Yes there are benefits to the worker (esp when your job puts you in harm's way). Yes collective bargaining is awesome. Unions, if run well, are fantastic. In my opinion we tend to mess them up.
"Unions are bad!", no, the concept is fine, you have some bad ones.
"Police are bad!", no, the concept is fine, yours are just untrained and overburdened.
"Public transport is bad, I need a car!", no, the concept is fine, you just have bad public transport and that forms your opinion.
Also, in the context of comparing to other countries, I would think many did not have the land available to spread out in the same way at the time cars were available? I'm just curious how much of this may be related to the timing of the US
We're not going to get different results when we form a union in the US unless we make an attempt to get different results.
I’m just arguing that the concept is fine, and the implementation is corrupted. Removing the corruption would be great but the issue is not the concept itself.
If you think EU unions are great - then you'll need to first educate American union advocates about what they're doing wrong.
E.g. communism.
Im for unions, it beats the current situation, but im weary of the sales pitch.
Even some in the US as some commentators have suggested (Screen Actors Guild being one)
As much as I would like to believe that there is a massive pro-working-class institution in the US that can afford to spend billions per annum on under-the-table PR/propaganda campaigns to shill collective action, it just isn't the case. The MIC on the other hand... putting those socialized taxpayer dollars to work against the evil working class (around the world).
Not american.
Ps, i was not saying communism == unions. Thats fucking retarded on so many levels.
Hell maybe they all do. Maybe that is why modern day democracy actually works (checks and balances) and has very little to do with comunism vs capitalism.
https://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/31/movies/review-film-a-wiza...
One of the liveliest things about ''The Wizard of Speed and Time,'' aside from the frantic Mr. Jittlov himself, is the film's animosity toward Hollywood in general and the movie unions in particular. Mr. Jittlov, who himself resigned from the Directors' Guild in order to make this film free of union requirements, includes a sequence in which he visits one union office after another, being told in each that he must play by expensive and archaic rules if he expects to play this game at all.
When he tries to rent studio space, he is given a list of costs right down to the fee for a parking space, and winds up shooting in his own garage. And when he films an outdoor sequence in a park, a helicopter appears overhead with a loudspeaker to chastise him for trying to film without a permit. ''Maybe I shouldn't make films for a living,'' he muses dejectedly at one point. ''I've got a bicycle. I could deliver Steve's Pizzas.''
Historically they were a often a feudal "link" of control for administration. They meet with the head haberdasher to discuss carrots and sticks of taxation and licensing so they pay willingly and let them shout about unlicensed competitors instead of trying to chase down every last haberdasher to tax.
Unions are more "if you piss off every affiliated habberdasher in the city they refuse to make hats until their demands are met".
American systems are not dependable, intercity and interstate travel is often not punctual to the point of futility.
There are very few examples that prove me wrong here (probably NYC<->NJ links being an exception)
Travelling around Los Angeles is just not possible, the buses are disgusting when they actually work and the time tables may as well be dinner menu's for value they bring.
Getting to LA from San Francisco required a coach, the coach was 8hrs late. There were no trains.
Going from NYC to Philadelphia by train cost me $300, when I returned it cost me $82 and was delayed by 4hrs.
Travelling around NYC using their underground was "ok" from a dependability standpoint; though I saw human excrement on many occasions, in one case it was smeared entirely on one of the benches where passengers usually sit.
I consider American public transport to be pretty poor. Where it is punctual it is disgustingly unhygienic. Where it is hygienic it is prohibitively expensive and non-punctual.
The rail networks prioritise freight and lines are fragmented heavily- it is common for one line of track to have several different owners as it progresses through a state. This causes delays as they do not seem to cooperate in using the tracks effectively, or delays from the use of a line causes cascading delays.
I've lived in Finland, England and Sweden- and I have travelled most of Europe (NL, DE, DK, FR, ESP) and have found public transport to be mostly punctual, in some cases it's actually "dependable" as in, I can rely on public transport getting me to my destination in a precise amount of time (+/- 10 mins).
This is definitely not the case in the USA outside of a few very major cities.
“Many occasions” sounds like BS to me. Until the pandemic I rode the subway at least 12 times a week, every week for the past 22 years, and only saw human excrement twice (and one time it was actually a pretty funny story.)
I do slightly suspect that peak hours are more cleanly than non-peak time due to various economic reasons.
But I saw:
* poopy seat (when I got on the train at JFK)
* little human sized nugger, near the door, nearly stood in it as I disembarked a train near penn station.
* sticky urine floor near the door, which took me a good 1m30s to realise was definitely male human urine as I inspected the piss marks up the side of the door that I was pressed against during a busy ride.
