The real question becomes do labor advocates favor worker voice over expansive bargaining power?
The growing trend of multinationals shifting some of their product sourcing from China to other countries in Asia has been driven by a combination of rising labor costs, worker shortages, inflation, currency appreciation and changing policies.
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The recent spate of accidents in the garment trade, especially in Bangladesh, where in addition to the building collapse more than 100 have also died in factory fires over the past year has led labor unions and worker-safety groups to press Western retailers to tighten oversight of their supply chains.
But a worker who loses his job, or a labor-market entrant or unemployed worker who cannot find a new job, pays a much higher cost.
That increased productivity enables workers to earn higher wages, as wages in a competitive market equal the marginal productivity of labor (what the worker adds to production).
But, some labor regulations intended to protect worker are having disastrous effects on employment.
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The founder of the American labor movement had it right when he said the worst unfair labor practice is an unemployed worker.
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In recent decades, the casebooks have added the feminist point that joint filing tends to perpetuate a traditional division of labor by penalizing two-worker couples and to imposing a high marginal tax rate on working wives.
If they do, some businesses fear a labor crisis, says Laura Reiff, cochair of the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition, whose members depend on low-skilled labor.
Another explanation is surely the slow pace of job growth, which means fewer opportunities to entice what economists call the "marginal" worker back into the labor force.
This would allow firms to opt out of a wide set of labor laws if they have independent worker committees that approve and have oversight of workplace regulations.
The question of temporary workers has traditionally produced a stark divide between business and labor, with business seeking a large, low-cost supply of workers, and labor opposed to any guest-worker program that could threaten American laborers and produce questionable working conditions.
But a labor-management dispute led to a worker slowdown soon after the campaign started, causing the whole thing to blow up.
The biggest problem, from an economic perspective, is that despite all these ills attacking the labor force, government stats show the average worker is twice as productive today as he or she was 40 years ago, thanks to technology, meaning that an occasionally distracted employee is a small price for a business to pay for so much more output.
Six years later, business and labor have agreed to a plan for a guest worker program.
Ideally, a guest-worker program would have no cap so labor flows would adjust with supply and demand.
And for decades, it has improved worker safety and health and aggressively combated child labor at home and abroad.
Hirsch also recommends that rather than non-unionization, the default labor arrangement in a firm should be some form of worker association, but one without collective bargaining rights.
The IRS is considering coordinating standards with the Department of Labor to consider a full time employee to be a worker who is employed on average at least 30 hours of service per week.
You know, the median age for a fast worker, specifically, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is 28 years old.
Assuring maximum labor mobility limits meddling by the Department of Labor and reduces the chances that an employer can exploit a worker.
The better way is a large and robust guest-worker program that lets the flow of immigrants meet labor demands across the economy.
Lastly, I would like to touch on my final thought that labor advocates must make a choice between statutory bargaining power and worker voice.
Back in November I told you about a National Labor Relations Board complaint against a company who allegedly fired a worker over a Facebook comment.
According to data release today from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), productivity (i.e. worker efficiency) rose 6.1% from the first quarter of 2009 to the first quarter of 2010.
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Contrast that with this startling statistic from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: as of 2010, the average time an American worker stays at a job is less than four and a half years.
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Washington (CNN) -- Business and labor negotiators working to hammer out a deal on an immigrant guest worker program have reached broad agreement, a source familiar with the talks said Saturday, eliminating one major hurdle to legislation revamping the nation's immigration system.
Demand for labor is a function of productivity, or more accurately, profitability per worker.
Sources: the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and a study of state worker pensions done in 2009 by two academics, Joshua Rauh and Rovert Novy-Marx.
The details remain fluid, but we hear they may include a low national jobless rate, job openings as measured by the Labor Department's JOLTS index, and vetting by a new guest-worker commission.
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