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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   28472 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 11, 2023

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If you read your own link, you'll discover the reason Ford got lower priced workers is because they hired lower priced negros and minimized racial discrimination. As many right wing economists have noted, taste-based discrimination costs money and free markets penalize it.

One reason the (majority white) workers voted for unions was to reduce labor market competition by colored workers. This was a major motivator for many other pro-Union laws such as Davis Bacon and minimum wage.

https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1997/summer/american-labor-movement.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis%E2%80%93Bacon_Act_of_1931

Of course, having on the market a rather large source of cheap labor depresses wages outside of that group, too–the wages of the white worker who has to compete. And when an employer can substitute a colored worker at a lower wage–and there are, as you pointed out, these hundreds of thousands looking for decent work–it affects the whole wage structure of an area, doesn’t it?

  • Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts, 1957, after many colored workers moved to MA and started competing economically with his constituents

My own link says that, while Ford paid black workers slightly more ($14.53 versus $13.55), they paid white workers substantially less ($14.14 versus $17.38).

Note also that black workers made up 38% of the workplace at Ford but only 6% elsewhere, so the higher salary for black workers at Ford probably reflects the fact that more were working at more highly skilled jobs. It sure seems tough to infer anything other than that, at any given job description, Ford paid less.

One reason the (majority white) workers voted for unions was to reduce labor market competition by colored workers

This is common knowledge. Just as it is common knowledge that employers sometimes brought in black workers as strike breakers. But how does any of that support the incorrect factual claim that pay at pre-unionized Ford was equal to that at its unionized competitors?

Why vote to pay union dues for no benefit?

I was responding to this. They voted for unionization due to benefits they hoped to achieve for white workers, at the expense of black ones.

As noted in the article, the higher pay for black workers also reflects that Ford was greedy where others were racist.

That's the whole point of unionization - letting some workers get a great gig at the expense of others.

Yes, I am agreeing with you. it was OP who opined that it was not true ("Ford was late to unionization and I'm not aware of their workers having been poorly paid prior to it")

Wait, so the claim is that ford paid it’s black workers better than it’s white workers in 1940? That doesn’t pass the smell test- either the blacks were getting paid extra to cross picket lines, or the numbers are simply wrong.

Edit: forget the below. You have misconstrued what I said. The linked data [edit: I meant what I said] does NOT show that Ford paid its black workers better than its white workers. It shows that Ford paid black workers more than its competitors paid black workers ($14.53 versus $13.55), and that they paid white workers substantially less than its competitors paid white workers ($14.14 versus $17.38).

It indeed passes the smell test because, as I noted, the obvious explanation is that black workers at Ford were employed in more highly skilled occupations than the black workers elsewhere. Again, it says that black workers made up 38% of the workplace at Ford but only 6% elsewhere, So, the black workers elsewhere were probably almost entirely janitors and the like.

And $14.53 is more than $14.14.

Yes, you're right. I meant to say that my comparison was white to white and black to black.

But note that the article says that, at Ford, "Black employees are much more likely to have less desirable and more dangerous foundry jobs (39.9% of Black workers compared with only 4.3% of White workers)." It is safe to assume that companies will have to offer somewhat higher pay for dangerous and unpleasant jobs.

That’s fair, and the confound I was looking for.

And you’ll note that $14.53 is more than $14.14.

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