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> Unions are effectively dead right now in 2020 The rampant corruption in American unions contributed to this. Here’s the most recent instance: https://www.g

> Unions are effectively dead right now in 2020 The rampant corruption in American unions contributed to this. Here’s the most recent instance: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/08/27/business/uaw-dennis-williams.amp.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/08/27/busi...

rayiner 6y ago
Embezzlement to use union funds for personal expenses? That’s pretty low grade corruption. This sort of thing happens in private corporations and it rarely gets prosecuted unless it’s huge. We tend to hold Union officials to standards of conduct more similar to public employees and elected officials, rather than their private sector counterparts. I’m not sure that makes much sense.
- refurb 6y ago
  Embezzlement by a union official does more to hurt unions than embezzlement by some random public official hurts public perception of the govt. Union leaders talk about fighting for workers. Pay your dues, they go to fighting for worker rights. We’re here to look out for you. When the people representing you start stealing your money it makes you wonder how much they are looking out for you.
- xyzzyz 6y ago
  I wouldn’t call “ex-president of the union being 15th person charged in conspiracy embezzlement” a low grade corruption: if that’s low grade, what would high grade corruption look like?
  - 9387367 6y ago
    > if that’s low grade, what would high grade corruption look like? Look up and read: * Jennifer Arcuri’s funding application form. * Current Coronavirus government contracts in the UK and US * In the UK you could start with the UK's National Audit Office (NAO) * In the US look up Jared Kushner's coronavirus task force * In Israel, Netanyahu’s series of corruption cases
  - wavefunction 6y ago
    I'd say the PPP loans offered to large corporations for "Covid relief" are high-grade corruption due to the sums involved, the explicit removal of traditional oversight processes and funneling it through the US banking system even though the banks were only responsible for collating paperwork and not providing any sort of risk-assessment or capital for the loans themselves.
    - TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
      Perhaps. There's lots of corruption in the world. Consistent and unrelenting corruption of American Unions contributed significantly to their downfall, whether or not other forms of corruption exist. One of my first jobs was working part-time in a grocery store: collecting shopping carts, "clean up in aisle 7", stocking shelves, etc. I was 16 and forced to pay dues to a union. The dues were deducted from my minimum-wage paycheck. I had NO opt-out option. I worked maybe 10 hours per week? I was a high school student. I got ZERO benefit by paying union dues. This extortion was corruption in itself, nevermind the executive-level corruption that makes headlines every few years.
      - 6510 6y ago
        How much was that? Prices seem to vary wildly around the world.
    - Aunche 6y ago
      The PPP loans were meant to go to those corporations. Congress wanted to incentivize Shake Shack to not lay off their employees. It wasn't their own idea.
      - TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
        How is this relevant to Union corruption? Are you denying there is significant corruption or just offering a red herring (PPP loans) to distract me?
        Aunche 6y ago
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
  This is just one example of hundreds over the decades, painting a consistent thread of corruption. The most famous example is Jimmy Hoffa, whose story has been made into films... including one in 1992 with Jack Nicholson. “ Hoffa became involved with organized crime from the early years of his Teamsters work, a connection that continued until his disappearance in 1975. He was convicted of jury tampering, attempted bribery, conspiracy, and mail and wire fraud in 1964 in two separate trials.” One example of many. > This sort of thing happens in private corporations Private corporations have a mission to make money. Unions have a completely different mission.
  - siliconmountain 6y ago
    Netflix just made a 3 hour movie about this - The Irishman. I had to keep pausing and checking if something was real as I couldn't believe how bad things got
  - pr0zac 6y ago
