Exhume Collective Bargaining.

[Union Yes]

Dr John Nash once won a Nobel Prize in part by proving that when people come together and work together for a common cause, their 'strength in numbers' benefits each and every one of them.

Unions and their rank and file members use this basic concept to negotiate a legally binding contract with their employer. That contract usually will contain wage standards and wage protections, health insurance, grievance procedures, benefits, job protection, safety etc.

To me, a union contract also brings it's members something that is rarely talked about-dignity.

Union members elect their own board, often called a bargaining committee. They use their 'strength in numbers' to negotiate their contract with their employer in a process called..

Collective Bargaining.

CB is the heart and soul of Unions. It's the very reason why people form unions.

People join unions to negotiate fair pay/compensation benefits, job protection, workplace safety, workplace conditions.

Strength in numbers allows them to negotiate collectively. Hence, collective bargaining.

Corporations in America have declared war on us, the people.
Their war- To bust apart the "strength in numbers", to keep us from organizing unions, and to..
KILL THE COLLECTIVE BARGAINING PROCESS.

Corporations want CB dead and buried. They want unions dead and buried. They prefer wage-slavery.
They decide your wage. They will tell you what your labor is worth.

Corporations have largely succeeded at killing and burying the CB process.

Exhume Collective Bargaining!

If you've read this far then I hope that people will understand the importance of passing The Employee Free Choice Act. Call your elected's and demand passage of EFCA!

Democrats, put EFCA front and center. It's as important as health care reform. The livelihoods of the people are a front and center issue.

[Hippo_Tron]

1. Out of curiosity, to which of John Nash's works are you referring to?

[Union Yes]

2. Game theory.

[Hippo_Tron]

4. Yea I got that, as an avid game theoriest I'm curious to specifically which of his arguments

Are you talking about Nash equilibrium in general?

[Union Yes]

5. You'd know a heckuva lot more about it then..

so is it safe to say the Nash's Bargaining Solution from his Equilibrium is based from cooperative/non-cooperative games?

That would be my answer.

[Hippo_Tron]

7. Nash wasn't talking about collective bargaining specifically, but it is very applicable

In price theory (the non game theoretic branch of microeconomics), workers basically take a wage as given. How that wage is actually determined depends on the situation (I don't study labor markets so I don't know much about how they work). But if we assume that the corporation has the power to set it arbitrarily low then the worker is worse off.

What the Nash bargaining solution shows is that if two people are bargaining over a good, they will split it evenly in equilibrium (that's an oversimplification but it gives the idea). Therefore we can extrapolate from this that if workers are able to bargain from their wages, they will basically wind up with a relatively even split between what they want and what the corporation wants. But since each individual does not have the power to bargain over their wage, the only way that this scenario can be achieved is through collective bargaining.

It's also worthwhile to note that the situation isn't pareto optimal because there's a dead weight loss due to union dues. Both the worker and the corporation would be better off under an arrangement where, for example, the corporation agrees to pay the worker the union wage minus half of what union dues would be. But for various reasons such an arrangement isn't actually possible in the real world and more refined versions of Nash's equilibrium can explain why (the main refinements were proposed by Selten and Harsanyi who shared the Nobel with Nash). Therefore the worker is indeed best off under a collective bargaining arrangement.

[Union Yes]

8. Great info..

copied for future reference. Thanks for taking the time to write it and for the chat.

I've learned a lot.

:fistbump:

[Overseas]

3. K&R . //nt

[Union Yes]

6. ..

:fistbump:

[Overseas]

9. Yes Please! We all need it

to rebalance our economy out of this destructive plutocracy.