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Do Unions Really Raise Wages? 131They have insisted on promotion for seniority rather than for merit.They have initiated deliberate slowdowns under the pretense of fighting“speedups.” They have denounced, insisted upon the dismissal of,and sometimes cruelly beaten, men who turned out more work thantheir fellows. They have opposed the introduction or improvement ofmachinery. They have insisted on make-work rules to require morepeople or more time to perform a given task. They have even insisted,with the threat of ruining employers, on the hiring of people who arenot needed at all.Most of these policies have been followed under the assumptionthat there is just a fixed amount of work to be done, a definite “jobfund” which has to be spread over as many people and hours as possibleso as not to use it up too soon. This assumption is utterly false.There is actually no limit to the amount of work to be done. Work createswork. What A produces constitutes the demand for what B produces.But because this false assumption exists, and because the policiesof unions are based on it, their net effect has been to reduce productivitybelow what it would otherwise have been. Their net effect,therefore, in the long run and for all groups of workers, has been toreduce real wages—that is, wages in terms of the goods they will buy—below the level to which they would otherwise have risen. The realcause for the tremendous increase in real wages in the last half century(especially in America) has been, to repeat, the accumulation ofcapital and the enormous technological advance made possible by it.Reduction of the rate of increase in real wages is not, of course, aconsequence inherent in the nature of unions. It has been the resultof shortsighted policies. There is still time to change them.