Thoughts:
1) It makes me wonder where the surplus goes. Invested back into the corporations, so that the people who run them have a large amount of power? That would be dystopian. Unless I'm making an incorrect assumption, like...
2) Is it only downward compression, or does it perhaps act both upwardly AND downward? So there's little profit unspoken for, and anyone participating in the labor market is receiving a roughly equal piece of the economic output (or, at least, within a relatively narrow band).
3) That would suggest something rather radical to the (neo)liberal mindset of there being no ceiling on what spoils of productivity one can claw to oneself: instead, an acknowledgment that we're all roughly equal humans giving up a roughly equal portion of life, time, energy, and freedom to labor, regardless of the prerequisites to be competent at that labor (or of the opportunities to exploit one's position).
4) As for implications for other countries, I wonder if there are any for those in which social, racial, and class hierarchies are deeply embedded. Can the kind of robust wage bargaining described emerge even without all of that rectified? Maybe it's what catalyzes that rectification?
1) In Finland most of the value is given out as dividends. We have a chronic underinvestment problem where large companies don’t have long term strategies so they dole out a comparatively large amount of value as dividends vs. re-investing the money for future profits. As a result, the stock market is skewed towards dividend-companies vs. growers.
Re 2: salaries are very seldom too low. Think of waiters cleaners etc. they have pretty decent salaries. At least in Sweden where I live. This is the effect of unions being strong, a general culture that values work and workers, and historical and political context. Also scarcity plays a role, there are few people and many professions are hard to find.
Having said that, it's no socialist Heaven either, wealth inequality is among the highest in developed countries and unemployment is very high especially among the young people with immigrant background. Racism, or a certain suspicion of strangers, is latent and affects access to jobs. Inflation is high, housing market is as crazy as elsewhere, and living costs are not low.