17 ms·

This will help with recruitment, but the sentiment that new workers will essentially get paid the same as older workers is going to immediately be a big stickin

• stephengillie 8y ago
  This is how grocery unions (like UFCW) operate. There isn't a lot of debate about health and safety, mostly thanks to government agencies. Most of what the union does is operate the health insurer, and push for pay raises & fewer pay scale steps.
  • irrational 8y ago
    Are unions anti universal healthcare? It seems like they would be since it would be one less thing they could negotiate about.
    • egypturnash 8y ago
      No longer having to beg the bosses for healthcare would mean they could spend their time and energy pressing the bosses for other concessions.
    • InTheArena 8y ago
      They were in the Obamacare debate. Unions fought like hell against the Cadillac care provisions because it did in fact limit health care.
      • crooked-v 8y ago
        Obamacare is very, very far from universal healthcare. A more accurate comparison would be Medicare For All, which has broad support from a variety of unions.
      • HarryHirsch 8y ago
        What drove the costs of the "Cadillac plans" up was that the members worked in injury-prone industries, i.e. fishing, construction &c. The benefits weren't particularly rich. Small wonder that the unions in those industries would come out against provisions that would penalize their members for working in their line of work. There's plenty of things wrong with US unions, but opposition of fishermen to Obamacare isn't amongst them.
      • chris11 8y ago
        I thought a complaint was that Obamacare introduced a tax on health care plans that were unusually generous.
        • InTheArena 8y ago
          Which unions were asking to be exempted from. Hence my comment.
      • TheCoelacanth 8y ago
        "Cadillac care" provisions are in no way related to universal healthcare. They are a tax on healthcare plans that are more expensive than some threshold, intended to drive down the cost of healthcare plans by steering companies away from the really high-end plans.
• DasIch 8y ago
  Before you abandon the idea of unions, you should keep in mind that the situation in regards to unions in the US is fucked up in a rather unique way. So a much less radical approach of simply copying what other countries do, should work just fine much more reliably.
  • rm_-rf_slash 8y ago
    The relationship between labor and management/capital has historically been adversarial in the United States. We can’t just adopt the laws from countries with good labor relations like Germany or Denmark and expect the culture to follow.
    • chottocharaii 8y ago
      Try Australia.
    • int_19h 8y ago
      The relationship between labor and management/capital has historically been adversarial in all countries, in many cases much more so than US. I mean, US didn't have an attempted socialist revolution, for one - several European countries did. And yet they developed a working system involving unions out of it all. There's no reason why we can't, too.
      • lovich 8y ago
        America didn't get their socialist revolution because the companies and government brutally suppressed every rebellion and even basic strikes. America as a government and capitalist society has been actively against unions since forever, and in the past few decades they've convinced workers to be against unionizing as well -https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Corn_Rebellion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Corn_Rebellion This one on Blair mountain was big -https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain Veterans wanting to get paid in less than 20 years of waiting, so why not beat and shoot them? -https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army Just the history of union busting here -https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_...
• bsder 8y ago
  > But it also means the company becomes very adversarial with their work-force This is due to a combination of lack of social safety net and lack of worker representation. In the places where unions are noted for being "good", the government covers the social safety net and workers unions are given board seats as well as stock. This keeps everybody's goals aligned.
  • dantheman 8y ago
    Public sector unions are notoriously bad.
    • TheCoelacanth 8y ago
      For real or according to anti-union propaganda?
      • compcoffee 8y ago
        >For real or according to anti-union propaganda? For real. Unlike private sector unions, the people that the unions ares negotiating against are politicians, who have no real incentive to push back. "I'll grant your raises, you vote me back in, then I can grant more raises". The incentives are messed up.
    • bsder 8y ago
      Given my description, why in the world would you jump to public sector unions in the US instead of trades unions in Germany? (which is what I was describing) You might want to do a bit more research into actual unions around the world rather than simply regurgitating propaganda.
• ravitation 8y ago
  A company doesn't become adversarial with its workforce because of unions; a company is forced to treat its workforce more as an equal because of unions. The adversarial nature of the relationship between a workforce and its company is not a result of unions, it exists without unions. It's just that, without unions, companies are free to largely ignore the demands of individual workers. Control over compensation and healthcare "stuff" (and, I'd argue, even days off) is just as important to the well-being of a workforce as worker safety, especially in a country with a relatively weak "social safety net". How exactly does a union show that it is worth negotiating with as an equal without things that demonstrate its power, like strikes and bargaining hold-outs?
  • mdgrech23 8y ago
    Spoken like someone who very little actual real experience with a union.
