61–70 of 448 posts
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the unions tend to have an effect in favor of union’s leadership
Yup. Often forming a union just replaces self-serving management with self-serving union leadership. Nothing like those union leaders making $300k per year!
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I think it has to be framed against the baseline of pervasive anti-union ideology in the US. When people have been inculcated all their lives with the idea that labor organizing is bad, they’re all just temporarily embarrassed corporate execs, it doesn’t take too much to push them back towards this baseline. Or at least enough to quash the union.
One can be pro-organizing but not pro-union.
“I support the labor movement, but just can’t agree with their tactics. They can always just get a better job.”
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I think their angle is that it’s not in anyone’s favour to unionise.
It's hard to pinpoint where it originated but anti-union sentiment existed conversationally my entire life. The view being that union's are big inefficient bureaucracies of lazy people who get nothing done. It parallels the view of government I grew up with. Never really questioned where this view came from though, but my guess would be persistent long term marketing by interested parties. "Nudging" if you will. That…
Now, do the benefits to the workers in a dirty union outweigh the benefits to working for an abusive corporation? I have no idea.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
the unions tend to have an effect in favor of union’s leadership
Yup. Often forming a union just replaces self-serving management with self-serving union leadership. Nothing like those union leaders making $300k per year!
We just have such low awareness in the US about what unions are and how they work that we take self-serving, collaborationist, timid union leadership as a fact instead of something we can and should urgently struggle to change.
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the unions tend to have an effect in favor of union’s leadership
Yup. Often forming a union just replaces self-serving management with self-serving union leadership. Nothing like those union leaders making $300k per year!
I always wonder about these ham-handed anti-union efforts. I assume they must work to some degree, or they wouldn't do it. But it seems like the sudden escalation of anti-union arguments would only end up working in favor of the union. Because it betrays how against it they are. It confirms that yes, this union will have an effect, and not in management's favor. Like "Clearly we're onto something here if they oppose…
If you're in California right now and watch enough TV to see anti-vaping commercials, you'll relate to the idea that hammering a message into a viewer's head as if with an adze is seen as a useful strategy, regardless (or maybe because) of the quality and integrity of the message itself.
This is also of a piece with the generally constant push for employees to identify with the company's interests over their (and their colleagues') own. I think that finding Google's moves here as ridiculous is not something that can be counted on to be common sense. It sure feels like a material if-this-then-that relationship, but a lot of times people (you know...them ;) will only remember the last and/or loudest message they heard about something.
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One can be pro-organizing but not pro-union.
One should be both , with a careful eye towards aggressive governance and transparency of your union. No different than if you have equity ownership in a startup, the only difference is that you’re selling your time collectively instead of a product. Unions are just corporations for labor sales. If you don’t like your management, replace them with your vote.
Not necessarily, some are democratic, like some in Sweden. The IWW is an example of an alternative to the centralized unions [1].
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Or the unions are composed of reprehensible bigots who support the Vietnam war and are bad on race
The unions are democratic institutions that represent the self-organization of working people. If the current leadership of a union is bad (and in many cases it is) it should be campaigned against, voted out, and replaced. Giving up on the idea of a union because you don't like who's been elected to run it is self-defeating.
Not necessarily, some are quite centralized. For example, LO in Sweden. The US has plenty of examples. Look at Harlan County for an extreme example.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's hard to pinpoint where it originated but anti-union sentiment existed conversationally my entire life. The view being that union's are big inefficient bureaucracies of lazy people who get nothing done. It parallels the view of government I grew up with. Never really questioned where this view came from though, but my guess would be persistent long term marketing by interested parties. "Nudging" if you will. That…
You forgot corruption. In the US at least, unions can't seem to stay clean. Now, do the benefits to the workers in a dirty union outweigh the benefits to working for an abusive corporation? I have no idea.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it has to be framed against the baseline of pervasive anti-union ideology in the US. When people have been inculcated all their lives with the idea that labor organizing is bad, they’re all just temporarily embarrassed corporate execs, it doesn’t take too much to push them back towards this baseline. Or at least enough to quash the union.
One can be pro-organizing but not pro-union.