Читать книгу Inequality and the Labor Market - Группа авторов - Страница 8

The real genesis of this book comes from the pivot we made from exploring the question of labor market competition within the administration to exploring it with the public. We knew we had a long way to go in making “monopsony” a household term and explaining why the public should care about it. We built from the assumption that most people could understand what a monopoly was and that monopolies were not good for the economy. We needed to explain how monopsony—essentially a monopoly by another name—created a particular kind of harm when it came to the labor market. Our first step was for the Council of Economic Advisers to put out an issue brief in October 2016, “Labor Market Monopsony: Trends, Consequences, and Policy Responses.” The brief laid out how the growing concentration of corporate power was playing a role in reducing wages, the sources of monopsony power, and the administration’s first articulation of policies to address it. Although not likely to become a best seller, the CEA brief accomplished its purpose. It put a marker down that the Obama administration was broadening its gaze in looking for avenues to raise wages. On November 6, 2016, the New York Times covered the release of the CEA report, opining that it noted a shift in redistributive policies to “how the rules of the economic game shape people’s outcomes.”

At the same time, the Obama administration released a suite of actions aimed at reining in noncompete agreements, which we had identified as a substantial impediment to workers’ mobility and that thereby decreased competition in the labor market. Among the actions we took were the release of a report on state noncompete laws and a call to action for states to reform their laws to minimize the prevalence of noncompete agreements, especially for middle- and low-wage workers. Finally, the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division and the Federal Trade Commission released guidance for human resource professionals on how to spot collusion over wages among employers and established a hot line for human resource professionals to report allegations of collusions. The Justice Department committed to criminally investigate wage collusion cases.

Our partnership on these issues came to what seemed like an abrupt halt with the outcome of the 2016 election. But we both felt strongly that there was a great deal more to do in expanding the universe of economists, labor leaders, government officials, practitioners, academics, advocates, and activists who were willing to partner with us on exploring solutions to these labor market failures. We brought these new partners together at Harvard Law School in June 2018 for an event: “Unrigging the Market: Convening to Restore Competitive Labor Markets.” The foundation Justice Catalyst generously underwrote the cost of the convening, and its executive director, Ben Elga, was a key participant in designing the event. One exciting aspect of this assembling was the collaboration between antitrust experts and worker advocacy experts. We found that many of these stakeholders had never been at a conference together. In fact, in some instances we found labor standards enforcement lawyers who were meeting their colleagues in the antitrust division of the same state attorney general’s office for the first time. The papers that we solicited in advance of this event form the core of this book, in updated and expanded form.

We were not alone on a journey to delve more deeply into the failure of our labor markets. As noted above, we made news in 2016 for just using the word “monopsony” in a public document. By the time we held our conference at Harvard in 2018, the word was appearing regularly in serious policy circles and in the nation’s news outlets. More importantly, we heard from more and more people, including those involved with grassroots organizations, that the theme of corporate concentration and its corrosive effect on workers’ ability to compete had resonance. People had a growing awareness that corporate power had grown so significantly that we needed new solutions to make the system fairer. We decided to edit this book in order to continue the conversation—to share a wide array of policy ideas, to promote areas of research needed to take the conversation even farther and to deepen the connection between the need to enhance worker power and bolster competition.