461–470 of 500 posts
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They can’t find other unions
There is more than one union. You can also vote/organize to change your existing union (I can’t do that at my job).
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This is definitely not unique to unions, nor are all (or many) unions like this. Of course the examples you list are ridiculous and shouldn’t happen, but the more boring instances of bureaucracy are just part of the mundane process of work in a large company (e.g. raising a ticket on a third party vendor to grant access to some service and the whole process descending into farce as no one knows how to/wants to do it…
> "most of the time a union has some degree of member democracy" Most of the time ? Some degree ? Any union that does not represent its members to the best of its ability is not a good union. That's also why it's vital that no single union has a monopoly on a certain type of work; if union members are unhappy with their union, they need to be able to leave and join or start a new one.
I absolutely agree, but there are unions and unions. The SDA in Australia for instance is, for some members, useless, and for other members actually harmful - but it has been effective at winning better conditions for some workers. (SDA isn't the best example because RAFFWU, which is another union founded by workers and organisers who believe that SDA has failed workers, does a better job everywhere it goes.) A good union is better than a bad union, and a bad union is often but not always better than no union.
I also agree that unionised workers need to be able to effectively organise, which might involve starting a new union. That being said, union turf wars can devastate actual efforts to better conditions because of issues that could be resolved without splitting the union. The best reason to pack up shop and set up a new union is because the union doesn't have an effective means to, or a culture of, internal democracy, which means problems with the way the union is run can't be addressed. But if a union does have this, it's better to 'work within the system.'
I used to work at Facebook, and it was always interesting to me to see just how many engineers were actively against - aghast, even - at the idea of unions. Whenever it would come up on the internal boards the arguments were usually along the lines of: * "People who don't deserve to be paid more will get more money under a union" * "I'll be paid less under a union" * "Unions will slow us down, and we'll become more b…
This is a valid point. Your two examples are guilds not unions; they're inherently geared more towards contractors and individuals due to the nature of the work. While job hopping has become both more prevalent and more frequent among software engineers, it's certainly still mostly an employee-oriented field. It's very true that under unions, high performers specifically are paid a bit less and low performers a bit more. This is both the upside and the downside of collective bargaining and a fundamental characteristic thereof rather than a flaw of a specific union. As someone who's generally been promoted faster and paid more because I worked hard and put in long hours, unions are anathema to me. I'd likely be paid less and a less-productive peer paid more. I can see, however, why such a prospect would appeal to most people. But as an outlier among most employees, I see no reason to entrust my situation to majority rule as that takes it from a negotiation between me and an employer (a person who represents my interests and one who doesn't) to one between someone who represents the average employee and an employer, both of whom probably don't represent my interests.
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Support for unions is based on a basic misunderstanding of economics. It is not mandates from the state that lead to wages and work conditions improving. It's rising demand from employers, as their revenue increases, and they compete with other employers for a limited pool of workers. Unions obstruct the flexibility and freedom of the market, and thereby hamper economic efficiency and competitiveness. Firms will, all…
> all things being equal The whole point of unions is to affect change, so what does that sentence even mean? All else being equal means the union did nothing to change anything, and therefore is 100% overhead.
The outlier is if unions succeed in changing immigration policy to restrict the inflow of foreign labor. That can have unexpected effects that boost the country's economic growth rate or at least help its wage growth rate.
Depending on the situation, immigration restrictions can also harm the country's economy/wages.
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That kinda shows you what privilege is and how it conditions the political discussion. If you never had to face a problem (never needed someone to protect you against greedy employers), it is so hard to understand why that it's relevant.
Doesn't this make the point of tech works who are against tech unions (not other unions)? We're all generally paid extremely well and are privileged. Why risk changing things? I personally come from a pretty poor upbringing. I can see why it's scary for some to change something that 1. is working relatively well and 2. got them out of poverty.
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I'm endlessly surprised that unions are collectively as bad at PR as their image suggests.
One hypothesis that may explain the bad perception of unions is if there has been continuing investment and efforts in anti-union propaganda by pro-business or pro-corporate groups. A similar argument is put forward by Kerryn Higgs' book "Collision Course: Endless Growth on a Finite Planet", to explain why society takes direction from economists, in pursuit of economic growth, rather than taking direction from scienc…
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Thta's the responsability of the participants. It sounds like they've been complacent and they allowing people to represent them who do not represent them.
> Thta's the responsability of the participants. No, it is the responsibility of the laws surrounding unions in USA. They give ample of protections ensuring you can't easily oust or change bad unions. Even worse the left is championing anti worker laws like banning "right to work", a right that everyone in EU has which protects workers from bad unions, but somehow in USA "right to work" is anti union.
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What if the concept is what leads to the corruption? E.g. communism. Im for unions, it beats the current situation, but im weary of the sales pitch.
Are you arguing that unions lead to communism? While Europe has a rich weave of social-democratic governments, that would hardly constitute communism. In fact, I'd daresay actual communist parties in Europe with any real power are a distinct rarity.
Hell maybe they all do. Maybe that is why modern day democracy actually works (checks and balances) and has very little to do with comunism vs capitalism.
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What if the concept is what leads to the corruption? E.g. communism. Im for unions, it beats the current situation, but im weary of the sales pitch.
The "sales pitch" that is relevant here is the one put forth by the DoD and their enormously powerful SIGs for the last 75 years, namely "unions = communism" and "communism = bad". As much as I would like to believe that there is a massive pro-working-class institution in the US that can afford to spend billions per annum on under-the-table PR/propaganda campaigns to shill collective action, it just isn't the case. T…
Not american.
Ps, i was not saying communism == unions. Thats fucking retarded on so many levels.
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What if the concept is what leads to the corruption? E.g. communism. Im for unions, it beats the current situation, but im weary of the sales pitch.
But there are non-corrupt unions in other countries? Even some in the US as some commentators have suggested (Screen Actors Guild being one)