9 ms·
The horrors of... a 35 hour workweek, 5 weeks paid vacation, 16 weeks paid maternity leave, universal healthcare, and no at-will employment?
by door100 6y ago
The horrors of... a 35 hour workweek, 5 weeks paid vacation, 16 weeks paid maternity leave, universal healthcare, and no at-will employment?
- ryandrake 6y agoYou forget, with a union, the world's richest man might get richer every day at a slightly slower rate than he currently gets richer. That's the real horror!
- youeseh 6y agoWhat riches, exactly? Why the hate?
- AlexandrB 6y agoI'm not sure why people hate unions exactly. Seems weird to have "freedom of assembly" but then hate those that practice it for better negotiating leverage.
- renewiltord 6y agoEh? I hate lots of people who I nonetheless want to have freedom of assembly. Like anti-vaxxers. I want them to be able to say antivax shit but I hate them. What exactly is weird about this?
- ipaddr 6y agoWanting to take away another groups freedom is not unheard of but it is anti-social. Actually hating them probably means you have a lot of misplaced anger.
- youeseh 6y agoThis isn't about "freedom of assembly". I'm extremely pro freedom of assembly. "Unions = always good" is just as harmful as "Unions = always bad" as "Rich man evil" or "Rich man good".
- missedthecue 6y agoWhy does it have to be zero sum?
- ResearchCode 6y agoYour power in society is zero sum. Giving it all away to an oligarch in exchange for promises of cheap consumer goods is not an credible bargain.
- Tialco 6y agoUnfortunately all you crazies are obsessed with power. Focus on wealth, that's far more important and impactful on people's lives. The world has gotten far wealthier over the last 100 years.
- missedthecue 6y agoAt what level does wealth go from "normal wealth" to "oligarch wealth"? Like, where is that line? Also, on what planet could Bezos be described as an oligarch? Not this one. Everyone on the left and the right hates him for various reasons. The previous president hated him. This president just told his workers to unionize. Senators are constantly portraying him as Satan incarnate. He has no political power in Washington. They hate him.
- kepler1 6y agoAh, classic selection bias blinders on. Sure, great benefits for those who have jobs. What about for the people who can't get employed due to the conditions on labor? The young, poor, already jobless? Not so much concern for them, you got yours.
- kergonath 6y agoI am not sure the American underclass (a large part of Trump’s support base) is faring much better. Even with larger unemployment, inequalities are still not as bad as in the US. Several countries have similar problems, whether it takes the form of 10% unemployment or working-class poor.
- neaden 6y agoI'm not sure how COVID has effected it, but for the past years France has had a higher prime age labor force participation rate then the US, so it doesn't seem to be causing that issue.
- DeonPenny 6y agoThis part. People point to things like wealth inequality but not point to median incomes or employment rates, or marriage rates or birth rates. its extreme selection bias. If france was a country its median income with be comparable with alabama.
- mattkrause 6y agoThis is not a particularly useful statistic unless you include the varying levels of public services. I just did a similar analysis for a job in the US vs one in Canada. The actual salary in the US was much higher, but including healthcare expenses closed a lot of the gap. In some cases (e.g., chronic illness or young kids), the lower Canadian salary was a better "deal" overall.
- Gibbon1 6y agoFriend of mine moved to France from California. He said raising a kid in is way cheaper and less stressful in France. Me I'm fully aware that I'm paying whats amounts to $900/month protection money in the form of health insurance. Protection money because really the co-payes I have to pay are close cost of actually providing medical goods and services.
- baud147258 6y agoor the deadwood that gets protected because they belong to an union. Or unions being against remote work because that'd reduce employee control. Or union leadership just using their membership to laze around. Or union opposing projects they don't like. Or union harassing (including physically) managers. And to say nothing of railway union who apparently have a Mission to gridlock the country every few years (usually around the time someone in the government check the deficits of the railways)
- mempko 6y agoGreat way to talk about your fellow colleagues as dead wood. I would love working with you.
- tchanglington 6y agoWorking together isn’t fun when we’re all out of a job because the factory moved to another country
- mempko 6y agoDon't blame your co-workers. Blame those that made the decision to move the factory (board of directors)
- twirlock 6y agoWhat a stupid, flailing response.
- ralusek 6y agoI assume they're not just talking about all of their colleagues, but specifically the ones that don't pull their own weight. If you don't pull your own weight, then I would love working with you.
- door100 6y agoEven if all of these were true (I would describe most of them as a mischaracterization at best), do you honestly think that outweighs everything that I described? The worst thing that people can say about unions is they are bureaucratic and inconvenient. The worst things people can say about, say, working conditions in many non-unionized American workplaces are far, far worse. People dying, unfairly losing their job (and healthcare, and home), working incredibly long hours, unable to see their kid, unable to get adequate sleep, etc etc etc. I happen to think there are values other than "workers producing profit for their employers as efficiently as possible at the expense of anything else"
- hemantv 6y agoThere is reason US is very competitive globally vs France just the shell of its former glory
- supercanuck 6y agoYes. Geography
- mav3rick 6y agoReally ? Working more has nothing to do with it ? Or brilliant universities ? Or immigration ?
- ndosnfiwjaijx 6y agoHaving a population multiple times larger than France, massive reserves of important natural resources such as oil, and being safe from two world wars go a long way. USA didn't have any real competing countries near them. Canada and Mexico are jokes.
- supercanuck 6y agoNone of that happens without the geography of the United States. The US is the classic born on 3rd Base.
- watwut 6y agoThe former glory was holding colonies by considerable violence. If unions are the ones who stopped it, good. Through I strongly doubt unions had anything to do with that.
- 0xy 6y agoThe horrors of unions to me are represented perfectly in teachers unions, which repeatedly protect sexual predators and incompetent teachers [1] [2]. They serve their members to the detriment of everyone else, including the children they claim to care about (while enabling predators). In fact, teachers are significantly more likely to be predators than even priests. [3] Thanks to unions who go to bat for them. [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10000872396390443437504577547313612049308 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10000872396390443437504577547... [2] https://www.nj.com/education/2017/12/teachers_accused_of_sexual_misconduct_keep_getting.html https://www.nj.com/education/2017/12/teachers_accused_of_sex... [3] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/has-media-ignored-sex-abuse-in-school/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/has-media-ignored-sex-abuse-in-...