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I'll have to ask for a more objective criteria to say competition is not tough. Businsses are very hard to bring about to profitability and sustainability. And

I'll have to ask for a more objective criteria to say competition is not tough. Businsses are very hard to bring about to profitability and sustainability. And they are vulnerable to market wages and capital returns just like any worker. I agree that there is a different flexibility of labor and capital, but unions do not make labor and capital more flexible or inflexible. If anything, it makes labor inflexible and affects capital in the short term. > Negotiating as part of a group is not about supply and demand, it's about reaching a fair agreement between a specific company and a specific group of workers. Nobody cares about supply and demand on the market, most people would rather have a stable place to work and get decent raises if the company is doing well, instead of all the profits going to the management and shareholders. That sounds all good and well, but the union's interests are not its worker's interest. Its another organization that can feed of workers. Unless they make the pie bigger, they eat a generous slice, and if the company goes bust they will not eat at all. Unions have strong incentives to work in tandem with the company than with the worker.

blub 8y ago
Start-ups are very hard to bring to profitability and sustainability. An existing business, once off the ground can usually live for a long time unless the management team really screws up or their market gets disrupted. Even in these cases they can drastically reduce their costs by firing personnel and limp along to better times. There are also huge conglomerates which gobble up smaller brands, e.g. Kraft Heinz, Time Warner, Alphabet, 3M, etc. They couldn't give a fuck about fragility. Established businesses are in no way fragile. It's so ridiculous having to read this type of defensive argument. Employees are a bunch of peons for the big corps, but they shouldn't try to organise because it will be somehow worse for them, right. Any type of group dynamic will not perfectly represent the interests of the group, and yet there are very successful unions out there even in the US, where capital had an long and bloody history trying to suppress them.
- conanbatt 8y ago
  There are more employees in small businesses than in big ones.. Also management and corporate are employees as well.
  - wpietri 8y ago
    You are conflating startups vs small businesses. And small businesses are mostly irrelevant in unionization discussions. Employees rarely bother to unionize at a small business because the more equal balance of power and the closer human relationships between employee and employer yield more reasonable outcomes.

blub 8y ago

Start-ups are very hard to bring to profitability and sustainability. An existing business, once off the ground can usually live for a long time unless the management team really screws up or their market gets disrupted. Even in these cases they can drastically reduce their costs by firing personnel and limp along to better times. There are also huge conglomerates which gobble up smaller brands, e.g. Kraft Heinz, Time Warner, Alphabet, 3M, etc. They couldn't give a fuck about fragility. Established businesses are in no way fragile. It's so ridiculous having to read this type of defensive argument. Employees are a bunch of peons for the big corps, but they shouldn't try to organise because it will be somehow worse for them, right. Any type of group dynamic will not perfectly represent the interests of the group, and yet there are very successful unions out there even in the US, where capital had an long and bloody history trying to suppress them.

conanbatt 8y ago
There are more employees in small businesses than in big ones.. Also management and corporate are employees as well.
- wpietri 8y ago
  You are conflating startups vs small businesses. And small businesses are mostly irrelevant in unionization discussions. Employees rarely bother to unionize at a small business because the more equal balance of power and the closer human relationships between employee and employer yield more reasonable outcomes.