MY REPLY to this question on Thoma's "Economist's View" blog ...

MY REPLY to this question on Thoma's "Economist's View" blog: "Can you describe how industry-wide or common labor agreements work in Germany?" ******

I am no expert on how sector wide is done in different economies. If you are studious -- you seem much more so than I -- you can look up the 1992 book "Union of Parts -- Labor Politics in Postwar Germany" by Kathleen A. Thelen (which I have on my lap but never got around to).
http://www.amazon.com/Union-Parts-Politics-Postwar-Political/dp/0801425867/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1339119485&sr=8-1-fkmr0

Of course there is the recent: "Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?: How the European Model Can Help You Get a Life" by Thomas Geoghegan.
http://www.amazon.com/Were-You-Born-Wrong-Continent/dp/1595587063/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1339119525&sr=1-1

I just know that when I saw the idea somewhere, years ago, I recognized the answer to American labor's powerlessness instantly. I had been like one of those "cross of gold" farmers reading pamphlets, trying to figure out why their world was falling apart (deflation making their mortgage payments more expensive all the time).

Sector wide's advantages are so obvious that when you see it you genuinely wonder why you never thought of it yourself (at least I did).

As far as I can see, anywhere in the first-world where it is in practice, the average person has full empowerment -- political as well economic because full unionization means equal financing to match ownership's to go with the overwhelming majority of votes. The late David Broder, dean of the Washington press corps, wrote that when he first arrived there fifty years ago the lobbyists were all union.

Anywhere in the OECD it is not the average person is screwed more all the time.
Sector wide is over half a century proven -- and -- tried even in the second world (Brazil) and third world (Indonesia).

Funniest thing is that sector wide labor agreements were instituted in post WWII Europe by INDUSTRIALISTS to prevent labor unions going on a race to the top (with each other). The welfare state -- which is what everybody over here FOOLISHLY thinks as the big economic difference between Europe and us -- was actually offered to compensate labor for putting up with sector wide agreements.

Sector wide collective bargaining ends the race to the bottom just as well. Wal-Mart had to close 88 big boxes in Germany because they could not compete paying the same wages and be benefits.

I've got a human behavior theory that males being pack hunters are somehow able to relate to the big world only on the terms the world (stupidly?) works on already. Human males seem to automatically eject any solution too original like a spent cartridge -- literally incapable consider the novel on merits alone.

Human females being individual gatherers by DNA can according to my cabdriver theory think for themselves -- are actually able to ponder a new direction on merit alone -- not because they are "receptive" but because they can think for themselves.