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Unions work

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Re: Unions work

#221

Post by sershe »

autoexec wrote: post #210
sershe wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For most organizations, this behavior is incidental to their incentives. For unions, it's a primary motivation. Throughout their history, unions would always be maximally exclusionary to the degree it wouldn't backfire in terms of PR (and sometimes beyond that, e.g. Cesar Chavez conducting anti-immigrant border raids), because that is their whole point.

> For most organizations, this behavior is incidental to their incentives. For unions, it's a primary motivation. For unions, it has only ever been a means to an end (with that end being things like having days off, and safe working conditions) Corporations on the other hand throw human lives away because it makes them money, and making money is all they care about. That's why the bodies of children were being mangle…

For corporations, even their bad behavior is incidental to their goals. Corporation in a vacuum is a form of capital organization, typically used to provide some service for profit. Sure, if a corporation can e.g. buy a government (like United Fruit did), it will totally do that. However, it's incidental - if it couldn't it would do something else, so by setting up decent rules it is easy to make corporations do far more good than harm.

For unions in the vacuum though... if we assume no other workers exist and no innovation is possible, unions (at least, US-style unions) would have no reason to exist - company cannot replace workers, or between multiple companies it can only replace workers in a game of musical chairs, so all the workers individually would have great bargaining power.

An approximation: tech 5 years ago, maybe even now, I haven't interviewed recently.

So, the only/main reason unions need to exist is to protect the jobs of their members against (1) other workers, including immigrants (2) being obsoleted by innovation. That is not incidental to their goals, that is their whole goal. I find both of these incentives to be inherently evil (I am also self aware enough to know that while e.g. banning AI coding innovations, any further immigration of developers and outsourcing to boot would be amazing for my compensation, it's still evil)

Re: Unions work

#222

Post by sershe »

lamontcg wrote: post #184
sershe wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> racist, virulently anti-immigrant and outright violent against non-union workers. pretty much describing a lot of corporations, only they can be violent against all workers with union organizers getting it the worst.

Responded here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37691256

For corporations, it's incidental. For unions, it's inherent.

Re: Unions work

#223

Post by lamontcg »

sershe wrote: post #222
lamontcg wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> racist, virulently anti-immigrant and outright violent against non-union workers. pretty much describing a lot of corporations, only they can be violent against all workers with union organizers getting it the worst.

Responded here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37691256 For corporations, it's incidental. For unions, it's inherent.

That is almost incoherently delusional.

Re: Unions work

#224

Post by sershe »

Boogie_Man wrote: post #180
sershe wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, what do you think the reasons are that these workers took non-union jobs with Tesla, vs union jobs with Ford/GM/etc.? > To prevent wage reduction as a result of an influx of cheap labor It's not just against cheap labor, it's against any labor, including better labor - e.g. very recently, https://9to5mac.com/2023/08/07/us-tsmc-plant-petition/ Also, for me as an immigrant it's very interesting that you didn't de…

>Well, what do you think the reasons are that these workers took non-union jobs with Tesla, vs union jobs with Ford/GM/etc.? Because it's a job that's available near the workers. You could also say "Why would workers at GM take union jobs instead of non-union jobs". Companies having employees is not a useful metric in determining how good a company is when we're talking about manual work. It only tells you there are…

Points 1-2 make sense, although I don't believe (see no reason why, given the rest) unions would "come to the table", other than again when their demands are seen as unreasonable.

>I was attempting to provide context to your statement.

For the third, I'm not blaming. It's just interesting to me that you would provide proper context (they were trying to exclude other labor) for immigration case; but even though the motivation was the same for the racist case, you didn't say that - I assume it was not because you personally are ok with the anti-immigration case, it's just giving this "context" for racist behavior is really taboo, whereas for anti-immigration it's still ok even if you don't agree with it.

As for companies, responded here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37691256 In reality if they could replace 100% of labor with capital they'd do it.

Meanwhile it's actually an interesting paradox... I agree that in narrow circumstances unions achieved/helped achieve worker protections. However, other rules were imposed on corporations without unions, and in different contexts (e.g. environmental, consumer protection, etc.). So I'm not convinced unions were necessary, but suppose they were. Still, if the basic rules are established as laws (and I don't consider extra-legal rules, like suppressing competition for wage, as valid or necessary), a permanent union becomes unnecessary for them and its motivations become as I've described...

Re: Unions work

#225

Post by sershe »

sershe wrote: post #147

So a guy is walking down the street and he sees a worker along the road; the worker digs a hole in the ground, then waits a little bit and fills it back in. After that, he walks 10 feet and repeats the process. The guy asks the worker what he's doing. "Planting trees." "Why don't you put the trees in though?" "Oh, I am from the diggers union; the guy from the planters union is out sick today."

