5 ms·

Why are all of these articles so clueless as to what's actually happening, and how to solve it? Just ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ every time. Unions are the obvious easy fix [1].

Why are all of these articles so clueless as to what's actually happening, and how to solve it? Just ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ every time. Unions are the obvious easy fix [1]. Give the workers some real bargaining power and ability to stand up for themselves. https://www.epi.org/news/union-membership-declines-inequality-rises/ https://www.epi.org/news/union-membership-declines-inequalit...

briandear 8y ago
A union would deny me the freedom to negotiate my own wages.
- prolikewh0a 8y ago
  For the majority of America there's no such thing as negotiating wages. Do you think McDonalds or Walmart are going to let you negotiate more than a few cents here and there? Nope. The union would be more beneficial to them.
  - toast_coder 8y ago
    If your negociating with walmart or mcdonalds you have nothing to offer in terms of skill. (for the jobs you are referencing) Those people who have skills worth money like to negociate. The great thing about that is everone can better themselves and be worth more.
    - thomasahle 8y ago
      Why does more skill imply negotiation opportunity? Because you can then threaten to go somewhere else? That depends on whether those other places have the same non-negotiation policy. That's the idea of a wage fixing cartel.
  - edanm 8y ago
    > For the majority of America there's no such thing as negotiating wages. What makes you say that? According to the first report I found via Google [1], workers who earn minimum wage make up about 2.3% of the labor force. Wouldn't that imply that almost all employees have at least some bargaining power? Note: the report seems to only talk about workers paid hourly, I assume the statistic is no worse for full-time employees. [1]: https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2017/home.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2017/home.htm
    - noobermin 8y ago
      That's the federal minimum wage...a lot of states and cities have minimum wages above the federal minimum wage.
- curun1r 8y ago
  Negotiating only works when you have leverage. And the people with stagnating wages have no individual leverage. Unions work by grouping individuals with no leverage into a larger negotiating unit that does have leverage. So yes, if you can go to your boss and demonstrate your value to your organization and your value above and beyond any replacement they can find, then you shouldn't need a union. But if that's not the case and your work is in any way fungible, then a union can definitely help tip the balance of power between employees and businesses that try to hoard all the profits for the owners.
  - z3t4 8y ago
    It doesn't matter if the employer need to hire ten other guys and pay them double your salary just to do your job, if you can't find another job that pays more.
- coldtea 8y ago
  Yeah, the same way being member of an army in a battle will deny you the pleasure of killing the enemy and winning the war all alone... (Only in America people believe such things...)
- Analemma_ 8y ago
  Where do people come up with this crap? It’s trivially false: Tom Cruise is a member of the SAG and can demand his wages however he likes.
- Sharlin 8y ago
  Luckily the world doesn't revolve around you.
- maxerickson 8y ago
  No one is proposing forcing you into a union Brian, they are pointing out that people in low leverage jobs are likely to benefit from unionizing.
febeling 8y ago
You’d have to explain why there’s the same problem in Germany, where there are many unions.
- coldtea 8y ago
  Because unions have been corrupted and sold out for decades...
  - drdeadringer 8y ago
    Can I get an "and how"? I'd like a picture painted.
    - coldtea 8y ago
      (...) The German parliament enacted the co-determination law in 1976, a form of employee participation that allows union representatives to serve on the Board of Directors of corporations and vote on firm-related business decisions. The co-determination law covers enterprises with a workforce of over 2,000 employees. A series of recent labor-management bribery scandals could, however, contribute to destabilizing this model, which celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2006. The former president and founder of the “Arbeitsgemeinschaft Unabhängiger Betriebsangehöriger,”1 an independent union representing 30,000 employees at the multi-national corporation Siemens, was charged in mid-February with illegally receiving 14 million Euros from Siemens. The second unfolding union-bribery corruption scandal involves the former head of Volkswagen’s (VW) works council Klaus Volkert, a member of the IG Metall. (VW is Europe’s largest automobile manufacturer.) The former director of the VW labor relations department, Peter Hartz, admitted this past January to employing illegal spending accounts for prostitution and luxury trips to Brazil in which Volkert was a principal recipient of the payments. Documents show that Albert Schunk, an IG Metall member of the joint VW-IG Metall labor-management committee and responsible for international relationships for the union, also benefited from the illegal spending account for his trip to Brazil, including monies used for prostitutes. Keep in mind that Hartz was the architect of a set of neo-liberal reforms in Germany which reduced unemployment insurance for German workers. The reform is called Hartz IV and was enacted last year by the SPD-Green government. Robert Fitch, who was interviewed by Michael Yates in Monthly Review, minimized the first VW corruption scandal as a kind of anomaly within the European labor movement. But such scandals are hardly new: former head of the IG Metall Klaus Zwickel resigned his post in 2003 in the midst of a criminal proceeding lodged against him. His unsavory role on the Board of Directors of the Mannesmann corporation in which departing executives were paid severance payments totaling 57 Million Euros was the source of great media attention, largely because the case involved the most devastating white-collar economic criminal case in the history of Germany. Zwickel agreed to pay a 60,000 Euro settlement and is, according to German law, free of criminal guilt. The timing of Zwickel’s resignation in 2003 coincided with the IG Metall’s first strike defeat in over 50 years. Fitch moreover maintained that there is “no comparison between European and American corruption. No one has ever charged a European union with being a criminal enterprise.” The recent collapse of the union-controlled bank BAWAG (Bank für Arbeit und Wirtschaft) in Austria, however, would certainly qualify as an example of fundamental union corruption comparable to or surpassing American labor corruption. One German