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U.S. Rules Apple Illegally Interrogated Staff and Confiscated Union Flyers

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301–310 of 327 posts

Re: U.S. Rules Apple Illegally Interrogated Staff and Confiscated Union Flyers

#301

In Japan, there's a really symbiotic relationship between unions and corporations. Unions are very powerful, but they also take stakes in the corporations. I'm pretty sure that union reps often sit on corporate boards. Japan has a long culture of employee relations, but they also work their asses off. I don't think Japanese unions would cover slackers, which is a popular view of US unions.

>I don't think Japanese unions would cover slackers, which is a popular view of US unions.

popular =/= accurate. But yes, the most criticized aspect of unions (at least from a liberal lens) comes from its ability to rally around every worker in the union, regardless of individual productivity.

But historically, unions in the US neeeded those protections because it's way too easy to fire a US employee for anything that's not illegal. Japan doesn't make termination any easier, it's just incoporated at the government level instead of corporate. To compensate, Japanese "slackers" just get good severance packages as an incentive to get out, or even move them as far out of the picture as possible.

Re: U.S. Rules Apple Illegally Interrogated Staff and Confiscated Union Flyers

#302
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public school education is poor in part because it’s darn near impossible to fire bad teachers though. And I don’t see how unions would improve housing affordability. I’m not against unions per se, particularly for positions which are not as lavishly compensated as a typical white collar FAANG employee. I’m merely pointing out that you need to pick better examples. Otherwise you just undermine your own argument.

It would be better if they could fire the bad students as well

Until recently they could. There were programs for gifted kids. But then DEI ruined that as well.

Re: U.S. Rules Apple Illegally Interrogated Staff and Confiscated Union Flyers

#303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do black and hispanic students score worse?

Even adjusted for family wealth, income, and adversity nonimmigrants* with these backgrounds score worse at all schooling levels; even when placed in schools with double the funding per student. It would be nice if socioeconomic factors were the whole answer here. But that does not appear to be the case. Even Hispanic and Black students adopted by White families do not score much higher than peers of their ethnic gro…

> Even Hispanic and Black students adopted by White families do not score much higher than peers of their ethnic group.

Are you referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Transracial_Adoption... ? Are there other studies I'm not aware of? Because that study doesn't really conclusively demonstrate the point we're discussing in this thread re: race correlating with intelligence because of genetic factors of a race itself. In fact many interpretations of the study point to socio-economic factors as the root cause of different test results (e.g. it's hard being a different race than your parents, or suddenly finding yourself growing up in wildly different socioeconomic conditions than the ones you were born and raised into ). Also worth pointing out that black children adopted into white families had higher test scores than the mean for white children nationwide.

Re: U.S. Rules Apple Illegally Interrogated Staff and Confiscated Union Flyers

#304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now in that scenario the worker has no power at all The worker holds all the power, so long as another worker isn't an asshole ready to screw over his fellow man . What's the company going to do if the worker balks? Hire nobody? Not going to happen. Which is what a union ultimately serves: Establishing a brotherhood where the workers agree to not be assholes towards each other, to not screw each other over, so that…

>What's the company going to do if the worker balks? Hire nobody? Not going to happen. These days, yes. They get rid of Bob and make Andy do his and Bob's work (with no extra pay, of course), promising to replace Bob over the next 6 months while the company actually has a hiring freeze. I wish more "assholes" would realize this before trying to turn against their peers.

[deleted]

Re: U.S. Rules Apple Illegally Interrogated Staff and Confiscated Union Flyers

#305
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great question. Ledt assume that you’re discussing a topic like working hours. Your company says you have to work. 14h each day, and you argue that if you have to do that, you’ll be sleep deprived, make mistakes and be so low productivity that it wouldn’t benefit the company, especially since they would have to pay you more with a constant hourly wage than if you worked fewer hours and was more productive. The compan…

> Now in that scenario the worker has no power at all The worker holds all the power, so long as another worker isn't an asshole ready to screw over his fellow man . What's the company going to do if the worker balks? Hire nobody? Not going to happen. Which is what a union ultimately serves: Establishing a brotherhood where the workers agree to not be assholes towards each other, to not screw each other over, so that…

> But if workers had common decency to begin with...

What on earth do you mean? If a job gets posted do you ask them “did the last person get fired? If so I don’t want this job” to have “common decency”?

