Unions are not the primary mechanism between employers and workers for establishing fairer wages in many European countries. Unions are designed to level a power imbalance between an employer (typically a legal vehicle which aggregates the material self interest of various actors) and the employees who would otherwise have to act alone.
Myopically focusing on wages while ignoring the many other concerns about the distribution of power and legal rights is a common misunderstanding.
Hourly wages in Germany are not that different from the US. Depends a bit on how exactly to compare - nominal, PPP, net/gross, etc.: e.g., average nominal is about 10% higher in the US, real median is higher in Germnay, ...
Overlooking that we are comparing the richest EU state to all 50 US states, doesn't that further the point that having unions is are at best uninfluential.
Your zero-content bias is on display, but I'm not in the least American. If I were American I probably wouldn't have seen so much union nonsense.
Imagine how high must those salaries be in union-prolific Euro nations, compared to the measly ones of those uncivilized Americans!
Unions are not the primary mechanism between employers and workers for establishing fairer wages in many European countries. Unions are designed to level a power imbalance between an employer (typically a legal vehicle which aggregates the material self interest of various actors) and the employees who would otherwise have to act alone.
Myopically focusing on wages while ignoring the many other concerns about the distribution of power and legal rights is a common misunderstanding.
What a great excuse for stagnant wages.
2 replies →
Hourly wages in Germany are not that different from the US. Depends a bit on how exactly to compare - nominal, PPP, net/gross, etc.: e.g., average nominal is about 10% higher in the US, real median is higher in Germnay, ...
>median is higher in Germnay
I cannot think of any standard by which this is true, certainly not by nominal or PPP income for either personal or household income.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income
[2]https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/median-in...
5 replies →
Overlooking that we are comparing the richest EU state to all 50 US states, doesn't that further the point that having unions is are at best uninfluential.
4 replies →