Next time don't take Amtrack. Using NJ Transit from NY Penn to Trenton then transfer to SEPTA train into Philly will be < $30. The delays are unavoidable if something is broken.
That was such a good experience, even the tickrt app brought me joy.
Alongside that you also have (putting aside the longstanding battle between them) a plethora of on-demand taxi services.
There are decent (although not high speed) train connections to most other major cities in the UK and even to continental Europe, there's an airport literally 10 minute car ride from the financial district, and two major European airports under 30 mins train ride away (obviously all dependent on your starting location within the metro area).
As an integrated system it's not perfect, but I'd certainly argue it's a viable aspiration for many cities to hit "good".
Admittedly sometimes I'd fall asleep and miss my stop.
With that said, I have lived in the following places for more than a year, and found the public transportation to be good, if not excellent.
- Paris, France
- Lyon, France
- London, UK
- Amsterdam, NL
- Bayreuth, DE
Despite some well-known problems in some of these places (strikes in Paris comes readily to mind), the advantages remain enormous:
- Reduced motor vehicle circulation in the city
- A high degree of mobility at a moment's notice
- The ability to move around without breaking a sweat (sadly important when going to a meeting in a suit)
- The ability to get home while inebriated
- The ability for suburban (read: underprivileged) employees to participate in the heart of the regional economy
The list goes on...
Could you start a new kind of union as a kind of non-profit startup?
If I wanted to do this I'd leverage modern information technology to create covert communication channels for organizing and leverage big data, machine learning, and game theory to drive organization and bargaining strategies. You could apply pressure across supply chains, not just in individual industries, and you could really be quite a pain in the ass. Cambridge Analytica for the working class?
Also ditch the work rules and other antiquated industrial era ideas. Just go for pure financial and quality of life outcome. Work with industries if they're willing to play ball, but be a major pain in the ass when they don't. Negotiate, you know.
Honestly the hacker in me would be tempted if I had the time, skills, background, and connections. It would be a chance to wear a black hat and feel good about it. :)
If you did this you'd also have to be damn serious about opsec and tradecraft. When you threaten to increase labor costs, the gloves come off. I'd be about as worried about security doing this as I'd be running a dark web drug market.
It would really help if people would just use some qualifiers "US Unions", "US Police", "US Public transport", "US government".
The 'left' argues for unions based on the concept. The 'right' argues against them based on their execution. So we go round and round and round and round because neither is willing to consider or admit that we might be talking past each other.
Makes for great web traffic though.
The point is: many (most?) first-world countries have unions that work well overall. Same with police departments.
What you're describing are putative reasons why the American execution is a failure.
Sure, I'll freely admit that unions have worked very well other places, but the US seems to blow it every darn time. Why would this time be different?
Why assume that the day after a tech union is invented, suddenly you're stuck with a massive clanking bureaucracy that's identical to the ones that were formed in very different industries many decades ago?
Q: "Why is X so bad?"
A: "You're doing it wrong"
Could it also be that Y is always/sometimes just better?
The last two generations of western civilization were raised, out of good intentions, to be culture blind, and now with what's happening in the country we are seeing the result.
We should seek to raise rights and standards of living for all people. The focus on whether other people have cultures compatible with specific forms of government seems very suspect. Such talk keeps people down. Self-determination is a human right; therefore, it is a society’s right to determine government and culture. Your focus on culture is very strange; it suggests that the culture is a thing that justifies itself independent of the people. The culture is a thing people live and do. Your phrasing makes culture seem insidious, seeking to resist changes to status quo. Some monoculture advocates reject alternative cultures and seek to outcompete them. By implying there are singular cultures, you wipe away self-determination.
I don't know where to start with this comment. Perhaps you should stop grouping arguments by stereotype.
At an individual level, different people require different interventions, because they have different personalities. Some people can handle responsibility. Some people need financial motivation. Some people respond to love. Others best learn through violence or fear (I was far too smart to listen to my parents until they threatened a spanking, for example).
If you take all of these different personalities and force them to live under together under a single set of rules, regardless of whether their needs are met, they will compete, if not for resources them for social clout. It is human nature. Particularly in a universe where resources are scarce and time is short.
Though large scale human interaction has a normalizing effect, within the high dimensional space of human belief and behavior there is ample room for these same micro behaviors to be reflected by macroscale cultural trends. And, similarly, because the "ideal" form of government depends ultimately on widely varying beliefs, forcing multiple peoples with significant cultural distance will inevitably lead to inequality and clash - this is not a statement of superiority, sand though it can be used as part justification for some of the antisocial beliefs you raised, that doesn't mean it isn't untrue or that these real problems that we are seeing emerge across the world will simply go away if we ignore them. This pattern has been repeated across time and space and is an unnecessary source of unacknowledged strife in the modern world.
