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Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

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Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

#371

Post by [deleted] »

whimsicalism wrote: post #318
Jensson wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those were thanks to labor movements, not unions. They are not the same thing, labor movements happens thanks to Democracy. Democracy is crucial, I agree, it lets groups organize, protest and fix problems with how society works. But what we call unions today are not that. I'm all for labor engaging in politics, but they can do that without paying union dues for working at a company. The problem USA's workers face tod…

To claim that labor movements are somehow divorced from unions is ahistorical. > what we call unions today are not that. Unions don't involve organizing, protesting, or fixing problems? How do you think unions ever get a contract? Your comment makes frustratingly little sense to me.

[deleted]

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

#372

Post by josephcsible »

dls2016 wrote: post #269
cool_dude85 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The problem is in "Non Right to Work States" the unionized can clobber people that choose not to unionize and coerce them into participation. You are badly misinformed about what "right to work" is. In a union shop, the unionized "coerce" all employees in their bargaining units to participate, even in "right to work" states! Everyone is covered by the same contract! That's the whole point! Even in "right to work" st…

> In all cases, all relevant employees are "coerced" into the union contract. It's funny because usually the libertarian response to a lot of problems is "put it in a contract". But not that kind of contract!

That's because that's not a contract. Real contracts can only bind people who sign them, but in places that don't recognize right to work, you can be forced to join a union just because 51% of your co-workers signed.

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

#373

Post by JanisL »

cft wrote: post #168
everdrive wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But could you imagine if we spoke about corporations in this manner? "I've worked for corporations and they are a mixed bag. In practice, they often abuse their employees. I've personally witnessed bosses who contributed nothing for years and just played politics." We definitely talk about corporations in this way. All the time, in fact!

Moreover, the market often takes care of corporations that contribute nothing. Especially of the private ones. For the public ones, there's no "union" that protects their stock price on the stock market.

Open market operations of various central banks certainly impacts equity prices of publicly traded stocks. In some cases the holdings are enormous: https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Markets/BOJ-tops-pension-wh...

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

#374

Post by kelseyfrog »

Jensson wrote: post #287
woodruffw wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What, pray tell, are those corporations made of?

Corporations are a structure of workers. Both the structure and the workers are essential. Workers without structure doesn't produce much value leading to a poor society. Politically created structure leads to bad outcomes so also leads to a poor society. Capitalist created structure creates a lot of value and leads to rich societies. There might be alternatives, but so far capitalism is the only known way to create…

Corporations are a pattern of relations (social and economic) that are socially reproduced and codified by the legal system. The current body of law is a strange attractor for among other things, the reproduction of corporations as they exist today[1]. The way capitalism is coded is at the expense of experimenting with other systems[2]. Instead of experimenting with alternative systems of economic organization, we see an ongoing attempt to level all forms of alternative economic organization. In effect, the notion of "capitalism is the only known way" becomes a prescriptive rather than descriptive - a normative statement rather than a observational one.

If we were truly looking for more advanced forms of organization beyond the status quo, I would expect that economic imperialism would not exist. Instead, even more aspects of basic society are capitalized and in recent decades also codified using the inflexible mechanisms of computer code. The last remaining hold outs do so at their own expense[3]. So no, I don't think we're exploring the possibility space of superior economic technology, we're stagnating.

1. As a self-preservation principle

2. See M. Fisher, Capital Realism - https://libcom.org/files/Capitalist%20Realism_%20Is%20There%...

3. Market, political, cultural, economic forces all contribute to the complete and total capture of universal capitalism. Those who wish not to comply face political, social, and economic sanctions from the individual to national levels.

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

#375

Post by pandemicsoul »

chrisseaton wrote: post #224
sandworm101 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> For some reason we hold unions to an incredibly high standard of "no problems, ever" Because they are democratic institutions. They can be held to a no-problems standard because every time a problem occurs then those involved can be sacked and replaced. The level of acceptable corruption is set by the membership. Rules should therefore focus on openness and member participation in leadership selection. Everyone wh…

> I say join the leadership and run the union the way you think it should be run This is like saying if you don't like the gangs in your area you should join them and try to reform them to do social work instead. Why isn't it valid to say you don't like unions and so don't want anything to do with them?

