What's wrong with labor unions?

[TravelerKai]

Haven't read the entire thread, but I had a somewhat bad experience with one. When I worked for Kroger (a grocery store chain) as a very young man as one of my first jobs, I was relegated to bagging groceries when I wanted to be a cashier. Alot of that had to do with the union. Seemed race driven at the time, but I quickly figured out that it was more gender and union driven. Made me salty as fuck even though I was a diehard Democrat at the time. It made me privately cheer on Republicans anytime they tried to bust up unions. I was part time too because I was going to school at the time, but the member dues were too much money for me to pay. At that time, that was gas money EASY.

As I got older that experience never let me support anything union. Relatives that were in Teachers Union seemed to get more out of their dues than when I was a store worker, but even then I could see where they were losing out and their messages drowned out.

If you study Italian mob/mafia crime history, especially in Chicago and New York, you can see how easy it was for unions to get subverted with bad people. Money does not always ruin them, but it usually ends that way.

When you think about it on a ideological viewpoint, unions are very anti-capitalistic, and make no sense in private industries. Unions to me personally made sense in a world with lesser technology, safety regulations, and pay discrimination. Like many liberal causes today, it has an outdated feel now. We have the EEOC, OSHA, SOX, and too many other regulatory bodies now that used to be the role of a union.

I think unions are for a developing nation, not so much a nation with a whole host of laws and regulations on the books.

 

[godzilla]

Public unions should be abolished. You cant have an entity that gets paid by the taxpayer to lobby against the taxpayer. Most absurd thing I've seen. A lot of the pensions that were lobbyed for in years past are bankrupting cities and states are across the country.

I worked for a union as well once. They too often shield shit employees and create too many work rules that make it difficult to just do your fucking job. I know one guy who kept his job after trying to put his boss in the trash compactor. I shit you not.

Some skilled unions have also cities by charging abnormally high wages. Philly unions are famous this. Try to use non unions workers and they'll beat your ass. Since the politicians are bought and paid for, and the police are also union. They can get away it.

I tend to think unions are good in specific situations where monopolies occur and there is no competition for wages. Other then that, They do nothing but take money out of your paycheck unless you're a piece of shit

Other then that good riddence.

 

[Super_Fire]

Haven't read the entire thread, but I had a somewhat bad experience with one. When I worked for Kroger (a grocery store chain) as a very young man as one of my first jobs, I was relegated to bagging groceries when I wanted to be a cashier. Alot of that had to do with the union. Seemed race driven at the time, but I quickly figured out that it was more gender and union driven. Made me salty as fuck even though I was a diehard Democrat at the time. It made me privately cheer on Republicans anytime they tried to bust up unions. I was part time too because I was going to school at the time, but the member dues were too much money for me to pay. At that time, that was gas money EASY.

TK, are you me? :blink:

High school Kroger baggers unite!

 

[frozen-ace]

In most school districts something like 70% of the 'education spending' actually goes to the teachers' pension funds.

It’s not that high.

In most districts wages and benefits make up about 80% of the education spending. The remaining 20% is for everything else.

That 80% is roughly split evenly between wages and benefits-> so depending on the place 40% of education spending is on wages and 40% is on benefits.

On the benefits piece health insurance is usually more than the pension. Health insurance costs have risen dramatically in the last decade while pension costs have for the most part remained constant.

So to recap-
Wages 40%
Health insurance 25%
Pension and other benefits 15%
Everything else 20%

Many of the states used to have great defined benefit plans. These are the plans that promise / guarantee a fixed payment for life. There is also a spousal survivor benefit (depends on the plan but can be something around 50% or 75% or 80%- for life). To do the spousal survivor benefit your pension gets reduced by a certain amount but it guarantees your spouse that your pension payments will transfer to them upon your death for the rest of their life. These old plans are bankrupting the states that had them and still have them as members in these old plans are starting to retire.

The states that have moved to defined contribution plans will not have this issue 100 years from now (its similar to a 401k), but they still have to deal with the old people who got in on the old plans.