commentator described the scandal as “the downfall of the Austrian worker’s movement.” The BAWAG, the fourth largest bank in Austria, engaged in speculative business dealings in the Caribbean, which resulted in the loss of approximately 1 billion Euros. The Austrian Labor Federation (ÖGB) oversaw the bank, and the running shopping list of inept and criminal activities of the ÖGB could be attributed to a union leadership who were more interested in a wannabe-capitalist banker lifestyle rather than protecting the assets of ordinary rank-and-file members. The ÖGB turned the BAWAG into a criminal enterprise. The illegal practices of the BAWAG have resulted in the loss of the strike fund, an education fund for the children of union members, and an emergency assistance program for members who are experiencing a financial crisis. Union expenditures in Europe are not as transparent as in the United States. Consequently, union corruption in Germany is simply better disguised and therefore unregistered by many American labor journalists and commentators. https://mronline.org/2007/02/21/where-is-the-german-trade-union-movement-and-where-is-it-going/ https://mronline.org/2007/02/21/where-is-the-german-trade-un... In 2007, an attempt of a company to influence unions became publicly known that had been unprecedented in the history of German unions. Already in the late 1970s, the Siemens AG made arrangements to weaken the impact of the DGB. The first goal was to reduce the power of the DGB in the board of directors. The essential execution of this plan started in the 1980s. The Association of Independent Employees (German: Arbeitsgemeinschaft Unabhängiger Betriebsangehöriger, AUB) was founded. As "the other union", the AUB positions itself today deliberately against "traditional unions". Although the AUB has only about 32,000 members, the AUB chairman Schelsky said in 2003: "In ten years, we will be the only competitor in Germany to the DGB." And then his organization was supposed to have stronger political power. After it became public that Siemens had made payments of about 14 million euro to Wilhelm Schelsky, a business consultant and AUB chairman, the offices of Schelsky, Siemens and the AUB were searched by police. On February 14, 2007, Schelsy was arrested on suspicion of offenses in connection with taxes. The payments from Siemens to Schelsky are now estimated to be about 54 million euros. However, direct payments from Siemens to the AUB could not be proven. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_unions_in_Germany#Weakening_of_the_DGB https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_unions_in_Germany#Weaken...
robdachshund 8y ago
Unions are typically operated by organized crime and political groups. A union will not help anyone merely in virtue of being a union.
JustSomeNobody 8y ago
By saying unions are the fix, you're implying that corporations are too powerful (or hold more power against employees). This was explicitly stated in the article. > One possible reason is that employers are growing increasingly powerful.
- undersuit 8y ago
  I'm sorry that's not at all explicit.
InclinedPlane 8y ago
Unions and increasing the minimum wage. It used to work, until we intentionally broke the system.
- umvi 8y ago
  > It used to work For at least half of the 20th century, unions had out of control corruption and cronyism. The biggest unions (Teamsters, etc) were totally controlled by organized crime. Unions solve a few problems but introduce many others. Unions are also subject to the Shirky Principle[1] [1] https://kk.org/thetechnium/the-shirky-prin/ https://kk.org/thetechnium/the-shirky-prin/
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - AstralStorm 8y ago
    So, are we better off without them on median? If not, then apparently they were superior to current situation, no matter their flaws. If you are proposing a superior solution, you are supposed to show it is superior. If it is neutral, you should also show it actually is neutral and not inferior. I'd say that unions provide a controllable and governance alternative to employer wild west. If they are corrupt and crony, this is seen and can be fixed. Markets are not as easily controllable, even with laws.
    - umvi 8y ago
      It's hard to say if we are better off with out them. I wasn't alive during the first half of the 20th century, but my grandpa was and he is vehemently against unions, having worked in them for 20+ years. I am cautiously optimistic that unions can be a net good, but I'm also worried there aren't enough checks to balance them.
    - GFischer 8y ago
      My country (Uruguay) has strong, very often out-of-control unions. I don't think they're a solution. I've seen good union leaders, but most of them were corrupt and actively harmed the workers they purported to defend (when they weren't embezzling - and Argentina is even worse).
closeparen 8y ago
Unions protect incumbent workers against new entrants. That's obviously great for you if you're personally an incumbent worker in an industry that's unionizing, but can't move the needle on the economy as a whole. As price rises, quantity demanded drops.
- noobermin 8y ago
  I hear this often but have never seen hard evidence of it working, unlike the OP who shows data which gives hard evidence. BTW, I've seen enough handwaving and half-truths about unions peddled by those trying to further degrade them I've stopped seeing arguments against unions as being in good faith.
  - closeparen 8y ago
    Hard evidence of closed shops and hiring halls existing? Hard evidence of supply and demand dynamics? This is not an argument for or against unions. As I mentioned, it’s likely in your personal interest to unionize if you can.
    - aerotwelve 8y ago
      Closed shops are illegal in America and have been since the 1950s. Because of this, an employer never is forced to hire from a hiring hall (though many choose to do so because the union often contributes to the cost of recruitment and training these candidates).
- icantdrive55 8y ago
  I've heard this too, but never seen any evidence. The only good jobs I have had were unionized. The worst jobs were all non-union. Employers got around unions by moving factories overseas. Movies like Norma Rae could not be made today. Fat Cats got real slick. That said, some jobs just can't be shipped overseas. And many of those jobs are perfect for unionization. (I won't be back to debate. Too tired, but I will never understand how unions got such a bad rap, especially among the under thirty crowd? I guarantee working one day on a non-union construction site will have the most ardent anti-union bloke singing a new tune the following day.)
noelsusman 8y ago
You see the same trend in many other developed countries with strong union membership. You're gonna need more than one paragraph and a chart to convince me that unions are the answer to all of our problems.

