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Unionbusters (1986)

texasmonthly.com

31–40 of 59 posts

Re: Unionbusters (1986)

#31

I'm definitely in favor of breaking up the dockworkers/longshormans unions. I don't see why we should let a small group of people hold the whole economy hostage just to enrich themselves.

Don't forget the Jones Act (1920), which was originally designed to protect domestic shipping, which it immediately killed, and which now serves to protect domestic trucking. So if you want to transport something from Northern California to Southern, you MUST truck it, even if you could afford to wait a few weeks. It's incredibly bad for the environment, and much less efficient.

The American merchant marine was bigger than it ever was in the decades following the passage of that act. 1940s was the era of the liberty ships!

The Jones act was passed in 1920 because the merchant marine had been withering away in the decades leading up to WWI. WWI was an "oh shit" moment for the US when it realized that if it had been more directly involved in the shooting war it wouldn't have any ships to fight in it.

Arguably it worked as intended because the American flag fleet was large and modern by 1942 when the US found itself in a shooting war across two oceans.

Re: Unionbusters (1986)

#32
Background: I completed my union IBEW apprenticeship in Texas.

Comment on article: I read books more than I work (often!), and this article was wayyyyyyy tooooooo longgggggggggg. The point of effective communication is to be just concise enough to still retain your readership (I stopped reading a little less than half way).

Comment on unions: I am currently supporting UAW's current push to unionize Chattanooga's Volkswagon Plant; my posit to neighbors is "if unions actually rewarded blue collar employees worse, why would the corporate executives be rallying so hard with propaganda against organized labor?!"

Re: Unionbusters (1986)

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we don't want a small group of people to hold the economy hostage to enrich themselves, then we should be looking at corporations and the ultra-wealthy.

I am always shocked by the mental model that despises labor power but is okay with the bug in our socioeconomic system where ultra wealthy people and corporations are allowed to wield such unelected power. Humans are strange.

Metwork effects for me, but mot for thee.

Re: Unionbusters (1986)

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we don't want a small group of people to hold the economy hostage to enrich themselves, then we should be looking at corporations and the ultra-wealthy.

I am always shocked by the mental model that despises labor power but is okay with the bug in our socioeconomic system where ultra wealthy people and corporations are allowed to wield such unelected power. Humans are strange.

I suppose it's just the temporarily embarrassed millionaire mentality.

Re: Unionbusters (1986)

#35

Background: I completed my union IBEW apprenticeship in Texas. Comment on article: I read books more than I work (often!), and this article was wayyyyyyy tooooooo longgggggggggg . The point of effective communication is to be just concise enough to still retain your readership (I stopped reading a little less than half way). Comment on unions: I am currently supporting UAW's current push to unionize Chattanooga's Vol…

"if unions actually rewarded blue collar employees worse, why would the corporate executives be rallying so hard with propaganda against organized labor?!"

Because the world isn't a war between workers and employers. It's not a zero-sum game. Businesses create value by turning less-valuable inputs from society (fundamentally, labor) into more-valuable outputs to society (cars, haircuts, etc). It's a positive-sum game. Unions add a lot of friction to this process, causing everybody to be worse off overall. Business leaders care about creating more outputs to society. Unions work against that goal.

Some of the best, highest-paying companies aren't unionized, even within a specific industry, unless legally required. Unions succeed by suppressing change, which works well enough in government and stodgy old industries which often amount to arms of the government anyway: education, healthcare, automotive, transportation, etc.

Businesses fight against unions because they don't want the light to go out.

Re: Unionbusters (1986)

#36

Background: I completed my union IBEW apprenticeship in Texas. Comment on article: I read books more than I work (often!), and this article was wayyyyyyy tooooooo longgggggggggg . The point of effective communication is to be just concise enough to still retain your readership (I stopped reading a little less than half way). Comment on unions: I am currently supporting UAW's current push to unionize Chattanooga's Vol…

"if unions actually rewarded blue collar employees worse, why would the corporate executives be rallying so hard with propaganda against organized labor?!" Because the world isn't a war between workers and employers. It's not a zero-sum game. Businesses create value by turning less-valuable inputs from society (fundamentally, labor) into more-valuable outputs to society (cars, haircuts, etc). It's a positive-sum game…

You've got a couple of statements here that belie assumptions that aren't very accurate.

> Business leaders care about creating more outputs to society.

This is untrue. The reason markets work at all is arguably that it's untrue. Business leaders care about generating rewards for themselves. Markets are a mechanism that ensure that it is profitable to create more outputs to society.

