Unions
A Wal-Mart store in Jonquière, Quebec voted to unionize. Wal-Mart is closing the store.
Personally, I think unions are generally bad for business. They may be good for the people at the unionized businesses, but the unionized businesses are going to be less competitive than their non-unionized competition, and what good is it having a union when your employer goes bankrupt?
Of course that?s not likely to happen at Wal-Mart. But if you unionize Wal-Mart, another company will pop up to compete with Wal-Mart, who has the advantage of 20% lower labour costs. So we start the cycle all over again.
Advocates of unionizing Wal-Mart employees say that minimum wage isn?t enough to support a family. But wouldn?t that suggest that minimum age is too low? If ?minimum wage? isn?t enough to live on, then why have a minimum wage at all?
If you increase minimum wage to a value that is sufficient (whatever that is, I don?t know), it puts every competitor on an even footing, and perhaps the need to have unions to secure the 20% pay hike will go away.
That?s my two cents on economics.