The people on the defined benefit plans have about 30-40 more years until they are all deceased. Then you have to calculate the spouse survivor benefit- so let’s say you have the guy in the defined benefit plan who retires today at 50, goes 30 years and when he turns 80 decides to marry a 20 year old bar girl from the Philippines and then pass away. She will now get the spouse survivor benefit for the rest of her life (another 80 years). That’s 110 years for this pension to pay out, and maybe the teacher only worked for 20 years. Think about that- you were lucky enough to get in to the old plan while it existed, you did your time and worked 20 years and retired, and now there is a potential for 110 years of GUARANTEED monthly payments. The true cost of these plans will not be complete until both the participant and the spouse are deceased.

Some of these old plans also offer full health insurance. Once someone gets into their 70s and 80s the health care costs far exceed the pension payments. Major heart surgeries and hip surgeries can cost more than all of the actual lifetime pension payments combined.

 

[Simeon_Strangelight]

Unions are an absolute necessity in a free market economic model. You have to have worker's rights represented, but best not on state level, but on national level.

One of the reason why in the robber baron times some industrialists or mine owners paid shit was because all the others paid shit too - 80 hour weeks and barely subsistence wages, shoe-less workers in shoe factories etc.

It turned out later, that when good wages are paid, then even more industries and greater wealth can be created for everyone. But of course strong unions, high living wages have to coincide with strong borders, common sense tariffs and you have to explain to unions why a certain company simply cannot afford this or that perk or wage. In Germany unions used to have a seat at the board working together with the employer.

Unions however can be inflitrated - in the US this was specifically the case with pure communists or sometimes the mob taking control of things. There are books written on the subject. The negatives however especially in the US are overblown. Government unions are a special thing and while necessary, you have to have massive checks and balances due to the nature of government jobs. Even companies like GM or Chrysler - those big ones were not ruined by high wages - German and Japanese manufacturers also pay their workers plenty. The reason for the failures was simple crappy management decisions - planned obsolescence gone too far, probably even planned de-industrialization of the US.

Every force in nature needs a counter-force to stay in balance. You cannot have the power of the corporations be wielded on a mass scale. In some companies lack of control works well, but in many industries the workers need to be represented or the companies do what they did now - fire locals, hire illegals or some cheaper VISA foreigners or they move the factory offshore and produce at 10% wage cost while telling you to "compete".

So to recap - unions yes, need control, but also need common sense labor regulations (for example giving massive fines for hiring illegals etc), has to come with sound borders and common sense tariffs - and if someone is found to be a commie, then he needs to be fired instantly, should be a ban against communists on union boards.

I don't think that it can work without unions in our system - a company would want to increase profits no matter what - if they can get away with it, then they don't give a shit if they hire shoe-less factory workers or cleaning crew again.

 

[debeguiled]

More divide and conquer.

We have way more in common with people running unions than we do with their corporate masters.

This is also an example of what we used to call the second foul rule in basketball, a concept where one player keeps fouling another player, the refs never call it, so the second player gets frustrated, fouls the player back, and the ref calls that foul.

I would wager there is practically nothing a union does that gets criticized that isn't in response to something fucked up that management did beforehand that was much worse.

Everyone wants to talk about how pointless and wasteful it is that only one union member is allowed to flip a light switch, or pick up a hammer in a specific situation, but the reason this things happens is that management is constantly trying to get people to do things that don't fit their job description.

I have experienced this first hand in a non union shop. I was waiting tables at a place, and after a shift waiters always have side work, like filling salt and pepper shakers and changing table cloths, basically getting his section ready for the next shift.

Managers at my restaurant, a corporate place owned by Pepsi, had the bright idea of extending side work so instead of 15 minutes at the end of the shift, it was an hour of cleaning the restaurant, the floors, washing the walls. Why? Because they have to pay janitors more than they pay waiters, so if the can get the waiters to do janitorial work, call it 'side work,' they save money.

They are always doing this cost cutting shit at the expense of employees. That being the case, can you see why unions have to come up with these hyper picky rules that that only the carpenter can nail the picture back up on the wall? It is because these become loopholes that the bosses exploit endlessly.

