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>I absolutely do not understand why you would vote against your own collective interest It's because unions in America cannot guarantee the existence of the jo
by jasode 6y ago
>I absolutely do not understand why you would vote against your own collective interest
It's because unions in America cannot guarantee the existence of the job. Yes, unions can force negotiations but they have no power to force the corporation to keep the factory open. (E.g. workers of Bakers union go on strike and in response, Hostess closes the factory.)
That's the tradeoff of possible negative consequences that many armchair observers totally leave out when they only emphasize benefits of unions such as "higher pay, better work conditions, etc".
I'd contend that observers who are confused why workers would "vote against their self-interest" and being "illogical" -- do not truly empathize with the poor workers' plight. (Or the observers are from Europe where unions work differently than America.)
So the workers (Volkswagen workers in TN, Nissan in TN, Boeing in SC) that voted to reject union representation weighed the game theory tradeoffs of:
(a) jobs continue to exist with better pay and conditions
... or ...
(b) jobs are eliminated leading to layoffs and pay of $0
The possible outcome of (b) becomes even more perverse in that the workers pay dues to have their jobs eliminated!
Yes, but if workers don't form a union -- "it's a race to the bottom!". Well, repeating memes is the currency of pundits rather than real cash that puts food on the table. Workers, understandably, make local decisions because they want a paycheck rather than worry about some global abstraction of "race to the bottom".
Other fields such as NFL, NBA, superstars have leverage in union negotiations. Faceless workers have much less leverage. E.g. baseball umpires (faceless and less leverage) strike but the MLB just accepts their resignations and hires replacements. The unskilled line workers in factories have even less leverage.
- bradleyjg 6y agoHard to believe this isn’t the top reply. You don’t need to go off into some long discussion about the philosophy of collective action. This vote was no because if it had been yes the likely consequence would have been all the voters being out of a job.
- regextegrity 6y ago> This vote was no because if it had been yes the likely consequence would have been all the voters being out of a job. Isn't that a problem?
- pc86 6y agoMaybe. Maybe not. Let's take for the sake the argument that yes, it's a problem. Should Amazon be prevented from closing the factory? For how long? Do they have to send as much product there as they did before? Can they open a non-union warehouse in Columbus, MS less than two hours away? Any temporary/sunsetting requirements just get factored in to the new math of how much a union would cost them. So maybe you buy the workers six months but the same thing happens. So if you actually want to "fix" things (again, from the assumed standpoint that shutting down the factory is a Bad Thing) the requirement has to be permanent. So is the requirement then that Amazon has to keep this one warehouse open in perpetuity just because its unionized? What if Amazon goes bankrupt? What if Amazon sells its fulfillment and shipping components to another company? What if that company buys everything except this one warehouse? The argument of "they shouldn't be able to close the factory" falls apart pretty quickly when you think of how you would have to enforce it.
- bradleyjg 6y agoMaybe. But it’s not some deep mystery why the vote was no. All the threads and sub threads discussing it as if it were a deep mystery puzzle me. I’m always bemused at smart people with strong opinions on subjects where they don’t even have a grasp of the basic factual landscape.
- selimthegrim 6y agoVW _wanted_ a union in TN.