They're just spending all they money they saved from the wage theft.
Wage theft is saving them tens of billions in the US every year. So they are hardly spending all of that for this!
US employers spend more than $1.5B a year to fight labor unions, report finds
31–40 of 230 posts
Re: US employers spend more than $1.5B a year to fight labor unions, report finds
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm generally pro-union and certainly fair wage, but it's important to keep in mind that unions will grow into their own power centers and have leadership with its own internal goals which are not aligned with either their working members nor the employers.
You're not pro-union if you still spout anti-union propaganda. You spent more words arguing against unions than you did for them. I'd say your first part of the sentence is probably more of a rhetorical trick than anything close to true
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Re: US employers spend more than $1.5B a year to fight labor unions, report finds
#33Think about the recent tech layoffs - we spend a lot of time comparing one set of severance concessions to another. Wouldn't it be better if this were a matter of contract instead of your great corporate overlords deciding how much they deign to give you as they take away your job?
This may be the moment to start thinking about unions seriously in tech. The large employers have, themselves, acted to suppress worker power in the past: https://journals.law.unc.edu/ncjolt/blogs/wage-fixing-scheme...
Re: US employers spend more than $1.5B a year to fight labor unions, report finds
#34They're just spending all they money they saved from the wage theft.
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Re: US employers spend more than $1.5B a year to fight labor unions, report finds
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
but it's important to keep in mind that without unions the corporation will grow into their own power centers and have leadership with its own internal goals which are not aligned with either their working members nor the employers
The discourse around unions is so weird. A bunch of people form an organization so that they can work together to sell stuff. When they're selling widgets, or other people's labor, we call those people "management" and we call their organization "business" and it's the standard way of doing things. When they're selling their own labor, we call it a "union" and suddenly people have Opinions about whether they're reall…
I don’t think it’s weird. Why should a union be a protected class that you cannot fire? If a company can find people to work cheaper than what the union offers why should they have to continue to employ union workers? Pros/Cons to everything. I generally sit into the stance that the free movement of labor is one of the things the US gets right.
Re: US employers spend more than $1.5B a year to fight labor unions, report finds
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
The discourse around unions is so weird. A bunch of people form an organization so that they can work together to sell stuff. When they're selling widgets, or other people's labor, we call those people "management" and we call their organization "business" and it's the standard way of doing things. When they're selling their own labor, we call it a "union" and suddenly people have Opinions about whether they're reall…
I think where it breaks down though is if a company manages to monopolize the market we all recognize this is bad. If a union tries to monopolize the labor supply to a company, most pro-union opinions celebrate this and argue the company should have to negotiate with the union to find a rate rather than being able to just shit-can everyone in the union and move on to the next guy. Union itself I'd agree could functio…
Aren't exclusive contracts pretty common in business? There's a big difference between monopolizing the supply to a single customer, which happens all the time, and monopolizing an entire market.
Re: US employers spend more than $1.5B a year to fight labor unions, report finds
#37I have pretty mixed feelings on unions. I spent most of my early career as a non-union blue collar worker embedded into mixed teams (union + non-union members). The general experience I walked away with was that unions seemed to attract the worst employees. I remember one individual in particular who, having worked with him for two years, never once actually did any work. He was actually one of my first mentors and I…
Similar life experiences. Like the idea of unions - especially how they are explained at a textbook level. I fully believe labor needs as much leverage against capital as possible for the scales to be balanced at all. But US unions seem to exist nearly exclusively to protect people who don’t want to work. Not my thing. At all. One should be able to be rewarded for hard work and productivity when you are expending mor…
Thanks for sharing. Very interesting to hear someone else with a similar experience.
> Unions devolving to simply protect the lowest common denominator is a problem.
I've always wondered if this is because the ones most incentivized to stay are the ones that eventually make it into upper leadership. It always seemed to me like the decisions being made at that level were intended to protect those same people. For example, rather than seeing poor-performing members as a risk to the union, the answer was to just lobby legally secured work so that companies had no choice but to hire its members. Which is quite the game, because I'm sure at face value it sounds great (companies can't ignore unions), but the hidden reality seemed to be that it just ensured these people always had a job.
Re: US employers spend more than $1.5B a year to fight labor unions, report finds
#38I have pretty mixed feelings on unions. I spent most of my early career as a non-union blue collar worker embedded into mixed teams (union + non-union members). The general experience I walked away with was that unions seemed to attract the worst employees. I remember one individual in particular who, having worked with him for two years, never once actually did any work. He was actually one of my first mentors and I…
This is usually one of the arguments made against unions, and I find it an interesting phenomenon.
Philosophically unions benefit the majority and are probably a net good on a social construct level. But they are likely a net loss to the top percentage of workers who are extremely motivated to move up and probably hurt innovation overall.
Unions exist to benefit the median and bring up the floor, but it stifles competition among those who really do desire to be at the top. And in doing so while it brings up the floor, it also brings down the ceiling because people who would normally be motivated enough to move up would not have much incentive to do so anymore.
Additionally most companies arguments against unions make the assumption that EVERYONE wants to be part of that top percentage, that everyone is extremely motivated to move up the ladder, etc. Also they bank on convincing everyone they could be part of that top percentage that moves up.
But statistically only so many can, and there is no universe where everyone can be that top worker who is successful because only so many can move up anyways.
Edit: Adding that this is from my perspective on US views of unions. I don't know much about how it differs elsewhere since many point out it seems to be done differently here vs elsewhere.
Re: US employers spend more than $1.5B a year to fight labor unions, report finds
#39I have pretty mixed feelings on unions. I spent most of my early career as a non-union blue collar worker embedded into mixed teams (union + non-union members). The general experience I walked away with was that unions seemed to attract the worst employees. I remember one individual in particular who, having worked with him for two years, never once actually did any work. He was actually one of my first mentors and I…
This is usually one of the arguments made against unions, and I find it an interesting phenomenon. Philosophically unions benefit the majority and are probably a net good on a social construct level. But they are likely a net loss to the top percentage of workers who are extremely motivated to move up and probably hurt innovation overall. Unions exist to benefit the median and bring up the floor, but it stifles compe…
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