4 ms·

Practices that work during a growth phase rarely work effectively when an organization (business, country, etc) has reached the latter states of its lifecycle.

Practices that work during a growth phase rarely work effectively when an organization (business, country, etc) has reached the latter states of its lifecycle. One example is unions: they organized and protected workers in a period when companies were maturing. The growth phase is over. Now that such protections have been augmented by retirement funds and pensions, businesses have little room to maneuver when an economic downturn hits. Unions prevent those businesses from being able to maintain competitive pricing in global markets due to labor costs, so those obligations eventually put the company out of business or force it to move operations - normally out of sheer survival since other companies in the space will be doing the same. The end result is that, in a mature market, unions can strangle a business until both that business and the retirements of employees are lost. Many other points exist that may seem counterintuitive without understanding the perspective of both the employer and employee as well as international capital flows and cycles.

maxerickson 8y ago
The simple way out of the pension trap is to fund them with real actual money instead of promises to pay.
- jessaustin 8y ago
  True, but history has shown that unions are no help with that. Lots of union members trusted that their pensions were funded. Union leaders knew they weren't, but somehow were convinced not to care about it...
cryoshon 8y ago
>businesses have little room to maneuver when an economic downturn hits sure they do. they just underpay their workers the whole time. oh yeah, and most places don't offer pensions anymore.
Spooky23 8y ago
Business picked up lots of flexibility, they outsource and offshore. Even if it costs more, the books look better.
api 8y ago
How do unions work so well in Germany? I've heard the whole system is different from American unions and less adversarial but I don't know the details.
- tormeh 8y ago
  Part of it is just politics/culture, I imagine. Unions are mainstream in Germany, so German unions' positions on various issues are also mainstream. From what I hear unions' in the US have more fringe positions.
  - gowld 8y ago
    Unions aren't fringe.The US populace is more fringe right-wing relative to Europe.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- fulafel 8y ago
  It's not just Germany, it's common to northern Europe.
imbokodo 8y ago
> Unions prevent those businesses from being able to maintain competitive pricing in global markets due to labor costs, so those obligations eventually put the company out of business or force it to move operations - normally out of sheer survival since other companies in the space will be doing the same. Well this is false on a number of levels but is a common argument - "if you're the one doing all the work and creating all the wealth, don't organize with the other workers to keep more of the wealth you create, or the soi distant 'job creator' heirs expropriating your surplus labor time might send you into poverty". Of course no one ever tells the heirs who expropriate profits from these companies that they should shirk in fear in organizing together for their class interests. You make a number of discordant points. If we are in an economic system, the fourth one in the past few millennia, where "the growth phase is over", then clearly it is also the beginning of the end of the fourth economic system, and the birth of the fifth system which was born in the Paris Commune is coming. Pensions are dying as are other old age moneys - it is under attack, and organized workers are what keeps it alive. Companies don't have a problem with competitive pricing. They have a problem with below-desired profits. The business press says this. See the recent (non-union) Facebook drop. "Out of business or move"...GM was organized in 1936. Larry Page's grandfather helped do that. In fact Page has held up the weapon his grandfather carried during a strike. The grandfather then made enough to send his son to college. And the son's son formed Google. Maybe GM profits fell at some point, but the family had already moved on. Compare to the completely unregulated textile mills in the Carolinas. No unions, yet the plants still closed down and left the country. Low paid grandchildren with no college education now see the big employer in town shutter up and they are out of luck. Thanks, I would prefer the former case. As far as understanding international capital flows and cycles, Karl Marx spoke about that a century and as half ago and spoke about overproduction, recessions, falling profits, continuing income inequality etc. Not in a liberal social democrat way, but in a way that showed the system would eventually self-destruct as feudalism in Europe had, or how the Roman Empire and it's slave latifundias did, or as hunter-gatherer bands had on the face of the agricultural Sumerian slave empires. The contradictions and self-destructiveness Marx pointed out are still happening - one example being the 1999 Glass-Steagall bank deregulation followed 9 years later by the "too big to fail" taxpayer TARP bailout. It's not hypocrisy - it's contradiction. It's cognitive dissonance which will eventually rent things apart - which has been renting things apart. As a worker creating wealth, I'll take my own council and organize together with my fellow workers as opposed to prostrating myself before the parasitical heirs expropriating my surplus labor time for scraps of food.
gowld 8y ago
Why is management/capital strangling employees into substistence better than unions strangling capital? Wages have stagnated for many years, especially in non-union industries
- stuckinarut 8y ago
  Because someday I (being extremely smart and awesome person who's way better than the average worker) will be that rich capitalist standing on the backs of the workers. So I need to protect them now, obviously. Plus I can negotiate better by myself against a faceless company worth dozens of billions. Like I said, I'm very special.

