The impact of companies’ dominance on labours

Some economists argue that when the multinational giants increase their sizes and influence, the benefits created by the economic growth will not be fairly located to the labours. This claim makes a lot of sense. When the multinational giants are influential, labours are so powerless when facing these giants, so they have to face what their companies offer. Therefore, when the giants have the control over their employees’ wages, they can get more profits and cash from squeezing their employees for their shareholders, and we can see many of these tech companies have had massive share buyback schemes. It seems what the economists are arguing is happening at the moment.

However, massive companies can also fail. For example, Nokia used to be the largest mobile phone maker in the world. However, since the launch of the first iPhone model, Nokia has quickly declined and disappeared from the main stage of the new smartphone era. The fall of Nokia was caused by a rapid market shift led by technology innovation. As these tech giants all went through this period, they must be aware this potential risk. Technology innovation is made by people and these giants know about it; therefore, the labours with extreme skills and knowledge are always what the giants are competitions for. For these highly skilled labours, they have the control over their own wages.

Therefore, the dominance of multinational giants will widen the wealth gap between shareholders and ordinary people, between highly skilled labours and ordinary people.