Even at union places I worked, they were always trying to cut corners to fuck with employees, and you felt lucky to have a union having your back. At a hotel I once worked at, the hotel had to provide a meal for employees, not off the menu, but something. So they got the bright idea to just give us leftovers from banquets, and then they didn't have to prepare anything, not even sandwiches.

I went back to get my meal and some of the cold cuts actually had mold on them. It was like the biggest fuck you you could get after working your ass off for a company. I took them food to my manager's office, showed him the food in good faith, not confrontationally, thinking he didn't know what we were getting, and he got a hard look on his face I had never seen before and said, you got a problem, go to your union.

It's like that.

We spend a fair amount of time talking about the psychopaths who run things, that tiny percentage, and you don't think that filters down and normal workers don't get shafted by corporations? You actually think the unions are the problems?

This is some second foul shit.

In the old days they didn't negotiate with strikers, they just hired thugs to come in and kill them. You won't read that in history books.

Seeing this was a public relations problem, they came up with the Mohawk Valley Strategy, which is worth Googling if you are interested. This was in the early 1930's.

The basic idea was that instead of killing unions, you destroy their reputations. This strategy was so successful that it has been adopted by businesses everywhere, to the point that much of the talking points of the Mohawk Valley situation persist to this day, and have been internalized by the public at large.

Repeated even in this thread.

We have been programmed since a young age to be hyper-critical of unions and to identify with owners.

That is the real American way, people at the bottom, identifying with the people at the top, because when their ship comes in they don't want to have to deal with a bunch of regulations.

If you have the inclination, do some research on the Mohawk Valley strategy, or The Ludlow Massacre.

We have been programmed to dismiss and laugh at unions. It is part of the intellectual air we breathe.

But if you shake a scorpion and a salamander up in a bottle, they will attack each other, because neither sees the hand shaking the jar.

 

[TigerMandingo]

^^otd:

 

[Simeon_Strangelight]

I would agree with Debeguilded on that even if some unions do to too far - there were French unions which kidnapped and physically attacked managers:

But those guys were communist psychos who later got blacklisted for life.

But as I mentioned before - it's overblown.

And keep in mind one thing - in Poland the unions were the ones which fought the communist regime which is odd since the Communists are supposed to be the friends of the workers, while this time the workers opposed the dictatorial shitheads.

It's the same concept in the US which has no poor people - just inconvenienced rich people.

Meanwhile in countries like Switzerland or Germany you are naturally joining the union if you start working in many jobs - it's taken for granted and no one thinks about it twice. (Both countries still have surprisingly large manufacturing industries.)

I could quote countless examples from history and the current state especially in the US where companies take advantage of people - not only in service industry, but essential jobs like pilots where some 30%+ of young co-pilots have to be on food-stamps while the European ones enjoy a solid middle-class lifestyle instantly.

 

[Thomas Jackson]

Public sector unions are a joke. I firmly believe government employees should not be able to vote. The incentives are too strong to misuse taxpayer funds for their own benefit. NY, NJ, Cali, and Ill have terrible fiscal issues as a result of this.

 

[AneroidOcean]

We have been programmed to dismiss and laugh at unions. It is part of the intellectual air we breathe.

But if you shake a scorpion and a salamander up in a bottle, they will attack each other, because neither sees the hand shaking the jar.

Thanks for highlighting some of the good that unions can do.

Do you think that most unions in current times (I'll say in the US) actually have the average worker's interests in mind when it comes to working conditions?

I think there are good unions but that especially the public sector unions tend to be bullies and force draconian protections for their workers that screw the public out of hard earned tax dollars.

As for being programmed to dismiss and laugh at unions, actually it's much the opposite. The vast majority of teachers in our educational system are members of unions and I can't think of a single person that didn't have a neutral to positive view of unions due to their education and societal influences during their upbringing.

Unions were essentially laid out as holier than thou and once I started to realize how far that is from reality (essentially some are very good...mostly ones that existed in the past) and that some (maybe many nowadays) are more on the bad side.

