PS: Remember, the best way to keep power long term is to convince everyone else to hand it to you.

Weekend off? Unions

9-5? Unions

Retirement Savings? Unions

Pension Program? Unions

Health Benefits? Unions

Vacation Time? Unions

Sick Time? Unions

Lunch break? Unions

Work place safety regulations? Unions

Boss threaten to fire you if you don't let him screw your wife? Unions

And who opposed to the socialized health insurance movement? Nearly every medical association (doctors, dentists), the entire insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and even premiers of provinces.

Employers were not willing to give those concessions without a fight.

Today, they don't have to fight. They can offshore, outsource, or automate your job. There are a lot more options these days then there were back then...

These all boil down to the same thing. Firing the offending laborer. So really we haven't advanced far since the 1850's.

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This is why Anti-Unionists get so pissy about Unions blocking people from being fired. It removes the main power owners have over their workers.

Your comment is pretty hard to parse, but that's not a thing that I've ever hard anybody say.

>PS: Remember, the best way to keep power long term is to convince everyone else to hand it to you.

Your phrasing makes me think that you're trying to be sarcastic, but that's exactly how every long term transition of power has ever worked. If people are not convinced that you should have the power, they will take it away on a whim. See, for example, the US civil rights movement vs. the emancipation proclamation and civil war. The South was not in general convinced by the emancipation proclamation, and so the oppression continued in the extreme. The civil rights movement did an awful lot of convincing, and though there are still those that are unconvinced, the power transition was far more lasting and complete. Force only works as long as you have the upper hand. Convincing works as long as the other person is convinced.

Google search "40 hour work week Henry Ford" and it auto suggests "henry ford started 40 hour work week" "henry ford invented the 40 hour work week"

Which takes you to "Does the 8-hour day and the 40-hour week come from Henry Ford, or labor unions?" http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/sep/... "In 1914, at a time when most workers still lacked a guarantee of eight-hour days, the Ford Motor Co. attracted notice for instituting eight-hour shifts and raising wages in the manner the graphic indicates. (For many Ford workers, the work week remained six days.)"

Of note, you can get 24 hours from 4 * 6, 3 x 8, or 2 x 12 hour shifts. But, 8 * 6 is not 40.

And closes with "The claim contains some element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression, so we rate it Mostly False."

It's a better example to point out that the the emancipation proclamation didn't even free all the Union's Slaves at the time. Its kind of a no-duh that the South wouldn't follow it because the emancipation proclamation was a war measure against the Confederacy. Edit: It'd also be stronger to point out Jim Crow laws in the reconstruction era

http://www.dw.com/en/germany-to-mark-record-year-for-strikes...

Because your characterization of unions just sounds like blindly repeating the anti-union propaganda that has been so successful in the US starting from Reagan's time.

This obviously changes power dynamics quite a bit.

Note that unions, management, and investors are often not smart. This is often to their long term harm.

And that's an important point, because a "smart union" only works if management doesn't try to railroad them at every turn. It's not exactly surprising that e.g. US Unions had to be hard rather than smart, given management or investors would call the army on them.

In the nordic model, unions are part of corporate governance and thus can have significant stake in and impact on corporate policy, in the US unions are considered pests to be squashed and only listened to when there's literally no other way.

Because you first expressed a misunderstanding about what unions are and then expressed a misunderstanding about how this site works.

In fact, in modern times, according to Greenspan, there is also a third party: the corporate leadership's interest is at odds with both the employees and the sharedholders, forming a triangle of interest. Perhaps this third only applies to US public corps.