maxerickson 8y ago

The simple way out of the pension trap is to fund them with real actual money instead of promises to pay.

jessaustin 8y ago
True, but history has shown that unions are no help with that. Lots of union members trusted that their pensions were funded. Union leaders knew they weren't, but somehow were convinced not to care about it...

cryoshon 8y ago

>businesses have little room to maneuver when an economic downturn hits sure they do. they just underpay their workers the whole time. oh yeah, and most places don't offer pensions anymore.

Spooky23 8y ago

Business picked up lots of flexibility, they outsource and offshore. Even if it costs more, the books look better.

api 8y ago

How do unions work so well in Germany? I've heard the whole system is different from American unions and less adversarial but I don't know the details.

tormeh 8y ago
Part of it is just politics/culture, I imagine. Unions are mainstream in Germany, so German unions' positions on various issues are also mainstream. From what I hear unions' in the US have more fringe positions.
- gowld 8y ago
  Unions aren't fringe.The US populace is more fringe right-wing relative to Europe.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
fulafel 8y ago
It's not just Germany, it's common to northern Europe.

imbokodo 8y ago

> Unions prevent those businesses from being able to maintain competitive pricing in global markets due to labor costs, so those obligations eventually put the company out of business or force it to move operations - normally out of sheer survival since other companies in the space will be doing the same. Well this is false on a number of levels but is a common argument - "if you're the one doing all the work and creating all the wealth, don't organize with the other workers to keep more of the wealth you create, or the soi distant 'job creator' heirs expropriating your surplus labor time might send you into poverty". Of course no one ever tells the heirs who expropriate profits from these companies that they should shirk in fear in organizing together for their class interests. You make a number of discordant points. If we are in an economic system, the fourth one in the past few millennia, where "the growth phase is over", then clearly it is also the beginning of the end of the fourth economic system, and the birth of the fifth system which was born in the Paris Commune is coming. Pensions are dying as are other old age moneys - it is under attack, and organized workers are what keeps it alive. Companies don't have a problem with competitive pricing. They have a problem with below-desired profits. The business press says this. See the recent (non-union) Facebook drop. "Out of business or move"...GM was organized in 1936. Larry Page's grandfather helped do that. In fact Page has held up the weapon his grandfather carried during a strike. The grandfather then made enough to send his son to college. And the son's son formed Google. Maybe GM profits fell at some point, but the family had already moved on. Compare to the completely unregulated textile mills in the Carolinas. No unions, yet the plants still closed down and left the country. Low paid grandchildren with no college education now see the big employer in town shutter up and they are out of luck. Thanks, I would prefer the former case. As far as understanding international capital flows and cycles, Karl Marx spoke about that a century and as half ago and spoke about overproduction, recessions, falling profits, continuing income inequality etc. Not in a liberal social democrat way, but in a way that showed the system would eventually self-destruct as feudalism in Europe had, or how the Roman Empire and it's slave latifundias did, or as hunter-gatherer bands had on the face of the agricultural Sumerian slave empires. The contradictions and self-destructiveness Marx pointed out are still happening - one example being the 1999 Glass-Steagall bank deregulation followed 9 years later by the "too big to fail" taxpayer TARP bailout. It's not hypocrisy - it's contradiction. It's cognitive dissonance which will eventually rent things apart - which has been renting things apart. As a worker creating wealth, I'll take my own council and organize together with my fellow workers as opposed to prostrating myself before the parasitical heirs expropriating my surplus labor time for scraps of food.

gowld 8y ago

Why is management/capital strangling employees into substistence better than unions strangling capital? Wages have stagnated for many years, especially in non-union industries

stuckinarut 8y ago
Because someday I (being extremely smart and awesome person who's way better than the average worker) will be that rich capitalist standing on the backs of the workers. So I need to protect them now, obviously. Plus I can negotiate better by myself against a faceless company worth dozens of billions. Like I said, I'm very special.