The San Francisco Chronicle reports West Europeans may have to retire abridged workweek: Free time imperiled by EU’s ndustrious new members. In some European countries, where weeky work hours have been regulated to 40 or fewer hours, labor unions are consenting to more hours for the same pay, rather than see their employers move the work to Eastern European countries where workers are willing to work longer hours and for less pay.
The means by which unions is raise the wage of some workers is by lowering the wages of the workers who are not in the union or by creating unemployment through supply restriction. But they don’t tell their members that. That puts them in a difficult position when wages need to be lower. If people were offered the chance to fewer hours for less pay, some might be willing, but it is not in the interest of the union to give them that option.
German journalist Olaf Gersemann has recently published Cowboy Capitalism: European Myths, American Reality (reviewed here). One of the themes of the work is that the US economy’s relatively lesser amount of labor regulations is advantageous. I am wondering if in Western Europe many workers have been given a misleadingly optimistic picture by the government of the amount of benefits they will receive for health care and retirement pensions, so they work less and save less than they otherwise would if they knew the true picture? In this sense, people have been fooled into working less than they would if they had accurate information.
Some of the outsourcing pessimists have maintained that it will take decades to employ the vast pools of unemployed or low-skilled workers in low-wage countries, like China and India. AP reports: Southern China faces shortage of migrant labour as workers balk at low pay. Is it possible that wages will need to rise in China to continue to attract labor?
