5 ms·

American Union corruption is an ugly story, quite a lot of it in New York, NY .. later Detroit. The battle against communism fits well here, as the far-right c

American Union corruption is an ugly story, quite a lot of it in New York, NY .. later Detroit. The battle against communism fits well here, as the far-right criminals who did run NY Unions were the choice of the insider capitalists, versus the serious-Left that thought of the idea. Proof of this extreme statement? How about a Jeopardy question -- "What New York City famous gangster got his start as a mafia boss with his appointment to run the New York airport union" ..

mrguyorama 4y ago
Funny how people only ever talk about those supposedly horrible unions instead of the nurses and teachers unions that made sure my mom could feed her kids or my family members are paid fairly for their hard work, often hard PHYSICAL LABOR in a supposed knowledge industry.
- buscoquadnary 4y ago
  Actually most of the people I hear that talk about Teacher's union are expressing negative opinions of them, citing things like rubber rooms, and the impossibility of getting rid of bad teachers. Not necessarily saying I have an issue with unions per se, but the two unions I hear people complaining about the most are the teachers and the police unions. It seems generally people don't like public sector unions from the people I've talked to.
  - sophacles 4y ago
    Those examples sound to me like great examples of unions doing thier job: protecting their members. All the places that I've heard of that weaken or eliniate various unions in the name of protecting the powerful shortly produce stories of ever increasing demands for unpaid work and firings for not doing the unpaid work, or firings/censures/punishments for not violating the laws of physics (e.g. my friend who was given a pay cut because every teacher was required to do an hour of 1:1 time with each of their students each week, but her band was 200+ kids).
    - macinjosh 4y ago
      > (e.g. my friend who was given a pay cut because every teacher was required to do an hour of 1:1 time with each of their students each week, but her band was 200+ kids). Sounds like only one side of the story to me and highly improbable.
      - sophacles 4y ago
        You think its improbable that an organization would set an unmeetable KPI to have an excuse for lowering pay?
        xboxnolifes 4y ago
        I think it's improbable that an org would set such a blatantly unreachable KPI. It's not subtle in any way and would not hold up to challenging.
    - inglor_cz 4y ago
      Can't you see the problem with protecting at least the cops against things such as public scrutiny? They wield enormous power already, they should be held accountable.
  - bsder 4y ago
    Because that all fits the anti-union PR. The mere presence of the union suddenly cuts down on the shittiness of the administration. Teachers stop getting jerked between classes and classrooms. Teachers can't get forced into doing extracurricular activities. etc. The union also pays the legal bills when teachers get sued by idiotic parents because they had the temerity to teach evolutionary theory in a science class. And, as I have pointed out previously, a lot of the "can't get rid of teachers" is due to the fact that the administration simply won't file the paperwork to get a teacher fired. You see, if you file the paperwork, that becomes a record and can wind up public information. That record is likely to come up when the administrator is trying to get a promotion or a new job. So, rather than creating a paper trail to fire the teacher, these administrators would rather transfer teachers to a "rubber room" and bury the problem so that it won't haunt the administrator's promotions in the future.
- macinjosh 4y ago
  The last people I want working as my nurse or my kids teacher is someone who is entitled to their job regardless of their performance.
