I 
S.IH- 
The Conditions of a Workers* Paradise. 
Let me now take up the question of labor's counterpart to 
a buyers' market for products. Besides providing him with 
flexibility in responding to an increased availability of labor 
or a fall in sales, the price .maker's excess demand for labor can 
also make it profitable for him to engage in nonwage competition 
and so create a sellers' market for labor. After all, if he can 
profitably employ extra workers who take the initiative to ask for 
work, it must be almost as profitable for him to persuade additional 
workers to ask for work, provided that the cost of persuading them 
is less than the cost of offering them higher wages. Pleasant 
working conditions, medical facilities, pension plans, cheap housing, 
the provision of limited job security and similar fringe benefits 
are as many examples of such means of persuasion,; (The higher-than- 
stanaard wage for overtime work is the labor-market counterpart oef 
special sales and discounted prices^ 
In the U.S., firms in non-unionized industries often use fringe 
benefits as a means to attract good workers, though it is often inter 
preted as a ruse to take the wind out of the sails of union organizers. 
In a country where a mere 13% of the labor force is unionized, that is 
not a very convincing explanation. There are several other explanations, 
one of them being that such firms find it more profitable to attract J 
additional workers by the offer of fringe benefits than by raising 
wages.