105
submitted 17 hours ago by maplesaga@lemmy.world to c/canada@lemmy.ca
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 3 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

Nice theory you got there, shame it doesn't bear out in practice. In normal labour conditions workers have no leverage over employers to demand higher wages because workers have to take any job available in order to avoid homelessness and hunger. Workers demand for jobs is inelastic. Only in labour shortage scenarios workers have leverage to demand higher wages. But even then industry consolidation counteracts that because large corporations not only have price setting market power in the consumer market but also in the labour market. This is why the only consistent way to create similar leverage for worker in the labour market is unionization. Wages have never grown significantly enough to chip away wealth inequality except in the presence of strong and wide unionization. This is the main reason why increased labour productivity decoupled from wage increases since the 70s and 80s, when union busting started picking up around the world.

Rapidly increasing labour supply can make wages worse but that's not the main driver as there have been periods where wages have both been increasing with significant immigration and also others where wages were stagnant without significant immigration.

[-] maplesaga@lemmy.world -2 points 11 hours ago

Sure I'd say unionization is eroded by mass immigration and capital shallowing, wouldnt you?

[-] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 4 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

No I wouldn't. I would say unionization is eroded through various union busting strategies as practiced as far back as the 19th century. The incentives to bust unions operate on individual firm level and do not require any other macro level phenomena to explain. Firms bust unions because unions increase wages and higher wages reduce profits.

this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2026
105 points (92.0% liked)

Canada

11715 readers
399 users here now

What's going on Canada?



Related Communities


🍁 Meta


🗺️ Provinces / Territories


🏙️ Cities / Local Communities

Sorted alphabetically by city name.


🏒 Sports

Baseball

Basketball

Curling

Hockey

Soccer


💻 Schools / Universities

Sorted by province, then by total full-time enrolment.


💵 Finance, Shopping, Sales


🗣️ Politics


🍁 Social / Culture


Rules

  1. Keep the original title when submitting an article. You can put your own commentary in the body of the post or in the comment section.

Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca also apply here. See the sidebar on the homepage: lemmy.ca


founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS