Altos salários e "controle operário"

Um post de Chris Dillow sobre o assunto:

Compass [uma organização da ala esquerda do Partido Trabalhista] wants the government to set up a High Pay Commission to limit top incomes. This is a bad idea. It’s an example of what Boffy (...) calls the Left’s “debilitating reliance on statism.”

The thing is, high salaries lie along a spectrum. At one end, there are genuinely talented people who might be lost to the country if their wages are capped. Some of these might not be obviously overpaid: Cesc Fabregas (pbuh), for example, earns a third less than Frank Lampard. At the other extreme are pure rent-seekers, who owe their riches to the ability to climb corporate ladders or to the fact that they are in positions to rip off workers or shareholders. And there are many between these two poles - people who are good but not £1m a year good.

However, a blanket cap on salaries cannot distinguish between all these different individuals. Which gives us a problem.

If the cap is set low enough to hit rent-seekers, oppressors and exploiters, it risks driving away genuinely productive people. And if it’s set high enough to retain the latter, it’ll leave the power-grabber untouched.

There is, though, an alternative to a government commission - workers’ control. Workers, far more than any ragbag of state-appointed “experts”, have an idea whether their high-paid bosses are clueless gobshites or genuinely good managers. And they have an incentive to distinguish between them. Rational workers would want to retain a talented manager, as he is best able to secure their jobs and improve their wages. And they have every need to get rid of the bad boss, as it’s their jobs that are threatened by his greedy incompetence.

In this sense, I agree [that] collective action is better than state intervention. As long, that is, as we recognize that what’s needed is not workers’ pressure upon companies, but worker’s control: workers should hire bosses, not (just) bosses hire workers.

So, high pay should be curbed (or not) not by the state but by workers themselves.