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Chapter 1: What is the real horror behind the Alien franchise?
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We begin today with, I think truly, one of the most chilling earnings calls I have ever heard. Really disturbing stuff. And people should know, earnings calls generally, they're very, welcome to Q3. Yeah, profitability, costs, stuff like that. But in this call, they throw to the CEO, and it is very different here. You want to hear it?
Bringing us to the earnings report on our deep space initiatives. Every corporation has a space fleet.
Space fleet. Of course, every corporation has a space fleet. You know, space fleet is a weird way to put the pivot to space, I suppose. But like, you know, I kind of follow.
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Chapter 2: How does Weyland-Yutani represent monopsony power?
If you haven't seen it, come on, people. We will also be spoiling some parts of the brand new book, The Wage Standard, subtitled What's Wrong in the Labor Market and How to Fix It, by economist Aaron Dubé. And if you haven't read that, also, come on, what's wrong with you people? Spoilers all around. So we emailed Aaron to say, you know what? We love your book, but you know what would be cool?
If we mostly interviewed about the movie Alien. It's true. And then Aaron wrote back to us and said, basically, Heck yeah. Pretty sure I watched Alien for the first time when I was in middle school. That's very young. Yeah, it was very edgy. It's R-rated, Aaron. Aaron is one of the most prominent labor economists working right now.
He's at UMass Amherst, and he's probably best known for his research on the minimum wage. Aaron's been contributing to this growing body of work that shows higher minimum wages do not kill jobs the way economists used to think. But you can read all about that in Aaron's book. Yeah, yeah. Back to Alien. Let's get back to Alien. Yes.
Do you remember feeling like they were worker rights issues at play? That was like the first thing I thought of. I was like, oh my gosh, told my friends. No, I think I was just like, oh my God, I can't believe I'm watching this. If it just so happened that this is why you got into labor economics, that would have been a wonderful answer, but that's okay.
You know, we can go with that because who knows? Yeah, who knows? Because there is genuinely a surprising amount of labor economics baked into the very core of this movie. So if you haven't seen it, allow us to briefly explain the setup, the basic setup of the film Aliens. 20th Century Fox presents... Exterior shot. Spaceship from a company called the Weyland-Yutani Corporation.
This is a space truck, essentially. It's hauling a bunch of ore from a mining planet back to Earth. But interior shot. Computer screen. The space truck's computer picks up a mysterious signal, then wakes the entire crew from cryo sleep.
I am cold. Cornbread. Cornbread.
Now, this crew, they're rough, they're tumble, they're blue-collar space truckers. They wear tattered clothes and headbands. They work for Weyland-Yutani and clearly would rather still be a cryosleep. I feel dead. So, yeah, that's the basic setup. Yeah, yeah, that's right. What about that setup gets your labor economist senses tingling? So, first of all... These are not great jobs.
These are tough jobs, yeah. There's some serious negative amenities, as we say.
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Chapter 3: What labor dynamics are highlighted in the movie Alien?
You don't have to watch for very long to see the problems. Basically, the first scene of the movie Alien is all about work and pay and contracts, and we cue that scene up to watch with Aaron. All right, everyone ready? Yeah. Okay. Sounds good. Here we go. Okay, so in this scene, the crew, they gather around this table. Their captain tells them about this mysterious transmission.
And they've been woken up because their company, Weyland-Yutani, it needs them to go investigate that transmission.
A transmission? Out here? Yeah. SOS? I don't know. Humans. Yeah, let me pause there.
Not in the contract. What's your reaction to that line? Well, you know, it's not in the contract. So if they are told they have to do something, it's not their contract, they should just quit and get another job. You're being facetious because they're on a spaceship. Oh, no.
How is that going to work?
Yes. Here is a giant clue that the true monster of Alien may be hiding in the labor dynamics, Greg. Yes? Yeah. I mean, okay. So our crew, they live on a company ship. They sleep in a company cryo sleep chamber. They eat company cornbread, apparently. Functionally, our space truckers live in a company town.
Now, what makes Alien a smarter econ movie than it needs to be is that it goes further than just saying like, oh, the crew's trapped, therefore they must do what their company says. Instead, this scene keeps going and the crew is like, well, if we do this little side mission, we better get overtime or something. Can we just talk about the bonus? Sorry, can I say something?
Let's talk about the bonus. There is a clause in the contract.
