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I always wonder about these ham-handed anti-union efforts. I assume they must work to some degree, or they wouldn't do it. But it seems like the sudden escalati

I always wonder about these ham-handed anti-union efforts. I assume they must work to some degree, or they wouldn't do it. But it seems like the sudden escalation of anti-union arguments would only end up working in favor of the union. Because it betrays how against it they are. It confirms that yes, this union will have an effect, and not in management's favor. Like "Clearly we're onto something here if they oppose it this much."

chrisseaton 7y ago
I think their angle is that it’s not in anyone’s favour to unionise.
- rapind 7y ago
  It's hard to pinpoint where it originated but anti-union sentiment existed conversationally my entire life. The view being that union's are big inefficient bureaucracies of lazy people who get nothing done. It parallels the view of government I grew up with. Never really questioned where this view came from though, but my guess would be persistent long term marketing by interested parties. "Nudging" if you will. That's what socialism, union's, and co-ops are up against. A sentiment that's been groomed over a long time, that makes you feel like a Commie or a conspirator if you question it. It's lead me to think that capitalism has become a religion. If you question it you get labeled subconsciously by otherwise reasonable peers.
  - imglorp 7y ago
    You forgot corruption. In the US at least, unions can't seem to stay clean. Now, do the benefits to the workers in a dirty union outweigh the benefits to working for an abusive corporation? I have no idea.
    - guerrilla 7y ago
      I always find this an odd thing to say... as if corporations and states have less corruption...
      - ThrowawayR2 7y ago
        > I always find this an odd thing to say... as if corporations and states have less corruption... If there are two corrupt things, why add a third one to increase the misery?
        guerrilla 7y ago
        Are you asking for the purpose of a labor union and insinuating that all labor unions are corrupt?
        ThrowawayR2 7y ago
        I lived in the Michigan for a couple of decades and observed the behavior of the Teamsters and UAW firsthand so insinuation is not even necessary.
        guerrilla 7y ago
        The Teamesters and UAW [1] are not all unions. It's a big world out there, so don't insinuate things about unions that you don't even know exist. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence
        ThrowawayR2 7y ago
        Nor should you pretend you know whether a future union at HCL is going to be one of the good ones or one of the corrupt ones.
        guerrilla 7y ago
        If you pay closer attention, you'll notice that I made no such claim.
        ericd 7y ago
        If you're an auto worker, how easy is it to get completely get away from UAW?
    - claudeganon 7y ago
      While I’m opposed to corruption in unions, according to the BLS, workers are better off with unions than without them: https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/04/art2full.pdf https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/04/art2full.pdf
      - jkp56 7y ago
        "workers are better off" is a statistical nonsense regardless of what's written in that pdf. This type of arguments can convince only non technical or not very smart people. A proper analysis would split workers into subgroups and give specific numbers for each subgroup. A proper analysis would use words like percentiles, median and distribution. When I see that "something is better on average" I always think that I'm being lied to.
        MiroF 7y ago
        That's just his/her paraphrasing of the complete source - if you actually had read that one you would see that it does give specific numbers for subgroups.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - bjourne 7y ago
    It is interesting that to most "Made in Germany" is a sign of high quality and that most think Germans have the best work ethic in the world despite also having the strongest labor unions.
    - scarejunba 7y ago
      If anyone has read a critical piece of work on what constraints in Germany allowed unions and companies to co-evolve instead of adopt the adversarial position that characterizes the American interactions, please share. There is something categorically different and I'm not sure how that came to be. Edit: I'm rate limited for comments. Thank you, my dude, for the recommendation.
      - anigbrowl 7y ago
        I'm glad you asked! Can't recommend this book enough; it's beautifully written and also short - in matters of philosophy, less is most definitely more. It's a general work on the adversarial legal tradition and while it doesn't touch on German labor unions specifically it does go into some detail about the differences between the (Anglo-)American and continental European approaches. Adversarial Legalism by Robert Kagan. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674012417 https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674012417
