Tag: unions

What We Do in the Shadows — Night Market

What We Do In the Shadows is a mockumentary that follows Nadja, three other vampires, and their family who live in present-day Staten Island. In this episode, the wraiths employed at Nadja’s vampire nightclub begin to agitate for better working conditions. In pursuit of a rare substance that will squash the wraith labor movement, Nadja goes to the night market—an open-air market organized and frequented by witches, demons, and other mythical creatures. Because the market runs on the barter system, Nadja has to make many trades and spend a lot of time haggling with others to get what she seeks.

Thank you to Megan Kirts for the scene suggestion and clip summary!

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Superstore — Election Day

It’s election day and Cloud 9 has placed pamphlets in the break room encouraging employees to vote for anti-union candidates. Cloud 9 knows that unionization could result in much higher labor costs, so they spend that money to encourage workers to not form a union. This form of managerial opposition is part of the explanation for the decline in unionization rates in the United States.

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Superstore — Employee Appreciation

After a recent uptick in the amount of union activity in the store, the corporate office has decided to institute Employee Appreciation Day. Jonah is quick to point out that this particular day always seems to occur whenever they are trying to get people to sign union card. He advocates for the union instead and mentions that joining a union may provide more long-term benefits, but Amy and Dina work to convince the employees that a union is unnecessary.

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Superstore — Union Busting

One way firms respond to increased union efforts is through managerial opposition. Because it’s illegal to fire workers who try to unionize, firms may use alternative tactics to discourage the formation of a union. An employee has been talking about forming a union and the district manager lets Amy know that the corporate office is considering shutting down stores, and a unionized workforce would make it more likely their store could be shut down. Amy, Dina, and Jonah meet in a backroom to discuss ways to stop the unionization from proceeding.

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Superstore — Going on Strike

A lot of the employees walked out while on their shift in the hopes of getting Glenn his job back. The regional manager has arrived and is working with Jonah and Amy to see how they can get the employees back to work. Initially, Amy and Jonah ask only for Glenn to have is job back, but they must sign a letter saying that they apologize for walking out. While it seems like a small request, they decide that the employees really deserve more. Part of the goal of unionization is to turn a competitive labor market into a monopoly provider of labor. Through collective bargaining, Amy and Jonah demand more for their group.

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Superstore — Union Memos

The lights are off in the store, but Dina and Glenn are searching for the manual override code to get power back online. While searching, Glenn goes through a series of older memos from the corporate office about how to keep union activity minimized. While stores cannot legally stop employees from unionizing, they have an incentive to keep unionization efforts at a minimum to keep labor costs low. The managerial opposition hypothesis is one explanation for low unionization in the US and primarily focuses on firms taking a proactive role in discouraging unionization.

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The Pajama Game — 7 1/2 Cents

Asking for a raise is tough, but even a modest raise in wages can have a huge impact on worker salaries. In this scene from The Pajama Game, we see how a 7.5 cent raise can impact a worker’s wage. The cast goes through the calculations of what they could earn with additional income, including an automatic washing machine, a year supply of gasoline, and a vacuum cleaner.

Assessment idea: This is a neat opportunity to calculate real wages and see what 7.5 cents would be worth today versus 1953. The BLS has a calculator so you don’t have to wait!

Looking for more: Do you want to see more economics in Broadway shows? Check out BroadwayEconomics.com

Thanks to Mark Sammons from the University of Arizona for sending this clip in!

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Young Sheldon — Organizing a Family Union

 

Sheldon isn’t happy with the bread for his sandwich and drags his friend, Tam, along to the grocery store to investigate. While there, Tam learns that the super market is just as convenient as his family’s convenience store and is no longer surprised that his family is losing business to the grocery store.

What Tam is surprised to learn is that the local employees earn $3.35 per hour, while Tam is paid $5 for the entire week. Realizing his dad is probably violating child labor laws, he wonders if he is able to form a union with his sisters and take his dad to court.

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Young Sheldon — Communism & Bread

 

Sheldon finds that his sandwich tastes a bit different than normal. After a quick trip to the grocery store, he realizes that his local bread company has been bought out by a larger corporation that is looking to make break quickly and cheaply. He doesn’t like this switch and petitions super market customers about getting the local bread company to listen to their customers.

Without realizing it, Sheldon suggests that communism may be a better system because then one central authority can decide the recipe for bread. He assumes bread lines in Russia are a result of great tasting bread, and not the country’s inability to allocate resources. The show is set in the 1980s, which is the midst of a Cold War. Sheldon’s dad gets a spot on the news and Sheldon almost shares how the social security system is similar, but his dad doesn’t give him the chance.

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