While digging around and researching the TVA, I came across and ordered David Dayen's book Monopolized. I couldn't shake a thought that's been sitting with me ever since:
We often hear about the market dangers of a monopoly… but what if the real issue for Labor is the inverse.
You probably already know what a monopoly is, when a small number of sellers control the market and can set prices and terms.
A monopsony flips that dynamic: when a small number of buyers control the market. For those of us in the trades who sell our labor, training, and craftsmanship, fewer buyers can mean less leverage over wages, conditions, and opportunities.
In our world, it doesn't always look like one company controlling everything. It looks like something more familiar.
Two or three major contractors.
The same names on every large bid.
The same players winning 70-80% of the industrial and heavy commercial work that union labor depends on.
On the surface it looks like leverage could be on labor's side. There's a lot of work. Calls are going out. Contractors are pushing for manpower.
But if you look a little closer, the dynamic shifts.
When most of the work is controlled by just a few contractors, the market starts to behave differently. It's no longer a broad, competitive field, it's a narrow channel. And in that kind of environment, even a strong local can find its negotiating position quietly constrained.
Not because the work isn't there.
But because who controls the work starts to matter more than how much work there is.
Concentration of power doesn't just raise prices or cut competition; it changes relationships. It changes who has options, and who doesn't.
And in a monopsony environment, options start to shrink.
If a local is heavily dependent on a small group of contractors for the majority of its man-hours, negotiations don't happen on a fully open playing field. There's an unspoken pressure that creeps in. The conversation isn't just about standards, it's about maintaining access to the work itself.
That's a different kind of leverage.
And if we're honest, it's one that can quietly marginalize a local's position over time, even in periods of high demand.
So the question becomes: what do we do with that?
For me, the takeaway isn't panic, it's awareness and intention.
It means recognizing that our role as union leadership goes beyond negotiating agreements. We're also shaping the structure of the market we operate in, whether we mean to or not.
If too much work flows through too few hands, we have to start asking how we widen that field.
That might mean being more deliberate about developing smaller and mid-sized signatory contractors, making sure they have real opportunities to compete and grow. It might mean looking at how bids are structured, how relationships are built, and whether we're unintentionally reinforcing concentration by defaulting to the same players over and over again. It also might mean leveraging your sponsorships differently to help gain work for some of your smaller contractors. (Something we may be able to help you with)
It also means thinking differently about organizing. Not just shop by shop, but market by market. Because the more density we have across a broader range of contractors, the harder it is for leverage to concentrate in one place.
And it probably means having more honest conversations internally and externally about what "a lot of work" really means if control of that work is narrow.
None of this is easy. And none of it changes overnight.
But ignoring it doesn't make it go away. If anything, it allows the pattern to deepen until it feels normal.
That's why this matters.
Because strong unions aren't just built on busy books. They're built on balanced markets. Markets where no single contractor, or small group of them, can quietly dictate the terms for everyone else.
Reading Monopolized didn't give me all the answers, but it did change how I look at what's happening around us. And maybe that's the first step, seeing clearly what kind of market we're actually operating in, so we can start shaping it into something better.
