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This happens because unions in the US are fragmented. In countries with bigger unions (e.g. France, Italy) those unions act at national level. This means that m
by mrighele 9y ago
This happens because unions in the US are fragmented. In countries with bigger unions (e.g. France, Italy) those unions act at national level. This means that moving the assembly line from Seattle to South Carolina would simply move the strikes from one place to another.
The underlying idea is that the behavior of the S.C. is just a race to the bottom and in the same way that those jobs arrived they will be gone one day once another plant accept even worse wages.
The downside is that if the union's approach is too strict, those jobs may simply disappear because it is not feasible to pay those workers more, or it may be cheaper to move those job abroad and import the resulting products.
This also requires workers to struggle and strike not for their job, but for someone else's.
(I am not saying one approach is better than the other, in fact I am usually not too fond of unions, but I am trying to explain the union's point of view)
- LoSboccacc 9y agoThe union in italy have been extremely damaging to the local economy in the last 20 years. You see national union goals are too distant and misaligned from workers’ For example one of the problem is that not all professions are unionized for example, so o get more profit and power the unions need to stifle innovation and steer the government only toward heavy industry to the destriment of almost every other sector Also being national they seldom talk directly with workers and plant owners, and prefer to play their hands at the political table, often ignoring the specificity of issues. And since their decision have national level ramification, every singe one needs months if not years to mature, implement and execute. Like, most national contracts are expired and have wages that are ridicolous by 2017 standards and base salary need to be supplemented in various, highly taxed ways, and new form of contracts are impossible to create (IT for example is hired under industrial or commerce contract, as the gategory didn’t exist at the time and there’s no reasonable way to create it now)
- _joe 9y agoWhat a whole bunch of inaccuracies. I have no time to waste rebutting all the multiple falsehoods in this post, but I want people living in other countries know that it is filled with inaccuracies and plain falsehoods.
- dpark 9y agoNo way. You can’t assert that someone is lying through their teeth and then utterly fail to provide even a single counterpoint. This is equivalent to yelling “fake news”. The parent comment might be full of lies, but I’m actually more inclined to believe it when the best you can do is call them falsehoods with no evidence or argument.
- ittrow 9y agoYou are FUDding. I'm an Italian living in Italy, and I 100% agree with the parent comment. Also, I'd add that most members of Italian national unions are retired people, so unions mostly care about pensions,ending being often in contrast with younger workers interests (for instance, keeping retirement age low, even if it's one of the lowest in the EU). One must also consider that there's a strong divide between unionized, older workers with "permanent job" contracts, and younger workers with precarious jobs, whose issues are completely ignored by national unions.
- LoSboccacc 9y agothanks. as an Italian I'm baffled how someone can be so blind at what's really happening with unions here
- tomcam 9y agoDo you feel Italy is a model of productivity thanks to union involvement?
- ittrow 9y agoItaly is not a model of productivity for several reasons. Reducing this problem to the union involvement of workers looks intellectually dishonest to me.