> Under what possible circumstances does the average individual have more negotiating power or more information than a multinational organization with teams of lawyers, an HR department, and access to labour market research?
You're assuming a level of competence for corporate HR departments that isn't in evidence. What do you think they have that you can't get from Glassdoor or similar? Not much, if anything.
> Please explain how a ditch-digger can have negotiating leverage over the average road construction company?
By taking a job at some other ditch-digging company, or Walmart, or Uber, or anywhere else, until one company offers a better wage than the other.
For commodity positions it's not even really a negotiation for either party -- everybody on both sides knows what ditch diggers get paid, the employers offer that much and the employees accept that much because anybody who offered less or demanded more wouldn't find any takers.
Which is also why there can't be any meaningful information asymmetry -- when everybody knows the prevailing wage for that category of work, there is nothing else you really need to know in terms of wage negotiations.
You're assuming a level of competence for corporate HR departments that isn't in evidence. What do you think they have that you can't get from Glassdoor or similar? Not much, if anything.
> Please explain how a ditch-digger can have negotiating leverage over the average road construction company?
By taking a job at some other ditch-digging company, or Walmart, or Uber, or anywhere else, until one company offers a better wage than the other.
For commodity positions it's not even really a negotiation for either party -- everybody on both sides knows what ditch diggers get paid, the employers offer that much and the employees accept that much because anybody who offered less or demanded more wouldn't find any takers.
Which is also why there can't be any meaningful information asymmetry -- when everybody knows the prevailing wage for that category of work, there is nothing else you really need to know in terms of wage negotiations.