If unions are "tyranny of the masses", isn't no unions "tyranny of the dictators"? It's not an either/or situation. As pointed out elsewhere, the relationship between unions and employers in the United States seems particularly poisoned, but there are many European countries where unions and employers have a much more productive relationship.

Of course, it probably does require the company to route some of the products of their labor back to the workers, which I guess is what American companies are loath to do?

Unions are the reason we have "government enforced guarantees of decent treatment".

Yes. Now why do we need unions if their mission has been accomplished? Their purpose has been served.

> Now why do we need unions if their mission has been accomplished?

To ensure that those protections are enforced. To ensure those protections aren't rolled back. To advocate for their membership in a changing economy where their work won't remain static for 40 years.

Maybe it's because I'm not American but is it really so hard to see why having someone to advocate for the people in the economy is a good thing? After all, companies are just 'capital unions' that advocate for their members.

What makes you think that union leaders advocate primarily for "the people" as opposed to their own best interests?

They often do either.

It's up to the members of a union to take sufficient interest in it that there are appropriate and effective governance structures in place - in the same way that it's up to the shareholders of a business to do the same.

That's like blaming individual voters for misdeeds by legislative bodies. Except that with unions, ballots aren't necessarily secret.

I wasn't aware I was blaming anyone for anything?

Organizations of any kind have someone they're supposed to serve - from your neighborhood bowls club to a fortune 500 company.

Organizational (corporate) governance is how you make sure the organization is operating for the benefit of its intended recipients.

Some organizations do governance well. Some do it badly. When the owners (shareholders, members etc) take their eye off the ball over time that organization will skew towards badly.

I don't think this is a controversial statement at all, even when applied to workers' unions.

You seem to assume that that certain factions (cough, cough, Republicans) won't happily roll back worker protections if unopposed.

Noted socialist publication Forbes disagrees with your assessment that they've been accomplished, specifically citing Tesla's insanely bad worker safety numbers:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidmarquet/2017/06/04/elon-mu...

Maybe if Musk spent time on his endeavor instead of throwing his time willy nilly in each direction he could have prevented a union. Cest la vive

You're right, clearly American workers are doing great. </s>

OHSA powers don't apply in the absence of a union?

Yes, instead we should have a tyranny of shareholders demanding ever more dividends, stock buybacks, acquisitions, layoffs, managing to Wall Street expectations, etc. until the company is bled dry.

It's hard to bleed a company dry if you are insisting that they pump in ever more blood. If a company dies your shares become worthless.

In a properly-diversified investment portfolio, the loss of any single company has minuscule impact. For workers, the loss of the company is much more devastating - suddenly left without salary and health insurance, faced with the prospect of having to uproot or retrain to find further employment, knowing that the hard work of a big chunk of their only life has gone up in smoke. Workers want the company to succeed.

But that same argument applies to unions, too. If your company dies, you're out of a job. Why would a union do that?

While this would work well in theory, do you see either political party working to build a stronger "bill of labor rights" for Americans?

Americans don't have basic labor rights like mandated vacation, paternity/maternity leave, sick leave, etc. I don't see the American political system as fixing this anytime soon.

Why is mandated vacation considered a "right?" It's a right that I don't have to work? That should be an agreement between the employer and employee and not the business of government. I'm an independent contractor and I don't get vacation paid by anyone except me. If I don't work, I don't get paid. I'm not sure why that's controversial. Should a restaurant customer pay for meals they didn't actually order just because they eat at a restaurant regularly? Then why should companies be compelled by the government to pay employees who aren't actually working?

To be clear, I'm not opposed to vacations -- that's a benefit that companies could offer in their bid to compete in the market for labor. It absolutely ought not be any of government's business. This is one of the reasons it's so incredibly unattractive to start a business in France and some other EU countries. The amount of government largesse at the entrepreneur's expense makes it insane to want to hire anyone let alone try and grow a business there. At the end of the day, "paid" vacation is paid for by the employee and the customers in the form of lower salaries and higher prices. Look at pre-tax salaries in Paris versus Silicon Valley. SV pays 3-4 times more AND offers health care and "benefits." In France, it's very risky to hire anyone, so salaries reflect the amount of risk assumed when hiring that employee -- meaning they're paid much less because there's a chance you'll be stuck with that employee indefinitely. Taxes are higher, living costs are higher, yet salaries are lower -- by 300%. All that "paid" vacation and "paid" benefits aren't cheap. If you look at net salaries, the difference is even more dramatic. The disposable income of a European worker is dramatically less than that of an American worker -- at least in software and tech.