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    Live through the 1970s when unions became far too political, there was the oil crisis, out of control inflation (in part from abandonment of Bretton Woods. p.s. this is where moves to the Euro originated) and most economies suffering badly and you start to understand. Strikes and disruption with unions using the tactics of previous decades - when they had fought for and won sorely needed rights, was no longer fit for purpose. They'd achieved the hard part now were fighting battles fewer and fewer outside the union cared for. When your refuse, electricity, heat or bank is disrupted for a lengthy period, while everyone is struggling, sympathy dwindles quickly. Resentment sets in, even for a fair and deserved pay rise, if it triggers yet another strike. What does surprise me somewhat, is the complete lack of resurgence, or even much recovery, in US and UK after being effectively neutered during the Reagan/Thatcher years. Europe seemed to fair better, so they have kept more union presence than the Anglosphere. Yet it's pretty clear we need something sticking up for worker rights once again. Coops are a completely different animal, and I've never encountered or heard of objection or resentment to those across my life. Capitalism, and most especially the modern neoliberal variant are indeed religions, with just as much dogma.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
claudeganon 7y ago
I think it has to be framed against the baseline of pervasive anti-union ideology in the US. When people have been inculcated all their lives with the idea that labor organizing is bad, they’re all just temporarily embarrassed corporate execs, it doesn’t take too much to push them back towards this baseline. Or at least enough to quash the union.
- cgag 7y ago
  What percentage of your life have you been being inculcated with the idea that your political opponents believe themselves to be temporarily embarrassed millionaires?
  - geofft 7y ago
    Opponents? My political opponents are actual, non-embarrassed millionaires and billionaires from families of millionaires and billionaires. My political allies are temporarily embarrassed millionaires, from the folks accepting below-market salaries to work at a potential unicorn to the folks buying literal lotto tickets at the corner store. A few of them are no longer temporarily embarrassed, having joined the right startup, which only goes to demonstrate that the worldview is correct. Things worked out for them without unionizing, clearly things will work out for me too one day.
    - parineum 7y ago
      It sounds like you're counting your opponents as politicians and allies as the people whom you personally associate with politically. If you were referring to only politicians, they're basically all millionaires.
      - geofft 7y ago
        That seems like a decent definition, if oversimplified. What's wrong with it? (And I think you'll find that I disproportionately support the non-millionare politicians.)
shams93 7y ago
Right now workers often put in more "give back" than they get paid I often had to work 20 hours to get paid for 8, forcing workers to do 12 hours a day for free is a great deal even if it mentally and physically breaks them who cares they're just temporary. I didn't work for Google but I assume the culture is the same as those places who forced me to work that hard.
- rhizome 7y ago
  FWIW, in the US, the Department of Labor takes wage theft complaints very seriously in the event that you or anybody else submits a complaint about that kind of working situation.
option 7y ago
the unions tend to have an effect in favor of union’s leadership
- refurb 7y ago
  Yup. Often forming a union just replaces self-serving management with self-serving union leadership. Nothing like those union leaders making $300k per year!
  - Despegar 7y ago
    $300k a year doesn't seem like much to pay for union leadership if it covered a large enough number of workers. It might be expensive on first glance, but it might be more expensive to not negotiate collectively.
    - option 7y ago
      if workers want to self-organize, why don’t they do exactly that and start a rival business?
  - arglebarnacle 7y ago
    Yeah, but unlike management, you can start an opposition caucus in your union, do organizing, win an election, and reform bad union leadership. We just have such low awareness in the US about what unions are and how they work that we take self-serving, collaborationist, timid union leadership as a fact instead of something we can and should urgently struggle to change.
