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What got you here, may not get you there. I have personally benefited from rights that unions have fought for. I am grateful to them for this. What I see them
by csours 6y ago
What got you here, may not get you there.
I have personally benefited from rights that unions have fought for. I am grateful to them for this. What I see them fight for now is worker retention. The most common fight is for the worst union members, because you have to represent your worst member, otherwise what is a union worth?
The other common union fight is whether the members are going to be screwed by management or by the competition, where the competition may be in a different country or a state with fewer protections on workers' rights.
I think there are still marginal conflicts where the Union can secure benefits for their members, but I'm not sure how much more they can help society overall.
- femiagbabiaka 6y agoUnions are just a framework. If you dig a bit you’ll find there are factions in almost every union fighting for more democracy and benefits for the members, and many of them are winning. Two off the cuff examples are Teamsters for a Democratic Union and CORE from the Chicago Teachers Union. EDIT: it would also be remiss not to add that much of the power of unions has been stripped away by union busting and bad legislation
- RobertKerans 6y agoWorker democracy is the characteristic that's most useful. Regarding that, imo there's a good case to be made even to the conservative side of the aisle in favour of unions, as at its best they can drastically reduce the need for strong top-down regulatory legislation in favour of much more specific, granular agreements between workers and employers made from the bottom up. But the power to be able to do that has been crippled (for good reason in some cases! But not all).