Do union members get higher wages than non-members?
Question: My lecturer said in class that exclusive and inclusive union members receive higher wages than nonunion. And that threw me off because it makes no sense to me whatsoever. I am inclined to believe that those union members don’t receive higher wages but, as I’ve already learned, theory is quite different than reality. So who’s right here? Answer: Union workers often do get higher wages than non-union workers in the same jobs and in the same industry. However, it is not true that union workers always and everywhere get higher wages than non-union workers. For a counter-example, one need look only at Microsoft and other high-tech companies, where many non-union employees have become millionaires. Unions are able to raise the wages of their members by getting a legal monopoly on supplying labor for a particular company or industry. If a company wants to hire someone, that person must either be a union member or be paid union wages. As you might expect, this causes the quantity of