briandear 8y ago

A union would deny me the freedom to negotiate my own wages.

prolikewh0a 8y ago
For the majority of America there's no such thing as negotiating wages. Do you think McDonalds or Walmart are going to let you negotiate more than a few cents here and there? Nope. The union would be more beneficial to them.
- toast_coder 8y ago
  If your negociating with walmart or mcdonalds you have nothing to offer in terms of skill. (for the jobs you are referencing) Those people who have skills worth money like to negociate. The great thing about that is everone can better themselves and be worth more.
  - thomasahle 8y ago
    Why does more skill imply negotiation opportunity? Because you can then threaten to go somewhere else? That depends on whether those other places have the same non-negotiation policy. That's the idea of a wage fixing cartel.
- edanm 8y ago
  > For the majority of America there's no such thing as negotiating wages. What makes you say that? According to the first report I found via Google [1], workers who earn minimum wage make up about 2.3% of the labor force. Wouldn't that imply that almost all employees have at least some bargaining power? Note: the report seems to only talk about workers paid hourly, I assume the statistic is no worse for full-time employees. [1]: https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2017/home.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2017/home.htm
  - noobermin 8y ago
    That's the federal minimum wage...a lot of states and cities have minimum wages above the federal minimum wage.
curun1r 8y ago
Negotiating only works when you have leverage. And the people with stagnating wages have no individual leverage. Unions work by grouping individuals with no leverage into a larger negotiating unit that does have leverage. So yes, if you can go to your boss and demonstrate your value to your organization and your value above and beyond any replacement they can find, then you shouldn't need a union. But if that's not the case and your work is in any way fungible, then a union can definitely help tip the balance of power between employees and businesses that try to hoard all the profits for the owners.
- z3t4 8y ago
  It doesn't matter if the employer need to hire ten other guys and pay them double your salary just to do your job, if you can't find another job that pays more.
coldtea 8y ago
Yeah, the same way being member of an army in a battle will deny you the pleasure of killing the enemy and winning the war all alone... (Only in America people believe such things...)
Analemma_ 8y ago
Where do people come up with this crap? It’s trivially false: Tom Cruise is a member of the SAG and can demand his wages however he likes.
Sharlin 8y ago
Luckily the world doesn't revolve around you.
maxerickson 8y ago
No one is proposing forcing you into a union Brian, they are pointing out that people in low leverage jobs are likely to benefit from unionizing.

