A union dispute with a local grocery store leads to a bigger concern with wages. Is solidarity possible when we believe in a zero-sum economy?
I believe that it’s in our best interests to practice what I call “shared prosperity”, which is the idea that we do better when we all do better.
This is in exact opposition to a “zero-sum” mindset, which states that if I win, financially, then someone else has to lose.
Many people think that finance is zero-sum, that if I give you a dollar then I no longer have it, therefore I lose and you win, but that is too simple-minded. We get money for our labor and labor for our money, and we trade these things because we get more value for them. And an inflationary economy means that money gets created—added—over time.
I say macroeconomics supports the idea of “shared prosperity”, and I think you should too.
Unfortunately, it seems like a lot of you don’t. And I want to challenge that.
Take contract negotiations. When you hear about a union working for increased wages for its workers, do you support this? And does this sentiment change if the union is working with “unskilled” labor?
Let’s take a look at the situation at my local grocery store chain.
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New Seasons
New Seasons Market is an upscale grocery store in the Portland, Oregon area. Probably the closest analogue would be Whole Foods, as the same type of customer visits it, and plus it shares the same reputation for being expensive.
New Seasons is terrifically expensive. It was never cheap, but after the inflation days of 2022, it got very expensive indeed.
At the same time, New Seasons has historically been a great place to work and shop. The employees are friendly and knowledgeable, and they hire throughout the community. Personally, I see a high proportion of trans folx working there when compared to other stores, and I think that’s great.
Many New Seasons employees voted to unionize in 2022. They currently have over 1,000 members, over a catchment area of 11 stores.
Contract negotiations
New Seasons employees are up for contract renegotiations at the time of writing. Things are not going well.
The union issued a one-day strike the day before Thanksgiving this year, as a way to encourage management to come to the table.
Here is the current state of negotiations, as written by the New Seasons Labor Union:
What we talk about when we talk about wages
I’m not qualified to go into the ins and outs of the contract negotiations, and that isn’t my point here anyway.
I’m more interested in the reactions of some to the demands of the union.
There was an eye-opening thread on Reddit that requested the community boycott New Seasons until management was willing to negotiate in better faith. I highly recommend you read through it.
But let’s take just the issue of wages. Currently, New Seasons employees start out at $16.25 an hour and cap out at $21 an hour.
(Quick pause: does that seem high to you, low, or reasonable? Keep that thought in mind.)
The union is angling for $27 an hour wage, at least as a contract negotiation starting point.
(Second quick pause: How does that seem to you? Keep that in mind too.)
Interlude: It’s just a job for teenagers
I remember a few years back when McDonalds workers had a big push to get the minimum wage raised to $15.
And I remember the backlash. “Why should they make so much money? It’s just a summer job for teenagers.”
What many have missed is that these “teenage” jobs are no longer only being done by teenagers. Adults, many of them supporting families, work at McDonald’s too
And if your response to that is, “they should get better jobs,” I think you’re asking the wrong question. Here’s a better one: why do we allow companies to have jobs people can’t live on?
What is a living wage?
Did you know that the Multnomah County (the place where many of the New Seasons locations are) living wage for a single adult is calculated to be $27.04/hr? (I couldn’t back this up exactly, but another source said $26.45, so close enough.) That means that anyone making below that amount is not making a living wage.
Do you think that adults working full-time should not earn a living wage? If you support people earning a wage less than this, than clearly you do.
Some people on Reddit do. Take a look a some of these direct quotes:
“27 dollars an hour is an unreasonable starting wage”
“I agree wages are too low as they are but $27/hour for a starting wage at New Seasons is insane.”
Skilled versus unskilled
Some of the vitriol was reserved for how this union was “unskilled” labor.
“You’re unskilled laborers. It’s not a career location unless you’re literally in management, or skilled labor like the butchers or bakers or the like.”
This is an interesting point, though also wrong-headed. What does “unskilled” actually mean? Is any job truly unskilled? Sure, you don’t need a certification to work at a grocery store, but given the challenges of dealing with an endless stream of customers, many of them wealthy or entitled, it’s hard to believe that literally anyone could do that job.
But okay, you spent money to get a certification, and you want some extra compensation for that. No argument there.
Solidarity means you should make more
But here’s my point, and I want to make this absolutely clear. If you think that someone else’s wages are too high compared to yours, the proper response isn’t to suggest that they should make a lower wage, it’s that you should be agitating to make a higher wage.
We as laborers, no matter what color our collar is, need to band together and support higher wages for us and everyone around us. To not do so, to say “I don’t make that much, so why should you?”, is what keeps people poor while the billionaires who run these companies laugh all the way to their private banks.
Make no mistake, trying to push down wages by having intra-labor fighting serves no one but entrenched wealth.
So instead of saying that $27 an hour for “unskilled” labor is too high, maybe you should ask yourself why you’re not making more money than you do at your “skilled” job, and then work to make that happen?
We should all be making more. We certainly used to, relative to cost of living, so we know it’s possible.
Even if, on some level, if our economy is a zero-sum game, then the billionaires and power brokers are the ones we want to lose when we win. They can handle it.
And support unions. Join one if you can. You are labor, and don’t think otherwise. Practicing shared prosperity is just another way of saying “solidarity”.
