The New Need for Unions
A story I had been following that got very little press, which is ironic, was about the closing of DNAinfo.com and the Gothamist by their owner, Joe Ricketts, after the writers decided to join Writers Guild of America, East. Ricketts, who is the founder of TD Ameritrade, said in a letter, posted on both sites, which claimed that the businesses were no longer profitable, and that was the reason for the decision. However, if you take a moment to poke around Joe’s blog, you’d find that he has written about how unions destroy businesses, and other free enterprise Milton Friedman stuff.
A bunch of people lost jobs because a rich guy, a very rich guy who owns the Cubs (which really hacks me off,) has decided that unions are a non-starter when it comes to business. Part of me feels like we have taken a huge step backwards to the 19th Century, when industrialists just refused to deal with organized workers. What I find interesting about this is that white-collar workers are now joining unions due to business practices from management. I think an important history of employment page has been turned; white-collar workers are no longer considered a part of management, nor will be protected by management.
I read this Opinion piece in the Times the other day, and it has influenced my thinking on this issue. This was the paragraph that really set me thinking:
“There are some winners, but the real champions are the corporate owners: They get their pick from all the qualified applicants, and the oversupply of human capital keeps labor costs down. Competition between workers means lower wages for them and higher profits for their bosses: The more teenagers who learn to code, the cheaper one is.”
In short, there are too many educated people fighting for those educated jobs. Ricketts can shut down his sites, reorganize them, call it something different, and then go out and find new writers, because there are plenty out there and not enough jobs.