3 ms·

What you are describing is what existed before what we have now. A group of people working for an employer would try to negotiate for safer working conditions,

by latj 11y ago

What you are describing is what existed before what we have now. A group of people working for an employer would try to negotiate for safer working conditions, better benefits, etc. The employer would take the list of demands, fire the person who handed him the list and say, "I'm not giving you any of this shit and anyone who talks about it again gets fired too." So people started organizing by trade. It made sense because workers of a common trade share experiences and grievances. If one particular employer treated its workers bad, that trade guild had more leverage by threatening work stoppage against other employers who could put pressure on the first employer. Over time employers started to converge and grow in power. Now you have a company who employs thousands of people in multiple locations. To keep the balance in power, the unions converged and grew in power. You cant threaten to replace a union worker if everyone who does that job is in the union(1). Now the unions are big enough to disrupt economies, sway elections, etc. They are large professional entities of lawyers, financial managers. They want everyone in the union for maximal leverage (ie fewer scabs, more dues) so they lobbied to affect the policies we have today. The small voluntary no-admin-overhead organization you are describing is ideal, but its really unlikely to work. It would depend on the employer allowing it to happen. I could say more here about the growing wealth gap, criminalization of poverty, and the quiet ongoing class war, and end with a Malcom X quote, "Anytime you depend on your enemy for a job you're in bad shape." But I dont feel like saying all that. ;) 1. robots

JoshTriplett 11y ago
> You cant threaten to replace a union worker if everyone who does that job is in the union If an employer did something like that, the FTC would go after them for abusing a monopoly to dictate pricing, for anti-competitive practices (e.g. contracts that prevent doing business with competitors), etc. But somehow it's OK for unions to do that?
- drumdance 11y ago
  Not "somehow." It's written into federal law.
- __jal 11y ago
  Maybe. A very short answer is that there are many differences between capital and labor. (It is even right there on the tin - we don't call our system "laborism", and a few actual words related to that meaning are popularly demonized in the U.S.) Sure, sure, corporations are people ("my friend"), but most humans still see a difference between John calling in sick because he didn't like seeing his pal Bob fired and things like redlining, oligopoly partitioning, etc. It has to do with power dynamics, and this is well recognized in law. (One example is that contracts between parties of disparate power are generally interpreted in the light most beneficial to the least powerful. For more extreme cases, look up the legal sense of the word "adhesion".) And recall that capital always has options. - Happy employees tend not to unionize. Many places normally considered to be natural homes for unions don't have them because management doesn't give them a reason to need one. - If capital or management decides those proles are too uppity, it can close shop. (Labor also has this option, but that's called 'suicide' and considered in a rather different light.) Walmart did this a while back when (IIRC) their butchers successfully beat them and unionized; Walmart got out of the meat cutting business. - Outsource. Amazon has a pile of circuit-breaker corporations that supply them backs and hands. Those corporations (really, binders on a Delaware shelf and bank accounts) take the heat from lawsuits when the backs break and the hands are smashed by robots. This use of non-human shields works surprisingly well in some circumstances, but the tight coupling with the mothership needed by app-driven job direction would make it look pretty strange if they set up shell companies to supply "workers", so that one may not work for Uber. (update: fixed my goofy formatting.)

by latj 11y ago

JoshTriplett 11y ago

> You cant threaten to replace a union worker if everyone who does that job is in the union If an employer did something like that, the FTC would go after them for abusing a monopoly to dictate pricing, for anti-competitive practices (e.g. contracts that prevent doing business with competitors), etc. But somehow it's OK for unions to do that?

drumdance 11y ago
Not "somehow." It's written into federal law.
__jal 11y ago
Maybe. A very short answer is that there are many differences between capital and labor. (It is even right there on the tin - we don't call our system "laborism", and a few actual words related to that meaning are popularly demonized in the U.S.) Sure, sure, corporations are people ("my friend"), but most humans still see a difference between John calling in sick because he didn't like seeing his pal Bob fired and things like redlining, oligopoly partitioning, etc. It has to do with power dynamics, and this is well recognized in law. (One example is that contracts between parties of disparate power are generally interpreted in the light most beneficial to the least powerful. For more extreme cases, look up the legal sense of the word "adhesion".) And recall that capital always has options. - Happy employees tend not to unionize. Many places normally considered to be natural homes for unions don't have them because management doesn't give them a reason to need one. - If capital or management decides those proles are too uppity, it can close shop. (Labor also has this option, but that's called 'suicide' and considered in a rather different light.) Walmart did this a while back when (IIRC) their butchers successfully beat them and unionized; Walmart got out of the meat cutting business. - Outsource. Amazon has a pile of circuit-breaker corporations that supply them backs and hands. Those corporations (really, binders on a Delaware shelf and bank accounts) take the heat from lawsuits when the backs break and the hands are smashed by robots. This use of non-human shields works surprisingly well in some circumstances, but the tight coupling with the mothership needed by app-driven job direction would make it look pretty strange if they set up shell companies to supply "workers", so that one may not work for Uber. (update: fixed my goofy formatting.)