7 ms·

Absurdity of this video aside, but I just wish there was room in today's political environment to discuss pros and cons to unions and non-unions. There are some

• ggm 7y ago
  "The principle is sound but sometimes the implementation is weak"? A question to ask is perhaps, if a Mondragon workers cooperative should have a union?
  • cameronbrown 7y ago
    Devil's Advocate: If there are so many examples of weak implementations, then is the principle therefore unsound?
    • nyolfen 7y ago
      is it pointless to attempt democracy when so many democratic states are corrupt?
      • chr1 7y ago
        Not a good comparison because democratic states are consistently better than non-democratic ones, so we have evidence that democracy is an improvement compared to other methods.
        • zaksoup 7y ago
          > democratic states are consistently better than non-democratic ones Union wages are consistently higher than non-union wages, so we have evidence that unions are an improvement compared to direct relationships with employers. Source: literally every long-term economic comparison of wages done for the last 50 years.
          • cambalache 7y ago
            And not only wages, almost every single work right has been won by sweat and blood of the organized workers. 8 hours working day, 2 days off a week, vacation time, pregnancy leave, medical insurance, etc, etc. None of them was implemented as result of the benevolence of the dominant classes.
            • jlawson 7y ago
              No, they were implemented as a result of labor-saving improvements in technology. Activists always want to take credit, but it's the engineers and scientists who actually did the thing that changed the pattern that had lasted for 10,000 years. Unions are just one particular way of structuring one side of a human conflict that is as old as civilization and as inherent as gravity.
              • arcticbull 7y ago
                And not locking workers inside factories? Was that implemented as a result of labor-saving improvements in technology? You should look up the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in New York, 1911, which it could be argued is what kicked off the modern unionization effort. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fi...
                • jart 7y ago
                  It also kicked off efforts for engineers to build better safety technologies, and for politicians to codify their use into law. A tragedy might grant an organizer an opportunity to make things better at one company, but that doesn't help the working class as a whole. In many ways, scientists and engineers really are the true progressives.
                  • arcticbull 7y ago
                    Because of the unions.
        • arcticbull 7y ago
          That's not really true, for instance Singapore isn't really democratic (it's effectively a one-party semi-totalitarian 'democracy') and you know what, it works really well there.
          • tawy12345 7y ago
            Singapore has also really only existed in its current form for a bit more than a half century and has had three leaders, two of which were immediate family. It hasn't really shown that autocracy works over longer time scales - in history there are plenty of cases where benevolent autocratic governments (monarchies, empires, etc) had extended periods of stability and prosperity.
        • majewsky 7y ago
          > democratic states are consistently better than non-democratic ones This statement is so vague that it is not worth debating. What does "better" mean?
      • dahfizz 7y ago
        No, but perhaps we should recognize the common errors of implementation and use that to improve the concept of democracy. It's not that this state or that state is corrupt. It's that democracy is vulnerable to corruption, so we should have systems in place to guard against that.
        • deleted 7y ago
          [deleted]
      • cambalache 7y ago
        You silly man, the only fallible institutions worth to maintain are those which benefit the people in power. All the rest are pie-in-the-sky utopias which should never be even discussed unless you are a commie lover.well, are you?
    • harimau777 7y ago
      I think there are at least an equal number of cases where a company without a union took advantage of their employees.
• noego 7y ago
  > I just wish there was room in today's political environment to discuss pros and cons to unions and non-unions I agree with this from both perspectives. Companies and business-owners should also be allowed to espouse anti-union arguments without automatically being tagged as "evil" or subjected to extra scrutiny. That said, you're certainly not going to find a nuanced debate in a ... training video. The purpose of this video is literally for the company to train their employees, not to serve as a forum for debating the pros and cons of unions.
  • jart 7y ago
    Amazon never espoused anti-union views, so how could anyone accuse them of being evil? It is however Amazon's firmly held belief that a union-free environment will maximize benefits for its shareholders, customers, and associates (in that order).
  • pessimizer 7y ago
    The major problem with this is that the employees are captive for a company's anti-union arguments; they're integrated with the job. As long as the union gets to speak to the employees on company time and gets to add pro-union arguments to the training videos, I see no problem with the boss doing so as well.