febeling 8y ago

You’d have to explain why there’s the same problem in Germany, where there are many unions.

coldtea 8y ago
Because unions have been corrupted and sold out for decades...
- drdeadringer 8y ago
  Can I get an "and how"? I'd like a picture painted.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    (...) The German parliament enacted the co-determination law in 1976, a form of employee participation that allows union representatives to serve on the Board of Directors of corporations and vote on firm-related business decisions. The co-determination law covers enterprises with a workforce of over 2,000 employees. A series of recent labor-management bribery scandals could, however, contribute to destabilizing this model, which celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2006. The former president and founder of the “Arbeitsgemeinschaft Unabhängiger Betriebsangehöriger,”1 an independent union representing 30,000 employees at the multi-national corporation Siemens, was charged in mid-February with illegally receiving 14 million Euros from Siemens. The second unfolding union-bribery corruption scandal involves the former head of Volkswagen’s (VW) works council Klaus Volkert, a member of the IG Metall. (VW is Europe’s largest automobile manufacturer.) The former director of the VW labor relations department, Peter Hartz, admitted this past January to employing illegal spending accounts for prostitution and luxury trips to Brazil in which Volkert was a principal recipient of the payments. Documents show that Albert Schunk, an IG Metall member of the joint VW-IG Metall labor-management committee and responsible for international relationships for the union, also benefited from the illegal spending account for his trip to Brazil, including monies used for prostitutes. Keep in mind that Hartz was the architect of a set of neo-liberal reforms in Germany which reduced unemployment insurance for German workers. The reform is called Hartz IV and was enacted last year by the SPD-Green government. Robert Fitch, who was interviewed by Michael Yates in Monthly Review, minimized the first VW corruption scandal as a kind of anomaly within the European labor movement. But such scandals are hardly new: former head of the IG Metall Klaus Zwickel resigned his post in 2003 in the midst of a criminal proceeding lodged against him. His unsavory role on the Board of Directors of the Mannesmann corporation in which departing executives were paid severance payments totaling 57 Million Euros was the source of great media attention, largely because the case involved the most devastating white-collar economic criminal case in the history of Germany. Zwickel agreed to pay a 60,000 Euro settlement and is, according to German law, free of criminal guilt. The timing of Zwickel’s resignation in 2003 coincided with the IG Metall’s first strike defeat in over 50 years. Fitch moreover maintained that there is “no comparison between European and American corruption. No one has ever charged a European union with being a criminal enterprise.” The recent collapse of the union-controlled bank BAWAG (Bank für Arbeit und Wirtschaft) in Austria, however, would certainly qualify as an example of fundamental union corruption comparable to or surpassing American labor corruption. One German commentator described the scandal as “the downfall of the Austrian worker’s movement.” The BAWAG, the fourth largest bank in Austria, engaged in speculative business dealings in the Caribbean, which resulted in the loss of approximately 1 billion Euros. The Austrian Labor Federation (ÖGB) oversaw the bank, and the running shopping list of inept and criminal activities of the ÖGB could be attributed to a union leadership who were more interested in a wannabe-capitalist banker lifestyle rather than protecting the assets of ordinary rank-and-file members. The ÖGB turned the BAWAG into a criminal enterprise. The illegal practices of the BAWAG have resulted in the loss of the strike fund, an education fund for the children of union members, and an emergency assistance program for members who are experiencing a financial crisis. Union expenditures in Europe are not as transparent as in the United States. Consequently, union corruption in Germany is simply better disguised and therefore unregistered by many American labor journalists and commentators. https://mronline.org/2007/02/21/where-is-the-german-trade-union-movement-and-where-is-it-going/ https://mronline.org/2007/02/21/where-is-the-german-trade-un... In 2007, an attempt of a company to influence unions became publicly known that had been unprecedented in the history of German unions. Already in the late 1970s, the Siemens AG made arrangements to weaken the impact of the DGB. The first goal was to reduce the power of the DGB in the board of directors. The essential execution of this plan started in the 1980s. The Association of Independent Employees (German: Arbeitsgemeinschaft Unabhängiger Betriebsangehöriger, AUB) was founded. As "the other union", the AUB positions itself today deliberately against "traditional unions". Although the AUB has only about 32,000 members, the AUB chairman Schelsky said in 2003: "In ten years, we will be the only competitor in Germany to the DGB." And then his organization was supposed to have stronger political power. After it became public that Siemens had made payments of about 14 million euro to Wilhelm Schelsky, a business consultant and AUB chairman, the offices of Schelsky, Siemens and the AUB were searched by police. On February 14, 2007, Schelsy was arrested on suspicion of offenses in connection with taxes. The payments from Siemens to Schelsky are now estimated to be about 54 million euros. However, direct payments from Siemens to the AUB could not be proven. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_unions_in_Germany#Weakening_of_the_DGB https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_unions_in_Germany#Weaken...