Re: U.S. Rules Apple Illegally Interrogated Staff and Confiscated Union Flyers

#306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now in that scenario the worker has no power at all The worker holds all the power, so long as another worker isn't an asshole ready to screw over his fellow man . What's the company going to do if the worker balks? Hire nobody? Not going to happen. Which is what a union ultimately serves: Establishing a brotherhood where the workers agree to not be assholes towards each other, to not screw each other over, so that…

>What's the company going to do if the worker balks? Hire nobody? Not going to happen. These days, yes. They get rid of Bob and make Andy do his and Bob's work (with no extra pay, of course), promising to replace Bob over the next 6 months while the company actually has a hiring freeze. I wish more "assholes" would realize this before trying to turn against their peers.

[deleted]

Re: U.S. Rules Apple Illegally Interrogated Staff and Confiscated Union Flyers

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They band together and then they be like: we want 50% wage increase or we all quit and you lose a lot of money in the process. This is what I mean by extort.

How is that extortion, exactly? They are merely refusing to trade their labor for the price offered. This is just basic negotiation, a fundamental mechanism of any free market. The only reason to be offended by it specifically when people do it collectively rather than individually is because in the former case they actually have enough bargaining power vs their employer to get a better price for their labor. That is…

And then they lobby the politicians to make it illegal to fire all of them for banding together. Extortion.

You know, if companies agree to never sell something under a certain price point it is called a cartel and it is illegal. But when workers do the same thing it's legal. Where's the fairness in that?

Re: U.S. Rules Apple Illegally Interrogated Staff and Confiscated Union Flyers

#308
post #90
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great question. Ledt assume that you’re discussing a topic like working hours. Your company says you have to work. 14h each day, and you argue that if you have to do that, you’ll be sleep deprived, make mistakes and be so low productivity that it wouldn’t benefit the company, especially since they would have to pay you more with a constant hourly wage than if you worked fewer hours and was more productive. The compan…

> and not everything in this world boils down to pure profit driven motives. that's not true. In fact, the polar opposite is true - every decision is in service to profit and the bottom line. It is only laws that prevent slavery. It is only laws that prevent over-work or exploitation. I would say that it is better to have regulation over unions. Unions may or may not act in the interest of the employee - it's a hit o…

> I would say that it is better to have regulation over unions.

It’s not an either/or, there’s unions and there is labor law, and labor law is in large part written to codify the trade offs in incentives between workers and companies. Are you really trying to argue that workers should have no say in the laws written to govern them?

Re: U.S. Rules Apple Illegally Interrogated Staff and Confiscated Union Flyers

#309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that extortion, exactly? They are merely refusing to trade their labor for the price offered. This is just basic negotiation, a fundamental mechanism of any free market. The only reason to be offended by it specifically when people do it collectively rather than individually is because in the former case they actually have enough bargaining power vs their employer to get a better price for their labor. That is…

And then they lobby the politicians to make it illegal to fire all of them for banding together. Extortion. You know, if companies agree to never sell something under a certain price point it is called a cartel and it is illegal. But when workers do the same thing it's legal. Where's the fairness in that?

The fairness is in the fact that the balance is tilted so immensely in favor of capital in the first place, that workers need to band together just to make things somewhat closer to equal when it comes to bargaining power.

Of course, in the ideal world, all companies would be worker-owned co-ops, and then unions would be unnecessary.

Re: U.S. Rules Apple Illegally Interrogated Staff and Confiscated Union Flyers

#310

In Japan, there's a really symbiotic relationship between unions and corporations. Unions are very powerful, but they also take stakes in the corporations. I'm pretty sure that union reps often sit on corporate boards. Japan has a long culture of employee relations, but they also work their asses off. I don't think Japanese unions would cover slackers, which is a popular view of US unions.

>I don't think Japanese unions would cover slackers, which is a popular view of US unions. popular =/= accurate. But yes, the most criticized aspect of unions (at least from a liberal lens) comes from its ability to rally around every worker in the union, regardless of individual productivity. But historically, unions in the US neeeded those protections because it's way too easy to fire a US employee for anything tha…

AKA “Window Seat.”

That’s being given a job, where all you do, is stare out of a window, all day.

It’s the worst thing that can happen to a Japanese employee. A lot of Americans might consider it a “dream job.”

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