    Private corporations have a mission of generating wealth for the people that make it up, their stockholders. Unions have the same mission just for their members. Its pretty comparable. Private corporations also have a pretty consistent thread of corruption, a similar example to the one you gave being HSBC laundering money for drug cartels. Again, pretty comparable. This isn't to say corruption in unions hasn't been part of why they've declined, its almost definitely part of it. While a corrupt corporate leader generally creates more money for its stockholders a corrupt union rep often costs the rank-and-file members which can greatly sour their opinions of unions as a whole. But there's nothing inherent to unions with regard to corruption, people in power often take advantage of their position no matter what type of structure they have that power in, and the point that it appears, at least to some people, that unions are held to a different standard than other types of organizations is worthy of being discussed.
  - awakeasleep 6y ago
    The weird twist to this tale is that the teamster's pensions didn't disappear or get cut when they were invested through the mob. However, after that corruption was cleared up and the pensions moved to Goldman and Northern Trust, the funds were destroyed and benefits to retireeswere deeply cut. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-the-teamsters-pension-disappeared-more-quickly-under-wall-street-than-the-mob-2016-04-04?mod=mw_share_facebook https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-the-teamsters-pension-...
partingshots 6y ago
Please don’t use AMP links.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
  Sorry about that. I’ve not found a way to convert those to non-AMP on an iPhone.
  - tchalla 6y ago
    click on the 'i' button on the top of the page, you will get the full URL.
  - dbattaglia 6y ago
    There’s a little up-arrow for sharing on the top right next to the real domain name, clicking that gives a Copy option with the actual URL. Annoying but handy once you find it.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- eganist 6y ago
  non-AMP in the meantime for those who want to avoid AMP without fiddling around on mobile to edit the link: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/27/business/uaw-dennis-williams.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/27/business/uaw-dennis-willi...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Technically 6y ago
There are good unions and bad unions, the idea of a single union culture is ridiculous. Secondly, you appear to have linked to a google search.
pcurve 6y ago
https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2020/09/01/why-san-francisco-is-in-trouble--19000-highly-compensated-city-employees-earned-150000-in-pay--perks/?sh=345433f63769 https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2020/09/01/why... San Fra public employee payroll takes the cake. Average compensations (total headcount) Nurse $293,000 (1471) Firefighter $192,000 (902) Police officer 3 $216,500 (821) Sergeant 3 $265,188 (500) EMT/Paramedic $194,344 (419) "A fire prevention lieutenant made $415,111 – more than double their $184,791 base salary with a whopping $230,320 in overtime" I'm all for competitive pay, but this is clearly out of whack. Recall the Spanish airtraffic controller strike of 2010. On average, they were making $400k/year with some double that, yet had the balls to go on strike. Federal gov't and military stepped in and took over, ending the gravy train. I wonder when the tipping is point is going to come for the U.S.
- Kluny 6y ago
  Is it out of whack? San Francisco has one of the highest costs of living in the country - I'd say the pay is correct in that it allows those middle-class professionals to live comfortably in the city where they work.
  - think814 6y ago
    In my opinion, the well being of taxpayers should take precedence over a relatively small number of gov't workers. Government needs to be paying market salaries to its employees, period. If gov't employees don't like it, they should quit and find another job like everyone else. In NYC it has gotten to the point, thanks to unions and regulations, that digging new subway tunnels is too expensive to consider. There was an article here at HNews a few weeks ago about a study that pointed out people making $75/hr in the tunnels to do more or less nothing. Why do we care about the well being of few thousand workers over millions of taxpayers, many of whom make less than the gov't / union employees? makes no sense.
    - coldcode 6y ago
      Yet this very site thinks paying these wages to Google interns is just fine. I have 4 decades of experience and deliver products that make $100M a year and I don't get paid these salaries because I don't work for a FAANG company, nor live in NY or SF, and am quite happy with what I make because the cost of living is reasonable and I like it here. The median union worker does not make $400,000 a year in any city in the US. Picking extremes and calling it the norm is just picking facts to promote an opinion. Whether you support or dislike unions in general is no reason to argue without useful facts to allow for reasoned discussion. This isn't Reddit.

