Your “reasonable older folks” are mostly correct. Their error is only one of scale. The blessed dears are either being too kind or seriously underestimating just how bad-for-business the situation is.
Here is a fact on this issue: Not only do unions make certain industries less efficient, they make all industries less efficient. Less profitable, too. Heck, just paying workers money (or anything at all) in exchange for their labor, and allowing the whiny pantywaists to go home every day to rest their lazy asses and gaze at their shrieking broods drags every business into an abyss of woeful inefficiency.
Think how much smoother the profits would roll in if a company could simply use children and slave laborers in 18 or 20 hour shifts, seven days a week, compensating them with one moldy bread crust a day (two for women in their final month of pregnancy and for children younger than nine on Christmas Day).
**Cha-CHING!! **The Invisible Hand gets it right once again! I sure wish that buzz-kill government would get out of his way so we could enjoy the efficiencies that Mr. Hand would bless us with, if only those meddling agitators could be “dealt with”.
Again you demonstrate that you do not understand how things work.
Contracts are negotiated. Both sides agree to the terms.
And why shouldn’t workers be able to ask for compensations and benefits they desire?
What rational employer would enter in a collective bargaining agreement? An employer who wants qualified, competent workers that he can retain, because they are happy with the conditions of their employment.
Look, all your (poorly-formed) bad opinions about unions seem to have to do with Washington state teachers’ unions. How you are able to generalize that into “all unions are bad” is beyond me, since it’s clear from your posts that you don’t really understand how things work, but the problem is that you are willing to tar ALL unions as bad, when you don’t have the slightest bit of knowledge about many (most) of them.
The fact that your opinions have been formed from incorrectly interpreted language and a simple lack of understanding on how contract law and labor laws work seems not to bother you at all, but don’t expect to get a pass when you want to debate those very points.
I’m guessing you need to learn some tools besides the strawman, or go back and show me where I have made any of the claims in your post. Actually any of those ridiculous statements are the exact opposite of my stance.
And for the record I think there are positives and negatives to unions, I am willing to have that conversation but not when your only debate tactic is to miss-represent my stance.
The reality is that the majority of union members in the US are now public employees, thus I was choosing unions based on their population.
So come back with some real points and I will do my best to answer/refute them.
It’s not a strawman at all to point out that you are incorrect as to who decides what working conditions will be and who signs the contract. Unions cannot unilaterally declare anything with respect to same. Your continued insistence that they do will not make your assertion any more true.
As near as I can tell, you’ve already done your best to answer/refute any points, and you’ve failed.
The demise of the middle class is commensurate with the destruction of unions. That is not coincidence.
As unions get killed, wages and benefits will go down. Note that this union busting has resulted in huge profits for corporations. They are cash rich, but do not invest.
If you do not understand that unions share your problems and are fighting to make your lives better, then you are lost. If you believe those on top are intending to increase wages and benefits, then you are retarded.
Allow unions to be destroyed and you will pay down the line.
No, I’m not saying that. I am saying that an employer can choose to do that.
The attentive reader will have noticed that rat avatar thinks unions set conditions, while I have talked about negotiations and how a wise employer would listen to the needs and desires of his employees, if he wishes to retain them.
On the one hand you say they are poor negotiators, but on the other hand you say they are so powerful that they are able to secure any and all benefits and compensations they “demand” from an employer.
And as you should know (at least by now since I’ve offered cites providing you with the relevant court decisions), by law you cannot be forced to support a union’s political lobbying.
Absolutely. These efforts were very important at a time when labor bargaining power was extremely low, and all labor was subject to terrible working conditions. The landscape today is different, and every union is different. That particular union didn’t garner me much of anything in return for the dues that I paid, and I don’t have any expectation that this union was a leader in any efforts to secure general worker rights.
The union movement, overall, was very nice for worker rights, but that does not mean that every organization that collects union dues, and negotiates with employers is useful to all the employees they represent.
