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I think there's a major issue with unions - if I'm paying tax dollars to fund said union, then they're part of the "general good". I don't think public unions

I think there's a major issue with unions - if I'm paying tax dollars to fund said union, then they're part of the "general good". I don't think public unions are acceptable because it's essentially the government (union employees) to extort money from the citizens. In many places, we call that corruption. Private unions I think are alright, I'm not opposed to (as an employer) having to negotiate with my employees. However, protections should be limited, because my shareholders are also entitled to their opinions as owners.

krageon 6y ago
From your stance it looks like you're a US citizen. Many, many people lived through horrific times to give you the privilege of workers' rights. Before that, the environments were terrible for them. Now you propose reversing that because (presumably) you are wealthy and you feel that you're entitled to power. I'm just not sure why you'd say that out loud, is what I guess I'm really curious about. It really speaks very poorly of a historical (or even current time) sense of empathy to look at employees in this way.
- function_seven 6y ago
  The distinction between public sector unions and private unions is important here. I'm very strong on unionization in general, but opposed to public sector reasons. Primarily for a reason you state in your comment: > ...you feel that you're entitled to power. I do. Yes. This is a democracy, and the people are supposed to hold the power to determine how government allocates resources. When a police union decides that the dirty cop will keep his job, against the will of the people they're supposed to protect and serve, I find it objectionable. Collective bargaining in government service substitutes the employees’ power for that of the voters’. In the private sector, they even the playing field when owners (who seek profit) face off against labor (who seek wages). In the public sector, it's a fight between the taxpayer and the earner about how the taxpayer's dollar is spent.
partiallypro 6y ago
I think it's ironic that a lot of people hate on Reagan for this but ignore that FDR was a huge critic of public unions. I personally am for private unions but do not believe public unions should exist. Police unions for instance are one of the single biggest obstacles to police reform, and the same is true of teacher unions and education reform. Public unions and general stake holders in the status quo makes reform incredibly difficult, if not impossible. Unions in Germany and other countries operate very differently than in the US as well, and that is often ignored.
- UnpossibleJim 6y ago
  To be fair, there are more reasons to hate on Reagan than this. Severely restricting mental health care to those who could afford it, and leading to an explosion of homelessness to save the upper 5% of earners a tax break wasn't very popular either. Trickle down economics was/isn't a popular economic policy to all but, again, the top 5% of earners.... Granted, these strategies are wonderful for garnering political donors, but there are plenty of reasons to hate on Reagan's policies (and FDR's really).
moftz 6y ago
You could make the same argument for any sort of negotiation the government engages in with a private citizen or corporation. I really don't see the difference between a worker employed by the government and one employed by a private corporation. Both want to pay the worker as little as possible. Both want to provide as little protections in the workplace as possible.
- lettergram 6y ago
  As an employer, I like as many protections as possible; more protections mean less lawsuits, higher work satisfaction (in many cases) and less knowledge loss. There's a long-term incentive to have protections. Regarding pay, I think competition takes care of that as well. That's why it's fine for a private business, they have a good metric for negation because they need "profit". It's why many auto manufacturers who had unions had to leave the states, but Toyota who was able to negotiate later in the union era is able to out-compete. In contrast, the government has no metric for how much is too much pay for a given job. Further, the government union is essentially going to take more money from the constituents at the point of a gun (government's main purpose is a monopoly on force). I don't think that's appropriate.
specialist 6y ago
By org is silly. Public vs private is semantics. It allows divide & conquer, defeating the whole point. The Correct Answer™ is sectoral collective bargaining. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sectoral_collective_bargaining https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sectoral_collective_bargaining
socialdemocrat 6y ago
Totally disagree. If you have a job, whether public or private, you can be subject to exploitation, bad treatment, shitty salary, unreasonable demands etc. You have as much need of a union as anybody else. Especially since a state is more powerful than any company. You are twisting logic in a crazy way here by suggesting anyone employed in the public sector is the government. The administration of the country and those doing it are very different from somebody being a public sector worker. A public sector worker has no more power over those running a country than you as a person employed in the private sector. I think the most fair system would be if workers got to elect 50% of the board and shareholders the other 50%. That would mean both parties get equal say. It is the money of the shareholders but it is the workplace and life of the employees. It would also encourage cooperation towards the common good of the company.
- lettergram 6y ago
