They sure would be awfully fine institutions if that's how they actually worked.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17218381
Sorry it's a wall of text. I suck at brevity.
In my defense it's a complex topic and I'm trying to credit some good points on both sides.
And ok, I was too flip in my last comment, frustrated that its parent seemed to completely ignore my main point. At their best, maybe some unions do still work that way.
Many don't though. Most blue collar guys I know found the teamsters especially abusive.
Separately, investigations into construction in New York invariably find its unions rife with mafia-ties and racketeering.
But there are some good cases out there too, I'm sure. I just think the best of both worlds is to incorporate fair practices into our legal structures, rather than create new centers of power.
The thing is, in the absence of corrupt union power, you got nothing and there's only corrupt corporate/employer power.
If you can solve for that, it'll be great. And I agree it's tragic and awful when the corrupt corporate power is only balanced by corrupt union power, none of it giving a damn for ordinary people. But that's power for ya.
waves tiny anarchist flag, or something
"Eventually, however, it was corruption that led Scrivano to leave the industry, after one of his studio’s investors stole the majority of the company’s funds and disappeared without trace."
Clearly, the person who made off with the money would not benefit from a union.
How would a union have stopped corporate insider theft?
e.g. how about decentralization into smaller, independent, labor organizations focused on local issues, which build on open-source legal artifacts for governance, negotiations, threats and defenses?
But beyond that, it’s about values. You can’t start with a business culture that rewards competitive greed and narcissism over empathy and cooperation and expect it to suddenly start acting against its own core ethics.
But I agree with you that values are central. I'd back more investigations to uncover corporations with internal cultures more like Enron and root out bad actors in such places earlier, if we could do that fairly.
> Those most in need of the labor rights and respect unions traditionally afford are often those who have almost no access to the legal system.
This seems like a powerful concern in theory but the facts make me optimistic. I haven't found, say, OSHA to be toothless in practice, the DOL routinely brings aggressive overtime violations cases, and enforcement of the civil rights act against particularly southern hotels and gas stations by federal courts are all powerful counterexamples.
They are not comprehensively solved problems, but clearly demonstrate that organs of state power can and have been used in defense of marginalized groups. I'd say especially Federal courts, but several agencies have done impressive work too.
someone standing up for your rights and asking for compensation to do it is a lot more than any kind of ridiculous disruption mode you can imagine.
so much of the next generation is being told coding is the only job skill they'll need, what do you think will happen when they've flooded the market? we live in a plutocracy waging a war on workers rights, we are gonna need unions and we're gonna need them immediately.