Some of it is deserved BTW; some big unions were/are corrupted and some were connected with organized crime. Even more innocently, unions have been quite conservative; as jobs and technology changed some were very resistant and fought modernization (requiring people who were not needed to be around). But a lot of it also stems from corporate resistance to unionization and the high regard in which ordinary people hold the opinions of corporate managers in the USA.
All that being said, unions have been very good for labor, and when I've worked in union shops (not in a unionized role) they've been really great in terms of qualified people and high quality work. I built my house using union labor and I'm glad I did.
Europe is not immune to these diseases by the way. Certain French unions certainly negotiate against the greater interests of society. And in Germany my non-unionized brother in law (a mechanical engineer) was not allowed to work late at VW -- he was trying to finish a project one evening and a union guy came by and cut his PC's power cable while he was designing a part.
That doesn't make the concept of a union bad. They worked much better 50 years ago, even. It's a great concept, but the implementation got corrupted over the years.
I don't think we'll fix unions' reputations without first fixing unions. And we really need more unions and more credible unions.
As a footnote, in my local school district, under coronavirus school closures, the teacher's union negotiated that the teachers get paid, but they don't need to remotely teach students. Some teachers continue teaching for some amount of time, but essentially on a volunteer basis. Many teachers are just sitting at home, doing nothing except for collecting a pay check.
And so they shouldn't! In many (most?) US states, the public schools are unconditionally funded by the state based on student enrollment figures. Cutting teacher pay during a closure under such a system would be a purely greedy move.
I don't know how it works in the majority of states but I know the model of mostly state funding based upon student enrollment is not universal. In my state the majority of funding is from local tax revenues. For example the budget for my local school district is approximately $1.3 billion. $370 million comes from the state and $30 million comes from the federal government. Another $40 million comes from "misc other sources" and $860 million comes from local tax revenue.
Sources: https://edsource.org/2019/californias-school-funding-flaws-m...
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_203.20.a...
My wife taught K12 for 12 years and then became an instructional coach teaching teachers how to teach. There's a shitload of work if you want to do it right, and at least half (in our district anyway) will stretch themselves extremely thin to do so. Half of the rest are 9-5'ers and the remainder are shitheads.
Perceived equity issues fed into this as well. The result, of course, is that parents who have time to teach kids have kids who are learning, while the vast majority of the district is learning nothing. With remote learning, the results would be less differential. But I guess the districts feels worse about inequities it contributes to than ones that arise out of inaction. We have a 1:1 program, so all students have technology.
But I would the union preempted this, and is what made this discussion moot.
There was a fairly recent ruling from the SCOTUS that struck down compelling non union members to pay union dues. It was as recently as 2018 or 2019. Cant remember the case name, but it originated in Illinois (a very, very pro union state).
Sure, cooperation sounds good in theory, but don't we have examples (in the US) of where management of a company and management of their union ended up very friendly at the expense of the workers? I'm pretty sure I read about stuff like that in the context of the recent automotive union corruption scandals.
I say try it maybe in one state and see how it goes.
My company recently granted an extra 40 hours of COVID PTO to use for flex, which is nice, but they could just stop trying to work around labor laws.
I had another experience in college where the TA union put up barriers for undergraduate students who weren't TAs to apply for university teaching opportunities. Any discussions or office hours must be held in the presence of a TA and if your schedule didn't work out then tough luck.
Yes, if you're making a union film you need to hire union members for positions covered by the union agreement. But unless your studio has signed an agreement with the unions, you're not subject to union rules. Generally, only the big studios and the bigger indies are subject to the Hollywood union rules.
If you don't abide by union rules then you're not eligible for certain awards or screenings.
This doesn't apply to the Academy Awards, Golden Globes, or other major awards. Many of the films nominated for these awards every year don't abide by union rules because their weren't subject to them.
When building your home, you have the option of hiring non-union workers. Workers have the option of not joining the union. The union essentially acts as a service provider to the independent workers. These individuals charge quite a bit more than non-union workers, but often have astounding levels of competence, productivity, and workmanship.
When a company is unionized, none of those things are true. Instead of the union being a de facto endorsement of a particular worker, it acts to protect its own power over the workers. Instead of the company having a choice about who to hire for a particular role, it is forced into one choice. Instead of workers joining a union for their own benefit, they are forced to join because of legal coercion. The union is highly motivated to control and limit its members--freedom for the members means destruction of the union.
All of the statements in that paragraph are false.
When I see "unions" such as "game worker unite" which is more of a communist political party than a union, or what Kickstarter union wants (have more say on what campaigns can be featured on Kickstarter or not, which is not what a union should be about), I understand why American unions have such a bad rep. These 2 examples aren't what unions should be about. What does a say in moderation policies on a platform has to do with worker conditions? Nothing.
You don't hear as much about European problems online, because they're spoken about in the respective nation's language. This means that it's hard to compare. Most European countries also have many problems like the US. Maybe not to quite the same extreme, but they do exist. The US does have a few things going for it though: very strong protections of speech, very high wages, a system of incredible services - things like Amazon, FedEx etc. From my perspective, things in the US actually seem better than in Europe for the long-term. They just have a few very obvious pain points like healthcare and the silliness of a lack of worker protections in some states.
Just keep in mind that unions aren't universal across Europe or even the EU. They usually exist, but they tend to not have much leverage.
I grew up in Canada, then moved to the US for 5 years before returning home to Canada. It always killed me when my US coworkers said teh same thing about "free speech" as i watched censored TV shows in the US which are not that way back in Canada.
