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US employers spend more than $1.5B a year to fight labor unions, report finds

theguardian.com

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Re: US employers spend more than $1.5B a year to fight labor unions, report finds

#101

Post by dfxm12 »

aliasxneo wrote: post #18

I 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…

It's rather arbitrary to monolithlize "union members" based on this limited experience.

Re: US employers spend more than $1.5B a year to fight labor unions, report finds

#102

Post by atmavatar »

miltonlost wrote: post #2

They're just spending all they money they saved from the wage theft.

I doubt it's close to everything they saved.

$1.5B is roughly the wage theft recovered between 2021-2023. It's estimated that more than $15B in wage theft occurs annually just from minimum wage shortfalls.

See: https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-2021-23/

Keep in mind that wage theft is narrowly defined to include only blatantly illegal actions such as underpaying minimum wage, failing to pay overtime, requiring off-the-clock work, denying meal breaks, etc. It that doesn't even get into more general wage suppression via abusing visas, anti-poaching collusion with competitors (a favorite pastime of FANNG), and at-or-below inflation raise policies, among other things, which have caused wages to diverge from productivity over the last half century.

Re: US employers spend more than $1.5B a year to fight labor unions, report finds

#103

Post by missedthecue »

miltonlost wrote: post #53
MattDamonSpace wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they literally provide value Shareholders are investors who give valuable resources to business

No, they provide capital. It's the workers who provide value to the company.

It's hard to explain why entrepreneurs want capital so much if it provides zero value. They're all stupid and doing something they ought not to?

Re: US employers spend more than $1.5B a year to fight labor unions, report finds

#104

Post by WarmWash »

Muromec wrote: post #74
WarmWash wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But US unions seem to exist nearly exclusively to protect people who don’t want to work. They don't exist for that reason, but their inevitable ground state is that. The fundamental and intractable problem with any form of socialization is that it naturally attracts free riders. The idea doesn't have a balanced equilibrium, so it's either logistically/bureaucratically heavy or always being pulled towards collapse. E…

A healthy organisation can reflect on this tendency and purge some free riders to preserve itself. The fact that it doesn't, to me personally, just means it's not under external pressure.

If there is one thing free riders are generally skilled at, it's hiding the fact they are free riding. There is then an internal decay where as others learn the tricks, they realize that they can start coasting too, and they should, because why would you do extra work if you don't have to.

To defeat this you need intense oversight, but then you yourself become the man with an iron fist.

This is a super common theme whenever you dig into anything socialized. It works great when everyone understands the system and is dedicated to the work, the mission. But as soon as a single atom of "I can get away with not doing my full part" seeps in, it's like a seed crystal that eventually collapses the whole system.

Re: US employers spend more than $1.5B a year to fight labor unions, report finds

#105

Post by mc32 »

Muromec wrote: post #89
aliasxneo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 exam…

Honest question -- what should happen to poor performing people? They should have less money, less food, be homeless or what? Should they be more stressed and as a result somehow perform better? On one hand I don't like to deal with results of bad craftsmanship, on the other hand I don't desire of the suffering of others. The thing is real, but so are the people. Not a snark or a gotcha, I'm a union member and recogn…

There should be disincentives for poor performance, options to improve performance (training, counseling, etc.) and incentives for good performance (better raises, perks, etc.) to incentivize good employees.

Re: US employers spend more than $1.5B a year to fight labor unions, report finds

#106

Post by jandrewrogers »

Balvarez wrote: post #57
aliasxneo wrote: post #18

I 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…

Your probably a normal guy making a comment in good faith, but I can't help but think this is the exact sort of dark marketing that I would do if I was an anti union commenter/marketer. Attack the vague made up values of union members because you can't attack the fact that large companies have been anti-worker for awhile and most people believe that. I'll also add onto here that if this comment gets down voted into t…

The poor reputation of unions in the US is well-deserved. The unions are writing their own anti-union propaganda, you can't blame other people for noticing this. Your argument is essentially that we should pretend this obvious badness doesn't exist because it makes unions look bad.

It is weird how much discourse these days is about pretending something obviously true isn't actually happening. The first step of fixing a problem is being honest about its existence. The inability of some people to be honest about the existence of obvious things is why so many problems go unaddressed.

Re: US employers spend more than $1.5B a year to fight labor unions, report finds

#107

Post by arjie »

Muromec wrote: post #74
WarmWash wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But US unions seem to exist nearly exclusively to protect people who don’t want to work. They don't exist for that reason, but their inevitable ground state is that. The fundamental and intractable problem with any form of socialization is that it naturally attracts free riders. The idea doesn't have a balanced equilibrium, so it's either logistically/bureaucratically heavy or always being pulled towards collapse. E…

A healthy organisation can reflect on this tendency and purge some free riders to preserve itself. The fact that it doesn't, to me personally, just means it's not under external pressure.

What definition of organizational health demonstrates this? Certainly none of the long-lived and powerful US unions have this property. Observationally, it seems that the strongest US unions also exercise their power to protect all within their fold. The worst offenders fail to be protected by the union, but in general, they are not purged. And US unions are quite powerful. The leaders wear Rolexes.

This seems logical. A labor union carries power commensurate with the number of members in it. It is more important for members that they be protected than that they be held to a high standard. If the latter is done, it is in service to the former. That is entirely the purpose of the union after all. No one forms a union so that others can hold them to a high standard of performance.

Re: US employers spend more than $1.5B a year to fight labor unions, report finds

#108

Post by nielsbot »

baron816 wrote: post #40
fmbb wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have the lawmakers on their side.

Who does? The unions definitely have lawmakers on their side.

what’s your evidence for that?

It that’s true, why is union membership declining? why did Trump et al gut the NLRB? why do starbucks unionized employees STILL not have a contract years after forming a union?

Unions are good and we need more of them.

Re: US employers spend more than $1.5B a year to fight labor unions, report finds

#109

Post by retardkiller »

infecto wrote: post #35
wat10000 wrote: post #23

Earlier 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 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.

[dead]

Re: US employers spend more than $1.5B a year to fight labor unions, report finds

#110

Post by nielsbot »

infecto wrote: post #90
Erem wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re not a protected class that you can’t fire, unless the company signs a contract to that effect with the vendor selling them labor (the union)

Is that correct? I thought the NLRA was shaped in such a way that you cannot fire someone because they are in a union. You cannot refuse to hire known union supporters. I liken to being similar to a protected class that you cannot discriminate against. Edit: why would this get downvoted? If I am wrong about the NLRA I am happy to be corrected.

you can fire union members you can’t fire people for organizing.
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