No, employers do not have anything to do with setting wages. They're out of the loop. Wage-setting is a public function in Job Markets, it's done automatically, within a legislatively-set ratio of maximum to minimum pay (2:1, 4:1, 212:1?). The Job Market software holds the average pay throughout the economy at 1 (credit hour). Interestingly, this might be expected to lead to deflation as productivity rises.
The wage offered may be gradually rising since the computer is throwing up a curve based on the employer's stated desire to fill the position by x date--or should that be d-date? So if I want this job I see listed, although I happen to be an archeologist with a rare specialization, I won't wait until the job has reached its maximum pay, I'll instead wait until the price seems right to me, since I don't KNOW no-one else will take it before me. Generally with jobs which are intrinsically enjoyable one's not looking for the highest pay but the right fit in other ways.
><snip>
>>But this computerized job bank would not merely be monster.com writ
>>large. In Brown's version, the computer software operating this job
>>market would be programmed to make sure that there were always enough
>>jobs to match the number of people looking for work. Employers, whether
>>public or private, would input their work needs into the system; the
>>computer then would divide up this need for new work into enough job units
>>so that everyone who was looking for a job could find one.
Gar:
>Comment. Obviously employers would have to submit joblists,
>dependendecies (what has to be done before what), what task cannot be
>seperated and must be done on the same equipment. Then yes - a computerr
>could do the job. Though you still might find human judgement backed by
>computing power could get the job done faster. That is human judgement
>might be needed to exclude some obviously infeasible combinations whose
>infeasibilty a computer might miss.
The programming is complicated but the employer might specify preferred shift lengths, then rather than treating the job request as continuous material to be cut into any size the program would rather look at these as slices--like an already-cut pie. The employer might not get exactly what they want, since the job market is also setting hours to ensure full employment. But there's no reason an employer would (initially) change who does what because they're now in a Job Market system. We're talking about jobs, not individual tasks--you're thinking job complexes.
I have to say, having spent much of my life doing a bunch of different little jobs that didn't really add up, in addition to work outside pay, it would be a big fucking relief to stop swapping around--it would eliminate the time wasted in starting up and reorienting, not to mention the waste of mental space. I'm not sure why I shouldn't just do physically- challenging work for 4 months then do something mentally challenging for 8. In my experience expecting to do strenuous physical work part of the day and (different) mental work later doesn't really work. Of course a lot of physical work requires mental work so then I'm still thinking about the goddam planer or what we need to do tomorrow to get the floor down.
The Job Market conception is one where you don't stay at a job very long if you don't want to, cause there's no fear you won't get another job.
>>Of course, some jobs that very few people are capable of doing
>>(professional athlete, astronaut) would continue to be highly paid, and
>>the highly skilled would generally be able to command greater earnings
>>than others (if they wished). But holding skill level equal, under this
>>system jobs that are less pleasant would be better remunerated than
>>more pleasant one.
Gar:
>OK this is the problem with this proposal. If acquiring a skill is
>onerous, the labor of acquiring it should be paid for just like any
>other work. But assuming the person did not have to pay for their own
>education (as in our current system) why should having a skill entitle
>someone to more money than someone who lacks it.
It doesn't, not automatically. First, you assume that more education makes you rarer. In fact, a dirty little secret of advanced industrialized societies is there aren't enough jobs for the educated. A few years back Doug cited a study in LBO which seemed to show that the main thing employers were getting when they got someone with a college degree was ideological (someone bought into the system) rather than functional (effective at the job.)
Second, there is a built-in incentive in Job Markets for on-the-job training, apprenticeships, and so forth, since requiring the employee to be an experienced criminal lawyer with 10 years experience teaching economic philosophy will cut down your potential pool, you might just ask for someone with a law degree.
Gar:
>This still produces
>unbalanced jobs. Here is an alternative that would produced balanced job
>complex (if you wished). Employers bid for labor to attrack applicants
>just as you say.
No, that's not what's going on here. The power to set wages and work hours no longer legally resides with the owners of the productive means. Just as owning a plantation no longer gives someone the right to obtain slaves.
<snip>
Gar:
>If some people are doing jobs with lots of
>pleasant and empowering tasks (because their special skill let them
>avoid competition - so they get extremely pleasant empoweing work at the
>pay the less skilled receive for much less pleasant, less empowering
>work) and others work at less, they get the feedback, the shaping of
>conciousness that comes from this.
Unlikely. You're assuming a scarcity of skills and education which is an unsafe assumption. The pleasant jobs are the ones more people will want, meaning the wages will be low. The point is that it's up to people's individual desires to decide how they want to arrange the pay/enjoyment tradeoff. This claim is made for capitalism, where it's obviously untrue, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be true in some other system.
But I should be clear, the job market is not primarily a moral prescription, it's a suggestion for rationalizing our economic life so that we can put it under democratic control. For example, currently economies must grow to stay 'healthy.' Shrinkage leads to massive dislocation, unemployment and misery. With a job market, a population could decide to shrink their economy (say they want the shorter workweek that increased productivity could provide). This would be accomplished by cutting back the average work year. Because the effect is spread throughout the economy, no-one is out on the street as a result, people in one industry don't suffer massive layoffs, whole towns are not devastated.
Gar:
>If someone is sweeping floors
>thirty hours a week, and someone else it a plant manager then the
>floor-sweeper is getting no training in decision making or debate; the
>plant manager is getting lots. Unless the floor sweeper has one hell of
>an axceptoinal talent, the plant manager will have more say in whatever
>dmocratic processes the system develops than the floor sweeper even if
>they are formally equal. And I know that some floor sweepers will be
>great at politics and some plant managers awful. But after twenty years
>in a situation like this, plant managers on average will get their way
>more often than floor sweepers.
As I said to Gar offlist, the floorsweeper can put down the broom at any time and go take a manager job, or maybe if he has no experience, an assistant manager job. In Job Markets, the likelihood of anyone doing the same job for 20 years is near zero--sounds like something that should be placed on the compost heap anyway.
Worker self-management would be possible in--but is not required for--Job Markets. More democracy at work is achieved not by 'self-management' (which doesn't really get at what's fundamentally making us unfree at work, after all) but by taking the power away from the owners to control the hours, pay and livelihood of workers.
Jenny Brown