5 ms·

If I want to work for Uber given their conditions, who has the right to tell me I can't? Who has the right to tell me I must obey by some group's rules first (t

If I want to work for Uber given their conditions, who has the right to tell me I can't? Who has the right to tell me I must obey by some group's rules first (the union in this case)? It's bizarre. I am all for unions. Go and organize people. But unions can't have special privileges granted by politicians (who very often are just bribed by those that run the union), and unions must never be mandatory to join. Mandate to join an union is immoral.

Mauricebranagh 5y ago
Pre entry closed shop is illegal in the UK
- bildung 5y ago
  It also is in the US, but apparently it is a common trope by anti-union politicians to act like this isn't already law.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - josephcsible 5y ago
    Yes, technically you don't have to join unions anywhere in the US. If you want, you can give up your membership and benefits, but still have to pay dues. Obviously, that's really one-sided, which is why a few states (but not the whole US) have passed right-to-work laws.
    - bildung 5y ago
      AFAIR you don't have to pay the full dues, just a part. And you still get the benefits that were collectively bargained. https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-law/employees/union-dues https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-law/em...
    - pseudalopex 5y ago
      Federal law forces US unions to represent non members. "Right to work" laws force unions to do it for free in most states. The rest allow unions to charge agency fees to cover the mandated services. Not full dues.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
> Who has the right to tell me I must obey by some group's rules first (the union in this case)? In principle, no one. The whole idea of a union is everyone wants the same thing and will refuse to work if these wants are not met. If people want different things, the union doesn't actually exist. > But unions can't have special privileges granted by politicians, and unions must never be mandatory to join. > Mandate to join an union is immoral. I agree in principle but in practice things get ugly fast. For example, developed countries have immigrant workers whose legal presence in the country is conditional on their continued employment. Corporations have a huge amount of leverage against these workers and will probably exploit them. Their ability to exploit these people leads to significantly diminished power of unions. I just have no idea how they're supposed to solve this issue in a way that keeps these principles intact.
- whitepaint 5y ago
  Good point. However, those immigrants wouldn't be in a country if it wasn't better than the alternative - which is their country. Of course it's not always the case, sometimes they are forced to which is fucking horrible. The exploitation of people is obviously wrong but I suspect the unions is not the answer.
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    Yeah, it sucks. The market is ruthless in exploiting economic disparities. For example, right now 1 USD is valued at 5.31 BRL. A salary of $20k/year is a ridiculous amount of money in my country. It's more than what the vast majority of people make working here. If corporations can exploit something like this, they can effectively reduce the value of their american workers. The solution in this case is to somehow make companies ignore these economic opportunities. Make them pay immigrants the same salary they'd pay a worker from their own country.
Mauricebranagh 5y ago
Try walking onto a building site and not wearing a hard hat or safety boots ands high viz.
klmadfejno 5y ago
The people harmed by the externalities of your personal choices because you live in a society where some degree of cooperation with the larger community is required.
- xboxnolifes 5y ago
  And people harmed by the externalities of forced union choice. Two sides, same coin.
  - klmadfejno 5y ago
    Of course. That's the whole point of society.
- CryptoPunk 5y ago
  The wage effect of the personal choice of what wage to work at it is not an externality. An externality is when one party's actions deprive you of something you are entitled to, like your person or property. The opportunity offered by another individual, is not yours to begin with, and that other indivual has a right to withdraw it by contracting with someone else at a lower wage. By way of analogy, imagine if you training to become physically more attractive made other male suitors less attractive to women in general. You did not, by virtue of making yourself more attractive, impose a negative externality on other men, as they were never entitled the affection and engagement of women in the first place. Moreover, the absence of labor regulations and social democratic policies is associated with more rapid economic growth and larger wage gains, so the premise of the notion that there are negative externalities emanating from contract liberty is wrong. The free market is far and away the most efficient way to organize an economy, because the market is the ultimate coordinating tool, and helps raise productivity, which has enormous positive externalities. These sound like the fundamentalist tenets of an ideology, that just happen to further the interests of the rich, but the statistical/empirical evidence has constistently validated these assertions, as do rationalist deductions based on game theory and widely accepted economic axioms like supply and demand and the efficiency of equilibriums established by them.
  - 5y ago
CPLX 5y ago
> But unions can't have special privileges granted by politicians Can corporations have special privileges granted by politicians? Seems to me that without special privileges granted by politicians, corporations would not actually exist at all.
- CryptoPunk 5y ago
  Corporations are just legal agreements. There is no need for the state to be involved for them to exist, though of course it helps the formation and preservation of corporations that a state exists to enforce contract law and protect the right to person/property, but that equally applies to any legal agreement. The only extra-contractual benefit the state grants corporations is limited liability for tort.

