IMO: I don't like unions in politics. Organized labor has done a lot of good, but they need to stay out of politics.
Unions Did Great Things for the American Working Class
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Re: Unions Did Great Things for the American Working Class
#92I haven't read the paper and I probably won't, but it seems suspicious to me that the 1940 to 1970 timeframe mentioned just happens to coincide with WW2 and the aftermath and recovery. If you aren't prepared to systematically destroy foreign cities and industry I don't think you can recreate those conditions.
These were also the years where the soviet union was at its most threatening and keeping workers happy to reduce the attraction of communism was at the highest. After that threat vanished the gains in productivity have been used to reward investors rather than workers.
How does this correlate with the mass exodus of members of the communist party in America in the 1930s after hearing about the conditions in Stalin’s Russia?
Re: Unions Did Great Things for the American Working Class
#93IMO: I don't like unions in politics. Organized labor has done a lot of good, but they need to stay out of politics.
I don't like corporations in politics. Successful businesses have done a lot of good, but they need to stay out of politics. (Read: And as long as they are in politics the unions have to be, too.)
Re: Unions Did Great Things for the American Working Class
#94Re: Unions Did Great Things for the American Working Class
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know if it's bad faith, but you're describing a property the entire society had at the time. Perhaps the unions were worse than most, but that's not the case you're making. Also, it's not clear how your claims and those of the article can't both be true.
> I don't know if it's bad faith, but you're describing a property the entire society had at the time. Perhaps the unions were worse than most, but that's not the case you're making. It's not true that lobbying the government to enact explicitly white supremacist legislation is "a property the entire society had at the time". > Also, it's not clear how your claims and those of the article can't both be true. It's dis…
Society at the time was dominated by views we would now call white supremacist. That is enough to explain why the unions behaved as you describe.
Since you asked above, I think this might be where the feeling of "bad faith" comes in. You're pushing this point harder than it can support and more harshly than you need to. That creates a feeling in the reader of something being off. That's too bad, because it's a good point. I found the information interesting, but because of this extra torque you're putting on it, one ends up responding more to that "off" feeling than to the informative parts of your comment.
Re: Unions Did Great Things for the American Working Class
#96I haven't read the paper and I probably won't, but it seems suspicious to me that the 1940 to 1970 timeframe mentioned just happens to coincide with WW2 and the aftermath and recovery. If you aren't prepared to systematically destroy foreign cities and industry I don't think you can recreate those conditions.
Generally, inequality increases during times of growth; it's a general rule that the rich get richer faster than the poor get richer. It's during times of decline that you normally expect inequality to decline. After all, the rich collect the profits while the poor collect wages. Wages are relatively fixed while profits vary wildly.
This was a different situation. The union organizing was mostly done in the 30s, alongside voting FDR into office, then the war happened. When veterans came home with the VI Bill a lot of them went to college and got involved with the new science money (military industrial complex, etc.). In addition to the Kaynesian New Deal investments, America was just on top of the world and happened to upon the closest thing it had ever known to socialism.
Re: Unions Did Great Things for the American Working Class
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
He said take, which doesn’t change my argument in any way.
Except that you can take something when someone else gives it up, by say, not innovating. Taking in that sense is very much not stealing.
That’s fair. But the countries he’s talking about aren’t freer by any reasonable definition of freedom.
Edit: and the countries he’s talking about didn’t take manufacturing by being more innovative, they did it through cheap brutal labor practices and environmental destruction of their ecosystems.
Re: Unions Did Great Things for the American Working Class
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
These were also the years where the soviet union was at its most threatening and keeping workers happy to reduce the attraction of communism was at the highest. After that threat vanished the gains in productivity have been used to reward investors rather than workers.
How does this correlate with the mass exodus of members of the communist party in America in the 1930s after hearing about the conditions in Stalin’s Russia?
I don’t think that had much to do with it. There was a lot of conflicting propaganda at the time and conditions in Soviet Russia in the late 1920s were good. Regardless, communists weren’t so easily persuaded.
The exodus was partly a reaction to poor conditions in Russia and the fact that Stalin, as opposed to Lenin before him, did not believe in pursuing worldwide revolutions. Stalin withdrew efforts to support communist parties worldwide.
But the main thing that encouraged withdrawal from the communist party was The New Deal.
Re: Unions Did Great Things for the American Working Class
#99There is definitely something missing in the current management/employee relationship. For example, the Wells Fargo account fraud issue. Where they had thousands of new accounts being opened without customer authorization. Caused by ratcheting sales mandates and mid level management pushing employees to open accounts fraudulently and firing those who objected. It showed an obvious lack of ability for the branch level…
Not really. Worker co-ops. Otherwise, the union just needs to implement the right policies as they do in Europe. The problem with unions in the US was largely that the big ones were often very integrated with the government and company owners; not a project so much of the workers.
Re: Unions Did Great Things for the American Working Class
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except that you can take something when someone else gives it up, by say, not innovating. Taking in that sense is very much not stealing.
That’s fair. But the countries he’s talking about aren’t freer by any reasonable definition of freedom. Edit: and the countries he’s talking about didn’t take manufacturing by being more innovative, they did it through cheap brutal labor practices and environmental destruction of their ecosystems.
My point is simply that places that embrace innovation will outperform places that don't. The Unions in the US do not embrace innovation. Look at what the Teacher's union in California has done to education here. If the US did not have the Unions destroy innovation in the car industry, perhaps the US would have the best and most reliable cars in the world. Japan embraced innovation as part of the DNA of how they work, and they make incredibly good cars.
The question to ask is: who is the customer of the Union in the US? There is a conflict of interest between the Union in the US and the customers of the products created by unionized companies. In Japan, the focus is on the customer and creating the best product. In the US, the focus is on being in the Union hierarchy, "saving jobs", getting money for the Union, etc. It has nothing to do with making great cars.
The construction Union in New York destroyed new modular appraoches to building in the late 60's (I worked for the architect who tried to bring that innovation in). Even today, if you want to bring modules not build in NYC in to town, it won't happen. There is a conflict of interest between the union and the construction companies' customers.
This is quite apparent in California where the Teacher's union is in a conflict of interest with the students being taught, which is why the Union has destroyed the product of public education consistently for decades.