> Why isn't it valid to say you don't like unions and so don't want anything to do with them?

Because you can't possibly have personally experienced every union, and the media isn't good at covering unions generally, so whatever bias you're (or anyone else making this statement is) presenting here feels unearned.

This is similar to the bias of racism or homophobia, right? Like, "I saw a Black person steal something, so now I think that all Black people are untrustworthy." Or, "I saw a gay man hit on a straight guy and now I think all gay men are sex pests." These are declarative statements about all people in those groups based on a small amount of information and on societal bias.

And these biases rarely go the other way – do you also end up saying, "I don't like corporations and don't want anything to do with them?" Corporations are, by far, have a vastly worse record on theft, corruption, anti-environmental practices, etc.

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

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Post by 8note »

Jensson wrote: post #189
airza wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point which i don’t think was articulated well by the GP is that depsite these objections to corporate power nobody (ok,few people) in HN threads ever seems to endorse getting rid of corporations.

Corporations creates enormous amounts of value, as far as we know modern society cannot function without those structures. Unions however are optional, even if they help they still aren't nearly as important as corporations. Edit: For those who disagree, how many modern societies are there without corporations running a majority of the economy? Not a single one. So as far as we know it doesn't work. It can work in th…

Isn't it by force of the US nuclear arsenal that modern societies must have corporations? You can do something else, but Americans will always try to assassinate you, and make sure you don't have access to resources

There's reasons other than being an absolute requirement for why everyone's currently using something

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

#377

Post by exabrial »

dls2016 wrote: post #263
exabrial wrote: post #120

This whole debacle is sort of humorous. I fully support the rights of workers to unionize. The problem is in "Non Right to Work States" the unionized can clobber people that choose not to unionize and coerce them into participation. This is incredibly unethical, immoral, and unconstitutional and violates a person's right to self-determination and other human rights.

Which other human rights are violated by representation dues? I can name dozens of corporations who have used their profits not to increase worker compensation, but instead to lobby directly against their workers. And the workers have no vote or voice in the matter. Google in the article, for instance. But think of all the other dubious lobbying corporations engage in. It's never discussed in this context because you…

The right to your own wages

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

#378

Post by Minor49er »

Natfan wrote: post #294
Minor49er wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I searched that page and didn't see a rule about jokes not being allowed

"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."

I think you responded to the wrong comment

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

#379

Post by 8note »

Jensson wrote: post #292
littlestymaar wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are however many examples of modern economies with very little union influence, USA is an example, and USA is a better place to live than most countries. The US is arguably pretty subpar in terms of quality of life compared to other developed nations (little vacation, really expensive school system, poor health system for the masses leading to a lower life expectancy, high criminality rate, etc.). Of course,…

I didn't argue otherwise. USA is however not subpar compared to any country hostile to corporations, which is the important part. A country being hostile to unions isn't nearly as bad as a country being hostile to corporations.

You can pick a different definition of modern society though, which then unions are a requirement

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

#380

Post by mendigou »

Jensson wrote: post #311
burkaman wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are however many examples of modern economies with very little union influence, USA is an example No there aren't. USA is not an example, every significant aspect of modern employment in the US has been shaped by unions.

That is a lie, labor movements shaped those long before there were a legal concept of unions. Unions != labor movements. Unions are often a result of labor movements, but they are not the same thing. For example, the 8-hour work week was demanded by labor movements who weren't organized as modern unions are organized. Edit: Labor movements often called themselves unions though, but that was just a group of people get…

I'm not from the US so I'm probably misunderstanding this whole conversation. What's the difference between "a group of people getting together to protest and demand rights" and a union apart from the union being a legal entity?

What you wrote in your edit is what a Union means in Europe, it's just formalized as an entity.

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