Wage Relationships —The Comparative Impact of Market and Power Forces

Clark Kerr
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Clark Kerr: University of California (Berkeley)

Chapter Chapter 12 in The Theory of Wage Determination, 1957, pp 173-193 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract One modern version of Adam Smith’s famous observation (Book I, Chapter 8) might read: ‘Workmen are always in constant and uniform combination to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate’. Now this version would not be so true as Smith’s about ‘masters’ (as Smith himself noted), for their combination is less the ‘natural state of things’. Workers, being more numerous and diverse, have less of a community of interest than masters and a greater need for formal bonds. These formal bonds, over the past century, have been supplied by labour unions in many trades and industries in those industrialized nations which are organized into pluralistic systems, and a major purpose of most of these unions has been to modify ‘market forces’ by group decisions and organized power in setting wages.

Keywords: Collective Bargaining; Skilled Worker; Wage Differential; Unskilled Worker; Labor Relation Review (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1957
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DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-15205-6_12

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