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Unions work

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Re: Unions work

#191

Post by phone8675309 »

adamrezich wrote: post #168
phone8675309 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's mainly due to the fact that it treats everyone more or less the same based on some formula. The beauty of a free market system is that if you feel that way, that the union bring mediocrity, you're not forced to deal with them. Start your own company that does not deal with the unions and bring in talent however you see fit. If unions really make things worse then congratulations, you've just created a more agi…

> The beauty of a free market system is that if you feel that way, that the union bring mediocrity, you're not forced to deal with them. Start your own company that does not deal with the unions and bring in talent however you see fit. If unions really make things worse then congratulations, you've just created a more agile company that will certainly dominate in the marketplace. this works until your workers start a…

> as though for some reason you're not entitled to the rewards that came from the risk and resources you put into starting your own company and growing its success

Nobody is saying that the owner of a business is not entitled to profits. That's a strawman. What is actually being said is that the owner of a business couldn't make those profits _without_ the workers, which means that the workers, the people actually doing the work, share some of the credit for the success they bring to the owner and that they too should be entitled to at least some of share of profits.

> enthusiastically pro-union people don't see any problem with this line of thinking

Yes, workers talking to each other about forming a union is a right they have by virtue of being a human being. Why does nobody flip this around and ask _what is the business owner doing wrong that their employees feel they need the protection of a union_?

> somehow the idea of them starting a business themselves, as a co-op, is Literally Impossible

For some workers it actually is. The primary thing that distinguishes the owners of the business and the workers of the business is access to capital. It is asinine to assume that someone who has worked all of their life necessarily has access to the capital to start a business. There is a power imbalance here, and you have not addressed it here.

> connecting and organizing people who share a common purpose or ideal is easier than it ever has been in human history

This is what a push to unionize _is_. The owners have the ability to respond to this - it's a growing industry of anti-union consultants and had made a few companies obscenely wealthy providing those services.

> somehow it's considered perfectly fine and just to do nothing like that on your own, but, instead, reap the rewards of others' risk and resources by pretending, after the fact, that they had never had any value to begin with—that it's the workers and workers alone who provide the Real Value to the company, and always have, and always will

See my point above about this being a strawman. Nobody is saying that the person that starts the company has ZERO value. Far from it. All they are asking is fair compensation for their work that has enriched the owner, which they are not getting. Employee productivity has almost doubled but their wages have been stagnant. Far from workers acting like owners have no value, it's the owners that are treating the workers as not having value.

Re: Unions work

#192

Post by specialist »

rexpop wrote: post #171
specialist wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Capital pushes to commodify skills and labor. We as "knowledge workers" know this in our bones. Now that we've digitized and automated blue collar work, we're tackling white collar work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros

But we haven't "digitized and automated blue collar work." Not by the a long shot. We've still got vast billions toiling in our service.

What's the skill level required for those billions of jobs?

Re: Unions work

#193

Post by phone8675309 »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #153
phone8675309 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's mainly due to the fact that it treats everyone more or less the same based on some formula. The beauty of a free market system is that if you feel that way, that the union bring mediocrity, you're not forced to deal with them. Start your own company that does not deal with the unions and bring in talent however you see fit. If unions really make things worse then congratulations, you've just created a more agi…

For one thing, berserk cops could actually be fired if it weren't for their union.

It is not the union that is keeping those cops employed - they're taken off the street, typically without pay - while their case is being adjudicated. What is keeping them employed is the doctrine of qualified immunity where they are rarely, if ever, held to account, criminally, for their behavior.

Re: Unions work

#194

Post by hackeraccount »

LindeBuzoGray wrote: post #176
throwawa14223 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So the union and company came to a legal agreement about work and your father chose to do work breaking that agreement. Adding value deserves to be met with threats. This is a stunning argument against unions you're making.

If I add value which management does not approve, then I am met by threats on their end. That is a stunning argument against management. The workers create all the wealth and do all the work. The heirs who own the controlling stake in a big company like Siemens do not work, but expropriate surplus labor time doing work. You have the workers who do all the work and create all the wealth on one end, and the heirs who p…

If you add value and management threatens you it's both wrong and a mistake on their part - in that it goes against managements interest.

If the Union does the same thing it's wrong - because threatening people is wrong - but not actually against their interests because as you say a Union isn't interested in the company doing well. All the company does is exploit them and the customers. The Union just wants to make sure they get a pound of flesh out of the company (and presumably the customers too).

