Anchor Brewing Co. employees are unionizing

I did not mean to overly simplify a complex issue.

A chart showing declining union membership being presented as self evidently demonstrative of the irrelevance of unions struck me as over simplifying a complex issue.

 

It's incredibly irrelevant. Just because two things are about paying taxes doesn't make them relevant. Some politicians want to pay more taxes for X. You interject that they can, but for Y. You don't see how that's a fundamentally irrelevant thing to even mention?

 

Good for you to feel that way. But given what we know about what marginal consumers are willing to pay for craft beer, your willingness to pay a higher price isn't representative. If they're not being paid enough to live (a dubious claim), then they can get another job that has a higher value for their labor.

 

Or they can try organizing together for better pay and working conditions first

 

I'll pass. There are lots of other cities in the country that don't have the insane COL that decades of refusing to allow new residential units has produced in the Bay Area. I chose to live in one of those places, rather than somewhere that was out of my budget. If you can't afford to live somewhere, maybe don't live there.

 

Wages are one concern cited by the Anchor workers. They’re also raising hours of work and workplace safety issues.

“Belden, like many of his coworkers, is kept at 29-hour workweeks—Anchor would be legally required to provide healthcare to anyone working 30 hours or more. He makes $16.50 an hour”

http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/21739/anchor_brewing_union_craft_beer_labor_san_francisco

 

Well, yes. Given that adding health insurance would immediately increase the cost of employing him by 10–15%, of course he's at 29 hours. I doubt that adding hours to his schedule would increase his productivity enough to cover the significant increase in the cost of employing him.

 

Let's be clear—he's not being denied health insurance, he's free to purchase it himself. Rather, his employer does not value his labor at $16.50 (plus the additional costs of employment, so closer to $22/hr) plus health insurance. Given the low margins of the craft beer business, I think that the brewery's valuation is probably correct. Adding at least $300 per employee per month to the brewery's expenses adds up quickly, and it's almost certainly going to require a price increase.

 

Of course. It might not even be possible for the business to operate if it hired the six employees at a 15% premium to the eight employees. In a low margin business, a 15% price increase in a key input is the difference between viability and dissolution.

And there are costs to killing the brewery out of the arrogance that you understand their cost structure better than they do. Look at the effects of the brewery existing versus not existing. Its customers clearly benefit—they value the beer produced more than the money that they pay for it. The state benefits—they receive tax revenues. The employees benefit—they have a job that is better than any of the alternatives, and would not exist if the brewery did not exist. In short, society is much better off with the brewery existing. If you get rid of the brewery, the customers lose their beer, the state loses its revenue, and the employees lose their job. If the conditions really are that bad, then why don't they change jobs? There's a historically tight job market, and California's Blue Pencil Rule means that they aren't constrained by non-compete covenants. If their labor really is more valuable than what they're receiving, then why haven't they switched to an employer who values their labor at its marginal productivity?

You don't seem to grasp that low margin companies can't afford to pay more than what they already pay, and you don't seem to grasp that there are significant social costs to killing businesses because you don't understand their cost structure.

 

Here’s a back of the envelope calculation...

• The bargaining unit is 70 people
• Anchor produced 1.75 million cases of beer in 2016
• Raise the price a nickel a bottle and you’d have $30,000/employee for increased compensation.
• Assume the extra nickel cuts into sales. So play it conservative and only increase compensation by $20,000 per employee.

 

Totally dude, but if prices go up because of the Mystery reasons that have already caused prices to double in the past 8 years, then it's absolutely fine.

You might try finding a chart that compares union membership to wages in relation to worker productivity. What you refer to as an anachronism was actually a pretty decent way to ensure people got paid what they were worth.

 

No azbeerdude was not discussing marginal tax brackets azbeerdude was discussing how socialists want the rich to give up most of their worth and re-distribute it to others. I don't recall being asked about marginal tax brackets, etc. If I remember correctly we were discussing how you indicated millionaires would be thrilled to give up most of their wealth for the better good, and I find that statement to be silly, I don't know anyone willing to do that. Anyway, thanks for the cheap shot when I tired to end the argument on a pleasant level. Cheers.

 

I hope the Anchor workforce are satisfied now that their interest in unionizing has turned us into Venezuela.

So angry about "socialism" yet so happy to wait in line. Paradox.