This is a really important concept. Amazon doesn't exist because Jeff Bezos is a selfless individual who cares deeply about making sure every American has free next-day shipping. It exists because Jeff Bezos wants to make money, and the market demonstrates that selling products with free next-day shipping is a desire that other people have, and therefore it will be profitable for him to fulfil that need. Markets are about assigning value to desires, and using that value to ensure that goods and services are traded efficiently and flexibly across the whole market without someone needing to coordinate things from the top.

This is (mostly) a good thing - efficient distribution of services across a market is why we like markets and tend to use them a lot across our economy. But we need to be honest about how and why they with, and it's not because business leaders are trying to be selfless to society.

On the other hand,

> Unions work against that goal.

This is also untrue. From a market perspective, unions are a collective bargaining tool used by workers selling their work. In the same way that it's easier for a handful of truck drivers to collect together and form a business, rather than each independently set their own price for their labour, so is it often easier and more efficient for a group of workers to collect together to form a union.

But like with any market, while people can haggle over the best price, the item must be sold at some point in order for all parties to get their rewards. If you've got a melon that you want to sell for $100, but no-one will buy it at that price, then all you'll have at the end of the day is a mouldy melon. Similarly, workers in a union want to sell their labour, because if they don't and the business collapses, they're all out of a job.

In that regard, a union is a tool used by people selling their labour in the market in order to achieve the best price for them (in this regard, they are just like the business owners from before, where the market uses their personal desires to generate value across the whole market).

In fairness, this is a very simple model, and so it doesn't tell the whole story. Markets have failure modes such as monopolies where the simple analysis of market efficiency tends to break down. On the other hand, if a worker cannot sell their labour, then they cannot eat and cannot access housing, which in practice puts a lot more power in the hands of the person buying labour then the person selling it. It's important to remember that the market model is just one tool that we have for managing resources, and in practice most successful countries use a mix of markets and government intervention to provide efficient access to goods and services across the economy while also preventing common failure modes. Rules to protect workers and unions are part of that mix.

But, despite its simplicity, the market model still helps explain the interactions between businesses and workers better than the naive approach that says that unions are bad and want businesses to die, and business owners are good and want to freely distribute value to the economy. I hope this comment demonstrates that a bit.

Re: Unionbusters (1986)

#38
post #30

I'm definitely in favor of breaking up the dockworkers/longshormans unions. I don't see why we should let a small group of people hold the whole economy hostage just to enrich themselves.

> I'm definitely in favor of breaking up the *capitalists*. I don't see why we should let a small group of people hold the whole economy hostage just to enrich themselves. See what I did there? The hostility to unions on this forum comes near exclusively from American posters, who coincidentally, have very poor workers rights compared to anywhere in the UK/EU/EEA. Unions provide a balance of power to employers. The m…

We are writing these comments on a discussion site created to serve the interests of a prominent private equity firm.

Perhaps we should realize how relevant that fact is to what we read here.

Re: Unionbusters (1986)

#39

Background: I completed my union IBEW apprenticeship in Texas. Comment on article: I read books more than I work (often!), and this article was wayyyyyyy tooooooo longgggggggggg . The point of effective communication is to be just concise enough to still retain your readership (I stopped reading a little less than half way). Comment on unions: I am currently supporting UAW's current push to unionize Chattanooga's Vol…

"if unions actually rewarded blue collar employees worse, why would the corporate executives be rallying so hard with propaganda against organized labor?!" Because the world isn't a war between workers and employers. It's not a zero-sum game. Businesses create value by turning less-valuable inputs from society (fundamentally, labor) into more-valuable outputs to society (cars, haircuts, etc). It's a positive-sum game…

>Because the world isn't a war between workers and employers. It's not a zero-sum game.

>Business leaders care about creating more outputs to society.

How do you square these ideas with record profits and record executive compensation, juxtaposed with decades of wage stagnation and the dramatically expanding wealth gap? That gap now has 1% of the population owning over 30.6% of the wealth.

In the context of this discussion, it doesn't matter if the game is positive-sum, if the overwhelming rewards from the created value accrue to a tiny percentage.

Re: Unionbusters (1986)

#40
post #16
post #5

I love unions in American fictional media. The Wire seasons two is centered around the dockworkers who take bribes and are arguing about how corrupt they should be (I’m biased since it’s the most boring season by far). Ozark features a union on the periphery which is introduced by a man carjacking a truck and kneecaping the driver with a shotgun. Can’t wait to see what’s up next.

Don't forget the classic film On the Waterfront . Considered one of the greatest movies ever made and adapted from "Crime on the Waterfront," a 24-article series by the New York Sun's Malcolm Johnson that received the second prize ever awarded for Local Reporting, in 1949. > In a vocation where loss of limb (and even life) was not uncommon, prospective workers — in a field disproportionately comprised of working-clas…

There's some interesting background the movie as well, with Elia Kazan's testimony to anti-communist tribunals in the US.

Plus it has an incredible score.

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