    - option 7y ago
      my parents had to be part of the union (USSR, so no choice). Union leaders decide who goes on vacation, when and where (e.g. paid trips to beautiful Crimea). Also, of course, who is paid what amount. Of course, if you aren’t relative/friend of union leaders you get none of the perks. f@&&k that
rhizome 7y ago
>It confirms that yes, this union will have an effect, and not in management's favor If you're in California right now and watch enough TV to see anti-vaping commercials, you'll relate to the idea that hammering a message into a viewer's head as if with an adze is seen as a useful strategy, regardless (or maybe because) of the quality and integrity of the message itself. This is also of a piece with the generally constant push for employees to identify with the company's interests over their (and their colleagues') own. I think that finding Google's moves here as ridiculous is not something that can be counted on to be common sense. It sure feels like a material if-this-then-that relationship, but a lot of times people (you know...them ;) will only remember the last and/or loudest message they heard about something.
frgtpsswrdlame 7y ago
It's about putting fear into the workers. I recently watched 'American Factory' on Netflix and this is what a union avoidance consultant says to the workers: Good afternoon. I want to thank you so much for coming. I know you didn't have a choice. The union will go out of their way to try to convince you that it's a good thing for you and that it is in your best interest. The contract that you get, if you get one, might include better wages and benefits. That contract might include the same wages and benefits you have today. And that contract finally might include less wages and less benefits. And the threat of a strike is no longer scary to employers, because today if you go on strike, while you can't get fired, the employer has the right to permanently replace you. I'll let that sink in.
einpoklum 7y ago
Intimidation doesn't work by changing someone's rational opinion... it's enough for management to have employees afraid of unionization, even if they think it would probably help them. Their mind will come round to rationalizing the action-out-of-fear.
anigbrowl 7y ago
Well, it's like looking at marketing/advertising and thinking ' nobody could fall for that, and certainly not me', but if it wasn't so effective firms wouldn't keep paying for it.
brightball 7y ago
They are always in response to ham handed pro union efforts. I live in SC and the volume of pro union propaganda that gets put out every time there’s an upcoming vote for Boeing is mind blowing. It’s not something you see often around here so when it suddenly appears it’s very out of place and noticeable. It’s a vote. People are going to campaign for their interests.
darawk 7y ago
> It confirms that yes, this union will have an effect, and not in management's favor. Like "Clearly we're onto something here if they oppose it this much." I think it's important to note here that "bad for management" doesn't necessarily mean "good for employees". It is possible that unions are bad for both, by gumming up the negotiating process, and insulating low performing employees at the expense of high performing employees. It may or may not be the case that this is what happens, but it does not follow from the fact that management opposes it, therefore it is good for employees.
- moocowtruck 7y ago
  well, USPS has an IT union and I can tell you first hand it is no good for employees, the things you mentioned happening absolutely happen and the place is just a disaster
  - tyri_kai_psomi 7y ago
    We have a contract with the USPS IT department and let me tell you, it is absolutely awesome for their employees. They do about half the work we do in twice the amount of time, get paid more, have more holidays (2 weeks + every single federal holiday) and have pensions. Every worker there clocks in at 9, and clocks out at exactly 5, not a single minute past. If you want a meeting or them to get you something, it needs to be scheduled before 4 otherwise there's a good chance people have already started leaving the office for the day. Sometimes I wonder where did I go wrong?
    - mszcz 7y ago
      I don't know if I'd like to work in a place like that. Wouldn't you get lazy after a couple of years? Doesn't this create incentives to deliberately work more slowly? After a couple of more years like that wouldn't you get used to not doing much and then get slaughtered when inevitable change came around? My friend referred to this kind of situation as "being in an ass" ;) Yeah, from time to time there's a smell but it's always warm, comfy and soft ;P
kortilla 7y ago
“Bad for the company” doesn’t mean “good for employees”. If the employees were planning on burning the office down, management would pretty obviously voice dissent but that doesn’t mean the employees are “onto something”.