  > You are twisting logic in a crazy way here by suggesting anyone employed in the public sector is the government. The administration of the country and those doing it are very different from somebody being a public sector worker Am I? The teacher, fireman, police, etc are all directly employed at the state, city, county level. Ultimately they are employed at our behest. The issue with collective bargaining is I have no alternative option. Do I trust the administrators we elect to fire bad teacher? Well they can’t because they have a union. The union will also help elect who ever will give them raises - It’s called “open bargaining”. There are alternative approaches as you suggest. One such suggestion would be allowed tax dollars to be applied at any school of your choosing. Thus there’s a repercussion for poor teaching or school management. Police officers would be more accountable if they could be fired for a bad job and not protected by a union, etc
iandanforth 6y ago
This is a deeply unempathetic position. Any group of people being taken advantage of by their employer should use collective bargaining to improve their position. We can and should argue about what just compensation and treatment is, but saying that an entire class of workers can't get together to fight for that just compensation? That is morally bankrupt.
aggronn 6y ago
I think this makes sense, and I might have agreed before I married someone working in a public sector union and saw how awful working in the public sector is compared to private (for many, but not all, professions). My perspective has been challenged over and over again by her experiences and now that point of view is just not compatible with the reality of how things work. So I'm going to make the case for why public unions are _more_ necessary than private union--public unions are needed to make it possible to provide competent, professional public services--, and rather deflect the conversation to a bigger question (with to me, a very clear answer), which is whether there should ever be non-market-driven revenues. There are some very hard-to-believe dynamics that occur in a public sector job. For teachers, air traffic controllers, police, etc, there is no competition in the labor market. If your boss is abusive, if you don't get paid fairly, etc, your only option is to change your career or leave your community. You cannot go to another employer. Management does not have the resources to provide relief when its objectively needed. Government effectively has a monopoly on that job, and if there are other jobs, they usually pay even less because of a compensating wage differential for the workplace being more tolerable (private schools, for example) There is also no profit motive. Good, effective leadership does not have a natural system for "floating to the top" like you find in for-profit settings. It doesn't happen just by chance, but as bad as leadership is in large corporate environments, its even worse and even less accountable in the public sector. Nevermind that good leadership is expensive--the best leaders do not go into public service, unfortunately, because it pays a lot better in the private sector. No profit motive also means that there isn't a single metric that aligns workers and management. Amazon may be abusing workers, but at least they can respond to clear issues by giving raises or bonuses. At least when a business succeeds, someone is getting paid and its about who should get that money. School teachers and police officers don't get more revenue if they succeed. Administrators and management don't get more money when they succeed, or when their workers succeed. Success does not feed success, in a financial sense (with exceptions, of course). If they fail, there is not a natural incentive structure that reflects that. Ultimately, revenue and accountability for public sector work is driven by voters, many of whom don't feel like they benefit from the service directly (whether they do or not is a separate conversation). Voters want to minimize costs and maximize services, but there is not a market mechanism that defines the equilibrium there. Voters (like you) don't know what it takes to deliver the quality of service demanded, and the systems don't naturally align themselves in a way that efficiently executes on those demands anyways. Public services will always be less efficient than you would expect--but many times they're the only way to provide the service in the first place. So you have poor leadership. You have totally decoupled funding from performance, and therefore compensation from funding from performance. Since there isn't a profit motive, aligning individual workers with the mission is a challenge. You have cost-sensitive, captive, and hostile benefactors and service users who have a dual demands: high quality of service, and lowest possible cost. This is the perfect environment for abusive leaders to make unreasonable asks to people who provide services at a rate well below its social value, using resources that don't reflect the real cost to provide the adequate, competent services desired. Unions are the only mechanism that exists for these people to protect themselves from that. Not only does the market have no power, it doesn't even exist. --- So yes, public unions serve the interests of workers, and "extort[ing] money from the citizens". Public unions cause some very obviously challenging circumstances--but the alternative is that public service workers are being asked to work in offend difficult, degrading circumstances where they are resourced in a way that sets them up to fail, asks them to make professional commitments to an employer who serves whims of public opinion rather than direct stakeholds are invested the complexities of their job, and which ultimately leads to a cycle of cynicism and further removal of resources. Nevermind that the nature of their work is inherently highly regulated and high-stakes. How do you run a public institution successfully in the long run with these core dynamics? This is an inherently messy world, and there is not a singular, cathartic solution for providing low cost, high quality, individualized, egalitarian public services. There needs to be some mechanism for finding a balance. The market is not an option. Privatizing all large scale government services doesn't change many of these dynamics, unless you remove any requirement for equal access or standards for quality of services provided. Public unions are the best on a field of bad options.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