RvF'ers did you have the opposite experience in the US educational system/society while going through childhood? I'd be fascinated to hear otherwise, but I just don't think it's that common.

 

[debeguiled]

There is also a rich and beautiful tradition of labor/union music.

Again, hardly anyone knows about these songs:

Come all of you workers who toil night and day
By hand and by brain to earn your pay
Who for centuries long past for no more than your bread
Have bled for your countries and counted your dead

In the factories and mills, in the shipyards and mines
We've often been told to keep up with the times
For our skills are not needed, they've streamlined the job
And with sliderule and stopwatch our pride they have robbed

But when the sky darkens and the prospect is war
Who's given a gun and then pushed to the fore
And expected to die for the land of our birth
When we've never owned one handful of earth?

We're the first ones to starve the first ones to die
The first ones in line for that pie-in-the-sky
And always the last when the cream is shared out
For the worker is working when the fat cat's about

All of these things the worker has done
From tilling the fields to carrying the gun
We've been yoked to the plough since time first began
And always expected to carry the can

This one's pretty funny. Festive almost:

Oh the price of gold is rising out of sight
And the dollar is in sorry shape tonight
What the dollar used to get us now won't buy a head of lettuce
No the economic forecast isn't right
But amidst the clouds I spot a shining ray
I can even glimpse a new and better way
And I've devised a plan of action worked it down to the last fraction
And I'm going into action here today
I am changing my name to Chrysler
I am going down to Washington D.C.
I will tell some power broker
What they did for Iacocca
Will be perfectly acceptable to me
I am changing my name to Chrysler
I am headed for that great receiving line
So when they hand a million grand out
I'll be standing with my hand out
Yes sire I'll get mine
When my creditors are screaming for their dough
I'll be proud to tell them all where they can all go
They won't have to scream and holler
They'll be paid to the last dollar
Where the endless streams of money seem to flow
I'll be glad to tell them what they can do
It's a matter of a simple form or two
It's not just renumeration it's a liberal education
Ain't you kind of glad that I'm in debt to you
I am changing my name to Chrysler
I am going down to Washington D.C.
I will tell some power broker
What they did for Iacocca
Will be perfectly acceptable to me
I am changing my name to Chrysler
I am headed for that great receiving line
So when they hand a million grand out
I'll be standing with my hand out
Yes sire I'll get mine
Since the first amphibians crawled out of the slime
We've been struggling in an unrelenting climb
We were hardly up and walking before money started talking
And it's sad that failure is an awful crime
Well it's been that way for a millennium or two
But now it seems that there's a different point of view
If you're a corporate titanic and your failure is gigantic
Down to congress there's a safety net for you
I am changing my name to Chrysler
I am going down to Washington D.C.
I will tell some power broker
What they did for Iacocca
Will be perfectly acceptable to me
I am changing my name to Chrysler
I am headed for that great receiving line
So when they hand a million grand out
I'll be standing with my hand out
Yes sire I'll get mine

 

[TravelerKai]

More divide and conquer.

We have way more in common with people running unions than we do with their corporate masters.

This is also an example of what we used to call the second foul rule in basketball, a concept where one player keeps fouling another player, the refs never call it, so the second player gets frustrated, fouls the player back, and the ref calls that foul.

I would wager there is practically nothing a union does that gets criticized that isn't in response to something fucked up that management did beforehand that was much worse.

Everyone wants to talk about how pointless and wasteful it is that only one union member is allowed to flip a light switch, or pick up a hammer in a specific situation, but the reason this things happens is that management is constantly trying to get people to do things that don't fit their job description.

I have experienced this first hand in a non union shop. I was waiting tables at a place, and after a shift waiters always have side work, like filling salt and pepper shakers and changing table cloths, basically getting his section ready for the next shift.

Managers at my restaurant, a corporate place owned by Pepsi, had the bright idea of extending side work so instead of 15 minutes at the end of the shift, it was an hour of cleaning the restaurant, the floors, washing the walls. Why? Because they have to pay janitors more than they pay waiters, so if the can get the waiters to do janitorial work, call it 'side work,' they save money.