The only people that demand "basic rights" such as 4 weeks paid vacation are people that have never run a business. The moment these campaigners for government mandated benefits actually try to start a business of their own is the moment they suddenly realize how destructive government-mandated benefits can be to a company and the economy. Employers should be able to offer whatever benefits they choose to offer. If an employee doesn't like the offered terms, they can walk away. If a company wants to compete for top talent, they'll end up offering good benefits as a response to the market as opposed to government mandate.

Look at the benefits offered by Facebook and Google. No government mandates there -- it's the market. They want to attract the best, so they have to offer the best.

You're right. Life around the world would indeed be better if absolutely everyone was upper-middle-class with in-demand skills and leverage.

Because all workers should be entitled to a minimum standard of living, even if they are in a field with a labor surplus.

Surely you think an employee should be able to quit his job, become a contractor, and charge the company more money. A union is just all the employees quitting and starting a consulting group.

... which then has power to set wage thresholds and working conditions for every other hourly worker in the company, present and future.

The main reason why the auto makers had a hard time was the global recession. Unions had exactly nothing to do with it.

I think the inference is that automakers weren't able to respond appropriately or timely because they have contractual obligations to the the workforce.If cutting salaries is required to keep the company afloat, but that's not possible without a union negotiation, and the union has perverse incentives of some sort at play, that could cause real problems.

I'm not saying that's what happened, but it's not impossible to come up with plausible situations that could lead to the situation described. I wouldn't be so sure to immediately discount the role of a union in how well a company fares a crisis, just as I wouldn't be so sure to discount the behavior of the executives. Each company probably had its own unique mix of problems.

Not exactly true, GM had $51 billion in losses in the 3 years prior to the 2008 recession. Factories in Michigan were being shut down long before that with operations being moved to lower cost locations -- locations that were lower cost specifically because they were either overseas or right-to-work states. Claiming that unions had nothing to do with the automotive crisis is to misunderstand the automotive industry. The financial crisis was traumatic to the auto companies because even with a shift away from union manufacturing, the overall drop in worldwide demand was the straw that broke the camel's back. The auto companies were on life support before the global recession.

"Unions are one of the main reasons we had such a huge American auto crisis just a few years ago."

Or, viewed through another lens: the auto workers' union is the organization that prevented auto workers from being squeezed tighter and tighter without end.

If they, the workers, hadn't banded together, the owners and shareholders could keep cutting their wages, could keep failing to uphold their obligations to the workers' pensions and health care, could keep screwing the workers out of wages and a good life.

It's hard for me to be sympathetic to the owners and shareholders. They're not the ones showing up to a factory floor day after day, bolting cars together, destroying their bodies for dollars an hour.

It's also especially hard for me to say, "you have a constitutional right to assemble, but not if you want to use that right to assemble to demand better pay for yourselves and your fellow workers".

In fact, given the history of how the owning class has treated the laboring class in this country, it's hard for me to say the laboring class should have fewer tools to better their lives.

"destroying their bodies for dollars per hour"

$31 per hour for a non-skilled assembly line worker.

That's $31 per hour + very good benefits.

http://www.npr.org/news/specials/gmvstoyota/

Perhaps we should demand government mandate a $100 per hour salary? I don't know, what's "fair" in your mind? Why not $200 per hour?

The truth is that many of these auto workers make more money than many of the shareholders. It isn't like "the shareholders" are ensconced in castles counting doubloons. These shareholders are teachers, fire fighters, normal people who invest in retirement funds or other retail investments. Sure there are a few rich people investing, but acting like shareholders are some kind of privileged class is disingenuous.

Why should the factory worker have more rights than the old lady living off her General Motors dividends?

"Why should the factory worker have more rights than the old lady living off her General Motors dividends?"

If they can work collectively and demand it, who are we to stop them?

Isn't that a market at work? They don't own the building, but they do provide the labor. Let them negotiate, collectively, and get whatever they can.

Why is the little old lady who does literally nothing for that dividend prized over the people who go to work day after day?

> Perhaps we should demand government mandate a $100 per hour salary? I don't know, what's "fair" in your mind? Why not $200 per hour?