Mauricebranagh 5y ago

Pre entry closed shop is illegal in the UK

bildung 5y ago
It also is in the US, but apparently it is a common trope by anti-union politicians to act like this isn't already law.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- josephcsible 5y ago
  Yes, technically you don't have to join unions anywhere in the US. If you want, you can give up your membership and benefits, but still have to pay dues. Obviously, that's really one-sided, which is why a few states (but not the whole US) have passed right-to-work laws.
  - bildung 5y ago
    AFAIR you don't have to pay the full dues, just a part. And you still get the benefits that were collectively bargained. https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-law/employees/union-dues https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-law/em...
  - pseudalopex 5y ago
    Federal law forces US unions to represent non members. "Right to work" laws force unions to do it for free in most states. The rest allow unions to charge agency fees to cover the mandated services. Not full dues.

matheusmoreira 5y ago

> Who has the right to tell me I must obey by some group's rules first (the union in this case)? In principle, no one. The whole idea of a union is everyone wants the same thing and will refuse to work if these wants are not met. If people want different things, the union doesn't actually exist. > But unions can't have special privileges granted by politicians, and unions must never be mandatory to join. > Mandate to join an union is immoral. I agree in principle but in practice things get ugly fast. For example, developed countries have immigrant workers whose legal presence in the country is conditional on their continued employment. Corporations have a huge amount of leverage against these workers and will probably exploit them. Their ability to exploit these people leads to significantly diminished power of unions. I just have no idea how they're supposed to solve this issue in a way that keeps these principles intact.

whitepaint 5y ago
Good point. However, those immigrants wouldn't be in a country if it wasn't better than the alternative - which is their country. Of course it's not always the case, sometimes they are forced to which is fucking horrible. The exploitation of people is obviously wrong but I suspect the unions is not the answer.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  Yeah, it sucks. The market is ruthless in exploiting economic disparities. For example, right now 1 USD is valued at 5.31 BRL. A salary of $20k/year is a ridiculous amount of money in my country. It's more than what the vast majority of people make working here. If corporations can exploit something like this, they can effectively reduce the value of their american workers. The solution in this case is to somehow make companies ignore these economic opportunities. Make them pay immigrants the same salary they'd pay a worker from their own country.

Mauricebranagh 5y ago

Try walking onto a building site and not wearing a hard hat or safety boots ands high viz.

klmadfejno 5y ago

The people harmed by the externalities of your personal choices because you live in a society where some degree of cooperation with the larger community is required.

xboxnolifes 5y ago
And people harmed by the externalities of forced union choice. Two sides, same coin.
- klmadfejno 5y ago
  Of course. That's the whole point of society.
CryptoPunk 5y ago
The wage effect of the personal choice of what wage to work at it is not an externality. An externality is when one party's actions deprive you of something you are entitled to, like your person or property. The opportunity offered by another individual, is not yours to begin with, and that other indivual has a right to withdraw it by contracting with someone else at a lower wage. By way of analogy, imagine if you training to become physically more attractive made other male suitors less attractive to women in general. You did not, by virtue of making yourself more attractive, impose a negative externality on other men, as they were never entitled the affection and engagement of women in the first place. Moreover, the absence of labor regulations and social democratic policies is associated with more rapid economic growth and larger wage gains, so the premise of the notion that there are negative externalities emanating from contract liberty is wrong. The free market is far and away the most efficient way to organize an economy, because the market is the ultimate coordinating tool, and helps raise productivity, which has enormous positive externalities. These sound like the fundamentalist tenets of an ideology, that just happen to further the interests of the rich, but the statistical/empirical evidence has constistently validated these assertions, as do rationalist deductions based on game theory and widely accepted economic axioms like supply and demand and the efficiency of equilibriums established by them.
- 5y ago

CPLX 5y ago

> But unions can't have special privileges granted by politicians Can corporations have special privileges granted by politicians? Seems to me that without special privileges granted by politicians, corporations would not actually exist at all.

CryptoPunk 5y ago
Corporations are just legal agreements. There is no need for the state to be involved for them to exist, though of course it helps the formation and preservation of corporations that a state exists to enforce contract law and protect the right to person/property, but that equally applies to any legal agreement. The only extra-contractual benefit the state grants corporations is limited liability for tort.