Do salary caps exist in other industries than professional sports?
In general, they don’t. Many individual companies budget their salaries, but that is not a cap. For example, Chrysler can decide how much it will pay welders, and negotiate welders’ wages with the United Auto Workers. However, Chrysler cannot force Ford or Toyota to go along; if Toyota wants to offer more when its labor contract comes up for renewal, or Ford wants to offer less and can get UAW to agree (possibly with some other changes, such as better benefits), that deal will stand. And if Toyota’s higher wages mean that the best workers choose to fill the jobs at Toyota instead of going to Chrysler, that is allowed to happen. It would be a salary cap if all automakers agreed to pay X wage for a welder with Y years of experience, and forced UAW to accept the offer from all of them or not at all. Effective salary caps may exist when there is a monopoly; however, almost all monopolies are either owned or regulated by the government. For example, until the alternative telephone companies