rayiner 6y ago

Embezzlement to use union funds for personal expenses? That’s pretty low grade corruption. This sort of thing happens in private corporations and it rarely gets prosecuted unless it’s huge. We tend to hold Union officials to standards of conduct more similar to public employees and elected officials, rather than their private sector counterparts. I’m not sure that makes much sense.

refurb 6y ago
Embezzlement by a union official does more to hurt unions than embezzlement by some random public official hurts public perception of the govt. Union leaders talk about fighting for workers. Pay your dues, they go to fighting for worker rights. We’re here to look out for you. When the people representing you start stealing your money it makes you wonder how much they are looking out for you.
xyzzyz 6y ago
I wouldn’t call “ex-president of the union being 15th person charged in conspiracy embezzlement” a low grade corruption: if that’s low grade, what would high grade corruption look like?
- 9387367 6y ago
  > if that’s low grade, what would high grade corruption look like? Look up and read: * Jennifer Arcuri’s funding application form. * Current Coronavirus government contracts in the UK and US * In the UK you could start with the UK's National Audit Office (NAO) * In the US look up Jared Kushner's coronavirus task force * In Israel, Netanyahu’s series of corruption cases
- wavefunction 6y ago
  I'd say the PPP loans offered to large corporations for "Covid relief" are high-grade corruption due to the sums involved, the explicit removal of traditional oversight processes and funneling it through the US banking system even though the banks were only responsible for collating paperwork and not providing any sort of risk-assessment or capital for the loans themselves.
  - TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
    Perhaps. There's lots of corruption in the world. Consistent and unrelenting corruption of American Unions contributed significantly to their downfall, whether or not other forms of corruption exist. One of my first jobs was working part-time in a grocery store: collecting shopping carts, "clean up in aisle 7", stocking shelves, etc. I was 16 and forced to pay dues to a union. The dues were deducted from my minimum-wage paycheck. I had NO opt-out option. I worked maybe 10 hours per week? I was a high school student. I got ZERO benefit by paying union dues. This extortion was corruption in itself, nevermind the executive-level corruption that makes headlines every few years.
    - 6510 6y ago
      How much was that? Prices seem to vary wildly around the world.
  - Aunche 6y ago
    The PPP loans were meant to go to those corporations. Congress wanted to incentivize Shake Shack to not lay off their employees. It wasn't their own idea.
    - TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
      How is this relevant to Union corruption? Are you denying there is significant corruption or just offering a red herring (PPP loans) to distract me?
      - Aunche 6y ago
TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
This is just one example of hundreds over the decades, painting a consistent thread of corruption. The most famous example is Jimmy Hoffa, whose story has been made into films... including one in 1992 with Jack Nicholson. “ Hoffa became involved with organized crime from the early years of his Teamsters work, a connection that continued until his disappearance in 1975. He was convicted of jury tampering, attempted bribery, conspiracy, and mail and wire fraud in 1964 in two separate trials.” One example of many. > This sort of thing happens in private corporations Private corporations have a mission to make money. Unions have a completely different mission.
- siliconmountain 6y ago
  Netflix just made a 3 hour movie about this - The Irishman. I had to keep pausing and checking if something was real as I couldn't believe how bad things got
- pr0zac 6y ago
  Private corporations have a mission of generating wealth for the people that make it up, their stockholders. Unions have the same mission just for their members. Its pretty comparable. Private corporations also have a pretty consistent thread of corruption, a similar example to the one you gave being HSBC laundering money for drug cartels. Again, pretty comparable. This isn't to say corruption in unions hasn't been part of why they've declined, its almost definitely part of it. While a corrupt corporate leader generally creates more money for its stockholders a corrupt union rep often costs the rank-and-file members which can greatly sour their opinions of unions as a whole. But there's nothing inherent to unions with regard to corruption, people in power often take advantage of their position no matter what type of structure they have that power in, and the point that it appears, at least to some people, that unions are held to a different standard than other types of organizations is worthy of being discussed.
- awakeasleep 6y ago
  The weird twist to this tale is that the teamster's pensions didn't disappear or get cut when they were invested through the mob. However, after that corruption was cleared up and the pensions moved to Goldman and Northern Trust, the funds were destroyed and benefits to retireeswere deeply cut. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-the-teamsters-pension-disappeared-more-quickly-under-wall-street-than-the-mob-2016-04-04?mod=mw_share_facebook https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-the-teamsters-pension-...

partingshots 6y ago

Please don’t use AMP links.

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
Sorry about that. I’ve not found a way to convert those to non-AMP on an iPhone.
- tchalla 6y ago
  click on the 'i' button on the top of the page, you will get the full URL.
- dbattaglia 6y ago
  There’s a little up-arrow for sharing on the top right next to the real domain name, clicking that gives a Copy option with the actual URL. Annoying but handy once you find it.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
eganist 6y ago
non-AMP in the meantime for those who want to avoid AMP without fiddling around on mobile to edit the link: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/27/business/uaw-dennis-williams.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/27/business/uaw-dennis-willi...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Technically 6y ago

There are good unions and bad unions, the idea of a single union culture is ridiculous. Secondly, you appear to have linked to a google search.

pcurve 6y ago

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2020/09/01/why-san-francisco-is-in-trouble--19000-highly-compensated-city-employees-earned-150000-in-pay--perks/?sh=345433f63769 https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2020/09/01/why... San Fra public employee payroll takes the cake. Average compensations (total headcount) Nurse $293,000 (1471) Firefighter $192,000 (902) Police officer 3 $216,500 (821) Sergeant 3 $265,188 (500) EMT/Paramedic $194,344 (419) "A fire prevention lieutenant made $415,111 – more than double their $184,791 base salary with a whopping $230,320 in overtime" I'm all for competitive pay, but this is clearly out of whack. Recall the Spanish airtraffic controller strike of 2010. On average, they were making $400k/year with some double that, yet had the balls to go on strike. Federal gov't and military stepped in and took over, ending the gravy train. I wonder when the tipping is point is going to come for the U.S.

Kluny 6y ago
Is it out of whack? San Francisco has one of the highest costs of living in the country - I'd say the pay is correct in that it allows those middle-class professionals to live comfortably in the city where they work.
- think814 6y ago
  In my opinion, the well being of taxpayers should take precedence over a relatively small number of gov't workers. Government needs to be paying market salaries to its employees, period. If gov't employees don't like it, they should quit and find another job like everyone else. In NYC it has gotten to the point, thanks to unions and regulations, that digging new subway tunnels is too expensive to consider. There was an article here at HNews a few weeks ago about a study that pointed out people making $75/hr in the tunnels to do more or less nothing. Why do we care about the well being of few thousand workers over millions of taxpayers, many of whom make less than the gov't / union employees? makes no sense.
  - coldcode 6y ago
    Yet this very site thinks paying these wages to Google interns is just fine. I have 4 decades of experience and deliver products that make $100M a year and I don't get paid these salaries because I don't work for a FAANG company, nor live in NY or SF, and am quite happy with what I make because the cost of living is reasonable and I like it here. The median union worker does not make $400,000 a year in any city in the US. Picking extremes and calling it the norm is just picking facts to promote an opinion. Whether you support or dislike unions in general is no reason to argue without useful facts to allow for reasoned discussion. This isn't Reddit.