Teitelbaum
Partners in Production or Crime?
9
Thus, the incorporated union prefers most of all that the employer concedes the union’s
demand without a fight (outcome
2
f
). Next, the incorporated union prefers that it win its
demand through a course of routine protest,
2
a
. Absent a win with routine protest, the
incorporated union prefers to concede,
2
e
, rather than witness a fruitless loss of worker income
and company profits,
2
b
. The incorporated union will avoid violence at all costs, but prefers to
winning with violence,
2
c
, to losing with violence,
2
d
.
Solution and implications
The incorporated union decides between three courses of action—conceding defeat,
routine protest, and violent protest—and chooses the course of action with the highest expected
utility. The three equations representing these possibilities are
2
e
EU
uc
=
(1)
))
1
(
(
)
(
2
2
r
r
ur
p
b
p
a
EU
−
⋅
+
⋅
=
(2)
))
1
(
(
)
(
2
2
v
v
uv
p
d
p
c
EU
−
⋅
+
⋅
=
(3)
where
c
EU
represents the union’s expected utility of conceding defeat,
ur
EU
represents the
expected utility of routine protest and
uv
EU
represents the expected utility of violent protest for
the union. The following are the implications of this version of the game.
Since the highest value of
2
2
2
)
0
(
1
c
d
c
EU
uv
=
+
⋅
=
, the lowest value of
2
2
2
)
1
(
0
b
b
a
EU
ur
=
+
⋅
=
, and a incorporated union prefers
2
b
to
2
c
, the game predicts that an
incorporated union will never choose to use violence
. An incorporated union, then, only chooses
between conceding and pursuing a course of routine protest action.
The union will strike, rather than concede, when
uc
ur
EU
EU
>
, which is to say when the
expected utility of a course of routine protest is greater than the expected utility of conceding
Convention