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I'm not sure where you see the big difference. Dutch unions negotiate employment contracts, so it's easy to see how unions end up 'in charge of hiring, promotio
by repolfx 8y ago
I'm not sure where you see the big difference. Dutch unions negotiate employment contracts, so it's easy to see how unions end up 'in charge of hiring, promotion and the content of your work'. Union power is ultimately rooted in the threat of striking to bring down the firm: there's no particular area of company policy such an organisation can't take control of.
Thus the powers unions obtain not only in the US but also for instance the UK, is entirely predictable - nothing stops them taking over the firm and unions are very frequently run by open communists who see it as a moral imperative to do so.
A good example is Unite in the UK, run by Len McCluskey:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Len_McCluskey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Len_McCluskey
In a speech at the 2010 Durham Miners' Gala he said political developments in Cuba and Venezuela should be better known, and suggested the reason they were not was because of "the fear of the good example".
Not surprisingly when major unions are led by people who think Venezuela is a "good example", people learn that unions are bad news!
- mcv 8y agoUnions have no interest in bringing own the firm. That would be bad for everybody. Unions have an interest in a healthy company. Their job is to represent their members to ensure employees are fairly compensated for fair work. How this works out in practice is that many industries, including the government, have very well-defined rules about compensation, which jobs go with which salary, how healthy working conditions need to be, and under what circumstances you can be fired. People can absolutely be fired, just not arbitrarily on a whim. So yeah, compared to the way some American unions and companies seem to work according to people in this discussion, the difference is very big.