tokai 7y ago
Unions have been have been suppressed for over 150 years. At least they have stopped killing unionist.
- CryptoPunk 7y ago
  Over the course of the early 20th century, unions got laws passed that violate the rights of employers, in order to give themselves enormous leverage over every capital-intensive work site where a large number of workers concentrate, and they attained a complete stranglehold over all major industries by the 1950s, and all the while, they've had the public at large convinced that they're the underdog.
  - ShadowKitten 7y ago
    >unions got laws passed that violate the rights of employers lol this is precious
    - CryptoPunk 7y ago
      I think you should do a little research to get a basic familiarity with what labor laws relating to union action prohibit. You'll find that they blatantly violate the contracting rights of employers. Snickering at me while being unaware of such a basic fact is deplorable.
      - joshuamorton 7y ago
        What is a "contracting right"? A quick search doesn't bring it up as legal terminology, so I'm thinking it's somewhere between generic libertarian and freeman-of-the-land level nonsense, but I welcome a less ridiculous explanation. If you aren't far libertarian, the government exists specifically to limit what people can contract to do. Unless you consider a government to be nothing more than a contract-enforcement entity (and even then, it is in some sense implied by there being contracts that the government would refuse to enforce). Further, describing a constitutional law as a violation of rights is in a sense a reverse tautology. It is by definition not a violation of anyone's rights, unless you believe that the US legal system is in some sense unjust, in which case I'm very, very curious to know in what way US law is unfair to employers.
jldugger 7y ago
> I assume they must work to some degree, or they wouldn't do it. I wouldn't be so sure. Unionization is usually rare in the US, and combatting it therefore won't have much evidence to go on. So you end up with crazy people making shit up and seeing what sticks. Like the guy working for Oregon's negotiation team who created fake aliases 'Aanus McFadden' and 'Roy Vragina' to post anti-union messages on social media: https://www.wweek.com/news/2019/08/06/oregon-health-and-science-university-employee-trolls-union-under-fake-names/ https://www.wweek.com/news/2019/08/06/oregon-health-and-scie...
tomohawk 7y ago
I always wonder about ham handed union activities. Cases like this are just sickening: https://www.illinoispolicy.org/news/seiu-fights-to-force-home-caregivers-to-pay-union-dues/ https://www.illinoispolicy.org/news/seiu-fights-to-force-hom... Several of my family members have been in unions, and all I can say is no thanks. I cannot imagine working in such an adversarial us vs them environment, where its all about assigning blame and working to rule. I cannot imagine being told I'm not allowed to work when I want to, just because the union boss wants to make a point.
markdown 7y ago
Agreed. Also, if you haven't, watch the documentary American Factory on Netflix.
onion2k 7y ago
I assume they must work to some degree, or they wouldn't do it. The people doing it must believe it works. That's not the same as it actually working. People do things that don't work believing that they do all the time.
jzb 7y ago
You'd think that... but apparently not. Worked at a factory many years ago (early 90s) where we supplied a union shop with parts. UAW was trying to unionize our plant, and management flipped its shit and went on the warpath. Prior to that I was really not pro-union, despite my father having been a UAW member and drilling into my head the times when the union kept the company from dicking people around. They showed their true colors loud and clear, but people still voted against the union. Despite all evidence to the contrary, they had people convinced that they were each and every one high performing employees who'd be held back by things like standard pay scales and agreements on overtime, etc. Sadly by that time I wasn't at the shop to vote anymore, because I was fired for speaking up against random drug testing. (Technically, I was fired for a "willful work stoppage" after coming back from lunch fifteen minutes late despite company policy saying you had 3 strikes in, IIRC, 90 days for being late to or back to work. It just happened to coincide with making noise about the brand new random drug policy introduced right around the time the UAW started trying to organize the shop.) I get that the UAW and other unions have their problems, but I wish people would work more on fixing those problems than giving up on the idea of unions. The older I get, and the more corporate bullshit I see, the more I believe we need more organized labor and not less.

