether or not using a machine helps, the point is that worker pay is increasingly disproportionate to the value workers produce due to corporate greed and political complicity. That’s true with or without machines.
uphillbothwaysWorkers make the machinery, though. Then, workers use the machinery to make more things. It may be different workers at different stages, but workers are the only means of production. Everything is produced by someone working to do so.
That’s a fair point, I haven’t thought about it like that.
hismajestyHorrible graph/desc. I would prefer a legend with those 2 colors instead.
Using two different y axis scales is really not good datavis. Can cause a bunch of misleading conclusions.
At least color the Y axes the same as the data they’re representing
The frustrating thing is that even people in unions today feel powerless. My partner’s wages are 10 years behind and her contract expired a year and a half ago. Her union rep talks more to management than they do the workers and it feels like they work for the company.
Altima NEOUnions are gutless these days. They let contracts expire without renegotiating for years. They hardly fight for real benefits anymore. They’re almost as bad as the corporations they’re supposed to be fighting.