Man, what an easy doctorate that would be. I wish I could have answered mine with, “God did it.”
Unless it’s shining the knobs of the union brass
No, we need unions because the absence of power creates a vacuum that will be filled and to counter management practices that pretty much ignore labor contributions except for the tail ends of the productivity spectrum and the people that game the system socially. If you’re in the middle of the pack and you step up your productivity, odds are management won’t see it. Even if they see it, they’re not likely to reward it because it could create morale issues among the rank and file.
This is because management doesn’t have your interests at heart. Management has its own goals to with and your 10% individual bump doesn’t hit their radar for more than a pat on the back.
You need unions to counter big business. Small business, the bulk of the productivity and innovation, as well as job growth, doesn’t have a lot of the big company issues. Often the owner is directly involved in the meat and potatos of the business and knows it from first hand experience.
But big business thrives by shedding jobs and increasing individual worker productivity by piling on the work until the worker is at capacity. Gets rid of that need to worry about a productivity boost getting in the way of “good” management". Big business also thrives by eating smaller businesses and repeating the strategy above, quite often destroying the innovation the smaller business brought to the table.
Modern big business has fastened onto the idea of outsourcing everything possible. Labor and material costs go way down and you also get the benefit of being able to shunt off product liability to another country.
We need unions to help push back against this kind of cannibalistic capitalism.
So, elucidator, I guess you are admitting defeat? It’s been a while and you haven’t responded.
To recap, you love to say how “there’s no such thing as a free market! No society has every had a free market!” when fiscal conservatives bring up free market principles. But when you bring up principles of “social justice,” you have no response to the observation that there has never been a “just” society.
Seems to me you may be rather dim. Little soft in the melon, even.
The goal of free market capitalism is monopoly, i.e. to eliminate the free market.
I’ve never heard one of you big L libertarians give a good explanation of how do deal with that.
Social justice doesn’t have a similar self-negating goal.
That’s simple, monopolies are inherently unstable and eventually implode.
Social justice has its own self-negating goal in that it can’t be everything to everyone. Do you protect free speech or limit kiddie porn? Do you protect rights of workers to unionize, or protect the rights of a corporation to set wages at market value?
In a word, yes. Tricky? You better believe it! Worth it? Don’t know, still working on it. Could use your help, if you’ve nothing better to do.
Sadly though not fortunate enough to be in a union have work to do.
No rich people there?
That’s because management isn’t supposed to have your interests at heart, just as you quite obviously don’t give a shit about management’s best interests.
So we need unions so you can work under capacity? To keep from increasing your productivity?
Businesses can’t survive running under capacity, with unproductive workers.
And you want job security on top of that? Pension and health benefits?
And why wouldn’t they. *Modern unions *have fastened onto the idea that workers shouldn’t be productive or at working at capacity.
And American consumers happily lap it up then demand more. Walmart is losing sales but only because people are buying the same crap at Target.
You need that kind of cannibalistic capitalism, you love it, it’s the reason you can afford your computer/router/modem/ISP (or possibly why your local library can).
Are people in your world not allowed to get together and agree what their own market value is? Why do you hate the free market, emacknight?
Do you think, somehow, that you’re forbidden from starting a competing union willing to work under more favorable terms? Are those evil unions forcing people to hire them? You’d think the almighty management dorks would be able to realize that letting sunk costs/assets lie is better than losing money on variable costs like labor and jettison the union as contractually allowed when said unions failed to adapt to changing economic times. In your world, isn’t that the right thing to do? Jettison the union workers as contractually allowed and hire the swarms of joyous free marketeers willing to work at the magically low “market value” the unions don’t acknowledge?
Maybe it’ll help you if you call them “Labor consulting/management corporations” instead of “unions”.
Speaking as someone whose employer’s management is making a tidy profit while (or more likely, because they are) clearly giving a shit about the interests of the workers, you’re fulla shit as usual. Maybe if management in general would stop trying to set new heights to the gini coefficient and treat their workforce with some respect once in a while, you’d see union power diminish. Instead it’s more short-sighted antagonistic crap.
Am I? There is no reason why the two groups can’t have overlapping interests. I spend a lot of money making sure my employees are well fed, and caffeinated because it improves their productivity, which in turn makes me more revenue.
It’s not a zero sum game.
But with that said, I will pay them as little as I can get away with; just as they aren’t about to voluntarily take a lower salary.
When was the last time you went into a store and demanded that you pay 10% more than the sticker price? Have you ever voluntarily told your boss that you’re willing to work for less?
You know that would be in the company’s best interest. You could also volunteer to work unpaid over time. Why haven’t you? Is it because you think about your own interests first?
I care about a system that balances competing interests and allows everyone to move forward through compromise. The problem is that corporatist interests have done their level best to upset that balance to “win” the competition when the best goal is to have nominal parity among the competing interests.
