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These are all real problems, especially in a lot of today's older unions that have been completely hollowed out and have become a kind of do-nothing "labor aris

These are all real problems, especially in a lot of today's older unions that have been completely hollowed out and have become a kind of do-nothing "labor aristocracy." They don't function as democratic institutions serving laborers' interests anymore, only their own narrow, elite, institutional needs--often institutional self-preservation at the expense of their members' interests. They're decrepit, corrupt dinosaurs, just like the Right says. But they got that way by losing the fight in the 20th century. Now they're kind of useless vestiges just waiting around to slough off eventually. So the old unions are no model to emulate here. But just noting that and giving up of course leaves the problem of my lack of power in the workplace completely unsolved. > One thing that wont happen: better working conditions. I still want better working conditions though, for me and for everybody. What do you suggest?

umvi 6y ago
> I still want better working conditions though, for me and for everybody. What do you suggest? Well, a re-brand for one. Don't call it a "union". Call it something else if it is something else. If you make a union patterned after traditional ones, why shouldn't it become a corrupt entity 50 years later just like all the current corrupt unions?
- shakezula 6y ago
  I'm very pro-labor/pro-worker, whatever you want to call it, and I'd be all about using a different term than union. It's a loaded term that has all sorts of negative connotation. New decade, new world of tech, new term for collectivized labor. I will admit, the police union problem is a hard counter. It's a solvable problem though, I think. Maybe we should bring "guild" back into fashion.
  - minimuffins 6y ago
    Guild has a connotation of workmanship and craft expertise, industriousness, etc. I do like that. But there is also an existing phenomenon of various things calling themselves guilds (there are various "freelancers'" guilds, e.g.), but they do not function as an economic bargaining institution at all. They're just professional organizations where people exchange contact info for networking purposes. I think there's no getting around the task at hand: rehabilitating the concept of a union of workers with shared interests and goals (even shared fraternity, if I'm gonna be super sentimental). It's capital, it's labor, it's unions. New century, same basic stuff.
- minimuffins 6y ago
  My take on this is the old unions aren't decrepit just because they're unions and they've existed for 100 years. I don't think it's built in to the nature of unions to eventually become decrepit (no more than any other institution anyway). Their problem is not that they're old, it's that they're not powerful enough anymore to be the kind of adversarial force they once were. They're shrinking instead of growing. Their strategy, if they even have any, is built around defensive self-preservation and survival. It's a siege mentality. There's a reason for it, and a history to it. In the first half of the 20th century, upstart unions were on the rise, growing all the time, taking over everything, expanding into new sectors, gaining power. There really was a time when it was reasonable to think eventually just about every job in the country would be union, and that's just how things are. Perfectly normal. (And generally speaking, those young unions were more spontaneous and democratic than their progeny today. They were more "bottom up", less bureaucratic. Also much fightier.) But capital isn't stupid or defenseless and they fought back. The result, for a while, was the Fordist paradigm that ruled the postwar years. The idea was union leaders and management leaders could work together and reach compromises that were acceptable to both sides, and overall productivity and quality of life would be optimized through this kind of give-and-take. We're all Americans, right? We all have the same goals (even if I own the factory and you work in it). Well, that's all gone now. From the 70s on, the formerly powerful unions got totally pulverized. One major weakness they had is their own leadership had, in the compromise period, gotten pretty cozy with management and formed a kind of "labor aristocracy" whose interests were more aligned with management than the rank and file. This is basically the state the old unions are in today. In other words, the developments were contingent on dynamics of 20th century history, not the only thing that could have happened. The problem with 20th century unions is not that they have some innate structural flaw, but that they lost the fight. I don't think we need to re-invent the concept. The boss owns everything you need to do your job, and you have to have a job. You lack power and control over your working conditions. As an individual you can't do anything about it. Banded together with the rest of the workforce, you can. This is a concept everyone can relate to already and I don't see any utility in renaming it for the new generation or something. I used to drive a 30 year old beat up car. One day somebody crashed into it and smashed it up. I tried fixing up everything I possibly could, but eventually I realized the engine was completely shot, the block had been cracked, and the thing just wasn't coming back. I didn't rebrand and go get a hoverboat or something. I just got another car that wasn't wrecked.
julienb_sea 6y ago
Working conditions should be regulated reasonably at a societal level. This already exists in practice via OSHA and minimum wage regulations. Advocate for improved worker conditions via legislature, although be aware of the market counter-reaction of making certain jobs more expensive than they are worth. Industry-wide unions can work, they are widely used in Europe, but they essentially act as barriers to progress and create arbitrary barriers to entry.
- minimuffins 6y ago
  Industry wide unions are the goal, but you don't just flip a switch and change to a society with industry wide unions. We don't have industry wide unions in the United States because, although unions were on the rise in the first part of last century, they eventually got beaten down into their pathetic state after the Fordist compromise broke down. > act as barriers to progress They give workers a say in what counts as "progress." "Progress," to my mind, does not necessarily equal improvements in my quality of life. e.g. I used to not be constantly surveilled. Then some progress happened, and now I am. Am I better off? What if we got to decide what technology to build instead of Google and the Pentagon?
hedora 6y ago
The CWA is a fairly old union, right? They’re hoping to join it.
- minimuffins 6y ago
  Yeah, it's a tradeoff they have to make. A lot of "knowledge worker" unions decide to do this, hoping it's worth it for the institutional support they'll get. Some grad student unions were formed under United Auto Workers in recent years, oddly enough. I'm not an organizer, and I don't really have an informed opinion about whether it's worth it. One hopes that these old unions could be revived with a bunch of new membership. What I described above is how they are now, not how they have to be. Worth noting also that even unions with totally screwed up leadership often have passionate and talented organizers with a lot of experience and institutional know-how at the lower levels, just like tech companies.