They are always doing this cost cutting shit at the expense of employees. That being the case, can you see why unions have to come up with these hyper picky rules that that only the carpenter can nail the picture back up on the wall? It is because these become loopholes that the bosses exploit endlessly.

Even at union places I worked, they were always trying to cut corners to fuck with employees, and you felt lucky to have a union having your back. At a hotel I once worked at, the hotel had to provide a meal for employees, not off the menu, but something. So they got the bright idea to just give us leftovers from banquets, and then they didn't have to prepare anything, not even sandwiches.

I went back to get my meal and some of the cold cuts actually had mold on them. It was like the biggest fuck you you could get after working your ass off for a company. I took them food to my manager's office, showed him the food in good faith, not confrontationally, thinking he didn't know what we were getting, and he got a hard look on his face I had never seen before and said, you got a problem, go to your union.

It's like that.

We spend a fair amount of time talking about the psychopaths who run things, that tiny percentage, and you don't think that filters down and normal workers don't get shafted by corporations? You actually think the unions are the problems?

This is some second foul shit.

In the old days they didn't negotiate with strikers, they just hired thugs to come in and kill them. You won't read that in history books.

Seeing this was a public relations problem, they came up with the Mohawk Valley Strategy, which is worth Googling if you are interested. This was in the early 1930's.

The basic idea was that instead of killing unions, you destroy their reputations. This strategy was so successful that it has been adopted by businesses everywhere, to the point that much of the talking points of the Mohawk Valley situation persist to this day, and have been internalized by the public at large.

Repeated even in this thread.

We have been programmed since a young age to be hyper-critical of unions and to identify with owners.

That is the real American way, people at the bottom, identifying with the people at the top, because when their ship comes in they don't want to have to deal with a bunch of regulations.

If you have the inclination, do some research on the Mohawk Valley strategy, or The Ludlow Massacre.

We have been programmed to dismiss and laugh at unions. It is part of the intellectual air we breathe.

But if you shake a scorpion and a salamander up in a bottle, they will attack each other, because neither sees the hand shaking the jar.

Great post.

History books discuss these things, just not a grade school level in any depth. Usually it is a footnote for Industrial Revolution and Child Labor.

Unions were created because owners treated people like absolute shit. Human societies were absolutely savage.

Pre-Industrial and Industrial America (not to mention Great Britain) were absolute meat grinders. Child labor to some extent was the straw that broke the camel's back. Some things like food issues helped, but the momentum was started from issues related to labor.

When people are discussing slavery, some people wonder how something so awful could exist in the first place. That's simple. Human beings were little better than animals in terms of their general regard for human life. Life was extremely cheap. Look at how they treated free people.

All this goes back to the issue of Feudalism. We tend to study Feudalism in terms of just a political system of governance. Feudalism was a culture more so than just a mere style of governance.

"Respect your betters."

Ring a bell? Of course. The class structure you were born into was how your life worked out. Feudalism did not even fully end into the mid 1800s. Yeah, the mid 1800s. The end of WW1 was like that time you found yourself balls deep in an old ex girlfriend (feudalism), then once you nutted, you realized what a terrible mistake you made. WW2 was the time you found a new girlfriend that was no different than the ex because your mindset never changed even though you realized the mistake of the previous woman.

So in a technology booming Earth, people are still treating each other like dogs in the street, trying to eat any and all other dogs, because the culture had not caught up with the sheer speed of technology gains. The brutality just got more efficient and automated. You are talking about people that are 1, 2, or 3 generations removed from being born serfs. That's not enough time using history as a guide on how fast/much human culture changes. People are stubborn and old bad habits take a long time to die, especially those that are hundreds of years old.

General wealth is also a factor. More wealth tends not to change general greed, but if the average person has more wealth or income in general, these issues tend to lessen. Even a janitor in the USA is loads wealthier than your average person in a disorganized undeveloped country, like Congo for example.