    • sir_branson 8y ago
      Spoken like someone with very little real experience in a union.
  • sethammons 8y ago
    > A company doesn't become adversarial with its workforce because of unions; a company is forced to treat its workforce more as an equal because of unions. I'm not convinced. My brother's work has a warehouse. The warehouse unionized (a large push by two folks who are no longer there). Most of the warehouse workers are now making _less_ than they were before due to union dues. There are guys that my brother would love to promote and reward with better pay, but the union does not allow that. The union demands such-n-such, the business pushes back. The workers are in the middle and get shitall. This union (at least) exists to grow itself and for no other reason. Now the "office personnel" are not allowed to talk anything union related with the "warehouse folks." It went from "us" to "us" and "them." The office people have to be careful on how they say anything or a union rep can file grievances. When you have to watch your behavior in fear of retribution, I'd say that is adversarial and I would say this happened due to the union.
• vkou 8y ago
  > But it also means the company becomes very adversarial with their work-force and spends most of its time trying to figure out how to get around the demands of the union. Companies don't become more adversarial when they deal with a union - what happens is that the union shines some sunlight on any existing adversarial relationships. When your boss asks you to work an extra hour without pay, and you tell him to pound sand, pointing at union rules, the union looks like a bad guy. Rolling over to his demands, because you lack union protection, is, for some reason, not considered 'adversarial.'
  • Fomite 8y ago
    This. It's only "adversarial" because now the workers are capable of being a meaningful adversary.
    • tropo 8y ago
      There is no need to be adversarial as long as workers have the right to leave. These are not slaves. They only stay until they can get a better deal (pay, respect, safety...) elsewhere.
      • vkou 8y ago
        Workers derive 100% of their income and survival from their employer. Employers dervie some sub-percentage point of their income and survival from any one worker. Unions level the playing field. Now, both sides have to negotiate from an even position - neither can do without the other.
        • burfog 8y ago
          That isn't a level playing field with an even position. The employer can't get other employees (due to union-favoring laws) but the employees can get other employment. The closest thing the employer has to "get other employees" is to shut down the workplace, possibly outsourcing to a different country.
• Spooky23 8y ago
  Most of the unsolvable adversarial issues are related to the inconsistent legal framework, various holes pinched in labor law and the constant threat of closure. A place like Boeing is really a government employer in disguise and has entirely different dynamics.
• jungturk 8y ago
  Codetermination seems to work well in Germany. Employees and shareholders are both represented on the board and perhaps that allows better negotiation and less adversity? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany
• jostmey 8y ago
  Unions are probably a good thing in general. But unions can become monopolies and perhaps such unions need to be busted up
  • Consultant32452 8y ago
    Unions are good for the union members most of the time, and generally bad for everyone else: shareholders, management, customers, etc. I'm not saying that's bad, that's the most obvious position for the union to take, to maximize benefit for itself at the cost of everything else. We don't seem to have any problem acknowledging that corporations do this, but unions, while not technically corporations, operate largely like one.
• gaius 8y ago
  I feel like the concept of unions needs to be rejiggered for the modern era This is very much a cultural thing. A German union for example ensures that Workers get their fair share but understands that the company must be profitable and successful first - they know not to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. Whereas unions in the UK immediately try to destroy a company to prove a point about capitalism, union bosses are lavishly paid, and the Workers are mere pawns, in some cases even actively working against their members wishes. That’s why Germany has a strong auto industry and we do not.
• ugh123 8y ago
  And please, oh please, add in an a high bar of performance. Many non-trade unions are notorious for dwindling down quality of work output.
• baq 8y ago
  unions should be for labor what HR is for the company - a single force with a comparatively large negotiating power instead of a thousand individual non-professional negotiators. it doesn't always look like this and this is a problem that unions have.
• AngryData 8y ago
  Part of the problem with unions here is the decades of anti-union lobbying which has resulted in locking in unions in place and restricting how they operate. Many places with a union now you HAVE to join and pay them and that is the end of discussion. And your voice doesn't matter for shit in the union, you are just meant to fall in step with your union leader's commands. And the structure of the unions themselves have come to resemble another profit-seeking business with a bunch of financial and business managers from outside taking over all the top positions, not former workers that rose from the ranks of workers and know the business, and then those outsiders raising management pay for themselves. If unions weren't so restricted, if talking about a new union couldn't get you fired, you could easily replace the old unions by a handful of workers freely starting their own union while opting out of the old shitty one ran by non-union workers. It would ideally light a fire under those entrenched union's positions.