chrisseaton 7y ago

I think their angle is that it’s not in anyone’s favour to unionise.

rapind 7y ago
It's hard to pinpoint where it originated but anti-union sentiment existed conversationally my entire life. The view being that union's are big inefficient bureaucracies of lazy people who get nothing done. It parallels the view of government I grew up with. Never really questioned where this view came from though, but my guess would be persistent long term marketing by interested parties. "Nudging" if you will. That's what socialism, union's, and co-ops are up against. A sentiment that's been groomed over a long time, that makes you feel like a Commie or a conspirator if you question it. It's lead me to think that capitalism has become a religion. If you question it you get labeled subconsciously by otherwise reasonable peers.
- imglorp 7y ago
  You forgot corruption. In the US at least, unions can't seem to stay clean. Now, do the benefits to the workers in a dirty union outweigh the benefits to working for an abusive corporation? I have no idea.
  - guerrilla 7y ago
    I always find this an odd thing to say... as if corporations and states have less corruption...
    - ThrowawayR2 7y ago
      > I always find this an odd thing to say... as if corporations and states have less corruption... If there are two corrupt things, why add a third one to increase the misery?
      - guerrilla 7y ago
        Are you asking for the purpose of a labor union and insinuating that all labor unions are corrupt?
        ThrowawayR2 7y ago
        I lived in the Michigan for a couple of decades and observed the behavior of the Teamsters and UAW firsthand so insinuation is not even necessary.
        guerrilla 7y ago
        The Teamesters and UAW [1] are not all unions. It's a big world out there, so don't insinuate things about unions that you don't even know exist. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence
        ThrowawayR2 7y ago
        Nor should you pretend you know whether a future union at HCL is going to be one of the good ones or one of the corrupt ones.
        guerrilla 7y ago
        If you pay closer attention, you'll notice that I made no such claim.
        ericd 7y ago
        If you're an auto worker, how easy is it to get completely get away from UAW?
  - claudeganon 7y ago
    While I’m opposed to corruption in unions, according to the BLS, workers are better off with unions than without them: https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/04/art2full.pdf https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/04/art2full.pdf
    - jkp56 7y ago
      "workers are better off" is a statistical nonsense regardless of what's written in that pdf. This type of arguments can convince only non technical or not very smart people. A proper analysis would split workers into subgroups and give specific numbers for each subgroup. A proper analysis would use words like percentiles, median and distribution. When I see that "something is better on average" I always think that I'm being lied to.
      - MiroF 7y ago
        That's just his/her paraphrasing of the complete source - if you actually had read that one you would see that it does give specific numbers for subgroups.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- bjourne 7y ago
  It is interesting that to most "Made in Germany" is a sign of high quality and that most think Germans have the best work ethic in the world despite also having the strongest labor unions.
  - scarejunba 7y ago
    If anyone has read a critical piece of work on what constraints in Germany allowed unions and companies to co-evolve instead of adopt the adversarial position that characterizes the American interactions, please share. There is something categorically different and I'm not sure how that came to be. Edit: I'm rate limited for comments. Thank you, my dude, for the recommendation.
    - anigbrowl 7y ago
      I'm glad you asked! Can't recommend this book enough; it's beautifully written and also short - in matters of philosophy, less is most definitely more. It's a general work on the adversarial legal tradition and while it doesn't touch on German labor unions specifically it does go into some detail about the differences between the (Anglo-)American and continental European approaches. Adversarial Legalism by Robert Kagan. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674012417 https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674012417
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  Live through the 1970s when unions became far too political, there was the oil crisis, out of control inflation (in part from abandonment of Bretton Woods. p.s. this is where moves to the Euro originated) and most economies suffering badly and you start to understand. Strikes and disruption with unions using the tactics of previous decades - when they had fought for and won sorely needed rights, was no longer fit for purpose. They'd achieved the hard part now were fighting battles fewer and fewer outside the union cared for. When your refuse, electricity, heat or bank is disrupted for a lengthy period, while everyone is struggling, sympathy dwindles quickly. Resentment sets in, even for a fair and deserved pay rise, if it triggers yet another strike. What does surprise me somewhat, is the complete lack of resurgence, or even much recovery, in US and UK after being effectively neutered during the Reagan/Thatcher years. Europe seemed to fair better, so they have kept more union presence than the Anglosphere. Yet it's pretty clear we need something sticking up for worker rights once again. Coops are a completely different animal, and I've never encountered or heard of objection or resentment to those across my life. Capitalism, and most especially the modern neoliberal variant are indeed religions, with just as much dogma.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

claudeganon 7y ago

I think it has to be framed against the baseline of pervasive anti-union ideology in the US. When people have been inculcated all their lives with the idea that labor organizing is bad, they’re all just temporarily embarrassed corporate execs, it doesn’t take too much to push them back towards this baseline. Or at least enough to quash the union.

cgag 7y ago
What percentage of your life have you been being inculcated with the idea that your political opponents believe themselves to be temporarily embarrassed millionaires?
- geofft 7y ago
  Opponents? My political opponents are actual, non-embarrassed millionaires and billionaires from families of millionaires and billionaires. My political allies are temporarily embarrassed millionaires, from the folks accepting below-market salaries to work at a potential unicorn to the folks buying literal lotto tickets at the corner store. A few of them are no longer temporarily embarrassed, having joined the right startup, which only goes to demonstrate that the worldview is correct. Things worked out for them without unionizing, clearly things will work out for me too one day.
  - parineum 7y ago
    It sounds like you're counting your opponents as politicians and allies as the people whom you personally associate with politically. If you were referring to only politicians, they're basically all millionaires.
    - geofft 7y ago
      That seems like a decent definition, if oversimplified. What's wrong with it? (And I think you'll find that I disproportionately support the non-millionare politicians.)

shams93 7y ago

Right now workers often put in more "give back" than they get paid I often had to work 20 hours to get paid for 8, forcing workers to do 12 hours a day for free is a great deal even if it mentally and physically breaks them who cares they're just temporary. I didn't work for Google but I assume the culture is the same as those places who forced me to work that hard.

rhizome 7y ago
FWIW, in the US, the Department of Labor takes wage theft complaints very seriously in the event that you or anybody else submits a complaint about that kind of working situation.

