Not2BSubjugated
Callous Individualist
I do want to make sure that I understand what you are saying before I make any more of my smart ass comments.
Do you think that going on strike or belonging to a union is immoral?
It depends on why you're doing it. If it's because you have a truly abusive employer, that's one thing. If it's because you want or need more pay, benefits, whatever for no more effort on your part, then yes, I believe that's wrong because providing what you need or want simply isn't your employer's responsibility
And, if YOU ran a business, would you pay your workers the least amount of money that you possibly could. Regardless of how successful your business was?
Of course I would. I just don't think that would be the peanuts you think it would. What I would need to pay to actually get someone to work for me would be dependent on similar, in demand skill sets are going for. If choose to pay less when there are reasonable opportunities for more close by, then I'm not going to have many employees. Not good ones any way. And wouldn't you, as a job seeker, try to get paid as much as you could? Why is the job seeker in the moral right for getting as much as they can out of an employer while the employer is morally wrong for trying to pay as little as they can? The more you get out of your employer the less there is left for them to take home for themselves, just like the less they try to pay the less there is for you to take home. Both sides are doing the exact same thing.
Interesting replies. I think that you have an unusual take on unions and the reason working people have a need for unions and the benefits unions give employees. I've never belonged to a union, my Dad did. Plus I lived in a UAW city for many years. Till all the GM jobs went south.
Don't know what you do for a living but if you were union represented, you would probably be making more than 15 bucks an hour. If you are skilled labor. Would that be a good thing?
But I don't think you appreciate what Henry Ford understood. If you don't pay people enough money to make a decent living then you don't have the consumers that a consumer economy like our really needs.
Increased paychecks for hourly working people will stimulate the economy much faster than CEO's and other executives getting an extra few million in bonus money for slashing payroll. IMO.
I'll give you this, I don't see anything morally wrong with unionizing. If the market you're in will bear it, more power to you. Get that money.
From what I understand of Henry Ford, though, his philosophy was as much about being able to streamline his production so that his product was cheap enough for the working man to buy as it was about paying people more so they'd buy his product. Seriously, think that one through: "If I give the workers in the factory more money, I can trade them my product to get a percentage of it back!" That's not sound math. 6 year old could tell you that. Choosing, all by yourself, to overpay your employees (pay them significantly more than the going average for people in similar positions) has its advantages. More people will apply and you'll have a larger pool of potential candidates to choose from, giving you better odds of coming upon some truly valuable workers. However, if you honestly believe that arbitrarily giving your workers enough to make sure they can afford your product is going to increase your profit margin, I don't even know how to begin to help you.