All in all, you have to have unions if the laws of the jungle are still valid in your society in any way shape or form.

 

[debeguiled]

We have been programmed to dismiss and laugh at unions. It is part of the intellectual air we breathe.

But if you shake a scorpion and a salamander up in a bottle, they will attack each other, because neither sees the hand shaking the jar.

Thanks for highlighting some of the good that unions can do.

Do you think that most unions in current times (I'll say in the US) actually have the average worker's interests in mind when it comes to working conditions?

I think there are good unions but that especially the public sector unions tend to be bullies and force draconian protections for their workers that screw the public out of hard earned tax dollars.

As for being programmed to dismiss and laugh at unions, actually it's much the opposite. The vast majority of teachers in our educational system are members of unions and I can't think of a single person that didn't have a neutral to positive view of unions due to their education and societal influences during their upbringing.

Unions were essentially laid out as holier than thou and once I started to realize how far that is from reality (essentially some are very good...mostly ones that existed in the past) and that some (maybe many nowadays) are more on the bad side.

RvF'ers did you have the opposite experience in the US educational system/society while going through childhood? I'd be fascinated to hear otherwise, but I just don't think it's that common.

It seems to me like most institutions today have been twisted from their original purposes and would be unrecognizable to their founders, and this probably includes most unions, unfortunately.

As for teachers and what they teach about unions and the history of labor, I sometimes forget that I am a lot older than most forum members, and what applied when I was going to school doesn't apply anymore.

When I was in high school, no one had even heard of "A People's History of the United States," and even later, when I was in my thirties, trying to research the history of the labor movement, in '93, this was still before the internet, and I had an entire University library to browse, and I only found a couple books about unions and their history.

I wasn't even conspiracy minded, or learned in geo-politics at the time, but it was fucking weird that it was so hard to find anything about labor that looked at things from the point of view of the workers.

Meanwhile, everyone had an opinion about unions, and it was all along the lines of how lazy, corrupt, inefficient, anti-American they were. Same type of jokes you would hear from comedians on tv.

And no one said a word about how corporations work, how they will screw their workers if they can, not even from human evil, but just the pressure of shareholders on a CEO to keep being more profitable.

It would be interesting to hear what people have been taught in schools about unions.

I can't imagine how any union could escape corruption today, not to mention identity politics, feminism, etc..

 

[TravelerKai]

We have been programmed to dismiss and laugh at unions. It is part of the intellectual air we breathe.

But if you shake a scorpion and a salamander up in a bottle, they will attack each other, because neither sees the hand shaking the jar.

Thanks for highlighting some of the good that unions can do.

Do you think that most unions in current times (I'll say in the US) actually have the average worker's interests in mind when it comes to working conditions?

I think there are good unions but that especially the public sector unions tend to be bullies and force draconian protections for their workers that screw the public out of hard earned tax dollars.

As for being programmed to dismiss and laugh at unions, actually it's much the opposite. The vast majority of teachers in our educational system are members of unions and I can't think of a single person that didn't have a neutral to positive view of unions due to their education and societal influences during their upbringing.

Unions were essentially laid out as holier than thou and once I started to realize how far that is from reality (essentially some are very good...mostly ones that existed in the past) and that some (maybe many nowadays) are more on the bad side.

RvF'ers did you have the opposite experience in the US educational system/society while going through childhood? I'd be fascinated to hear otherwise, but I just don't think it's that common.

It seems to me like most institutions today have been twisted from their original purposes and would be unrecognizable to their founders, and this probably includes most unions, unfortunately.

As for teachers and what they teach about unions and the history of labor, I sometimes forget that I am a lot older than most forum members, and what applied when I was going to school doesn't apply anymore.

When I was in high school, no one had even heard of "A People's History of the United States," and even later, when I was in my thirties, trying to research the history of the labor movement, in '93, this was still before the internet, and I had an entire University library to browse, and I only found a couple books about unions and their history.

Meanwhile, everyone had an opinion about unions, and it was all along the lines of how lazy, corrupt, inefficient, anti-American they were. Same type of jokes you would hear from comedians on tv.