option 7y ago

the unions tend to have an effect in favor of union’s leadership

refurb 7y ago
Yup. Often forming a union just replaces self-serving management with self-serving union leadership. Nothing like those union leaders making $300k per year!
- Despegar 7y ago
  $300k a year doesn't seem like much to pay for union leadership if it covered a large enough number of workers. It might be expensive on first glance, but it might be more expensive to not negotiate collectively.
  - option 7y ago
    if workers want to self-organize, why don’t they do exactly that and start a rival business?
- arglebarnacle 7y ago
  Yeah, but unlike management, you can start an opposition caucus in your union, do organizing, win an election, and reform bad union leadership. We just have such low awareness in the US about what unions are and how they work that we take self-serving, collaborationist, timid union leadership as a fact instead of something we can and should urgently struggle to change.
  - option 7y ago
    my parents had to be part of the union (USSR, so no choice). Union leaders decide who goes on vacation, when and where (e.g. paid trips to beautiful Crimea). Also, of course, who is paid what amount. Of course, if you aren’t relative/friend of union leaders you get none of the perks. f@&&k that

rhizome 7y ago

>It confirms that yes, this union will have an effect, and not in management's favor If you're in California right now and watch enough TV to see anti-vaping commercials, you'll relate to the idea that hammering a message into a viewer's head as if with an adze is seen as a useful strategy, regardless (or maybe because) of the quality and integrity of the message itself. This is also of a piece with the generally constant push for employees to identify with the company's interests over their (and their colleagues') own. I think that finding Google's moves here as ridiculous is not something that can be counted on to be common sense. It sure feels like a material if-this-then-that relationship, but a lot of times people (you know...them ;) will only remember the last and/or loudest message they heard about something.

frgtpsswrdlame 7y ago

It's about putting fear into the workers. I recently watched 'American Factory' on Netflix and this is what a union avoidance consultant says to the workers: Good afternoon. I want to thank you so much for coming. I know you didn't have a choice. The union will go out of their way to try to convince you that it's a good thing for you and that it is in your best interest. The contract that you get, if you get one, might include better wages and benefits. That contract might include the same wages and benefits you have today. And that contract finally might include less wages and less benefits. And the threat of a strike is no longer scary to employers, because today if you go on strike, while you can't get fired, the employer has the right to permanently replace you. I'll let that sink in.

einpoklum 7y ago

Intimidation doesn't work by changing someone's rational opinion... it's enough for management to have employees afraid of unionization, even if they think it would probably help them. Their mind will come round to rationalizing the action-out-of-fear.

anigbrowl 7y ago

Well, it's like looking at marketing/advertising and thinking ' nobody could fall for that, and certainly not me', but if it wasn't so effective firms wouldn't keep paying for it.

brightball 7y ago

They are always in response to ham handed pro union efforts. I live in SC and the volume of pro union propaganda that gets put out every time there’s an upcoming vote for Boeing is mind blowing. It’s not something you see often around here so when it suddenly appears it’s very out of place and noticeable. It’s a vote. People are going to campaign for their interests.

darawk 7y ago

> It confirms that yes, this union will have an effect, and not in management's favor. Like "Clearly we're onto something here if they oppose it this much." I think it's important to note here that "bad for management" doesn't necessarily mean "good for employees". It is possible that unions are bad for both, by gumming up the negotiating process, and insulating low performing employees at the expense of high performing employees. It may or may not be the case that this is what happens, but it does not follow from the fact that management opposes it, therefore it is good for employees.

moocowtruck 7y ago
well, USPS has an IT union and I can tell you first hand it is no good for employees, the things you mentioned happening absolutely happen and the place is just a disaster
- tyri_kai_psomi 7y ago
  We have a contract with the USPS IT department and let me tell you, it is absolutely awesome for their employees. They do about half the work we do in twice the amount of time, get paid more, have more holidays (2 weeks + every single federal holiday) and have pensions. Every worker there clocks in at 9, and clocks out at exactly 5, not a single minute past. If you want a meeting or them to get you something, it needs to be scheduled before 4 otherwise there's a good chance people have already started leaving the office for the day. Sometimes I wonder where did I go wrong?
  - mszcz 7y ago
    I don't know if I'd like to work in a place like that. Wouldn't you get lazy after a couple of years? Doesn't this create incentives to deliberately work more slowly? After a couple of more years like that wouldn't you get used to not doing much and then get slaughtered when inevitable change came around? My friend referred to this kind of situation as "being in an ass" ;) Yeah, from time to time there's a smell but it's always warm, comfy and soft ;P

kortilla 7y ago

“Bad for the company” doesn’t mean “good for employees”. If the employees were planning on burning the office down, management would pretty obviously voice dissent but that doesn’t mean the employees are “onto something”.

tokai 7y ago

Unions have been have been suppressed for over 150 years. At least they have stopped killing unionist.

