The Devil is in the Math

Pro-labor site In These Times has posted a piece claiming an employer's lockout is costing the company more than giving into the union's contract demands. The first question is "why is that news?" One would assume the disrupted continuation of work would be more expensive. Upon closer analysis, however, the math is skewed. The poster includes the total cost of replacement labor in the computation. Since the locked out employees are not paid for being locked out, the labor cost figure does not belong in the calculation. The proper analysis would subtract the normal labor costs from the actual labor costs to ascertain the increase caused by the lockout.