How Did Labor Unions Occur During The 20th Century?

Words: 478
Pages: 2

Guilds were more prevalent in western Poland, just like labor unions were more prevalent in the north than they were in the south. The nature of organized labor in regard to the extent to which such institutions generally advocate for greater levels of wages than what would normally prevail in a free market, created elevated levels of discrimination. It did this by incentivizing employers to higher fewer workers; because labor was more expensive at the margin than what would have normally prevailed in the free market. In effect, the artificially inflated wages created a surplus of applicant workers, which does not occur when wages are subject to the dynamics of supply and demand. Ultimately, a surplus of workers makes it easier for firms to reject qualified applicants from the “wrong group,” because the firm does not have to worry about the costs associated with searching for similarly qualified replacements for those that have been arbitrarily rejected. Even when the discrimination imposed by labor unions is not a factor, employers can still easily discriminate if …show more content…
In both cases black workers were more heavily employed by railroads during the early twentieth century than they were by mid twentieth century. The labor markets were also more heavily regulated in the mid twentieth century than earlier in the century; and it could hardly be argued that there was less racism prevalent in the earlier era than the later era. This example illustrates the concept that the freer a market is, the greater the costs of discrimination, which decreases the incentive to be discriminatory. In fact, some of the strongest opponents of segregation in the United States were the railroad companies. They opposed segregation because it would increase their operating costs thereby decreasing their