Sure. If you want to run a Broadway Show, you’re going to hire many folks from a bunch of different unions. Let’s say you’re going to run a rehearsal in the theater, and need someone to bring out 2 folding chairs to set on the stage as props for the rehearsal. Union rules dictate that you will hire someone for a minimum 4 hour work call, at overtime rates, to do nothing but bring out 2 folding chairs at the beginning of the rehearsal, and put away 2 folding chairs at the end of the rehearsal. There are likely 10+ other people at the rehearsal with functioning arms and eyes who can operate a folding chair, but none of them are “Props Guys” so they are not allowed to do it. So, for 2 minutes he handles some folding chairs, and for 3hrs 58min he sits in a break room watching TV.
This is an example of a strong union with skilled professionals using its bargaining power to set work rules that are hilariously inefficient in order to get its members paid for doing next to nothing.
People have blamed unions for the US auto industry losing ground to Japan and Germany for a long time. What they fail to realize is that Germany and Japan have unions too.
I happen to have some knowledge of the contracts (and union and people) you are completely mischaracterizing; I am an IATSE member.
While it’s true that there is a 4 hour minimum for a work call, it’s NOT true that it would be at overtime rate. Also, there’s no reason the stagehand couldn’t do some other task, within the scope of work, if his employer needs him to do something. If the employer has nothing to be done, then of course the stagehand would be standing by. What else would he (or any other employee in any other field) be doing in a simar situation?
And, as always, no employer was coerced into signing a contract. Obviously some employers want to retain a trained, skilled, reliable workforce.
Unions are, of course, good and bad. They are good inasmuch as they facilitate a voluntary means for people to get together to protect themselves. They are bad inasmuch as they force things upon their constituents. I think that they often fill a vital role without which we’d be screwed. Unfortunately, they get corrupted and do great evil too. We need the right to have unions around and they should be allowed to operate freely, BUT the right not to participate in them must be present so that when particular unions turn hideous as they often do they don’t have a totalitarian strangle-hold on any workers within or without their ranks.
I’m sorry that I misstated by saying it was overtime when it is not overtime, other than that, it’s correct, right? If the show only needs a couple of folding chairs moved for rehearsal, it’s a 4 hour call, and the IATSE member is going to be “standing by” in the break room watching TV for 3 hrs 50 min, just in case there’s a folding chair malfunction.
What else would he be doing? He’d be watching TV at home, unpaid, and one of the Stage Managers or someone else who needs to be there can take out the 2 folding chairs.
If he has other work to do, then he’s not there to move the chairs, he’s there for the other work, and he’ll move the chairs because he just happens to be at the theater during rehearsal.
The thing is, unions kind of need that stranglehold to have any sort of traction on management. If unions do not cover the whole of the worker force, then any strike by the unions is a non-issue, and management can simply hire scabs to do the job. And there’ll always be plenty of scabs and workers desperate for money enough to do any job. Since the threat of a strike is all unions have to make themselves heard, you could see how this could be a problem for them.
In theory, letting the workers decide whether or not they want to be part of the union, or whether they want to take part in this or that action on an individual basis would indeed be better, principle-wise.
In practice, individualists such as myself who simply refuse to be part of the union and do their own thing based on their own decisions are a strict power sieve. Not only that, but when those individualists do have something to oppose or fight against they’re usually coming to the unions for help anyway, since protesting on your lonesome is sort of ineffective. So most often these guys simply want all the benefits of being in a union, but none of the drawbacks. Once again, you can see how union members would look down on that sort of thing.
The system still works and isn’t oppressive as long as the union bosses are neither assholes nor corrupt. The workers hold a modicum of control over the former since union bosses are elected (or can defect and form their own competing union). And for the latter, what are you gonna do ? Any corrupt entity is crap, whether it’s management, unions, police, government, religion. It’s no argument against any of those social constructs.
Wait, if you (the manager of the show) don’t belong to a union, how can the union rules dictate anything to you? What’s to stop you from personally opening up the two folding chairs yourself?
Yep. We had that at my workplace earlier in the Spring. A new employee declined to join the union and then blew a gasket when we declined to pursue a grievance for her.
This was a great laugh to start the day off. Well played, I Love Me, Vol. I.