• mc32 7y ago
  Definitely. Unions brought progress in terms of worker rights, up to a point. They helped transform the landscape for all workers. But, like all big and complex organizations they become corrupted and rather than having the interest of workers and society as foremost goals, self perpetuation and preservation become the goals. Except for Bernie no other candidate explicitly and implicitly supports unions. All the others support policies which would undermine unions, except for where it’s politically expedient. But this is natural. Even in the proletarian era of Mao, unions/workers suffered descent too. Often a most favored group would be pitted against another when necessary, for example the Hong Wei Bings [紅衛兵]
  • 29athrowaway 7y ago
    > But, like all big and complex organizations they become corrupted and rather than having the interest of workers and society as foremost goals, self perpetuation and preservation become the goals. The same can be said of corporations too.
    • CamperBob2 7y ago
      The corporations produce useful stuff, though.
      • pasquinelli 7y ago
        Workers produce useful stuff
        • CamperBob2 7y ago
          Correct, workers do. Unions don't. They are fundamentally parasitic, which isn't necessarily a value judgement.
          • hannasanarion 7y ago
            Unions strengthen workers. A company that negotiated 1000 small contracts has the upper hand in each of them, if it is forced to negotiate 1 big contract, then they are on equal footing.
• mmcwilliams 7y ago
  At the same time, there should also be room to discuss the pretty good examples of employers being corrupt and even engaging in wage-fixing collusion against workers across companies within an industry. On this site there’s plenty of anti-worker sentiment and not enough discussion of the misdeeds [0] of the employers. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust...
  • ckris 7y ago
    There are plenty of issues that should be on the table when it comes to technology workers like equity arrangements, severance at high risk companies, systems for promotions, actual vacations, open source funding, health care between employment etc. The reason it won't happen isn't because there isn't cause, or that employees would suddenly sabotage the company, but that any such organization would be a politic force. Especially in a country like the US where there are only two parties as contenders and only 50% of the eligible population votes. It doesn't take that much to change the political landscape, which is why no one can be allowed to. Companies view everything as a cost whether it is infrastructure, health care or rights. They lobby broadly to minimize those costs and to keep their own position. And that is unlikely to change. If there is any argument against unions it is that it is already too late. Unions ultimately work by having a war chest for strikes. The company, or the employer organization, then have their own war chest. Tech companies have so much cash, and the cost of living is so high, that a strike wouldn't even be thinkable for many many years. Making an effective union impossible.
    • mmcwilliams 7y ago
      I’m not sure I’m convinced that going into any discussion that prefaces worker organization as “impossible” is entirely in good faith. All industries view worker-related expenses as costs (they are) so I don’t see the exception in this case. What I do see is that a $350-400M settlement was seen by insiders as being short an order of magnitude, meaning that the 65,000 tech workers affected by this wage-fixing crime left a lot on the table. Class actions lawsuits, it seems, aren’t the correct tool for this kind of negotiation and unions are a viable alternative.
• rayiner 7y ago
  Also different kinds of unions. For example, American style “union shops” are uncommon in Europe, and illegal in some EU countries.
  • vinay_ys 7y ago
    I saw a Youtube video of an American political campaign event where someone from Europe ask a question about unions and pretty much saying that American unions are weak compared to the ones in Europe. Is this true? How are the unions in Europe? Or any other place?
    • maximente 7y ago
      without writing a thesis, here are some thoughts: - US is/was about 100 years behind european labor movement (germany, sweden, etc. started mid 19th century; US not until 1935 Wagner Act) - ghent system - in scandanavian countries, unions provide most unemployment benefits, not .gov. you can imagine this leads to large union membership - americans lost manufacturing/blue collar ("union" jobs) en masse as white collar jobs rose, whereas trade skills are still a thing in countries like Germany with their sort of parallel university system for trades - there is probably a relationship between strong social welfare and union membership, though directionality isn't clear - perhaps large % of union membership enables more tolerance towards social welfare, or perhaps social welfare allows people to not worry about retaliation from attempting unionization, or ..
• lucas_membrane 7y ago
  > examples of unions being corrupt This is largely a legacy of the police Red squads funded by the capitalists all over the USA starting in the 1930's. To get the radicals and other effective organizers and voices of the working classes out of the unions, local politicians and the police looked the other way as organized crime gained influence over many unions, thus simultaneously corrupting local governments, law enforcement, and organized labor.
