給你的員工加薪吧

Walmart’s Visible Hand

給你的員工加薪吧

A few days ago Walmart, America’s largest employer, announced that it will raise wages for half a million workers. For many of those workers the gains will be small, but the announcement is nonetheless a very big deal, for two reasons. First, there will be spillovers: Walmart is so big that its action will probably lead to raises for millions of workers employed by other companies. Second, and arguably far more important, is what Walmart’s move tells us — namely, that low wages are a political choice, and we can and should choose differently.

幾天前，美國(guó)最大的雇主沃爾瑪(Walmart)宣布將為50萬(wàn)名員工加薪。對(duì)其中許多員工來(lái)說(shuō)，漲幅是很小的，但并不妨礙此事的重要性，原因有兩個(gè)。首先是會(huì)有溢出效應(yīng)：以沃爾瑪?shù)囊?guī)模之大，這一舉動(dòng)可能引致數(shù)以百萬(wàn)計(jì)的其他公司員工得到加薪。第二點(diǎn)，應(yīng)該說(shuō)也是更為重要的一點(diǎn)，沃爾瑪?shù)呐e動(dòng)在告訴我們，低薪是一個(gè)政治選擇，我們可以，也應(yīng)該做出別的選擇。

Some background: Conservatives — with the backing, I have to admit, of many economists — normally argue that the market for labor is like the market for anything else. The law of supply and demand, they say, determines the level of wages, and the invisible hand of the market will punish anyone who tries to defy this law.

提供一些背景：保守派——不得不承認(rèn)，他們的背后有一些經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家的支持——通常會(huì)說(shuō)，勞動(dòng)力市場(chǎng)跟任何其他東西的市場(chǎng)是一樣的。他們說(shuō)，供求法則決定薪資水平，任何人要想違背這一法則，都會(huì)遭到市場(chǎng)無(wú)形之手的懲罰。

Specifically, this view implies that any attempt to push up wages will either fail or have bad consequences. Setting a minimum wage, it’s claimed, will reduce employment and create a labor surplus, the same way attempts to put floors under the prices of agricultural commodities used to lead to butter mountains, wine lakes and so on. Pressuring employers to pay more, or encouraging workers to organize into unions, will have the same effect.

這種觀念尤其在暗示，任何推高工資的企圖都是徒勞的，或者會(huì)有糟糕的后果。它認(rèn)為設(shè)定最低工資會(huì)減少就業(yè)，造成勞動(dòng)力過(guò)剩，就好比給農(nóng)產(chǎn)品設(shè)定價(jià)格下限曾經(jīng)導(dǎo)致黃油成山、紅酒成湖等等。強(qiáng)迫雇主增加工資，或鼓勵(lì)工人組成工會(huì)，也會(huì)有同樣的效果。

But labor economists have long questioned this view. Soylent Green — I mean, the labor force — is people. And because workers are people, wages are not, in fact, like the price of butter, and how much workers are paid depends as much on social forces and political power as it does on simple supply and demand.

但勞動(dòng)經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家對(duì)這種看法一直存在質(zhì)疑。大扁豆綠餅(Soylent Green，同名電影中用死人制成的一種食物。——譯注)——我的意思是，勞動(dòng)力——是人。由于工人是人，工資實(shí)際上和黃油的價(jià)格不是一回事，工人的薪水多寡，取決于簡(jiǎn)單的供求關(guān)系，同樣也取決于社會(huì)中的力量和政治權(quán)力。

What’s the evidence? First, there is what actually happens when minimum wages are increased. Many states set minimum wages above the federal level, and we can look at what happens when a state raises its minimum while neighboring states do not. Does the wage-hiking state lose a large number of jobs? No — the overwhelming conclusion from studying these natural experiments is that moderate increases in the minimum wage have little or no negative effect on employment.

有什么證據(jù)?首先，看看提高最低工資標(biāo)準(zhǔn)后實(shí)際會(huì)怎樣。許多州的最低工資是高于聯(lián)邦水平的，我們可以比較一下，當(dāng)一個(gè)州提高最低工資，毗鄰的州不提時(shí)會(huì)出現(xiàn)什么情況。加薪州會(huì)失去大量就業(yè)機(jī)會(huì)嗎?不會(huì)——通過(guò)研究這些自然實(shí)驗(yàn)可以得出毋庸置疑的結(jié)論，最低工資的適度提高對(duì)就業(yè)的負(fù)面影響微乎其微。

Then there’s history. It turns out that the middle-class society we used to have didn’t evolve as a result of impersonal market forces — it was created by political action, and in a brief period of time. America was still a very unequal society in 1940, but by 1950 it had been transformed by a dramatic reduction in income disparities, which the economists Claudia Goldin and Robert Margo labeled the Great Compression. How did that happen?

