Comment by asuffield | Hacker News Reader

Comment by asuffield | Hacker News Reader

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It's certainly possible for unions to prevent manufacturing that pays less than a living wage. It's not clear to me how they could ever cause it to happen. The big problem that hasn't been mentioned so far in this thread is the other side of the equation: it's not enough to make the job pay a living wage for the workers. It must also produce a product that consumers want to buy, which means producing it at a price those consumers are willing to pay.

There is a very direct relationship to consider here, because the consumers and the workers are often the same people. If one worker takes one week to manufacture an item which that worker is not willing to buy at a price of one week's wages, then they should not expect to be able to make a living from this.

What unions can do - and frequently have done - is raise the minimum price of goods and transfer some fraction of this to the manufacturing workers. If this makes the goods too expensive, then the factory closes down because people aren't buying them.

The cost of labour is substantially lower in various Asian countries. That isn't going to change, and you've effectively stated that you're unwilling to accept paying local labour similar rates. The conclusion you should be drawing from this is that the only way to make manufacturing work in this environment is to massively improve the productivity per unit of labour. You need to be getting away from people assembling things with their hands, and towards workers who build and maintain manufacturing automation.

Sadly, when this opportunity arose in the recent past, it was those same unions who tried very hard to block it, and were successful in that goal - manufacturing is still a laborious manual process.

Want to change this? Stop learning how to weld. Learn how to build a welding robot.

There's a little more to it than that, especially if you're looking at the historical example of the auto companies.

Back in the 70s-90s, the Japanese were beating the pants off the American automakers. But this wasn't because of price, at least not by the 80s. It was because the American companies weren't producing products that people wanted to buy. In the 70s, American cars were huge gas guzzlers, and with the '74 gas crisis, people wanted smaller, more efficient cars, and the Japanese sold them. By the 80s, Americans had finally figured out how to make small cars again, but they were crap, so people happily paid more for Japanese cars than for competing American cars. The Japanese cars were far more reliable, lasted longer, used less gas, looked better, were nicer in pretty much every way, so their higher cost was seen as worth it; only people buying solely based on price bought American cars. Labor rates were a factor, but not that much: by the 90s, Japanese labor rates were significantly higher than American labor rates, so to decrease costs the Japanese had opened many assembly plants in the US (but in places where they could avoid unionized labor, like Ohio and the South). The cars made here in the US still had great quality unlike cars made by the American automakers, and sold very well.

Today, we still see a lot of this: various Japanese and European automakers have assembly plants here in the US to take advantage of our cheaper labor rates, but their vehicles are still generally seen as superior to American-brand cars.

Basically, you can chalk it all up to management. The American cars have been undesirable because of poor decisions by upper management at these companies. You can't blame crap quality on line workers; they didn't design the car, they're just doing what they're told by managers and engineers. And engineers are constrained by the decisions made by management.

Sure, it's certainly possible for affordable manufacturing at wages everybody is willing to accept to still manufacture products that nobody wants to buy. Getting the manufacturing right does not excuse making a bad product.

>If one worker takes one week to manufacture an item which that worker is not willing to buy at a price of one week's wages, then they should not expect to be able to make a living from this.

The manufacturing industry is not the tech industry. You can't produce physical goods with just your brain. Raw materials and machines play also part in the manufacturing cost, not just wages.

Indeed, but the statement remains true. If it takes one week of labour to produce something that one week's wages won't buy, the price is clearly too high to sell. The correct price will have to be somewhat lower than this, for the reasons you state (among others).

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