Labour Laws
I just did a play-through of the game in the religious country, and it was pretty cool. I managed to turn the economy around (on my second try) and win with 61 million votes vs 60 million, so it was darned close :D.
I thing I did notice is that productivity is not affected by union laws. My gut feeling is that it should be. If your legal set-up is pro-union, that probably includes strict de-markation and making it hard to fire people. This, (my opinion) is bad for productivity, although great for the union workers with cushy jobs :D.
I think I'll add a slight negative effect to productivity, scaling to a positive effect as you go from pro-union to pro employer.
The game does a pretty good job of automatically simulating real world phenomena. Trade Unionists may be upset by the anti-union policy, but if it increases productivity and boosts GDP, that will raise more tax and enable the govt to lower tax rates and improve public services, which will please that same person :D. The problem (as in real life), is preventing those same union members from going on strike in the interval between crushing the unions (Thatcher) and reaping the rewards of an economic boom (Blair). You could say that in the UK, the conservatives (Thatcher) did the legwork of breaking strong unions, but couldn't keep things together long enough for the positive effects to trickle through to the economy. Or you could disagree and say it was sleaze, or the poll tax. ho hum.
I'm actually fairly pro-union in many ways, and anti-union in others. I think that workers have rights which need to be strongly protected and enforced by an organisation not related to the employers, but I think if someone is a crap worker it should be easy to sack them. Discuss :D
I thing I did notice is that productivity is not affected by union laws. My gut feeling is that it should be. If your legal set-up is pro-union, that probably includes strict de-markation and making it hard to fire people. This, (my opinion) is bad for productivity, although great for the union workers with cushy jobs :D.
I think I'll add a slight negative effect to productivity, scaling to a positive effect as you go from pro-union to pro employer.
The game does a pretty good job of automatically simulating real world phenomena. Trade Unionists may be upset by the anti-union policy, but if it increases productivity and boosts GDP, that will raise more tax and enable the govt to lower tax rates and improve public services, which will please that same person :D. The problem (as in real life), is preventing those same union members from going on strike in the interval between crushing the unions (Thatcher) and reaping the rewards of an economic boom (Blair). You could say that in the UK, the conservatives (Thatcher) did the legwork of breaking strong unions, but couldn't keep things together long enough for the positive effects to trickle through to the economy. Or you could disagree and say it was sleaze, or the poll tax. ho hum.
I'm actually fairly pro-union in many ways, and anti-union in others. I think that workers have rights which need to be strongly protected and enforced by an organisation not related to the employers, but I think if someone is a crap worker it should be easy to sack them. Discuss :D
posted by cliff at
4:21 PM