I don’t love it. I have several computers and I’d probably just have one really good one if they cost more. Just like people did when “personal computers” came into vogue. People spent thousands on what you can get for a few hundred now and they had fewer dollars to spend back then.
The reason I have computers and the internet is small businesses starting in garages and a government funded internet. (Thank you Al Gore. 
)
Your lies aside, I can show that you clearly know this to be morally wrong. Wanna guess how? Easy: do you tell your employees explicitly that you pay them as little as you think you can get away with? Have you made it known, publicly, that this is your policy?
Of course you haven’t. Because you know that other people would think of you what many here already do, and in real life, you aren’t strong enough to actually, publicly, out loud, live the ideals you espouse so smugly in anonymity here on the internet.
And, you know that they’re right, too.
What does that even mean? How am I supposed to know how much the worker requires to support himself?
Are we supposed to based income off lifestyle choices? Should the father of four get paid more than the kid living at home, even though they both the exact same job in the exact same way?
Now, here’s a thought, what if instead, the worker chose a job that supported his lifestyle? Or if that doesn’t work for you, perhaps he could chose his lifestyle based on the job he’s able to get?
It’s not a value conflict. As the guy that owns the widget factory, who’s looking out for my interests? What happens if people won’t pay for my widgets? My family will starve. Do I not deserve a living wage? Why do you hate my family?
You know, I’m the one that spent 8 years in widget school. I’m the one that spent time designing and developing the widget. It was my capital on the line to start production. I’m the one out there trying to find new markets, some of which are in foreign countries. I’m the one lobbying the government to keep the factory open. I’m the one struggling to keep energy and material costs down.
So who is looking out for my best interests? Certainly not the unions.
Point to one other guy in that factory that risked capital, or did anything other than show up and expect a paycheck, and tell me why he deserves more than he’s earning.
Wait, are you under the impression that employers pay more than they can get away with? Is that a secret?
I hate to be the guy that tells you this, but right now your boss is looking at a spreadsheet and trying to minimize labour costs. I know this because in between arguing with strangers on the internet, and packing for vacation, I’m looking at my production schedule and trying to figure out how to minimize my labour costs; they are huge, and I need more of it. So I struggle to figure out how to hire more people at a lower wage, knowing that when I do that I get lower quality employees. I struggle with having to get the same number of people to work faster. I look at investing in new equipment, mechanization/automation, food, music.
If you went to your boss on Monday and offered a 10% pay cut, what do you think he’d say? How about when reviews come around and you said no to your 3%. Do you really think your boss doesn’t want to pay you less? He wants to pay less for everything, that shouldn’t be a secret.
And to answer your question more directly: I tell them what ever I think will get productivity up. So no, I don’t tell them explicitly things that would hurt moral. Just as you probably haven’t told your boss you want to fuck his wife/daughter/sister/brother.
But there you go, that’s what’s happening on the floors above where you work.
I can’t help but notice you haven’t offered to pay the $14.95 for a Straightdope subscription. It is possible that you choose the lowest price you could get away with?
While I think you make a good point “never” is not the right notion. “Less likely” is better. I don’t think conservatives of any stripe feel there exists any type of guarantee that you suggest. As far as a just world, even in a just world, shit happens. You can go on a long hike a be prepared for virtually anything. But then you could fall into a crevasse just as a boulder is falling and find your arm stuck between a rock and a hard place.
The problem appears to arise from systematic efforts to help out others. When helping others is taken out of the hands of individuals, then helping is provided to the characteroligcally flawed. Giving to the poor is a good thing, but welfare rewards the Cadillac Queens. Helping someone out when they are out of a job is laudable, but unemployment benefits reward laziness. I should have ample tax breaks for my charitable giving, because when I don’t have control over it, it goes to the wrong sort.
This is interesting But I don’t think that it’s the idea that any giving that is not done directly is bad, it’s that it MAY be bad. So, why not allow me to do the giving directly.
I have a job I’d like you to do. What is wrong with you figuring out what range would be acceptable to you, me figuring out a range that I’d be willing to pay and striking a deal where we overlap? What’s wrong with that. I have no expectation to pay you less than what you’d be willing to do the job for. Do you have some expectation that I would pay you more than the higher end of my range?
I think compassion has a lot to do with it. I think you’re underestimating the personal benefit that comes from being compassionate and helping people. It’s a pretty good feeling. we should be encouraging this, not reducing the possibility of it occurring by having all “help” be extracted from us via taxes.
If by “manage the transition” you mean offer better unemployment benefits, I’m sure we could do that. But slapping tariffs on goods in order to protect our own workers runs afoul of the WTO rules. Are you suggesting that we withdraw from that organization?