umvi 6y ago

> I still want better working conditions though, for me and for everybody. What do you suggest? Well, a re-brand for one. Don't call it a "union". Call it something else if it is something else. If you make a union patterned after traditional ones, why shouldn't it become a corrupt entity 50 years later just like all the current corrupt unions?

shakezula 6y ago
I'm very pro-labor/pro-worker, whatever you want to call it, and I'd be all about using a different term than union. It's a loaded term that has all sorts of negative connotation. New decade, new world of tech, new term for collectivized labor. I will admit, the police union problem is a hard counter. It's a solvable problem though, I think. Maybe we should bring "guild" back into fashion.
- minimuffins 6y ago
  Guild has a connotation of workmanship and craft expertise, industriousness, etc. I do like that. But there is also an existing phenomenon of various things calling themselves guilds (there are various "freelancers'" guilds, e.g.), but they do not function as an economic bargaining institution at all. They're just professional organizations where people exchange contact info for networking purposes. I think there's no getting around the task at hand: rehabilitating the concept of a union of workers with shared interests and goals (even shared fraternity, if I'm gonna be super sentimental). It's capital, it's labor, it's unions. New century, same basic stuff.
minimuffins 6y ago
My take on this is the old unions aren't decrepit just because they're unions and they've existed for 100 years. I don't think it's built in to the nature of unions to eventually become decrepit (no more than any other institution anyway). Their problem is not that they're old, it's that they're not powerful enough anymore to be the kind of adversarial force they once were. They're shrinking instead of growing. Their strategy, if they even have any, is built around defensive self-preservation and survival. It's a siege mentality. There's a reason for it, and a history to it. In the first half of the 20th century, upstart unions were on the rise, growing all the time, taking over everything, expanding into new sectors, gaining power. There really was a time when it was reasonable to think eventually just about every job in the country would be union, and that's just how things are. Perfectly normal. (And generally speaking, those young unions were more spontaneous and democratic than their progeny today. They were more "bottom up", less bureaucratic. Also much fightier.) But capital isn't stupid or defenseless and they fought back. The result, for a while, was the Fordist paradigm that ruled the postwar years. The idea was union leaders and management leaders could work together and reach compromises that were acceptable to both sides, and overall productivity and quality of life would be optimized through this kind of give-and-take. We're all Americans, right? We all have the same goals (even if I own the factory and you work in it). Well, that's all gone now. From the 70s on, the formerly powerful unions got totally pulverized. One major weakness they had is their own leadership had, in the compromise period, gotten pretty cozy with management and formed a kind of "labor aristocracy" whose interests were more aligned with management than the rank and file. This is basically the state the old unions are in today. In other words, the developments were contingent on dynamics of 20th century history, not the only thing that could have happened. The problem with 20th century unions is not that they have some innate structural flaw, but that they lost the fight. I don't think we need to re-invent the concept. The boss owns everything you need to do your job, and you have to have a job. You lack power and control over your working conditions. As an individual you can't do anything about it. Banded together with the rest of the workforce, you can. This is a concept everyone can relate to already and I don't see any utility in renaming it for the new generation or something. I used to drive a 30 year old beat up car. One day somebody crashed into it and smashed it up. I tried fixing up everything I possibly could, but eventually I realized the engine was completely shot, the block had been cracked, and the thing just wasn't coming back. I didn't rebrand and go get a hoverboat or something. I just got another car that wasn't wrecked.

julienb_sea 6y ago

Working conditions should be regulated reasonably at a societal level. This already exists in practice via OSHA and minimum wage regulations. Advocate for improved worker conditions via legislature, although be aware of the market counter-reaction of making certain jobs more expensive than they are worth. Industry-wide unions can work, they are widely used in Europe, but they essentially act as barriers to progress and create arbitrary barriers to entry.

minimuffins 6y ago
Industry wide unions are the goal, but you don't just flip a switch and change to a society with industry wide unions. We don't have industry wide unions in the United States because, although unions were on the rise in the first part of last century, they eventually got beaten down into their pathetic state after the Fordist compromise broke down. > act as barriers to progress They give workers a say in what counts as "progress." "Progress," to my mind, does not necessarily equal improvements in my quality of life. e.g. I used to not be constantly surveilled. Then some progress happened, and now I am. Am I better off? What if we got to decide what technology to build instead of Google and the Pentagon?

hedora 6y ago

The CWA is a fairly old union, right? They’re hoping to join it.

minimuffins 6y ago
Yeah, it's a tradeoff they have to make. A lot of "knowledge worker" unions decide to do this, hoping it's worth it for the institutional support they'll get. Some grad student unions were formed under United Auto Workers in recent years, oddly enough. I'm not an organizer, and I don't really have an informed opinion about whether it's worth it. One hopes that these old unions could be revived with a bunch of new membership. What I described above is how they are now, not how they have to be. Worth noting also that even unions with totally screwed up leadership often have passionate and talented organizers with a lot of experience and institutional know-how at the lower levels, just like tech companies.