An interesting feature of working life at Winchester Canada was that the union was clearly stifling innovation. What I saw certainly conformed to the picture of unions that comes out of Parente and Prescott's "Barriers to Riches," which cites labor unions and trade barriers, among other things, as factors that lower TFP (total factor productivity) and the standard of living in a country. At the Winchester plant, every activity was governed by a set of workplace rules, written up in the union contract. Management and production workers thought of each other as adversaries. This was not a conducive environment for thinking up new ways of organizing production or designing new products. It seemed clear that you could take away the union, create more flexibility, increase productivity, pay everyone more, and bring about a Pareto improvement.
Steve Williamson then points out a minor observation that unions have not caused public sector growth to swing out of control in Canada, the only part Thoma quotes. Thoma knows his commenters don't usually follow up, I do, every time. I especially have to follow up on Krugman, as my oards of reaers are aware.
We are not seeing economic science from these university professors, we are seeing them take the union stand and skipping any pretense at science.
That line works some places, but here in California the more bullshit I hear from professors, the more likely I think they simply are unable to cope. We should start a clear reformation of the university system and remove the dinosaurs clinging to their outmoded lecture halls.
No comments:
Post a Comment