然后再來(lái)看歷史。你會(huì)發(fā)現(xiàn)，我們?cè)?jīng)擁有的中產(chǎn)階級(jí)社會(huì)，并不是非人的市場(chǎng)力量促成的——它是政治行動(dòng)的成果，只用了不長(zhǎng)的一段時(shí)間。1940年的時(shí)候，美國(guó)還是非常不平等的社會(huì)，但到了1950年，貧富差距的縮小帶來(lái)社會(huì)劇變，也就是被經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家克勞迪亞·戈?duì)柖?Claudia Goldin)和羅伯特·馬戈(Robert Margo)稱為“大壓縮”(Great Compression)的時(shí)期。這是怎么回事?

Part of the answer is direct government intervention, especially during World War II, when government wage-setting authority was used to narrow gaps between the best paid and the worst paid. Part of it, surely, was a sharp increase in unionization. Part of it was the full-employment economy of the war years, which created very strong demand for workers and empowered them to seek higher pay.

政府的直接干預(yù)是一部分原因，尤其是在二戰(zhàn)期間，政府動(dòng)用薪資設(shè)定權(quán)力來(lái)縮小最高薪和最低薪之間的差距。當(dāng)然，工會(huì)數(shù)量的急劇增加起到了一定作用。還有就是戰(zhàn)時(shí)的充分就業(yè)經(jīng)濟(jì)營(yíng)造了極其強(qiáng)勁的勞力需求，讓工人有了尋求更高工資的余地。

The important thing, however, is that the Great Compression didn’t go away as soon as the war was over. Instead, full employment and pro-worker politics changed pay norms, and a strong middle class endured for more than a generation. Oh, and the decades after the war were also marked by unprecedented economic growth.

然而最重要的是，戰(zhàn)爭(zhēng)結(jié)束后“大壓縮”并沒(méi)有馬上停止。 事實(shí)上，充分就業(yè)和支持工人的政治改變了薪資規(guī)制，一個(gè)強(qiáng)勁的中產(chǎn)階級(jí)延續(xù)到了下一代。噢對(duì)了，戰(zhàn)后幾十年還出現(xiàn)了空前的經(jīng)濟(jì)大增長(zhǎng)。

Which brings me back to Walmart.

這就讓我想到了沃爾瑪?shù)氖隆?/p>

The retailer’s wage hike seems to reflect the same forces that led to the Great Compression, albeit in a much weaker form. Walmart is under political pressure over wages so low that a substantial number of employees are on food stamps and Medicaid. Meanwhile, workers are gaining clout thanks to an improving labor market, reflected in increasing willingness to quit bad jobs.

這家零售商的加薪，似乎是有一股力量在起作用，同樣是這種力量當(dāng)年促成了“大壓縮”，只不過(guò)這次的力量要小很多。沃爾瑪是承受著政治壓力的，它的薪資太低，以至于相當(dāng)一部分員工要靠食物券和聯(lián)邦醫(yī)療補(bǔ)助(Medicaid)過(guò)活。與此同時(shí)，隨著勞動(dòng)力市場(chǎng)的改善，工人的勢(shì)力在增加，這體現(xiàn)為辭去爛工作的意愿有所增強(qiáng)。

What’s interesting, however, is that these pressures don’t seem all that severe, at least so far — yet Walmart is ready to raise wages anyway. And its justification for the move echoes what critics of its low-wage policy have been saying for years: Paying workers better will lead to reduced turnover, better morale and higher productivity.

然而有意思的是，這些壓力看起來(lái)不算特別大，至少目前是這樣——但沃爾瑪還是打算加薪了。它提出的理由，和多年來(lái)一直在批評(píng)其低薪策略的人看法一致：給工人更高的報(bào)酬會(huì)降低雇員流失率，提升士氣和生產(chǎn)力。

What this means, in turn, is that engineering a significant pay raise for tens of millions of Americans would almost surely be much easier than conventional wisdom suggests. Raise minimum wages by a substantial amount; make it easier for workers to organize, increasing their bargaining power; direct monetary and fiscal policy toward full employment, as opposed to keeping the economy depressed out of fear that we’ll suddenly turn into Weimar Germany. It’s not a hard list to implement — and if we did these things we could make major strides back toward the kind of society most of us want to live in.

進(jìn)而我們看到，為成千上萬(wàn)的美國(guó)人策劃一場(chǎng)大幅度的加薪，幾乎可以肯定沒(méi)有通常認(rèn)為的那么難。將最低工資標(biāo)準(zhǔn)充分上調(diào);為工人組成工會(huì)提供便利，增加他們的議價(jià)權(quán);以充分就業(yè)為目標(biāo)制定直接的貨幣和財(cái)政政策，不要因?yàn)閾?dān)心我們會(huì)一夜之間變成魏瑪?shù)聡?guó)，就去把經(jīng)濟(jì)保持在蕭條的狀態(tài)。這些舉措要實(shí)施起來(lái)并不難——如果我們?nèi)プ?，我們就能大踏步地向前邁進(jìn)，實(shí)現(xiàn)我們理想中的社會(huì)。