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> While the NLRB has previously held that companies can require employees to attend anti-union meetings, the agency’s current general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo v

> While the NLRB has previously held that companies can require employees to attend anti-union meetings, the agency’s current general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo views such “captive audience” sessions as inherently coercive and illegal, and her office is pursuing cases that could change that precedent. While it seems to be some advancement here, and the NLRB may make these meetings illegal, I wonder how we got to this point. It's an easy case to be made that anti-union meetings may be coercive. It's also completely illegal for company higher ups to organise, or for companies to meddle in labour organisation affairs, yet it is fine to push workers to not join unions?

moate 4y ago
>> I wonder how we got to this point. The glib answer is "Capitalism, neo-liberalism, and the lack political party that actually answers to/is beholden to the labor class". There's a lot of nuance in those 3 things, but if you study the history of labor struggles and policy in the US it's mostly that.
Spooky23 4y ago
Easy. Ronald Reagan. Alot of people felt that unions were way too strong going into the 70s and 80s. Particularly as the “new south” became an onshore outsourcing destination, policy flipped.
- moate 4y ago
  Don't you DARE let the Democrats, especially during Clinton era, off the hook. That was their turn away from unionism and towards the 3rd way the told everyone that they don't need union protection because in the new economy of the digital future everyone will have so many opportunities that the unions were a thing of the past and everyone will be so well educated they can't help but make a good living. https://www.lawcha.org/2016/11/23/bill-clinton-remade-democratic-party-abandoning-unions-working-class-whites/ https://www.lawcha.org/2016/11/23/bill-clinton-remade-democr...
  - Spooky23 4y ago
    Don’t clutch the pearls too tightly. It started with Reagan. No judgement applied.
  - tristor 4y ago
    Agreed. Not to delve too deep into this, but Clinton was the first Neoliberal POTUS, and set the tone for things to come. In a way, we are all victims of his success, as it was obvious globalist neoliberalism had benefits for all sides of the table, except labor. Here we are several decades later, and we're just now starting to see the impacts of taking it too far (JIT supply chains contracting and screwing the entire economy).
    - robonerd 4y ago
      In my view the best arguments for neoliberal globalism were international trade making things cheaper and making wars impossible. Except by now it should be obvious that efficient international trade is a race to the bottom which creates fragile supply chains that crumble when stressed and force free workers in liberal countries to compete with slave labor in autocratic countries. And it hasn't stopped war either, but rather made free nations more reticent to oppose wars started by their vital but belligerent trading partners.
  - newaccount2021 4y ago
- legitster 4y ago
  > Alot of people felt that unions were way too strong going into the 70s and 80s I mean, now that we're a generation removed it's easy to forget that unions in this era were terrible. They were (generally) anti-immigrant, nepotistic, protectionist, and willing to sacrifice the jobs of their own members to get in dumb turf wars with other unions (plus the whole organized crime thing). You can also look up the whole "two-tier wage systems" many of them implemented. Modern unions are clearly more well behaved - I wish more unions today pushed a "not-your-dad's-union" message instead of trying to sell Americans on a nostalgia.
  - robonerd 4y ago
    A union that isn't protectionist, in every relevant sense of that term, seems worse than useless.
    - legitster 4y ago
      Well, in the secondary sense, there will be people who argue unions aren't necessarily restrictive. But in the primary sense, the AFL-CIO used to staunchly anti-immigrant but has since softened they stance.
legitster 4y ago
For the NLRB, there's a difference between workers joining a union and a workplace successfully voting to unionize. Once a workplace successfully unionizes, there are immense and permanent legal rights given to the union and restrictions imposed on the employer. But until the criteria for an official election, it's just ideas being shared and the NLRB has little oversight.

moate 4y ago

>> I wonder how we got to this point. The glib answer is "Capitalism, neo-liberalism, and the lack political party that actually answers to/is beholden to the labor class". There's a lot of nuance in those 3 things, but if you study the history of labor struggles and policy in the US it's mostly that.

Spooky23 4y ago

Easy. Ronald Reagan. Alot of people felt that unions were way too strong going into the 70s and 80s. Particularly as the “new south” became an onshore outsourcing destination, policy flipped.

moate 4y ago
Don't you DARE let the Democrats, especially during Clinton era, off the hook. That was their turn away from unionism and towards the 3rd way the told everyone that they don't need union protection because in the new economy of the digital future everyone will have so many opportunities that the unions were a thing of the past and everyone will be so well educated they can't help but make a good living. https://www.lawcha.org/2016/11/23/bill-clinton-remade-democratic-party-abandoning-unions-working-class-whites/ https://www.lawcha.org/2016/11/23/bill-clinton-remade-democr...
- Spooky23 4y ago
  Don’t clutch the pearls too tightly. It started with Reagan. No judgement applied.
- tristor 4y ago
  Agreed. Not to delve too deep into this, but Clinton was the first Neoliberal POTUS, and set the tone for things to come. In a way, we are all victims of his success, as it was obvious globalist neoliberalism had benefits for all sides of the table, except labor. Here we are several decades later, and we're just now starting to see the impacts of taking it too far (JIT supply chains contracting and screwing the entire economy).
  - robonerd 4y ago
    In my view the best arguments for neoliberal globalism were international trade making things cheaper and making wars impossible. Except by now it should be obvious that efficient international trade is a race to the bottom which creates fragile supply chains that crumble when stressed and force free workers in liberal countries to compete with slave labor in autocratic countries. And it hasn't stopped war either, but rather made free nations more reticent to oppose wars started by their vital but belligerent trading partners.
- newaccount2021 4y ago
legitster 4y ago
> Alot of people felt that unions were way too strong going into the 70s and 80s I mean, now that we're a generation removed it's easy to forget that unions in this era were terrible. They were (generally) anti-immigrant, nepotistic, protectionist, and willing to sacrifice the jobs of their own members to get in dumb turf wars with other unions (plus the whole organized crime thing). You can also look up the whole "two-tier wage systems" many of them implemented. Modern unions are clearly more well behaved - I wish more unions today pushed a "not-your-dad's-union" message instead of trying to sell Americans on a nostalgia.
- robonerd 4y ago
  A union that isn't protectionist, in every relevant sense of that term, seems worse than useless.
  - legitster 4y ago
    Well, in the secondary sense, there will be people who argue unions aren't necessarily restrictive. But in the primary sense, the AFL-CIO used to staunchly anti-immigrant but has since softened they stance.

legitster 4y ago

For the NLRB, there's a difference between workers joining a union and a workplace successfully voting to unionize. Once a workplace successfully unionizes, there are immense and permanent legal rights given to the union and restrictions imposed on the employer. But until the criteria for an official election, it's just ideas being shared and the NLRB has little oversight.