I think "free speech" on the US side is highly overrarted and if you look into it more seriously you will find many nations which are at least at the US level. Some higher, like Canada, which doesnt have the "7 words you cant say on TV" restriction.
More generally, protections against the government for personal speech are more complete in the US (both in principle and in practice) than any other country I'm aware of. A few examples might be the Westboro Baptist Church or the infamous Brandenburg v. Ohio case. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio)
(My view is necessarily US-centric though, so do feel free to point out any counterexamples I might not be aware of.)
we do have "hate laws" here, and you see others commenting and outlining how this is a "restriction" on free speech, but if you look at the law, you will see the US has something similiar as well:
Canada: https://cfe.ryerson.ca/key-resources/guidesadvice/legal-rest...
US : https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1204/breach-of-...
Can you link to these laws? Because if you're talking about bill C-16, it's very clear that it isn't making it a crime to express certain beliefs, it's making it illegal to discriminate based on gender or gender identity. Just as the US does with regards to certain traits (such as color, religion, marital status, etc)
I dont recall if the "wardrobe malfunction" in the Janet Jackson/Just Timberlake Super Bowl half time show resulted in a fine, but pretty much all live broadcasts are now delayed 15-30 seconds or so that so a producer (or whomever) can hit the censor button if something comes up.
"Between 1990 and 2004, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued fines totalling $2.5 million to radio licensees for airing material it deemed indecent from The Howard Stern Show, the highest amount of any American radio show. "
"On April 8, 2004, Clear Channel was fined $27,500 for each of the 18 violations for a combined $495,000 NAL for airing the broadcast on its six stations that carried Stern"
Any of these publishers could sell tapes or dvds of these shows and face no fines whatsoever. Similarly, they could air them on the internet or on cable television that is not subject to public control of content. There's no restrictions on the content itself, there's restriction on the use of publicly owned bandwidth.
I think it is properly rated. If you only have restrictions against vocabulary then you still have all the other liberty and you can advocate a repeal of the law that bugs you.
I suspect the censorship you were noticing was self-censorship in order to avoid adverse public reaction.
A legendary animated show spells out that you can only use the word "shit" metaphorically, e.g. "I feel like shit". I have to admit that most of the time I prefer people would go easy on my ears if they have to talk literally about defecation.
> only prevents government restrictions on speech, not restrictions imposed by private individuals or businesses unless they are acting on behalf of the government.
Which means the US right of free speech is somewhat weak compared to some other countries.
Especially it means that any company working "in favor" of the government but not "for it" could very well restrict free speech.
I never understood why anyone from the US think they have a "very strong protection" of free speech.
I don't follow what you're trying to say here? A private company can do as it pleases because an employee's speech could conflict with its business interests. In some cases, other federal, state, or local laws offer additional protections to the employee (ex California provides very strong protections for employee political speech).
The idea is that the government isn't allowed to restrict your speech, but it also can't force you to interact with someone you don't want to. If you say things that offend people, the consequences are your problem to deal with.
That you have to handle consequences when you insult someone or you IDK openly call for the murder of all ... People that's a different matter I didn't intend to go into.
I don't think you can avoid it though.
What if I personally choose not to associate with people I view as activists? Surely that's my right? What if I start a small business that's very up front about refusing clients who are activists? What if Facebook were to ban the accounts of known activists?
Who gets to set the criteria that determine if a topic or group is protected, what constitutes an insult, etc? Who do these rules apply to - only the largest of businesses or even to individuals? How do you balance such rules against the freedom to choose not to associate with someone? How do you avoid situations in which such rules would constitute a form of forced speech?
If you tell Facebook (using your example) that they have to allow speech on their own platform that they don't agree with, then you had better have a very clear, comprehensive, and unambiguous set of legal tests to apply because you're opening an absolutely enormous can of worms. Worse, Facebook is the _easy_ case because you can construct a reasonably convincing argument that the large public cloud providers have intentionally made themselves a sort of public commons (albeit a strange privately owned and operated one). As you look at progressively smaller businesses that serve fewer customers and have more competition, such an argument begins to break down.
I can see the reasoning that a forum (ex Reddit) or web host (ex Cloudflare) is a platform provider and should be required to be neutral, similar to the DMCA Safe Harbor provisions. But I can also see legitimate concerns arising if (for example) YouTube was forced to host videos that they felt tarnished their brand or (for example) Reddit had been legally prevented from banning /r/watchpeopledie.
Europe is great for workers who get lucky enough to get a contract (French unemployment is often 2-3x US unemployment), don't want to leave, and don't want to be rich.
Average US GDP per capita is 35% higher than France and Britain, despite having large numbers of poorly educated immigrants. Furthermore, tax rates are much lower in the US than in Europe, so people can actually consume quite a bit more.
As a recent example in my state, a local establishment raised wages, raised prices, and strictly disallowed tips. I thought it was a great idea, but apparently sales fell and there were complaints from both wait staff and customers. They promptly switched back.
> Which one is better?
Honestly? The European one IMO because it actively prevents the exploitation of workers.
There is immense cultural momentum behind tipping culture.
Where I live it is common to have a 15+% gratuity added to the tab automatically and then an optional extra tip that goes to the full staff. This seems to be a reasonable compromise.
[1] https://mjperry.blogspot.com/2011/06/americas-economic-succe...
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_househo...
Of course the great irony is all of the arguments against unions also applies directly to corporations, yet those same people that are against unions don't really like to talk about the idea of abolishing corporations. Usually those arguments turn into 'one bad apple' or 'they'll be out-competed' or something about the free market, never mind that unions operate on the same free market principle as corporations.