krageon 6y ago

From your stance it looks like you're a US citizen. Many, many people lived through horrific times to give you the privilege of workers' rights. Before that, the environments were terrible for them. Now you propose reversing that because (presumably) you are wealthy and you feel that you're entitled to power. I'm just not sure why you'd say that out loud, is what I guess I'm really curious about. It really speaks very poorly of a historical (or even current time) sense of empathy to look at employees in this way.

function_seven 6y ago
The distinction between public sector unions and private unions is important here. I'm very strong on unionization in general, but opposed to public sector reasons. Primarily for a reason you state in your comment: > ...you feel that you're entitled to power. I do. Yes. This is a democracy, and the people are supposed to hold the power to determine how government allocates resources. When a police union decides that the dirty cop will keep his job, against the will of the people they're supposed to protect and serve, I find it objectionable. Collective bargaining in government service substitutes the employees’ power for that of the voters’. In the private sector, they even the playing field when owners (who seek profit) face off against labor (who seek wages). In the public sector, it's a fight between the taxpayer and the earner about how the taxpayer's dollar is spent.

partiallypro 6y ago

I think it's ironic that a lot of people hate on Reagan for this but ignore that FDR was a huge critic of public unions. I personally am for private unions but do not believe public unions should exist. Police unions for instance are one of the single biggest obstacles to police reform, and the same is true of teacher unions and education reform. Public unions and general stake holders in the status quo makes reform incredibly difficult, if not impossible. Unions in Germany and other countries operate very differently than in the US as well, and that is often ignored.

UnpossibleJim 6y ago
To be fair, there are more reasons to hate on Reagan than this. Severely restricting mental health care to those who could afford it, and leading to an explosion of homelessness to save the upper 5% of earners a tax break wasn't very popular either. Trickle down economics was/isn't a popular economic policy to all but, again, the top 5% of earners.... Granted, these strategies are wonderful for garnering political donors, but there are plenty of reasons to hate on Reagan's policies (and FDR's really).

moftz 6y ago

You could make the same argument for any sort of negotiation the government engages in with a private citizen or corporation. I really don't see the difference between a worker employed by the government and one employed by a private corporation. Both want to pay the worker as little as possible. Both want to provide as little protections in the workplace as possible.

lettergram 6y ago
As an employer, I like as many protections as possible; more protections mean less lawsuits, higher work satisfaction (in many cases) and less knowledge loss. There's a long-term incentive to have protections. Regarding pay, I think competition takes care of that as well. That's why it's fine for a private business, they have a good metric for negation because they need "profit". It's why many auto manufacturers who had unions had to leave the states, but Toyota who was able to negotiate later in the union era is able to out-compete. In contrast, the government has no metric for how much is too much pay for a given job. Further, the government union is essentially going to take more money from the constituents at the point of a gun (government's main purpose is a monopoly on force). I don't think that's appropriate.

specialist 6y ago

By org is silly. Public vs private is semantics. It allows divide & conquer, defeating the whole point. The Correct Answer™ is sectoral collective bargaining. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sectoral_collective_bargaining https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sectoral_collective_bargaining

socialdemocrat 6y ago

Totally disagree. If you have a job, whether public or private, you can be subject to exploitation, bad treatment, shitty salary, unreasonable demands etc. You have as much need of a union as anybody else. Especially since a state is more powerful than any company. You are twisting logic in a crazy way here by suggesting anyone employed in the public sector is the government. The administration of the country and those doing it are very different from somebody being a public sector worker. A public sector worker has no more power over those running a country than you as a person employed in the private sector. I think the most fair system would be if workers got to elect 50% of the board and shareholders the other 50%. That would mean both parties get equal say. It is the money of the shareholders but it is the workplace and life of the employees. It would also encourage cooperation towards the common good of the company.