"Fair" is the value that workers' labor generates. It's probably a lot more than $31 in the case of autos.

> I'm largely anti-union

For that idea to be rational, you probably are the owner of some big enterprise.

Made an account just to say that I couldn't tell if this post was sarcasm or not. Really? You don't want "...tyranny of the masses demanding ever more pay, benefits, etc until a company is bled dry", but you're ok with "..government enforced guarantees of decent treatment."?

Strong fucking everything

Unions ruin nearly every company they touch Government unions are even worse because the government is largely able to support a nearly unlimited budget.

Let's not forget that unions are not opt-in or opt-out. If you work in a union shop you are in that union and their dues are automatically taken directly out of your pay. You don't like what your union is doing? Tough luck. Suddenly you need to negotiate with the people who should be on your side and are taking money away from you to fund themselves. Union workers are often doubly screwed by their employers and their unions.

Are you aware there are entire countries where Unions are practically required for your wages?

You're being downvoted because this isn't true.

No one is ever legally obligated to join a union in the U.S. You may be required to pay dues, since the union affords you protections even if you're not a member, but you'll never be required to join it.

It's also not true that "don't like what your union is doing, tough luck". Unions are democratic organizations. Don't like what it's doing? Take your case to your fellow union members, persuade them, and steer the ship to what you do want the union to do.

You seem to have a view of unions that is tinged with much of the anti-union lies that have been propagated for decades in this country. (I won't dignify those lies by calling them propaganda.)

I doubt a handful of forum posts would convince you to reexamine the things you say that aren't true, but I hope you'll consider the fact that you've been mislead for a long time by very wealthy, powerful, media-savvy people.

(Unions are none of these, by the way--not particularly wealthy, nor powerful, and not media-savvy in the slightest.)

> No one is ever legally obligated to join a union in the U.S. You may be required to pay dues, since the union affords you protections even if you're not a member, but you'll never be required to join it.

So you can instead choose to pay money yet have no voice, or choose to not have a job at that company, or in some cases a job in an entire profession when the union has bought legislation to that effect. Great choice.

> Take your case to your fellow union members, persuade them, and steer the ship to what you do want the union to do.

Sure. And if you can't, then you should be able to stop giving them money if they're going to use it for purposes you oppose.

(For clarity: I have no problems with unions; in some cases they've achieved extraordinary things. I do have problems with mandatory union dues/membership, and mandatory unions for entire professions. Voluntary associations are a great thing; involuntary associations are not.)

  No one is ever legally obligated to join a union in the U.S.

To "join": not officially. There have been cases of workers not having applications forwarded without including signed provisional cards (known as "card check" organizing[0]).

There is agency shop organizing in which workers have to pay full dues but do not have to join the union. It can be seen as a distinction without a difference to those who have to pay the dues.

Then there's full right-to-work situations, where unions cannot compel workers to join the union or pay dues as a prerequisite to work in that shop.

[0] http://www.heritage.org/jobs-and-labor/report/how-union-card...

[Edit]: closed shop definitional error

The Taft–Hartley Act outlawed the closed shop in the United States in 1947.

Actually you are wrong. You can be legally obligated to join a union in any non Right to Work state. Unions almost always have a union security clause forcing employers to only accept their members who are in good standing.

Unions are also not very democratic. They are democratic in principle but once again fall to the tyranny of the majority. If you are a minority in a union you are completely screwed unless you can trump their demands by using a protected class.

Unions have already served their purpose, well their original purpose was racism pure and simple, but their purpose of protecting workers is no longer necessary. Now they exist to only protect themselves.

> well their original purpose was racism pure and simple

Exactly how much work-oriented racism was there in 14th century England, when trade unions were first outlawed? Or in industrial age Britain?

Stop spreading your crazy FUD.

  since the union affords you protections

I rarely see this mentioned in the media, but another occasional downside of being a union worker is that a collective bargaining agreement can supersede worker-protection regulations -- in other words, your union leaders can leave its members with inferior conditions.

Here's one example I experienced directly. Normal California law at the time mandated minimum break periods and frequencies based on hours worked (e.g. 4+ hour shift = 1 rest break, 5.5+ hours mandated a meal break, 6?+ hours mandated a second rest break).

The union negotiated away all rest and meal breaks in our unit in return for either a shorter shift or slight shift premium depending on which shift one worked.