Okay, so that person who is, well, actually, there's a clause in the contract. He's an android. He represents the company, Weyland-Yutani. He's a management shill.
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Chapter 4: How does Aaron Dubé's research inform our understanding of labor markets?
And it It certainly seems as if the corporation Weyland-Yutani is operating with the power of a monopsony in the dystopian sci-fi future of Alien. Now, obviously, this is a crazy, fantastical world far off in space with aliens and xenomorphs and whatever. But these sort of all-powerful monopsonies have existed in the real world, like mining towns that were owned and run by one company.
And when there's only one employer, workers are, how did Aaron put it again, kind of screwed. Yes, one company, real bad for workers. Of course, in a company town or, you know, like there's going to be monopsony power, a whale in your tummy. But this is really a much more endemic feature of the labor market than people have really understood.
As in monopsony power is sneakily hiding all over our current labor market, even money. when there is more than one company to go work for. And this, this actually is the part that should land, like the economic version of a surprise alien bursting out of your colleague's chest. Greg, you want to go with that again? Wait, am I the alien or the person? I guess I was wrong.
The monopsony was hiding within us all along. That's the takeaway here. Yes. For decades, economists assumed that labor markets were mostly competitive and that monopsonies, they could be treated like unicorns, you know, only found in rare circumstances. But Aaron and a growing number of economists, they're finding monopsonies, it's more kind of like a regular horse.
Monopsony power, it's just like much more pervasive than previously thought. Yes, sure. Pervasive. But the key here is that monopsony power that Aaron and other researchers are finding, it's not obvious, like in old mining towns or future space mining companies. It's kind of with us now sneakily. So Aaron walks us through how to spot what today's monopsony power looks like for us.
I think that the key thing is to start with the, like, what is monopsony power? Monopsony power means that workers can't easily switch jobs and employers have some degree of choice of what kind of wages or what kind of working conditions to provide. Now, why did they have this choice? Why don't you have basically, I pay a little bit lower than the market wage.
Everyone bolts and is gone to the next best alternative. Why does that not happen? It's not because we're stuck on spaceships. That's not the reason. That's not the reason. That's like the fifth reason. But first, because there may be concentrated markets. Concentrated markets. So maybe we don't yet have one giant Weyland-Yutani corporation running the world.
But when you look at specific industries within specific geographies, some of those have been consolidating, offering fewer and fewer employers for people to work for. As industries consolidate, employers tend to be able to reduce pay for workers. And one example Aaron points to in his book, somebody who is working in the skiing industry.
Ski industry, you know, like 25 years ago, there was a lot of small family-owned hills. But over the last 25, 30 years, it's become very consolidated. Interesting. Like, for example, in Vermont, you could maybe go to the next one over and, hey, that's also owned by the same employer.
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Chapter 5: What role do negative amenities play in job desirability?
Summer camp in Massachusetts, the examples go on, but it's basically a way to reduce competition for workers. What you're saying about the ways in which monopsony shows up, like, surely we're not all stuck on a spaceship with a single employer controlling our entire life. And what your research has shown is like, aren't we, though, in just littler ways? That's right. So jobs are sticky.
Quitting is harder. And as a result, our working conditions and job quality are only partially determined by a well-functioning market force. So yes, there's aspects of exactly what doesn't work in a very dramatic way in Alien does afflict us in smaller but important ways. And the good news is we have ways of fixing or improving those more so than in the movie, perhaps.
Yeah, Aaron says in the real world, we have ways to push back against monopsony power. Things like minimum wage laws, antitrust enforcement, and labor unions that fight for worker interests. And this is basically what Aaron's book is about. He says the erosion of those counterforces is a big reason we've seen a stagnation of worker pay and a rise in inequality.
That's in the real world, of course. But Aaron says he supposes those things would have helped in the movie Alien, too. Yeah, like, imagine if in the movie the employees of Weyland-Yutani were, like, in a really strong labor union or something. Like, one that we see in a lot of other countries, where they hammer out worker protections for a whole sector of the economy.
So, if we had, for example, the Sectoral Space Fuckers Association, the S... S-T-A. Yep. The S-S-T-A. The S-S-T-A. And so when they start having these debates about what they should do, there's a big volume of S-S-T-A, you know, contract that lays out our collective bargaining. And in fact, if they found out something they didn't really like, they would say, you know what?