People are really not liking this joke. I think it's because it strikes (see what I did here?) too close to home.

Or is it because it's not realistic? Ok, actually there are two digger guys, one to dig the hole and one to fill it in, pursuant to union agreement of 1953 when they were using shovels; now they have an excavator, but... jobs! So they take turns, or maybe they have two excavators pursuant to union agreement of 1979 so that they could each have their own workplace after that one guy wanted AC on and the other wanted AC off and the AC on guy had a heat stroke. Also the planter guy is not out sick, he was suspended from the job because he was putting trees in the holes upside down; he's now sitting in the "rubber room" with full pay pending 11 months of union arbitration. Also when the passer-by offers to help them put the trees in, the diggers beat him up.

Re: Unions work

#226

Post by [deleted] »

adamrezich wrote: post #218
heavyset_go wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not either or. You can be paid for labor, get equity and profit sharing at the same time.

what possible incentive would the owner of a company have to give workers equity/profit sharing while keeping all of the risk for himself?

[deleted]

Re: Unions work

#227

Post by autoexec »

sershe wrote: post #221
autoexec wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For most organizations, this behavior is incidental to their incentives. For unions, it's a primary motivation. For unions, it has only ever been a means to an end (with that end being things like having days off, and safe working conditions) Corporations on the other hand throw human lives away because it makes them money, and making money is all they care about. That's why the bodies of children were being mangle…

For corporations, even their bad behavior is incidental to their goals. Corporation in a vacuum is a form of capital organization, typically used to provide some service for profit. Sure, if a corporation can e.g. buy a government (like United Fruit did), it will totally do that. However, it's incidental - if it couldn't it would do something else, so by setting up decent rules it is easy to make corporations do far…

> unions (at least, US-style unions) would have no reason to exist

Of course they would, because corporations exploit workers all the time. If workers aren't being paid the backpay they're owed, the union will handle that. If workers want to be able to take the time to walk to a bathroom instead of having to wear diapers or piss in plastic bottles while working, the union will handle that. Same with being forced to work excessive hours, having unpaid overtime, being locked in overnight, being forced to continue working under hazardous conditions, being forced to submit to strip searches by management, etc.

These are the types of abuses that happen in the US, and even if every employee were part of a union, companies would continue to do those types of things for as long as they could get away with it. The difference is that workers with unions can pressure the company to stop abusing workers for example, like when employees are being forced to share underwear with their co-workers (https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-jun-08-fi-7876-...)

unions protect workers against a hell of a lot more than just being replaced by slave labor, or robot slave labor.

Re: Unions work

#228

Post by dleslie »

babypuncher wrote: post #198
dleslie wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even for humans there was a transition period, and not a sudden explosion of new expression. Naturalist gave way to impressionism, which gave rise to expressionism, and eventually then came abstract works. There's a clear, gradual change in style between them all.

I don't see why you couldn't have an AI do the same, by training it towards a particular aberration in output until that became something it understood well.

Re: Unions work

#229

Post by sershe »

lamontcg wrote: post #223
sershe wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Responded here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37691256 For corporations, it's incidental. For unions, it's inherent.

That is almost incoherently delusional.

I strive to make my responses ALMOST incoherently delusional, as opposed to the ones such as yours that has literally zero value.

Re: Unions work

#230

Post by sershe »

autoexec wrote: post #227
sershe wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For corporations, even their bad behavior is incidental to their goals. Corporation in a vacuum is a form of capital organization, typically used to provide some service for profit. Sure, if a corporation can e.g. buy a government (like United Fruit did), it will totally do that. However, it's incidental - if it couldn't it would do something else, so by setting up decent rules it is easy to make corporations do far…

> unions (at least, US-style unions) would have no reason to exist Of course they would, because corporations exploit workers all the time. If workers aren't being paid the backpay they're owed, the union will handle that. If workers want to be able to take the time to walk to a bathroom instead of having to wear diapers or piss in plastic bottles while working, the union will handle that. Same with being forced to w…

You are missing my point, or rather confirming it. Multiple times actually.

1) The reason corporations can do these things is because there's competition for jobs. If there wasn't, they wouldn't be able to get away with it - see tech industry pay and perks, and the fact that people just leave and find another job for a reason as normal as having to work at an office. If there's competition for labor, unions have value - by excluding other labor. That is their only goal.

2) What's wrong with "robot slave labor"? My point exactly, again. Unions protect a subset of workers from innovation. Good for a few newly-useless workers, terrible for society.

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