Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a paradox of the left - is the fight to keep people laboring, or to do away with it (through automation etc.)
Is it really? There is nothing wrong with fighting for workers rights while automation is not here yet. The problem is that automation has to be taxed accordingly to allow us to live with dignity when there is no job to occupy (i.e UBI), and guess who's against taxation? "The left" would be the wrong answer. I don't see any paradox. 1.Tax the rich now. 2. Improve worker rights which will push us faster towards automa…
Apple’s anti-union tactics in Atlanta were illegal, US officials say
101–110 of 150 posts
Re: Apple’s anti-union tactics in Atlanta were illegal, US officials say
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a paradox of the left - is the fight to keep people laboring, or to do away with it (through automation etc.)
The promise of automation has always been that you'll get a better job with less menial labour if your job is automated. But I don't believe that's been the case, overall. It seems to me that automation causes people to be displaced from jobs where their skills are valued, to jobs where their skills are seen as replaceable. In a capitalist system, without something like UBI, that's a huge problem because once you're…
Yes, workers don’t benefit from automation under capitalism. Productivity increases far outpace wages earned which have even moved in opposite directions
Re: Apple’s anti-union tactics in Atlanta were illegal, US officials say
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
You joined a union where more than a dozen of the leaders were recently convicted of embezzlement. The UAW is in a bit of a pickle for awhile.
Many of us on HackerNews work for businesses like Amazon, or Tesla, or Apple, or Microsoft, which have also been found to have broken the law. Anywhere there is power there is corruption. It seems to me that joining a union where some of leadership have been convicted of crimes should be no different than working for a corporation where some of the leadership has been convicted of crimes -- you make your own decision…
No post body was provided.
Re: Apple’s anti-union tactics in Atlanta were illegal, US officials say
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
One point I've seen little or no discussion about on hn, is that employers are often (at least in Norway) organized. So they will have access to legal aid, standard contracts, training on negotiating etc - this in addition to the skewed bargaining power between a single employee and the company as a whole. Is this not common in the US (illegal collusion on wages aside)? It's always seemed strange to me that people wi…
Keep in mind that unions in Europe are not the same thing as US unions, despite the same name. In Europe there are multiple unions you can join for an employer. This competition keeps them working well. In the US it's a single union per employer, and if the employer has one, you are forced to join it (and in some states you can decline to join, but still be required to pay fees). This causes lots of problems with cor…
Can't confirm this for Germany - we usually have a single (dominant) union per trade or industry segment - e.g. Ver.di for the entire service sector. I think in this way, unions here are significantly more centralized than in the US.
Standard salary rates are usually negotiated by those dominant unions for the entire sector (though in the last decades, a lot of this stuff has been deregulated, so the salary rates have become less relevant today, except for state employees)
Employees are not required to join a union - however in every company above a certain size, they have the right to a work council. Unions can initiate an election for such a council even against the orders of the company's management. While the unions can enforce creation of work councils and usually offer ongoing support, the councils are generally independent and staffed by company employees.
See Ver.di vs Twitter for a current example where a work council is founded in opposition of management (text in german) : https://www.verdi.de/themen/recht-datenschutz/++co++43ec9312...
Re: Apple’s anti-union tactics in Atlanta were illegal, US officials say
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why wouldn't you want to be part of a union? I am a recent member of the UAW (a more white collar local), and it's been insightful. I think unions are much weaker than people perceive. Their strengths are mostly superficial. Striking is something members don't want to resort to. Other than that all you can really do is rally and file NLRB complaints. The NLRB is a slow moving bureaucracy that any competent employer c…
I have no desire to be part of a union because of my one-person removed (friends) experience with union violence. 1) Interns, not being part of the union, needed to cross the picket line (Canada Federal Government strike). My friend (female) was punched in the face by a union member. 2) Another friend working on the factory floor, doubled then tripled their work quota. They were pulled aside and told it was amazing h…
It seems you are anti-union because of bad experiences two friends had. Do you have any friends who have bad experiences with corporations? Do you hold corporations to a lower standard than unions?
Re: Apple’s anti-union tactics in Atlanta were illegal, US officials say
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe the parent is saying that if your logic were correct unions would be extremely powerful in relation to multinational corporations and everyone would be afraid of getting the union angry, as this is not the case something must be keeping unions in check or they cannot, at any rate, grow to be as powerful as you suppose. That your logic as stated does not hold any identifiable logical error does not mean that…
And unions are exactly that powerful. A strike can easily shut down a company, a town or a country. I do not see a similar power on the corporation's side. Firing everybody would just kill the corporation as well.
