Kevin Williamson: Investment, not unions, is what really turbocharges the value of workers’ labor

From Mark Perry. Excerpt:

"A world without union bosses is not a world of wicked coal-mine operators exploiting helpless serfs with nobody standing in the way but the Molly Maguires. It isn’t a union that inspires Google to offer such high wages and rich amenities to its employees — it’s Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, etc., each of which would love to drive a fleet of buses over to Mountain View and bring back everybody it could.

“Well, that’s Google,” you might say, “and not everybody has the skills or the talent to work in High Nerdery in San Jose or Austin or to tote a pitch book around lower Manhattan.” True enough, but the same principle applies to pipefitters and machinists and the 244 other labor categories Evan Soltas takes a look at here. His finding? That changes in productivity account for about 74% of changes in wages within any given industry. Workers get paid more because they produce more, not because there’s some coddled predatory halfwit threatening to pass out picket signs. 

Detroit is dead. But when Europeans fire up their nifty new turbocharged Honda Type R Civics, they’re enjoying 276 horsepower made in the USA — in a car that isn’t ever going to be sold in the American market. Americans will have to make do with the new NSX supercar, which is built at the same facility in Marysville, Ohio, by highly skilled, highly paid American autoworkers with no UAW bosses around to gum up the works and skim from the paychecks. 

Why is Honda so successful in the United States? Last year, automakers announced $1.8 billion in investments in Ohio, and $1.5 billion of that was Honda: $70 million for NSX production here, $123 million for a painting facility there — it adds up. Investment, not union extortion, is what turbocharges the value of labor. There’s a world of difference between what 100 skilled workers with a 20-year-old facility can create and what 100 skilled workers with a state-of-the-art facility can create. Real investment in real capital is what enables economic growth and higher wages.

If you’re unlucky, you’ve heard some speeches this weekend about all the great things the Teamsters and the UAW have done for the American worker, and all the things they want to do. Don’t believe a word of it. You want to do the American worker a favor, then get rid of the interference — the taxes, the regulations, and, yes, the dopey antiquated union rules — that stand between the worker and the factory door. American workers are among the most creative and productive people who have ever lived, and it wasn’t a corrupt Jimmy Hoffa protection racket that made them great. They aren’t weaklings, and they don’t need protection — not from you, not from Donald Trump, not from Bernie Sanders, and not from James P. Hoffa. All they need is a chance to use the talents and the strength God gave them."