That’s why I drew the logical connection to authoritarian concepts. No one is forcing anyone to be more free. That would be impossible. Freedom is a choice one makes for oneself, individually. Keeping someone from being free can be forced upon another. Society can do this collectively through laws. These are nuanced differences between freedoms and liberties, which some people don’t have.
I don’t know why you focus on the culture when people are why the culture exists as it does, not the other way around. The status quo benefits from dominant culture and from keeping established power structures in place. You can’t use the culture as an argument to justify a form of government that removes human rights. Just like I can’t sign a contract that gives up my Constitutional rights. Those in less free countries are not given the choice of more freedom.
Those definitions should be loosened in an office setting, rather than dismissing the entire idea of a union.
They have real experiences of a union in their company. You have examples of unions in your country. Who is correct?
If your answer is yourself, then you're not understanding the point or the concern that people who are against unions have. It doesn't matter if Sweden implemented it well and somewhere else implemented it poorly. Bottom line is that the poorly-implemented scenario can happen, does happen, and in fact happens more often than anecdata of "oh no true union does that".
Unless you can propose a foolproof way that the "wrong way" is always prevented, then you will get opposition to your beliefs. Calling people or things stupid doesn't solve that.
Don't like your deal, which doesn't let everyone move tables? Negotiate a new one. Maybe you can offer them something they'd rather want instead.
Having a let hostile environment also let smaller, more agile unions thrive, instead of forcing them to all join together.
I won't retort with a similarly vulgar comment because:
1. we probably agree on the value of unions
2. I understand your exasperation with American ignorance and cultural bias on the subject
3. it's not constructive
However, it brings me no joy to assert that you are dead wrong. Union jobs can and do exist in places. The deleterious nature of these jobs is a subject of frequent debate in France: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_syndical
"Ignorance and bias" is apparently now equivalent to "decades of experience that differ from your preferred reality".
Unions in America are clearly a dumpster fire, but only someone profoundly ignorant (and arrogant, to boot) could claim that unions are a failed concept.
If you don't have these kinds of things in the contract, what can sometimes happen is a situation where all the "monitor movers" are unionized, but then management hires a new "screen transporter" for $10 an hour who isn't in the union.
Broadly summarizing, the potential for the remaining tie-breaker to defect to either side tends to keep participants honest, even if they're bitterly opposed.
Often you find yourself in a situation where nobody can win, but anyone can choose who wins if they commit to losing.
Unfortunately, it's rare all three participants realize the situation.
You can say "unions are a no brainer - America is so backwards not to have them".
I can say "unions are awful and poisonous to a company."
...and given the different definition of "union", we are each correct within our national context, but often incorrect when saying it online.
US unions != EU unions.
[0] Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
As a result, it's a race to the bottom as governors try to pursue business-friendly policies to attract jobs. And on the other "side", to pursue union-friendly policies to attract votes.
Both of which tug decisions to the extremes, the better to win their base, rather than seeking compromise that's acceptable to both parties.
One reason proletarian internationalism remained a hotly debated topic in communist theory for decades.
I find it fascinating, particularly in a country like America where democracy is a core part of our being.
Unions allow people to vote on their own preferences, then use their collective voice to negotiate. If you don’t like some bullshit union practice, then that is the fault of the people in it not the unions themselves.
Power perpetuates power
Eric: It isn't if you can't go and work somewhere else.
— J. B. Priestley
Not everyone is in a position to find another job. And what do you do if the best place you can work is still rubbish? What if you're an ISP tech?
Okay, sarcasm aside; I've worked for many different tech companies and good managers are exceptionally rare and there is no pressure from the top to change that, and pressure from the bottom doesn't work. There is, however, a lot of pressure to not fire or demote managers as it looks bad for the management above them.
You can’t get rid of power, just redistribute it. As flawed as democracy is, that’s what it attempts to do.
Or do we want to get rid of governments? ;)
In that case I’ll happily make the same snarky comment about whatever collection of humans accrue and then abuse power in our new government-free society.
People are naturally social. There will always be power, wielded in one way or another. But we have and will figure out schemes to wield it in a to benefit the many more than the few.
Contrast that with my experience with Unions in Sweden; and that is that they basically don't exist except to ensure that workers rights are not infringed.
So they'll be involved in a termination, or help negotiate overtime pay.
There is no such thing as a "union job", it's just having what's referred to as a "collective agreement".