Yes. Violence really isn’t relevant to that, is it?
In a thread about the Pinkertons, would you declare that all corporations are evil because of their violent past?
Should I go start one so I can ask you?
Since I never said all unions were evil your question makes little sense.
To mention past violence in a discussion about unions is basically the same thing as saying all unions are evil. It’s the same basic logical fallacy of generalizing. Past violence or corruption is completely irrelevant to this discussion. Even present violence or corruption is irrelevant when talking about unions in general, since few engage in either today.
They’re already doing it. Employer bullying of employees, piling more work on fewer people, unpaid overtime, and so on.
What makes you so certain that all employers wish to negotiate with their employees?
I can tell you from personal experience that it isn’t always so. My former workplace’s admin wanted the adjunct faculty to be unseen, unheard, listed as “staff,” given no raises or recognition or shared governance, totally expendable, etc. Hell, the full-time faculty didn’t even want to acknowledge our existence. We ended up forming our own unit so we could bargain. There were no other options.
My current workplace features a wall-to-wall unit which functions quite well.
Yes, I realize that not all unions are good; some are terrible, and some are mediocre. But I can’t see them as inherently bad.
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Sure, maybe you can do better on your own.
But maybe, if you were one of thousands in a job like truck driver or factory worker, the employer would laugh at you for even trying to get five minutes to talk about what you want, let alone care. You get what you’re offered, take it or leave it. It’s not even worth his time to negotiate. He can fire you and hire someone new faster and cheaper than negotiating with thousands of workers one by one.
And, of course, what you get when you negotiate through a union is more security in the form of a contract. A union contract has a set period and enforcement mechanisms a worker can use. Make your own deal with an employer, and unless you sign a contract, it’s only good until the employer decides to end it.
This singer also spent most of his life as a Stalinist. I’m not sure multi-millionaires who continue to support the Soviet Union long after Stalin slaughtered millions of his own people is the best example.
Leni Reifenstahl and Roman Polanski supported unions also.
Why not use them as examples instead?
Of for that matter someone like Bruce Springsteen or Arlo Guthrie who don’t have records of supporting genocidal regimes?
That would be totally up to the employer. I don’t think unions are inherently bad, I think these employer mandates are bad. Unions could be great ways to increase workers’ bargaining power without state coercion.
That’s exactly why we had to form a bargaining unit (which is perfectly legal, if you can get enough people to sign on for it), despite the former college pres’s complaint that he didn’t think it was “in the college’s best interests.” Without the unit, we had no power and no voice–and therefore there would have been no changes unless someone higher up eventually decided to throw us a few more scraps.
I don’t agree that unwilling coworkers should be forced into a bargaining unit. If a group of workers wants to form a union, they should have incentive to form a productive, professional union that doesn’t have the benefit of a monopoly over all workers. If the union is successful in earning a good reputation and keeping the union strong, they will increase their wages because they are an asset to the company. Ideally, lazy workers would be barred from the union in order to maintain that reputation, and non-union workers may choose to join the union to gain the benefits associated with union 'membership, strengthening the union further. Management may eventually choose to deal exclusively with union workers because of the good reputation and convenience of collective bargaining, but they would likely want to have an escape plan in case the union fell into disrepair. I don’t see a positive role for the state in employer- union relationships.
I can’t speak for every unit out there, but the one I’m in now respects the rights of faculty not to join it. There must be some others with the same allowance. Some people even have religious objections to joining a union.
And believe me, adjunct faculty can’t afford to be lazy workers. There’s no way to do that and still keep a job that is already unreliable from one semester to the next.
Unions that do a crappy job and have poor leadership either change their ways or collapse, as far as I can tell.
It’s often hard not to have a single bargaining unit job. It’s hard to have two jobs with people doing the same thing, but one doing it without union rules/protections and the other without, since unions often negotiate for working conditions, safety rules, etc.
But I think it’s a good idea. Workers who don’t join the union shouldn’t benefit from the union’s hard work. They should get paid less and work harder. That would fix the freeloader problem. And no more right-to-work vs. union shop stuff either. Most workers would end up with union dues that are much lower than the increase in pay they’d get by joining the union and having a union job.
Don’t current rules also require the union to represent non-union employees in disputes or something? It came up in an old thread; I can dig it up if that sounds completely off base.
Yes, that’s true.
I read today that the workers at the VW plant in Chattanooga voted against UAW representation. Apparently VW wanted something like the works councils they have in Germany, but those are illegal in the US without involvement of a labor union (they count as company unions.) I know even less about how these things work in other countries. Maybe there are some practices we could adopt here?
Don’t see why any group of employees would be against discussing what they want from an employer, coming to an agreement, and then bringing this to the employer. That is collective bargaining. Don’t see why employees would want to give that up.
I think the main fear, which is partly justified, is that a large union that represents workers in many companies, like the UAW, would have its own priorities and not represent the workers at their company very well. Which is mostly crap, since unions typically have local elected leaders who negotiate and the big union just backs them up with legal help and advice.
To use my own experience (again), it can also be that even at the same company it it won’t well represent us. I was on a team of around a dozen, when there was an unionization effort we were told that our ‘job class’ had around 500 people in it. We had absolutely no idea who those other 480ish people even were, where they worked or what they did. We were essentially a department and group unto ourselves and had zero way of knowing that we would be well represented.
Go look at Detroit. Or Springfield, Ohio. You’ll break down and cry.
And we owe it all to unions.