The data here seems to indicate otherwise https://www.epi.org/publication/latest-data-release-on-union...
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/23/385843576/50-y...
Now it's true I have not lived all over the world, but I have lived in numerous places in the U.S, in Denmark, and spend some time in Italy every now and then. I also lived in Germany as a kid, but I've never really seen these fearsome unions you are familiar with, and did I say again I am in Denmark? Even here it isn't like such a powerful organization.
Certainly one can find historical instances of powerful unions, but they do not seem to exist now, and thus your analysis must be faulty somehow. If unions are naturally more powerful than the other forces of society their power should always increase and not decrease, but as the data linked above shows the opposite is the case.
If you want people to accept your logic you will probably need to back it up with data, arguing about real world things like unions tend to bring forth such requirements.
Re: Apple’s anti-union tactics in Atlanta were illegal, US officials say
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Minority unions undermine the collective bargaining that underpins the very concept of a union. They make no sense to me, at all. The whole point of a union is having a large enough block of workers committed to act together that the company is forced to either negotiate or perish. This obviously works when you have all the workers unionized, as a company without employees can achieve nothing at all. As the union get…
That sounds like a really good argument for a union providing sufficiently valuable services to their members that they want to be a member. If a union isn't serving its members those members should be able to seek better options. If unions worked like this in the US, it seems like many more people would be in favor of them.
Unions by and large do work like this in the US. There's fewer unions, but the unions that do exist tend to do a very good job of representing their members. The main force acting against unionization efforts here isn't that the unions are ineffective, it's that they're so effective that companies fight tooth and nail to suppress them, including spreading a lot of propaganda.
And the problem with open shops and opt-in unions is that scabs can be found who think in terms of the short term. A company, in contrast, has the luxury of playing the long game. So, faced with union demands, a company can hire a bunch of scabs offering benefits and pay equivalent or better than the union is currently fighting for, then when the union is crushed gradually fire the scabs and replace them with new workers who are back to the square 1 the union was fighting from. And because unionizing takes effort and conviction, the new lot might not unionize. The company wins.
Re: Apple’s anti-union tactics in Atlanta were illegal, US officials say
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you explain a check that prevents the same abuse from happening in other settings? I'm always very wary of the arguments that somehow police are a special industry where unions are bad. I don't really see any logical reasoning put forth to support that. Just evidence on how things have gone. :(
> are a special industry Public services are a special industry (not unique to just police) so the dynamics of unions are different. For one, many public services exist because they are critical to the functioning of society. You can tell this is fundamentally special case because the govt carves out special mechanisms to mitigate the risk (see the the current threat of a rail strike). Secondly, the government doesn'…
This still feels like a bit of a stretch. In that I can almost certainly list reasons why a big industry in a city is critical to the functioning of said city. All the more true for all too many cities around here.
Re: Apple’s anti-union tactics in Atlanta were illegal, US officials say
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Police unions Public unions seem to be a special case and, while I generally support unions, I can understand the perspective that public unions bring about specific problems. E.g., a strong bargaining chip for a union is the right to strike. The idea that a public service can strike creates problems. As another example, I witnessed changes in competition and economics force auto unions to compromise for the busine…
The main problem with the police union (in the US) is that they have been able to repeatedly stop officers who have done horrible things from being fired or even truly punished (paid leave is not punishment).
People often say "there should be a register of police offers nationwide that records officers who were terminated for cause, resigned in lieu of termination, etc."
And there is.
But in the very vast majority of police departments, the CBA with the police union prohibits the use of this register for hiring decisions.
Re: Apple’s anti-union tactics in Atlanta were illegal, US officials say
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm very much anti-unionization, but don't really fall into any of those buckets. To be fair, I didn't take it to be an exhaustive list. Basically, I'm opposed to unions as they exist in the US because of the government being involved and "artificially" granting them power.
> Basically, I'm opposed to unions as they exist in the US because of the government being involved and "artificially" granting them power. Artificial is an unfair characterization of history. The President didn't just descend from on high and grant unions powers out of magnanimity. At one point the unions were extremely powerful to the point that they were able to codify in law the rights they had attained.
> the rights they had attained
Rights they had to fight for, in many cases _die_ for. Corporations and the government were not above using police, private firms to do violence, even fatal violence, to employees who were not willing to bend over backwards (unsafe, unhealthy, inhumane working conditions) for their employer.