61–70 of 339 posts
Happy to hear workers are standing up for themselves. The anti-union FUD campaign in the US has contributed significantly to the erosion of middle class wages over the past 50 years (check out Thomas Piketty's work if you're curious about this).
Black friday is a thing in Italy??
Happy to hear workers are standing up for themselves. The anti-union FUD campaign in the US has contributed significantly to the erosion of middle class wages over the past 50 years (check out Thomas Piketty's work if you're curious about this).
It's way more complicated than that, and it can't simply be dismissed as a "FUD campaign". Union members are actually disproportionately likely to support things like right-to-work laws, which unions dislike because it (more or less) means workers aren't obligated to be members if they choose not to.
Similarly, union membership rates have dropped even in states that have very union-friendly laws (like New York and Massachusetts), and unions are having less and less success at the polls, meaning non-unionized workers are rejecting the proposals to unionize their workforces (UAW elections in particular - AFL-CIO elections to a lesser extent).
This pattern isn't as simple to dismiss as "anti-union FUD", especially since it's seen among people who are already union members in closed shops.
The reasons for this have to do with the history of unionization of closed shops, and the regional economic pressures it creates.
Now that's something I haven't heard about in the US for a few decades: strikes. I'm partly kidding, but have there been any major strikes in the US lately?
Neoliberalism has tried to structure the economy in order to render strikes impossible by guaranteeing that they can't cause any real inconvenience. The "sharing economy" is merely the next generation of that: there's no workplace to picket and a "flexible" supply of labour willing to cross the picket anyway.
There's also a general message carried by the medias and politicians that neoliberalism is the only possible solution. People are discouraged to go on strike (or even to vote for alternative parties) even when they see their wages and their social benefits declining. They feel that the medias may be right after all, and even if they aren't, there's not much to do anyway.
Happy to hear workers are standing up for themselves. The anti-union FUD campaign in the US has contributed significantly to the erosion of middle class wages over the past 50 years (check out Thomas Piketty's work if you're curious about this).
> The anti-union FUD campaign in the US has contributed significantly to the erosion of middle class wages It's way more complicated than that, and it can't simply be dismissed as a "FUD campaign". Union members are actually disproportionately likely to support things like right-to-work laws, which unions dislike because it (more or less) means workers aren't obligated to be members if they choose not to. Similarly,…
It's also nice to see people doing a serious strike in Italy for once, unions have done a shitty job there in recent years, but it's important to have workers protest, to guarantee a balance of power.
Black friday is a thing in Italy??
Great way to make sure in the near future Amazon will send packages to Italy from France, Austria, Slovenia or Switzerland - the countries sharing a border with them. (Same happened - and is happening - in Germany. Staff at logistics centers started to strike (in small numbers). Totally unrelated Amazon started shipping from Poland and Czech Republic)
And so will either increase prices or slow down delivery. Also, I don't know wether Italy has sane strike laws or not, but in Germany amazon would not be allowed to just fire the strikers, and there is and was non-negligible PR fallout from the strikes. Just to present the full picture. In the end, either there will be a price found. But I'd say good for Italian workers for making the labour market more of a market
> And so will either increase prices or slow down delivery.
Not really. Germany is small enough that it doesn't really matter if you get it from a German or a Polish warehouse (that sits directly behind the border). (Amazon Prime deliveries and similar stuff excluded - but that's a very small percentage)
> Also, I don't know wether Italy has sane strike laws or not, but in Germany amazon would not be allowed to just fire the strikers, and there is and was non-negligible PR fallout from the strikes.
You don't fire anyone. You just don't invest there any more to keep up with your xx% growth every year. You just do that behind the border.
Happy to hear workers are standing up for themselves. The anti-union FUD campaign in the US has contributed significantly to the erosion of middle class wages over the past 50 years (check out Thomas Piketty's work if you're curious about this).
It’s not FUD when you literally have unions such as ones for police who fight tooth and nail to keep bad employees working there. Sure, that’s what a union is supposed to do, but there needs to be a line, and no one wants to define it.
Imagine if we all (and not just the left) talked about companies the same way we talk about unions, using the countless examples of managerial abuse, wage theft etc. as examples. Would you say that would be reasonable?
And preemptively, this is not a "both sides" question either. Everything is grey, but there are shades of grey. And while neither unions nor companies are perfect, both are at the same time vital to how things work right now and not above criticism. They both are definitely preferable to 1820s style enterprises for example, but worse than the Culture.
Is there a Black Friday in Italy? I thought this would be a purely American thing.