Let me call, let me talk to my shop steward. That scene would probably play out a little different, wouldn't it? It would sort of be a really boring scene. And then they would say, okay, fine. We're not going to do it. And then they're just going to go back to Earth. The end. I don't know that that would be a boring scene, Greg. It sounds riveting to me, honestly. Agree.
And so Planet Money is proud to present the world premiere of Alien 1979, the labor economist's cut. And we hear from someone with firsthand knowledge of what it takes to make an actual alien movie and how to nail the perfect balance of labor economics and killer aliens. All of that after the break.
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Chapter 6: How do monopsony dynamics affect workers today?
Yeah, there are now a bunch of alien movies, and the best of those, they strike this delicate balance of space terror and smart economic themes. And we were unbelievably excited to get to talk to someone who has actually had to walk that econ horror tightrope. I'm going to put you on the spot a little bit.
Do you remember off the top of your head the first words that are spoken in your film Alien Romulus?
First word spoken. What is, let me remember.
This is Fede Alvarez. He co-wrote and directed the newest film in the Alien franchise. I can give you the answer if you want it. Attention all workers. Attention all workers.
Attention all workers. Attention all workers. Day shift starting in T minus 15.
We at Planet Money, we bring our economics lens to everything, but surely we are not hallucinating that you also have chosen to put labor dynamics to some degree front and center here, yes?
Well, I think all the... When you're going to make an alien movie, the first thing you do is try to study... what make the best iterations of this franchise. And I think, you know, if you look at the first one, you're given a second one and the third one, they're always talking about that. I mean, in a way, how powerless the individual can be, you know, in front of the machine.
This is kind of a big deal for us. Fede Alvarez, he's a very accomplished horror thriller director. He made his first films in Uruguay. He co-wrote and directed a huge hit in the United States called Don't Breathe. He also directed a reboot of The Evil Dead, which was freaking awesome and supposedly set a record for gallons of fake blood used in a movie. Indeed. Rain's fake blood.
Lots of fake blood. And yeah, Greg and I, big Fede Alvarez fans. And clearly, Fede knows that great alien movies need smart ideas about labor and work. He's not a labor economist, though. So we wanted to talk to Fede about how he went about finding and building those smart ideas into his movie.
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Chapter 7: What policy changes could improve worker conditions?
General powerlessness.
And in the case of Alien, it's always the Wailing Yutani who represents the government. It can be literally that in the stories, but it's also, you know, how you feel powerless versus something that cannot be destroyed, that seems to you cannot negotiate with, that seems that it's relentless.
So... I think that's why I think the best ones, they always start there. They get the audience. They draw them in from a perspective of, you know, everybody knows how it feels to be in that place and feel powerless. I've read a few quotes from you about this as an Uruguayan. Exactly, yeah.
Yeah, you said things like growing up under a dictatorship in a developing country, that there is a feeling that – may seem specific, but is universal about sort of a lack of options for you as a young person.
Yeah. I mean, ironically, at the same time, yes, Uruguay, by being born in a dictatorship, like my parents had a just a mentality in a way of a survival instinct that came from being born in that environment where you didn't have a lot of choices. And if you grew a beard, you will get arrested.
But at the same time, that being said, there's also the other side of it is when I moved to the United States, when I make Evil Dead my first film and I moved here, I was like, wait a second, you guys don't have like, Like vacation, a salary, like you don't have like guarantee 30 days of vacation every year.
And people were like, what are you talking about? You have to work. And I was like, what is this dystopian society?
So, you know, Uruguay, we have healthcare, it's free healthcare. And, you know, particularly in the employer dynamics, if you get hired by a company and...
And they want to fire you. It's okay. They can fire you. But they will have to pay you. There's all this severance thing. They have to pay you at least a month of salary for each year that you work at the company.
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Chapter 8: How does Alien: Romulus address labor issues differently?
Our executive producer is Alex Goldmark. Special thanks this week to Taylor Haber and to you, Greg Rozalski, you little xenomorph you. Greg, if you are not familiar, is our newsletter writer and wrote two excellent newsletters about monopsony, about the movie Alien, about Aaron Dubé, and those inspired this show. So you can find those. We're going to link to them in our show notes.
Yeah, thanks, Kenny. Really appreciate that. Yeah. I'm Kenny Malone. And I'm Greg Rozalski. This is NPR. Thanks for listening.
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