lettergram 6y ago
> You are twisting logic in a crazy way here by suggesting anyone employed in the public sector is the government. The administration of the country and those doing it are very different from somebody being a public sector worker Am I? The teacher, fireman, police, etc are all directly employed at the state, city, county level. Ultimately they are employed at our behest. The issue with collective bargaining is I have no alternative option. Do I trust the administrators we elect to fire bad teacher? Well they can’t because they have a union. The union will also help elect who ever will give them raises - It’s called “open bargaining”. There are alternative approaches as you suggest. One such suggestion would be allowed tax dollars to be applied at any school of your choosing. Thus there’s a repercussion for poor teaching or school management. Police officers would be more accountable if they could be fired for a bad job and not protected by a union, etc

iandanforth 6y ago

This is a deeply unempathetic position. Any group of people being taken advantage of by their employer should use collective bargaining to improve their position. We can and should argue about what just compensation and treatment is, but saying that an entire class of workers can't get together to fight for that just compensation? That is morally bankrupt.

aggronn 6y ago

I think this makes sense, and I might have agreed before I married someone working in a public sector union and saw how awful working in the public sector is compared to private (for many, but not all, professions). My perspective has been challenged over and over again by her experiences and now that point of view is just not compatible with the reality of how things work. So I'm going to make the case for why public unions are _more_ necessary than private union--public unions are needed to make it possible to provide competent, professional public services--, and rather deflect the conversation to a bigger question (with to me, a very clear answer), which is whether there should ever be non-market-driven revenues. There are some very hard-to-believe dynamics that occur in a public sector job. For teachers, air traffic controllers, police, etc, there is no competition in the labor market. If your boss is abusive, if you don't get paid fairly, etc, your only option is to change your career or leave your community. You cannot go to another employer. Management does not have the resources to provide relief when its objectively needed. Government effectively has a monopoly on that job, and if there are other jobs, they usually pay even less because of a compensating wage differential for the workplace being more tolerable (private schools, for example) There is also no profit motive. Good, effective leadership does not have a natural system for "floating to the top" like you find in for-profit settings. It doesn't happen just by chance, but as bad as leadership is in large corporate environments, its even worse and even less accountable in the public sector. Nevermind that good leadership is expensive--the best leaders do not go into public service, unfortunately, because it pays a lot better in the private sector. No profit motive also means that there isn't a single metric that aligns workers and management. Amazon may be abusing workers, but at least they can respond to clear issues by giving raises or bonuses. At least when a business succeeds, someone is getting paid and its about who should get that money. School teachers and police officers don't get more revenue if they succeed. Administrators and management don't get more money when they succeed, or when their workers succeed. Success does not feed success, in a financial sense (with exceptions, of course). If they fail, there is not a natural incentive structure that reflects that. Ultimately, revenue and accountability for public sector work is driven by voters, many of whom don't feel like they benefit from the service directly (whether they do or not is a separate conversation). Voters want to minimize costs and maximize services, but there is not a market mechanism that defines the equilibrium there. Voters (like you) don't know what it takes to deliver the quality of service demanded, and the systems don't naturally align themselves in a way that efficiently executes on those demands anyways. Public services will always be less efficient than you would expect--but many times they're the only way to provide the service in the first place. So you have poor leadership. You have totally decoupled funding from performance, and therefore compensation from funding from performance. Since there isn't a profit motive, aligning individual workers with the mission is a challenge. You have cost-sensitive, captive, and hostile benefactors and service users who have a dual demands: high quality of service, and lowest possible cost. This is the perfect environment for abusive leaders to make unreasonable asks to people who provide services at a rate well below its social value, using resources that don't reflect the real cost to provide the adequate, competent services desired. Unions are the only mechanism that exists for these people to protect themselves from that. Not only does the market have no power, it doesn't even exist. --- So yes, public unions serve the interests of workers, and "extort[ing] money from the citizens". Public unions cause some very obviously challenging circumstances--but the alternative is that public service workers are being asked to work in offend difficult, degrading circumstances where they are resourced in a way that sets them up to fail, asks them to make professional commitments to an employer who serves whims of public opinion rather than direct stakeholds are invested the complexities of their job, and which ultimately leads to a cycle of cynicism and further removal of resources. Nevermind that the nature of their work is inherently highly regulated and high-stakes. How do you run a public institution successfully in the long run with these core dynamics? This is an inherently messy world, and there is not a singular, cathartic solution for providing low cost, high quality, individualized, egalitarian public services. There needs to be some mechanism for finding a balance. The market is not an option. Privatizing all large scale government services doesn't change many of these dynamics, unless you remove any requirement for equal access or standards for quality of services provided. Public unions are the best on a field of bad options.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]