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    It's almost like you have a very colored opinion of what unions do. Consider where you get the information about unions. Unions are why when my mother got her job, she was given a paper that showed her most likely pay scale for the next 10 years. Unions are how my mother had excellent health care to take her children to the doctors, despite making just over poverty wages. Unions were there to help her when a student (a fellow student of mine, in my own class, indeed my mother taught me a few times) made baseless and false claims of sexual assault. Unions were there when nurses were being put in harms in an attempt to force nurses to bear the brunt of covid issues. Unions are there when management says "you should be expected to do X" when X is laughably beyond average expectations and also what was in your contract when you signed it. Unions could have stopped my company from requiring unpaid overtime as "prod support" for our products. Unions could have prevented my work contract from being one sentence that's as vague as possible. Unions could have prevented my company from cutting everyone's pay by 20% during covid despite business being up 100% because we do e-commerce.
    - macinjosh 4y ago
      My view is no more colored than yours apparently.
  - com2kid 4y ago
    > The last people I want working as my nurse or my kids teacher is someone who is entitled to their job regardless of their performance. And the last person I want working as my nurse is someone who got the job because they are good at boot licking and the previous nurse who cared about patient safety was fired for "being a trouble maker" when they complained about poor quality of patient care. Or how about a nurse who is overworked because there isn't a union around to see that they get breaks? Or how about a nurse who is stressed because they can't pay their bills? Without nurses unions, quality of care plummets. Or to put it another way, people become nurses because they want to help others. People become hospital administrators to make money. Without nursing unions, the hospital administrators are the ones determining what quality of care you will get.
kranke155 4y ago
Unions are necessarily political organisations (who are almost always corrupt), but they also do tend to defend the rights of their workers. Didn’t the UAW protect their workers so well that they are partially blamed for the trouble at GM and Ford? This is a Union so strong that it managed to become a major part of the companies bottom line (instead of all being extracted by CEOs as usual).
- nix0n 4y ago
  > UAW ... blamed for the trouble at GM and Ford This is just propaganda. The counterpoints to this would include the Geo Prizm and Pontiac Vibe, which were cheap, fantastically reliable cars built by GM union labor from Toyota designs.
  - bendbro 4y ago
    Couldn't you have picked something other than the apex econobox to prove you point?
    - thfuran 4y ago
      Is there some reason they should have?
      - bendbro 4y ago
        Yes
- macinjosh 4y ago
  > Unions are necessarily political organisations (who are almost always corrupt), but they also do tend to defend the rights of their workers. "My dad beats me but at least he feeds me once a day"
  - malermeister 4y ago
    How is corruption ~= beatings? More like: my dad wastes money on lottery tickets sometimes, but he always makes sure I'm cared for.
mistrial9 4y ago
edit people are mistaking this comment for anti-Unionism.. isn't it obvious that this is anti-"corrupt union management" and nothing about the virtues of working life, protecting workers from exploitation, and a social path to prosperity for a greater number of people? Management corruption IS a problem if you want all of that ! hard to be understood here...
lr1970 4y ago
> How about a Jeopardy question -- "What New York City famous gangster got his start as a mafia boss with his appointment to run the New York airport union" Is it Jimmy Hoffa [0]? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Hoffa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Hoffa
- mistrial9 4y ago
  Thomas 'Tommy' Lucchese Raab, Selwyn. The Five Families: The Rise, Decline & Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empire. New York: St. Martins Press, 2005.