Re: Unions work

#195

Post by em-bee »

mikecoles wrote: post #102
Woshiwuja wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions are fundamental in every line of work. Not having them is a huge problem. In Europe there isnt a single job without an union behind, wonder why in America that doesnt happen

Americans are smart enough and strong enough to not have to hide behind a 'powerful union'. Unions are nothing more than legalized mob. The are worthless for productivity and a disaster for those who are eager to work.

that's because unlike in europe unions in the US did not manage to get the same level of worker protection changed into law. US unions need to act like a mob because corporations are to powerful. compare that to eg. germany where there are more laws to protect employees so that pretty much the only job unions have left to do is to negotiate salaries and benefits.

Re: Unions work

#196

Post by adamrezich »

phone8675309 wrote: post #191
adamrezich wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The beauty of a free market system is that if you feel that way, that the union bring mediocrity, you're not forced to deal with them. Start your own company that does not deal with the unions and bring in talent however you see fit. If unions really make things worse then congratulations, you've just created a more agile company that will certainly dominate in the marketplace. this works until your workers start a…

> as though for some reason you're not entitled to the rewards that came from the risk and resources you put into starting your own company and growing its success Nobody is saying that the owner of a business is not entitled to profits. That's a strawman. What is actually being said is that the owner of a business couldn't make those profits _without_ the workers, which means that the workers, the people actually do…

why did you disingenuously disconnect the two parts of my sentence (regarding "starting a business on one's own being perceived as being Literally Impossible" and "ubiquitous instantaneous communication has made collaboration in shared purpose easier than any prior point in human history", and then respond to them separately, as if they were two separate thoughts? they were two parts of the same thought, hence them sharing the same sentence.

anytime enthusiastically pro-union people want to try to start a business on their own, together, by pooling their resources to collectively take on risk—if for no reason but to prove that unions don't exist more or less solely to tear down existing things that weren't built by the union themselves—they're more than welcome to give it a shot. but, since this doesn't really seem to happen, it's really easy to continue to perceive enthusiastically pro-union people as outwardly appearing entitled to rewards for risks and resources that were not theirs.

anyone can destroy—it takes considerably more effort to create.

Re: Unions work

#197

Post by ler_ »

dleslie wrote: post #3

By AI guardrails they mean: AI cannot be used to write or rewrite scripts, and cannot be source material; but writers are free to use it if they wish. Reminds me of how elevators originally had operators, until everyone realized how wasteful and silly it is to have someone whose sole job is to press elevator buttons. As AI improves, we will come to feel the same about writers.

I seriously don't get this argument, which I see far too often. Meaning, writing being simply a means to an "end" of a product. I like a good piece of fiction especially because it was written by a human being. It is that human's way of communicating something to me / the audience. Do people out there really want to read something written by a machine? Of course, if you have some bottom of the barrel corporate-approved fiction, it may as well be written by AI. But that isn't what I seek to consume and I would wager there are many others who feel the same way. What is the appeal of AI-generated fiction?

Re: Unions work

#198

Post by babypuncher »

dleslie wrote: post #138
babypuncher wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not convinced LLM's are capable of any truly original thought, which is necessary for good compelling writing. LLM's spit out derivative nonsense. Highly convincing nonsense, but derivative nonetheless. Any true originality in the output still comes from the human engineering the prompt. Basically, LLM's know how to follow the rules, color within the lines. A real artist understands those rules well enough to bre…

I'm not convinced that most, or any, humans are ever engaging in truly original thought. This idea that AI cannot be creative but humans can is something that begs for a test; and that test needs to be applied against humans, as well. If AI can pass it at least as often as humans can, then AI is at least as creative as humans; within the bounds of that test. As it happens, an AI has recently passed such a test[0]. 0:…

one possible test would be if a model trained solely on naturalist and earlier paintings could eventually start producing expressionist and abstract works, without carefully engineered prompts.

Re: Unions work

#199

Post by mcv »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #142
thebradbain wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WGA is a guild, technically, not a union — because most writers are 1099d by studios, not actually full-time employees. Hence the need for collective protections, as contractors in the US have much less guarantees than W2 employees, and thus a co-op structure is almost infeasible any way you look at it.

WGA as a co-op obviously wouldn't make sense. The studio itself is what should ideally be a co-op.

Or the WGA should start creating their own movies, of course.

Re: Unions work

#200

Post by [deleted] »

asoneth wrote: post #55
charcircuit wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weekends and 8 hour work week is not necessarily a good thing. There could be benefits to switching to 996 work week to compete better with China.

First, there are obviously diminishing and eventually negative returns to increasing work hours past a certain point. At the extreme end, 168h/week is clearly less productive than 40h/week despite being more than four times longer. At some point an additional hour provides zero marginal benefit, and past that point an additional hour lowers a worker's weekly productivity. That point may be 72h/week as "996" Chinese c…

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