CryptoPunk 7y ago
Over the course of the early 20th century, unions got laws passed that violate the rights of employers, in order to give themselves enormous leverage over every capital-intensive work site where a large number of workers concentrate, and they attained a complete stranglehold over all major industries by the 1950s, and all the while, they've had the public at large convinced that they're the underdog.
- ShadowKitten 7y ago
  >unions got laws passed that violate the rights of employers lol this is precious
  - CryptoPunk 7y ago
    I think you should do a little research to get a basic familiarity with what labor laws relating to union action prohibit. You'll find that they blatantly violate the contracting rights of employers. Snickering at me while being unaware of such a basic fact is deplorable.
    - joshuamorton 7y ago
      What is a "contracting right"? A quick search doesn't bring it up as legal terminology, so I'm thinking it's somewhere between generic libertarian and freeman-of-the-land level nonsense, but I welcome a less ridiculous explanation. If you aren't far libertarian, the government exists specifically to limit what people can contract to do. Unless you consider a government to be nothing more than a contract-enforcement entity (and even then, it is in some sense implied by there being contracts that the government would refuse to enforce). Further, describing a constitutional law as a violation of rights is in a sense a reverse tautology. It is by definition not a violation of anyone's rights, unless you believe that the US legal system is in some sense unjust, in which case I'm very, very curious to know in what way US law is unfair to employers.

jldugger 7y ago

> I assume they must work to some degree, or they wouldn't do it. I wouldn't be so sure. Unionization is usually rare in the US, and combatting it therefore won't have much evidence to go on. So you end up with crazy people making shit up and seeing what sticks. Like the guy working for Oregon's negotiation team who created fake aliases 'Aanus McFadden' and 'Roy Vragina' to post anti-union messages on social media: https://www.wweek.com/news/2019/08/06/oregon-health-and-science-university-employee-trolls-union-under-fake-names/ https://www.wweek.com/news/2019/08/06/oregon-health-and-scie...

tomohawk 7y ago

I always wonder about ham handed union activities. Cases like this are just sickening: https://www.illinoispolicy.org/news/seiu-fights-to-force-home-caregivers-to-pay-union-dues/ https://www.illinoispolicy.org/news/seiu-fights-to-force-hom... Several of my family members have been in unions, and all I can say is no thanks. I cannot imagine working in such an adversarial us vs them environment, where its all about assigning blame and working to rule. I cannot imagine being told I'm not allowed to work when I want to, just because the union boss wants to make a point.

markdown 7y ago

Agreed. Also, if you haven't, watch the documentary American Factory on Netflix.

onion2k 7y ago

I assume they must work to some degree, or they wouldn't do it. The people doing it must believe it works. That's not the same as it actually working. People do things that don't work believing that they do all the time.

jzb 7y ago

You'd think that... but apparently not. Worked at a factory many years ago (early 90s) where we supplied a union shop with parts. UAW was trying to unionize our plant, and management flipped its shit and went on the warpath. Prior to that I was really not pro-union, despite my father having been a UAW member and drilling into my head the times when the union kept the company from dicking people around. They showed their true colors loud and clear, but people still voted against the union. Despite all evidence to the contrary, they had people convinced that they were each and every one high performing employees who'd be held back by things like standard pay scales and agreements on overtime, etc. Sadly by that time I wasn't at the shop to vote anymore, because I was fired for speaking up against random drug testing. (Technically, I was fired for a "willful work stoppage" after coming back from lunch fifteen minutes late despite company policy saying you had 3 strikes in, IIRC, 90 days for being late to or back to work. It just happened to coincide with making noise about the brand new random drug policy introduced right around the time the UAW started trying to organize the shop.) I get that the UAW and other unions have their problems, but I wish people would work more on fixing those problems than giving up on the idea of unions. The older I get, and the more corporate bullshit I see, the more I believe we need more organized labor and not less.