mrguyorama 4y ago

Funny how people only ever talk about those supposedly horrible unions instead of the nurses and teachers unions that made sure my mom could feed her kids or my family members are paid fairly for their hard work, often hard PHYSICAL LABOR in a supposed knowledge industry.

buscoquadnary 4y ago
Actually most of the people I hear that talk about Teacher's union are expressing negative opinions of them, citing things like rubber rooms, and the impossibility of getting rid of bad teachers. Not necessarily saying I have an issue with unions per se, but the two unions I hear people complaining about the most are the teachers and the police unions. It seems generally people don't like public sector unions from the people I've talked to.
- sophacles 4y ago
  Those examples sound to me like great examples of unions doing thier job: protecting their members. All the places that I've heard of that weaken or eliniate various unions in the name of protecting the powerful shortly produce stories of ever increasing demands for unpaid work and firings for not doing the unpaid work, or firings/censures/punishments for not violating the laws of physics (e.g. my friend who was given a pay cut because every teacher was required to do an hour of 1:1 time with each of their students each week, but her band was 200+ kids).
  - macinjosh 4y ago
    > (e.g. my friend who was given a pay cut because every teacher was required to do an hour of 1:1 time with each of their students each week, but her band was 200+ kids). Sounds like only one side of the story to me and highly improbable.
    - sophacles 4y ago
      You think its improbable that an organization would set an unmeetable KPI to have an excuse for lowering pay?
      - xboxnolifes 4y ago
        I think it's improbable that an org would set such a blatantly unreachable KPI. It's not subtle in any way and would not hold up to challenging.
  - inglor_cz 4y ago
    Can't you see the problem with protecting at least the cops against things such as public scrutiny? They wield enormous power already, they should be held accountable.
- bsder 4y ago
  Because that all fits the anti-union PR. The mere presence of the union suddenly cuts down on the shittiness of the administration. Teachers stop getting jerked between classes and classrooms. Teachers can't get forced into doing extracurricular activities. etc. The union also pays the legal bills when teachers get sued by idiotic parents because they had the temerity to teach evolutionary theory in a science class. And, as I have pointed out previously, a lot of the "can't get rid of teachers" is due to the fact that the administration simply won't file the paperwork to get a teacher fired. You see, if you file the paperwork, that becomes a record and can wind up public information. That record is likely to come up when the administrator is trying to get a promotion or a new job. So, rather than creating a paper trail to fire the teacher, these administrators would rather transfer teachers to a "rubber room" and bury the problem so that it won't haunt the administrator's promotions in the future.
macinjosh 4y ago
The last people I want working as my nurse or my kids teacher is someone who is entitled to their job regardless of their performance.
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  It's almost like you have a very colored opinion of what unions do. Consider where you get the information about unions. Unions are why when my mother got her job, she was given a paper that showed her most likely pay scale for the next 10 years. Unions are how my mother had excellent health care to take her children to the doctors, despite making just over poverty wages. Unions were there to help her when a student (a fellow student of mine, in my own class, indeed my mother taught me a few times) made baseless and false claims of sexual assault. Unions were there when nurses were being put in harms in an attempt to force nurses to bear the brunt of covid issues. Unions are there when management says "you should be expected to do X" when X is laughably beyond average expectations and also what was in your contract when you signed it. Unions could have stopped my company from requiring unpaid overtime as "prod support" for our products. Unions could have prevented my work contract from being one sentence that's as vague as possible. Unions could have prevented my company from cutting everyone's pay by 20% during covid despite business being up 100% because we do e-commerce.
  - macinjosh 4y ago
    My view is no more colored than yours apparently.
- com2kid 4y ago
  > The last people I want working as my nurse or my kids teacher is someone who is entitled to their job regardless of their performance. And the last person I want working as my nurse is someone who got the job because they are good at boot licking and the previous nurse who cared about patient safety was fired for "being a trouble maker" when they complained about poor quality of patient care. Or how about a nurse who is overworked because there isn't a union around to see that they get breaks? Or how about a nurse who is stressed because they can't pay their bills? Without nurses unions, quality of care plummets. Or to put it another way, people become nurses because they want to help others. People become hospital administrators to make money. Without nursing unions, the hospital administrators are the ones determining what quality of care you will get.

kranke155 4y ago

Unions are necessarily political organisations (who are almost always corrupt), but they also do tend to defend the rights of their workers. Didn’t the UAW protect their workers so well that they are partially blamed for the trouble at GM and Ford? This is a Union so strong that it managed to become a major part of the companies bottom line (instead of all being extracted by CEOs as usual).

nix0n 4y ago
> UAW ... blamed for the trouble at GM and Ford This is just propaganda. The counterpoints to this would include the Geo Prizm and Pontiac Vibe, which were cheap, fantastically reliable cars built by GM union labor from Toyota designs.
- bendbro 4y ago
  Couldn't you have picked something other than the apex econobox to prove you point?
  - thfuran 4y ago
    Is there some reason they should have?
    - bendbro 4y ago
      Yes
macinjosh 4y ago
> Unions are necessarily political organisations (who are almost always corrupt), but they also do tend to defend the rights of their workers. "My dad beats me but at least he feeds me once a day"
- malermeister 4y ago
  How is corruption ~= beatings? More like: my dad wastes money on lottery tickets sometimes, but he always makes sure I'm cared for.

mistrial9 4y ago

edit people are mistaking this comment for anti-Unionism.. isn't it obvious that this is anti-"corrupt union management" and nothing about the virtues of working life, protecting workers from exploitation, and a social path to prosperity for a greater number of people? Management corruption IS a problem if you want all of that ! hard to be understood here...

lr1970 4y ago

> How about a Jeopardy question -- "What New York City famous gangster got his start as a mafia boss with his appointment to run the New York airport union" Is it Jimmy Hoffa [0]? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Hoffa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Hoffa

mistrial9 4y ago
Thomas 'Tommy' Lucchese Raab, Selwyn. The Five Families: The Rise, Decline & Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empire. New York: St. Martins Press, 2005.