421–430 of 724 posts
The anti-union rhetoric in America is staggering. You like weekends? Then stop ragging on unions.
You mean the American 5 day work week, brought to us by Henry Ford and not unions?
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Just because your friend didn't see the benefits doesn't mean he didn't have them. Kroger union members have health care benefits, dental and vision benefits, and other benefits that they wouldn't normally get with a minimum wage job. Protections against forced and unpaid overtime (while allowing for voluntary, paid overtime). Hell, the fact he got paid minimum wage in the first place--since unions were, and still ar…
None of these things applied to him. He did not get medical or dental benefits because he was employed there for less time than their minimum to begin receiving benefits (or maybe he had just qualified when his teaching license finally got through? I can't remember now). Membership was mandatory for employment, so anyone who works there part-time for less than whatever the minimum amount of time to receive benefits i…
You say that, as you spout anti-union propaganda that would bring a tear to the eye of the walmart CEO.
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I have a friend who worked at a grocery store for a few months while waiting for his teacher's certification to get processed and sent to the state he'd moved to. It was a minimum-wage job, yet mandatory union membership at this grocery store chain meant that a cut of each of his minimum-wage paychecks was taken from him without anything he could do about it. The idea that unions are inherently, universally good is j…
Your friend should have been working 80 hours a week for 20 cents an hour instead. Ban unions!
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Or it's just a symptom of the Shirky Principle: "Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution." Even if the workplace is not adversarial, any union will try to preserve the conditions that necessitate its continued existence. No union ever said "Wow, this new CEO and management are super fair and reasonable. We are no longer necessary, let's dissolve and let them take the reigns."
>No union ever said "Wow, this new CEO and management are super fair and reasonable. We are no longer necessary, let's dissolve and let them take the reigns." Name a company with a CEO and management who are super fair and reasonable (e.g. paying employees the full value of their labor instead of profiting from the surplus value created by the employee)
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> Individual workers are powerless, only able to bring their own labor to the negotiation table. What do you mean they are only able to bring their own labor to the table, what else is there that a laborer can bring to the table other than their own labor? If individual workers feel powerless that is probably not because of them possessing something other than their own labor while not being able to negotiate that so…
...what else is there that a laborer can bring to the table other than their own labor? It's as if we're rediscovering the stated purpose of unions, right here in this thread! The union can negotiate with everyone's labor, not just that of an individual worker.
The anti-union rhetoric in America is staggering. You like weekends? Then stop ragging on unions.
I have a friend who worked at a grocery store for a few months while waiting for his teacher's certification to get processed and sent to the state he'd moved to. It was a minimum-wage job, yet mandatory union membership at this grocery store chain meant that a cut of each of his minimum-wage paychecks was taken from him without anything he could do about it. The idea that unions are inherently, universally good is j…
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Well done, one of the more succinct and accurate explanations of the shortcomings of the unions I've experienced and have relayed to me (Teamsters, NEA, CWA) in the US.
Thank you. I will say though, that as a shortcoming I think this is largely a consequence of the American labor movement being so small and neutered. If they encompassed a larger share of the workforce I think the pressure from the membership would push them towards being more representative of industrial interests as a whole. But they've been on the back foot over multiple generations of retrenchment now, so the lea…
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Whats wrong with inherited wealth? Literally anyone can pass on wealth to their heirs. It takes no brains, and no special access. Just spending less. People shouldn't be taxed more because they have more foresight or impulse control than others. Yes, maybe it doesn't happen in one or two generations - but it can. Also - lots of people have moved up in the world from nothing - and it wasn't "inherited wealth" keeping…
"Have the poor just considered not being poor?"
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You mean the American 5 day work week, brought to us by Henry Ford and not unions?
You mean the 5-day work week, originated by Henry Ford, and spread throughout the world by unions? More than a decade past before another company adopted the 5-day work week. Unions took Ford's example and made it the standard.
I wish them well, but having family members and friends work in unionized workplaces, it's not something I would ever do. It always seems to degenerate into an "us vs them" sort of thing whenever I talk to them about where they work. Why would I ever work some place where things are so adversarial? You also end up with this 3rd party involved in everything, creating all kinds of "rules" to make things "fair". Want to…
(And the Award for Thread's Most Inflammatory Analogy goes to...)