441–450 of 785 posts
Everyone loves unions, somehow they overlook the outrageous power of police unions to keep terrible people in their ranks. Also Union actions against nonunion jobs are borderline criminal most of the time.
It's hard to argue they don't serve their members' interests - admittedly to the detriment of the rest of society. Given a choice, who wouldn't like a 500lb gorilla like that in their own corner?
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You are authoritarian - forcing people to do something that should be accomplished voluntarily is antithetical to freedom
Why is it authoritarian and bad to be forced to interact with the union, but fine to be forced to interact with management?
Really don’t understand the reasoning to not making union membership voluntary. Completely illogical. Basically you agree it’s authoritarian but “it’s better than the alternative” which is bullshit.
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You are authoritarian - forcing people to do something that should be accomplished voluntarily is antithetical to freedom
The baseline condition of labor, that those doing it must continue to do it or they will die , is inherently much more authoritarian than this. I'm not at all arguing for an "ends justify the means" position here, just pointing out that the condition we're talking about is already a morally compromised one, and so people won't always have the freedom to operate purely in line with their moral preferences. Or yours. B…
I had a boss who was an expensive consultant for unions. He explained the reason unions in the US were shrinking is that they are too powerful. They control huge pension and healthcare portfolios and can completely control the relationship with employers, especially in closed shop situations. Comparatively, European unions are much "weaker" - or maybe more accurately their purview is much smaller. They control smalle…
>He explained the reason unions in the US were shrinking is that they are too powerful. They control huge pension and healthcare portfolios and can completely control the relationship with employers, especially in closed shop situations. This is interesting. I'm a government employee with a union, a pension, health insurance, the whole deal. The union does not control the pension or healthcare in any way whatsoever.…
Skilled trade unions. IBEW (electrical) has union-run pensions and healthcare, I’m not familiar enough with pipefitters or steelworkers but I’d guess their unions do too.
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Why should developers unionize? I love not being in a union. If my company starts dicking me around I'll quit and find another job. Besides, if I do something so bad my boss wants to fire me, fine then I'll go work somewhere where people want me. I don't want to have to bring in my union rep to argue about it since going somewhere else means losing my tenure and taking a 30% pay cut. The only time unions make sense i…
> Why should developers unionize? I love not being in a union. If my company starts dicking me around I'll quit and find another job. Why does the former preclude the latter? > Besides, if I do something so bad my boss wants to fire me, fine then I'll go work somewhere where people want me. What if you didn't do _anything_ and your boss wants to fire you so badly? What if your boss fired you over Zoom randomly withou…
The same as what GP said "If my company starts dicking me around I'll quit and find another job". If I'm no longer wanted at my job, I'll find another one.
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> It's possible we'll see a generational wave of unionization. I fully expect this to happen. Younger folks today are the unlucky beneficiary of years of wage stagnation and home price inflation. They have every right to be angry, and I think they are collectively starting to realize that they have a lot of power to change the status quo. At the risk of veering into politics, I'm also not sure how this will change th…
Higher wages cannot make it any more possible for N+1 people to have N large plots of land close to the city center.
Only higher wages make it possible to have taller apartments in some idealized frictionless capitalist system!
(In the real world, we can and should build taller not matter what, but certainly unionization doesn't hurt with this.)
In 2022, the only time I tend to see a union do anything, it’s to disrupt and create mob like holds on things (shipping, trucking etc). There seems to be waaay more corruption in anything union related than without.
Can someone seriously explain why this is needed or a good thing? Who actually wins in Amazons case outside of corrupt, power hungry union leaders who get to create roles for themselves?
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I've seen what large unions can do (just search for some of the largest Mexican unions, like the PEMEX one). Any organization of a certain scale and power gets corrupt, including private companies and unions. I strongly believe in unions, but I agree with OP that keeping them small and focused is better for both the interests of the company and the employees. Extreme power imbalances are seldom (and I'd dare say neve…
> Extreme power imbalances are seldom (and I'd dare say never) good. I've seen unions effectively bankrupt business during tough times. Please be specific.
A single successful effort of unionization at an Amazon facility is more than symbolic: It will encourage -- and serve as a blueprint for -- employees at other Amazon facilities to do the same. Moreover, it will motivate employees at other large companies to try. This has been brewing for a while. It's possible we'll see a generational wave of unionization.
It's interesting to see the cyclical rise and fall of workers unions in the US. I'm of the opinion that there needs to be a balance between worker and employer rights - however it seems that, at least in the US, that balance swings back and forth quite often. It seems like anti-union proponents will remind you of the bad times when unions had too much power, and union supporters will remind you of the bad times when…
MAYBE you could in Europe, where in 1980s there was some decline in private sector investment concurrent with lower profit rates, but that never happened here.
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I've been a conservative since I had a minimum wage job, for one reason: I want the government out of my life as much as possible. I firmly believe nobody will care about my family as much as I do and I don't want the government's golden handcuffs. Leave me alone, let me work, and I'll happily live with whatever happens. I think this is the fundamental disconnect in left-right (economic) politics. The left, as I see…
> I want the government out of my life as much as possible unless it has to do with your education, gender identity, sexual preference, religion, voting, or women's rights, I assume