robdachshund 8y ago

Unions are typically operated by organized crime and political groups. A union will not help anyone merely in virtue of being a union.

JustSomeNobody 8y ago

By saying unions are the fix, you're implying that corporations are too powerful (or hold more power against employees). This was explicitly stated in the article. > One possible reason is that employers are growing increasingly powerful.

undersuit 8y ago
I'm sorry that's not at all explicit.

InclinedPlane 8y ago

Unions and increasing the minimum wage. It used to work, until we intentionally broke the system.

umvi 8y ago
> It used to work For at least half of the 20th century, unions had out of control corruption and cronyism. The biggest unions (Teamsters, etc) were totally controlled by organized crime. Unions solve a few problems but introduce many others. Unions are also subject to the Shirky Principle[1] [1] https://kk.org/thetechnium/the-shirky-prin/ https://kk.org/thetechnium/the-shirky-prin/
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- AstralStorm 8y ago
  So, are we better off without them on median? If not, then apparently they were superior to current situation, no matter their flaws. If you are proposing a superior solution, you are supposed to show it is superior. If it is neutral, you should also show it actually is neutral and not inferior. I'd say that unions provide a controllable and governance alternative to employer wild west. If they are corrupt and crony, this is seen and can be fixed. Markets are not as easily controllable, even with laws.
  - umvi 8y ago
    It's hard to say if we are better off with out them. I wasn't alive during the first half of the 20th century, but my grandpa was and he is vehemently against unions, having worked in them for 20+ years. I am cautiously optimistic that unions can be a net good, but I'm also worried there aren't enough checks to balance them.
  - GFischer 8y ago
    My country (Uruguay) has strong, very often out-of-control unions. I don't think they're a solution. I've seen good union leaders, but most of them were corrupt and actively harmed the workers they purported to defend (when they weren't embezzling - and Argentina is even worse).

closeparen 8y ago

Unions protect incumbent workers against new entrants. That's obviously great for you if you're personally an incumbent worker in an industry that's unionizing, but can't move the needle on the economy as a whole. As price rises, quantity demanded drops.

noobermin 8y ago
I hear this often but have never seen hard evidence of it working, unlike the OP who shows data which gives hard evidence. BTW, I've seen enough handwaving and half-truths about unions peddled by those trying to further degrade them I've stopped seeing arguments against unions as being in good faith.
- closeparen 8y ago
  Hard evidence of closed shops and hiring halls existing? Hard evidence of supply and demand dynamics? This is not an argument for or against unions. As I mentioned, it’s likely in your personal interest to unionize if you can.
  - aerotwelve 8y ago
    Closed shops are illegal in America and have been since the 1950s. Because of this, an employer never is forced to hire from a hiring hall (though many choose to do so because the union often contributes to the cost of recruitment and training these candidates).
icantdrive55 8y ago
I've heard this too, but never seen any evidence. The only good jobs I have had were unionized. The worst jobs were all non-union. Employers got around unions by moving factories overseas. Movies like Norma Rae could not be made today. Fat Cats got real slick. That said, some jobs just can't be shipped overseas. And many of those jobs are perfect for unionization. (I won't be back to debate. Too tired, but I will never understand how unions got such a bad rap, especially among the under thirty crowd? I guarantee working one day on a non-union construction site will have the most ardent anti-union bloke singing a new tune the following day.)

noelsusman 8y ago

You see the same trend in many other developed countries with strong union membership. You're gonna need more than one paragraph and a chart to convince me that unions are the answer to all of our problems.