And no one said a word about how corporations work, how they will screw their workers if they can, not even from human evil, but just the pressure of shareholders on a CEO to keep being more profitable.

It would be interesting to hear what people have been taught in schools about unions.

I can't imagine how any union could escape corruption today, not to mention identity politics, feminism, etc..

I actually read Zinn's book in the 90s before I went to college on my own volition. My father owned that book. He had a personal library he started from back in the 70s when he was flirting with Afrocentrism and Civil Rights stuff. Anything from We Wuz Kangz illustration books a Hotep or BN would love to read today to stuff like Zinn's book.

That book changed my life because it was so riveting, non-PC, straight fire as you could get. For those times at least anyway. I think that book is one of the few books I read cover to cover as a kid and could not put down. Keep in mind I have ADD-i as a kid at the time, and still managed to read that book nonstop completely. That's how good that book is.

When I took history coursework in college I had to read it again for a class. It was still great. That said, we also had plenty other books to read that covered labor etc. I also took courses on British Empire and British history, so I got to learn their side of the same issue. They were worse than we were and that is saying something. I bet they have a much different experience education wise for your average UK student today.

The treatment of miners, railroad workers, and other workers in US territories, Republic of Texas, and other professions before and after the Civil War and Reconstruction are eye opening as well.

People today are aghast at school shootings, but there was a time where the HBO show Deadwood is a daily occurrence and someone was always getting shot over beefs, labor disputes, strikes, land related claims, etc. People walked over the dead bodies and kept it moving...

 

[debeguiled]

Yeah, I can't help but love that book, even though the SJWs claim it as their own.

 

[Dodgy]

Everyone wants to talk about how pointless and wasteful it is that only one union member is allowed to flip a light switch, or pick up a hammer in a specific situation, but the reason this things happens is that management is constantly trying to get people to do things that don't fit their job description.

I have experienced this first hand in a non union shop. I was waiting tables at a place, and after a shift waiters always have side work, like filling salt and pepper shakers and changing table cloths, basically getting his section ready for the next shift.

Managers at my restaurant, a corporate place owned by Pepsi, had the bright idea of extending side work so instead of 15 minutes at the end of the shift, it was an hour of cleaning the restaurant, the floors, washing the walls. Why? Because they have to pay janitors more than they pay waiters, so if the can get the waiters to do janitorial work, call it 'side work,' they save money.

They are always doing this cost cutting shit at the expense of employees. That being the case, can you see why unions have to come up with these hyper picky rules that that only the carpenter can nail the picture back up on the wall? It is because these become loopholes that the bosses exploit endlessly.

To be honest, you described a situation at nearly every coffee shop, fast food, deli, or slow food restaurant where staff takes 30 minutes to clean the place. The problem from a business owner's perspective is that if you hire janitors, you hire more employees. More employees not only means more wages paid out, it also means more payroll taxes and more workers compensation payments. This results in higher costs to keep the place running and less net profit to the owners. And if the owners aren't making enough profit to make running the place worthwhile, then the whole business shuts down and the employees are out of a job.

And most Pro-Union arguments always reference the 19th and early 20th century working conditions as reasons for a union, but those conditions don't exist anymore. As Traveler Kai mentioned above there has been sweeping federal and state legislation protecting workers that didn't exist in those times.

Also, pro-union advocates always reference the predatory corporate JD Rockerfeller-type owner who counts his money while his workers starve. But that's not the reality anymore either. Most corporations are run by boards and shareholders and many of the biggest ones would shit bricks if they a had a potential PR disaster from poor working conditions.

And if you think about it only 1% of all corporate business owners can afford to needlessly fuck around with employees and not have to worry about the resulting loss of productivity or inefficiency from disgruntled employees, or from protracted lawsuits. That's another point missing from pro-union advocates is that there has never been a time in history where employees (or everyone for that matter) has access to lawyers with a simple Google search. And with modern courts rules and state laws, it's never been easier to file lawsuits no matter how ridiculous the claim. And on the flip side, litigation has never more been expensive.

