Corporate Spies Are Watching Organized Labor • Hacker News Board

Re: Corporate Spies Are Watching Organized Labor

#91

Post by LadyCailin » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 1:10 AM UTC

threatofrain wrote: post #75

seibelj wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

College-educated people who make good salaries have this vision of unions as the silver bullet solution for the working class. I don’t think they know any working class people with union experience, as unions are unquestionably a mixed bag. For some anecdata, my dad’s a musician and a guy he plays with is a janitor for his full time job, and he is diehard anti-union out of life experience.

I agree, the teacher union strikes in Chicago ground the whole system to a halt with 300,000 kids not in school. If prolonged it could've seriously hampered childrens' progress in education.

Teachers quitting by the droves because of terrible working conditions and inability to make ends meet also hampers children’s education. Be thankful they still care enough to go on strike.

Re: Corporate Spies Are Watching Organized Labor

#92

Post by LadyCailin » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 1:16 AM UTC

cmdshiftf4 wrote: post #71

mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is better for both individuals and society at large if we are able to not only generate material wealth, but also do so within systems of our own design which allow us to generate said wealth through voluntary cooperation. You are of course correct that any person is technically free to reject any particular job, but someone with an interest in both continuing to be able to provide for themselves and their family…

>It is better for both individuals and society at large if we are able to not only generate material wealth, but also do so within systems of our own design which allow us to generate said wealth through voluntary cooperation. There's absolutely nothing stopping people, especially a collective of people who might want to form a union, from pooling their own funds and starting an enterprise based on the values of thei…

> It is incredibly dishonest, and certainly of ill intent, to join or remain within a company or group whose values you strongly disagree with for the purpose of financially benefiting from that group's activities and trying to undermine said values from within.

Perhaps, but this is why unions should exist even when things are going well, to prevent them from getting bad in the first place.

Re: Corporate Spies Are Watching Organized Labor

#93

Post by tptacek » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 5:40 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #63

claudeganon wrote: post #20

Counter to what you see touted on this website, unions are not solely about securing additional material benefits for workers. They are and have always been about changing workplaces from top-down, authoritarian models to ones where workers have a say in their company’s work and overall direction. They’re about acknowledging that none of these structures function or accomplish anything without labor and shifting thei…

> They are and have always been about changing workplaces from top-down, authoritarian models to ones where workers have a say in their company’s work and overall direction. They’re about acknowledging that none of these structures function or accomplish anything without labor and shifting their relations of power to reflect this reality. I’d encourage younger folks who have an idealized view of American unions to ch…

This is not a great argument, since (1) The Irishman is based on what experts seem to believe is a work of total fiction (its subject claims to have been instrumental in the Bay of Pigs, the Kennedy Assassination, Watergate, the killing of Jimmy Hoffa, and the killing of Joe Gallo), and (2) the industries that were mobbed up when unions were ascendant remain mobbed up now; of course the unions were infiltrated, you couldn't engage with those industries without engaging with their unions.

It's a good movie and all. I just wouldn't draw a lot of public policy lessons from it.

Re: Corporate Spies Are Watching Organized Labor

#94

Post by rayiner » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 11:15 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #93

rayiner wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are and have always been about changing workplaces from top-down, authoritarian models to ones where workers have a say in their company’s work and overall direction. They’re about acknowledging that none of these structures function or accomplish anything without labor and shifting their relations of power to reflect this reality. I’d encourage younger folks who have an idealized view of American unions to ch…

This is not a great argument, since (1) The Irishman is based on what experts seem to believe is a work of total fiction (its subject claims to have been instrumental in the Bay of Pigs, the Kennedy Assassination, Watergate, the killing of Jimmy Hoffa, and the killing of Joe Gallo), and (2) the industries that were mobbed up when unions were ascendant remain mobbed up now; of course the unions were infiltrated, you c…

Fair enough. Probably shouldn’t draw too many conclusions from movies and Wikipedia. I find the organized crime involvement in American unions very interesting, though, because from what I’ve read it’s different than the case often is in Europe. I find unions a somewhat interesting alternative to government regulation (such as in Scandinavian countries which have no minimum wage but broad unions). But at the same time I tend to view organized crime as being the most dangerous thing to a civilization.