  • Smithalicious 7y ago
    Ah yes, of course unions can't be corrupt! It's all a false flag conspiracy by "the capitalists"!
  • tomcatfish 7y ago
    Do you have some citations for this claim? I would be VERY interested in a reading list of any kind, as I have lived near Chicago, which has an interesting history with both police officers and unions.
    • lucas_membrane 7y ago
      The wikipedia article on Red Squads has many references about this ugly fact. Where I live, in Portland, the Red Squad was founded in reaction to the Depression-Era victory of labor, aided by loyal American leftists, in the West Coast dock strike. It was a part of the police department located in a separate headquarters, funded in part by private contributions, and its existence was not even admitted by the mayor for about 60 years. The Red Squads found organized crime a natural and profitable ally in wealth's struggle to limit workers' power. In the 1950's, the United States Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in Labor and Management found organized crime working closely and routinely with local authorities in Portland and well on its way to taking over the state attorney general's office. This is where Bobby Kennedy's battle against corrupt labor unions began and gave them so much national attention, when organized crime showed that it had learned that it could corrupt Republican politicians as proficiently as it had corrupted Democratic politicians.
• specialist 7y ago
  It comes down to information asymmetry and mitigating free-riders. This seminal 1965 book explains the necessity of unions in game theoretic terms. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Collective_Action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Collective_Action As for particular criticisms of any particular org (unions, corporations, government, whomever), the evergreen all purpose prescription is to increase transparency, responsibility, and accountability. What's going on, how are decisions made, who gets the blame. Everything else is just rhetoric (partisan squabbling).
• Animats 7y ago
  So little is said about unions today. There was a time when newspapers had a "union beat", and you'd read about who was elected head of the UAW local and how the Steelworkers negotiations were going. It's been a long time since WCFL radio, "The Voice of Labor in Chicago". Few people know how unions work any more. They vary as much as companies do. Some are top down, some are bottom up. Some run their own insurance and pension plans. Some are craft oriented, like the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and some cover everyone in a plant, like the United Auto Workers. For the "tech" industry, the Hollywood unions are worth looking at as a model. Most are under the umbrella of IATSE, The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees. The Animation Guild represents most of the animators at the major studios. IATSE has grown over the last decade, which is unusual for unions today. They've picked up many people in Hollywood effects houses. They have not, however, been able to organize the game industry, despite trying. IATSE figured out the "gig economy" long ago. Their contracts cover things like "minimum call time" (if you're called into work for an emergency, that's not only paid time, there's a minimum number of hours, usually 4), and overtime (not just paid, but time and a half and double time during crunches). This is why, as I've pointed out before, film scheduling is an organized discipline but software development scheduling is a joke. There are advantages to working at a company with a partly unionized workforce even if you're not in a unionized job. There's less being jerked around. Management is aware that their authority is not unlimited. Hours also tend to be more reasonable.
  • jrheard 7y ago
    What's a good way to learn more about the history and function and current status of unions? Are there any good books/resources that aren't particularly biased toward one side or the other?
    • Animats 7y ago
      It's harder than I expected. Try: [1], which is a study of how unions have interacted with the gig economy. (Mechanical Turk workers had an organization, Dynamo. Last update on their web site was 4 years ago, though.) Teen Vogue (which has better content than the name would suggest) has a good article.[2] [1] http://rooseveltinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Miller-The-Union-of-the-Future.pdf http://rooseveltinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Mil... [2] https://www.teenvogue.com/story/what-a-labor-union-is-and-how-it-works https://www.teenvogue.com/story/what-a-labor-union-is-and-ho...
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• frogpelt 7y ago
  Likewise. Nuance is gone on almost all topics. It's very frustrating. I honestly believe the Internet, specifically places like Twitter have destroyed civil discussion and consideration of alternate viewpoints. Also, I don't think the video is absurd at all. What advantage would Amazon have by being pro-union or pretending to be pro-union? And what advantage would they have by not addressing it at all?
  • majewsky 7y ago
    Humans have never been particularly good at considering alternate viewpoints. What's changed is that people holding alternate viewpoints (and unwilling to consider yours) are now much more visible to you. (Edit: This was meant to sound hopeful.)