So that's my personal deterrent for not screwing my employees. Because even the dimmest one can find a lawyer who can sue me, which forces me to spend money and time on protracted litigation that may end with me paying a settlement, or losing at trial and being at the mercy of an ultra-liberal judge when they assess punitive damages against me. And that fear is what gets non-union employees their breaks, lunches and overtime.

 

[beta_plus]

What's Wrong? In the USA, they extort & kill people

I've always wondered if there is a comparative study of US unions versus those in other fully developed countries.

The hatred in the USA of unions come from several things, but the biggest two things are:

THEY EXTORT PEOPLE.
THEY MURDER PEOPLE.

I'm not even exagerrating.

Under the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 decision U.S. vs. Enmons, unions are exempt from a federal anti-extortion law known as the Hobbs Act.

In the late 1960s, they murdered Joseph Yablonski and members of his family for daring to challenge their corruption.

Guess what? That makes people not like you and your organization very much.

I have never heard of German or Scandinavian unions extorting or murdering people who got in their way. Even if those countries governments treat them better, that does not excuse American Unions.

 

[rudebwoy]

Unions destroyed manufacturing in the UK in the 70s.

It is a double-edged sword. If it weren't for unions, these companies would pay workers next to nothing.

 

[debeguiled]

To be honest, you described a situation at nearly every coffee shop, fast food, deli, or slow food restaurant where staff takes 30 minutes to clean the place. The problem from a business owner's perspective is that if you hire janitors, you hire more employees. More employees not only means more wages paid out, it also means more payroll taxes and more workers compensation payments. This results in higher costs to keep the place running and less net profit to the owners. And if the owners aren't making enough profit to make running the place worthwhile, then the whole business shuts down and the employees are out of a job.

And most Pro-Union arguments always reference the 19th and early 20th century working conditions as reasons for a union, but those conditions don't exist anymore. As Traveler Kai mentioned above there has been sweeping federal and state legislation protecting workers that didn't exist in those times.

Also, pro-union advocates always reference the predatory corporate JD Rockerfeller-type owner who counts his money while his workers starve. But that's not the reality anymore either. Most corporations are run by boards and shareholders and many of the biggest ones would shit bricks if they a had a potential PR disaster from poor working conditions.

And if you think about it only 1% of all corporate business owners can afford to needlessly fuck around with employees and not have to worry about the resulting loss of productivity or inefficiency from disgruntled employees, or from protracted lawsuits. That's another point missing from pro-union advocates is that there has never been a time in history where employees (or everyone for that matter) has access to lawyers with a simple Google search. And with modern courts rules and state laws, it's never been easier to file lawsuits no matter how ridiculous the claim. And on the flip side, litigation has never more been expensive.

So that's my personal deterrent for not screwing my employees. Because even the dimmest one can find a lawyer who can sue me, which forces me to spend money and time on protracted litigation that may end with me paying a settlement, or losing at trial and being at the mercy of an ultra-liberal judge when they assess punitive damages against me. And that fear is what gets non-union employees their breaks, lunches and overtime.

I don't disagree with anything you say.

I was fleshing out what was being written by showing some of the history of the labor unions.

I am assuming you are not a multinational conglomerate, and the example I wrote isn't aimed at you and your situation.

It is a different thing for a guy who owns one restaurant to have everyone pitch in and get it done, and for a massive Pepsi owned chain to expect the same thing.

The place I worked, it turned out, was shorting everyone 45 minutes a week, and that would make no sense for a small business owner to do, but if PepsiCo did that to every worker at every restaurant, we are talking some bank.

I also said clearly that it was different today and that it is hard for institutions like unions not to be corrupt.

This thread was pretty much 'unions suck' and that is why I posted, to hint at some of the history.

 

[debeguiled]

Unions destroyed manufacturing in the UK in the 70s.

It is a double-edged sword. If it weren't for unions, these companies would pay workers next to nothing.

This is the whole point.

It is a double edged sword!