serious question: say everyone you described gets a 20% raise
what do you think will happen to the cost of goods? what companies do you think are operating with enough margin that they can just afford a 20% rise in their payroll costs?
The costs of goods will increase regardless of labor cost as they have already. The issue lies in the contradiction between relatively stagnant wages and the rising cost of goods/housing/etc which naturally develops into labor organizing.
A better question to ask is what will happen when a larger portion of the profit that these workers created now flows back into their communities?
Workers spend their money at family run business, and small to medium size businesses in their community and contribute to the local economy. The economic implications of this effort are not just beneficial for the 150,000 UAW workers but their communities and local economies as well.
In contrast the board members who are reaping those profits are not spending money in those communities. Even if they theoretically lived in the same communities and frequented the same businesses they would not buy anywhere close to the same quantity of goods and services that the 150,000 uaw workers would with those same profits.
You're deluding yourself into believing that costs set prices. This is econ 101: prices are made when supply meets demand. Costs only set a floor on supply. In any case where a business has a moat of any kind, only the demand curve matters: prices will be set where price times # of people willing to pay that price is maximized.
Companies are profitable, by definition. If they aren't profitable, they die (eventually). As long as there is a profit, worker pay raises does not need to be completely covered by an increase in price. Where does profit go? Into the hands of the rich.
Thus, workers demanding raises is simply a progressive wealth redistribution, from lining the wallets of fatcats, to rewarding the people who actually created that wealth.
Serious question: if every company was working with razor thin margins, and every worker made make minimum wage while investors reap profits from speculation, would that be good?
> in the case of the GM stock particularly, are shareholders/investors reaping profits and benefit? go look up the GM stock, it's flat/down over 5 years
You failed to take into account that GM issues real stock (unlike most tech companies) and thus pays dividends. If you take dividend payouts into account, the value of an investment in GM has been indisputably positive (though probably not more positive than inflation).
There is way more than 5% of the cost from labor, you are missing all the extra costs from the parts they buy from other companies. There are way more laborers working on the cars than what the car companies employ themselves, the small number of workers still working at the car companies now try to leverage that but it is unfair to give all the value of the cars to them rather than share it evenly across the industry. And when shared evenly there wont be much left.
great question! profit margins have indeed been rising significantly over the past few decades, from around 5% to 12% just since the mid-90s -- https://www.yardeni.com/pub/sp500margin.pdf
If both Wal-Mart and Amazon drivers strike we might actually have a shot a taking a bite out of capital finally.