this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2023
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Norway doesn't have a minimum wage because the unions don't want one. They believe having a set minimum wage sets a low anchor for negotiating, and that they can negotiate higher wages without one.
Select industries do have a minimum wage for their specific field, though. And there's a legal minimum you must pay teens working in summer internships, because they're not unionized and often get lowballed.
This is probably gonna bite them in a long run when neoliberalism will chew through union power.
You can't really compare US and Norwegian unions apples to apples. They don't work the same way. In Norway they're way more mainstream, work closer with the government, and they don't employ people. There are no "union shops", and no vote to join a union. You just join one while employed directly with your employer.
You can still negotiate your own compensation, but the union may also negotiate raises for the entire workplace separately (including for non-members). In a way you could say the union negotiates a workplace-specific minimum wage.
The risk of union workers getting fired and replaced with scabs is far less in Norway, because there is much stronger worker protection. These protections apply to everyone, not just the unionized workers, but they were achieved due to unions, years ago.
I don't think you necessarily can draw any conclusions about strategy for Norwegian unions based on experience with US unions, or vice versa. They're just different beasts.
Note: Apologies if some of this is mildly incorrect, I have not been directly involved with union work in either country, and so I only have a high-level view of it all. Someone more experienced should be able to give more detailed information about union strategy in either country.
IMHO this strategy helps to prevent chewing. Workers will say "I need this union for a high wage" instead of "what do we even need these union dues for anymore".
UBI without a minimum wage promote workplaces that don't respect worker's labour, and socializes while privatizing profits. It would basically be the issue Germany had with social support before minimum wage was introduced. We need both UBI and a minimum wage.
Why would people work for an abusive employer when they don't particularly need to work at all?
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We could go back to company scrip and children in the mines. That's where unregulation would take us
Scrip is kinda low key a thing again. My SO works for wawa and there is definitely some scrip vibe. They have a company store, a points reward system, they will put you through school if you take classes that benefit the Corp, and the only way to move up is to basically bootlick management at weird company festivals.
It all has this very dystopian vibe of "everything within the corporation eco system" and my SO is a very principled women who is shy and kind and she refuses to take a step to elevate herself within the Corp, but getting a union going is pretty hard where we're at, everyone is very much of the boot tasting, welfare queen bad variety.
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Actually, I think it's the government regulation keeping together capitalism
If it goes too hard, it doesn't end well but do not give these corpos free reign over the market
I've just made an UBI community since there wasn't any on lemmy:
[/c/[email protected]] [email protected]
Edit: I still don't know how to link properly
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There's got to be some conditions. How else do I control the people?
Who would pledge 10% of their income to distribute as basic income? There is no need to wait until politicians implement it. We can start immediately.
Nobody making under 250k would be paying into it and unrealized gains would be included in figuring all personal income. The ultra rich are paid mostly in services like corporate jets, meals, stocks and options. Salary is pretty minimal compared to all the other perquisites that come with SVP/Director on up to the c-suite level jobs in the top 1000 US companies.
If I made 350k all in and UBI takes 35k, I still take home 315k.
Heck, that portion of income that goes to UBI doesn't even have to count toward regular income taxes. It can be all pre-tax dollars.
The thing is, the economy works best when everyone can participate fully. Locking huge swaths of it into personal fortunes nobody could hope to ever spend in a lifetime is wasteful and puts a huge drag on the overall economy. Sure, they can pop for houses and planes and yachts but that doesn't really come close to the kind of economic power generated by millions of working poor buying their daily essentials.
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Income tax in Canada, where I live, is already 15-33%.
It's already horribly mis-spent. If it went up, I'm pretty sure the country would riot.
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Okay all you commies get ready for politics 101
First don't rely on morals to make your argument. It, unfortunately, does not change capitalist minds.
Second, frame your argument in capitalist rhetoric. For example you can say, "UBI is important to stimulate the economy by enabling Low-Income-Americans to spend more on essentials."
Seriously, not joking, this is how you change people's minds.
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ancaps: "muh NAP"
ancoms: "please get away from our commune, thank you"
Why should the majority of people settle for the leftover scraps of the capitalist class? I do see that it is possible for UBI to exist within a system where the means of production is under public ownership and democratic control, which I believe is necessary for social justice. However, if UBI is ever implemented in a fundamentally capitalist society, it only means that the wealth disparity has grown so large that the capitalists, in the act of preserving their heads on their necks, allow for a crappy standard of living for the rest. Although I could see myself welcoming UBI for a multitude of reasons, I am also scared that it would entail some form of permanent class disparity with the majority of people forever impoverished.
That's why the developed world is taking about universal basic income and not minimum wage. Guess the US will get there at some point too. If they stop falling back into the dark ages at some point.
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