Guin, I don’t know really too much what a straw man is. If it means I’m arguing just for the sake of arguing, I don’t want you to think that…I’m not much of a debator.
My point is this. From my experience with Unions (which, no, is not every Union in the world), I have seen naught but irrational, bullying, non-cooperative behavior (of which I listed many examples, as did others)
I guess I’m wondering why I bothered to work hard at college, work through the ranks of crap jobs in many fields to find one good job with good benefits when I could have just joined a Union, said “I wish I made as much as that guy” and gotten it by threatening my employer.
I realize that some businesses are atrocious to their employees and treat them terribly ala The Jungle or whatever, but going on strike at Christmas because you want a $1.00 raise is a little out of line.
Just to keep the argument going and adding a little bit of spice to it, The Great Gazoo posts this:
Comparing Big Business Practices to Union Practices is like comparing Osama bin Laden to the United States.
Big Business started all this with their bad practices (bad working conditions, low wages, no benefits, no job security)in the Industrial Revolution. Which caused unionization. A reaction to those practices, which may have shifted too far towards the unions (but I doubt it, Business still has the upper hand).
Most of us wouldn’t want to do the jobs that people say the union workers get paid too much to do! It’s usually tedious work or dangerous work, or both. Standing on my feet for 8 hours and doing the same thing over and over every day for 40 years??? Making $2 million over 40 years doesn’t seem too much.
Unions are essentially a good thing. Coming from the point of view that capitalism brings the two major classes into conflict on a daily basis, I think anything that serves to organize the workers and help them fight back in a more efficient fashion is a plus.
This is not to say that those numerous unions run in a bureaucratic, anti-democratic fashion are wonderful things and should be left to run as they are. The problem is that the real militant (read: socialist and/or communist) sections of the membership that gave many of the big unions their initial boost (like Farrell Dobbs in the Minneapolis Teamsters’ Strike of 1934) were witch-hunted out of the unions during the 1940s and 1950s, taking a lot of the fight out of the organizations. Couple that with the increased influence of organized crime around the same time and you end up with unions that are run in the interest of the top layers of the leadership bureaucracy, which is often more interested in cutting deals with the bosses and keeping their jobs than actually representing the interests of the rank-and-file membership. Hence the existence of tendencies within unions like Teamsters for a Democratic Union and New Directions (also within the Teamsters, but I may be mistaken).
Taking things backwards as I review the thread while posting:
From Nxn:
How, then, would you explain Reagan firing the striking PATCO controllers, and Clinton stepping in to head off strikes by airline pilots? If the government were interested in restraining trade through unions, should they not have let the strikes continue?
From Vinnie Virginslayer:
Sounds like the union missed a serious opportunity to reach out to the other non-unionized food chain workers in the area and say “Look what we can do for you”. And I really wonder if the food chain was so financially strapped that a successful union drive would have shut them down.
From sailor:
Which, to me, is a solid argument for aggressively expanding union membership. The more people who benefit from successful union fights, the better. And that takes care of your “favoring a few at the expense of the majority”.
From hansel:
It is indeed. Companies are still heavy hitting on the campaign to decertify unions, and some have been successful. I’ll have to look up some articles but I can get some backup for that.
Have you any proof that these cards are actually sold? I’m not overly familiar with the ‘card check recognition’ process but I’m doubtful as to whether the union sells the cards to people.
Without actual proof that check cards are actually being sold to unorganized workers, I’d say this is nothing more than a dirty trick on the part of the company. Then again, I’m convinced that any company that says “You don’t need a union, we’ll treat you right” is basically flat-out lying.
Finally, jarbabyj - The entire country didn’t suffer because Teamsters at UPS went out on strike. Business may have slowed down some, but untold misery and want didn’t stalk the land because of it. I’m sorry it affected your business, but striking for better wages and conditions in a company that treats its manual labor like absolute dirt is not bullying. A successful strike would have shown other workers that it’s possible to fight back and win, and to me that’s a good thing. And I don’t believe the Teamsters truly won, firstly because Ron Carey got hounded out of the union by the government as a result, and secondly because the 10,000 full-time jobs UPS promised have yet to materialize. They’ve basically sat back and said “Make us” almost from the moment the strike ended.
Capacitor,
I know there’s a lot of fuss about Nike’s factories. But, unless Nike is forcing people to work in their factories, I see absolutely nothing wrong with how much they pay their people. If Nike pulled out of there, those people would be a lot worse off. The solution to the over-population problem in certain areas is not extorting higher wages from private companies.
In the case of Orange County Garbage Collectors, there are people who would take the job for a lot less; otherwise the Unions wouldn’t have to strike to get more. If you think they deserver more, you are free to give your portion of your utility saving to any of the drivers you deem deserving.
Others have mentioned that a strike is the employees way of not working for a low wage. Fair enough only if striking workers don’t intimidate, harass, badger, and even in some cases assault the workers who would cross the lines. Be honest, would you cross the picket lines and not fear for your own safety?
Again, if price-fixing is good because it leads to a better quality product, why don’t we let the businesses do it? Lets make the price of the cheapest car $50K, and it would be a lot safer. Also, they would more environmentally safe. Lets double the price of food, so farmers could use the most environmentally friendly processes in their farms? Higher price of airplanes would also help improve its safety. This list is endless.
But, the idea of limiting competition helps improve quality is ludicrous. It is the threat of extinction that forces companies and people to improve. To remove competition, which is what the unions do, is promoting sub-optimal services for the benefit of the few at the expense to all.
I was a union memeber twice in my life-both times while attanding university. The second time, I was a waiter/busboy for a local restaurant. To work there, you had to join the hotel worker’s union. Our local shop steward just sat around all day, while we worked our asses off. Given the low hourly wage (most of my income was from tips), the union dues were fairley high-we never got an accounting of where our money went. The steward got to go to the union conventions (usually in NYC or Las Vegas); he usually had a good time. In short, my union did little for me except take my money!
The union-busting I was referring to involved near riots, mass firings without any sort of legal review, harassment of workers, etc. I’m aware that there are still dirty tricks that companies (and unions) can use in the whole process, but I think that the general shift of worker protection from unionization to federal labor laws has eliminated the worst excesses of acrimonious campaigns. And union decertification is a legitimate process, guided by law and overseen by federal agencies who have not been over friendly to business (at least from business’ perspective).
I used the word “sold” metaphorically; not too clearly, I guess. I meant that, as part of a union campaign, the organizers try to convince the employees to sign the authorization cards prior to the election. It’s a tactic akin to getting voters to post a sign for their chosen candidate on their lawn, but the implication is there that those who signed the cards will be better regarded members of the union than those who don’t.
While I’d agree that a company’s claim that they have the employees best interests at heart should be treated skeptically, it is certainly true in the case of company where I work. It’s not that management feels some kind of capitalist nobless oblige; as a practical matter, good working conditions and terms help us retain employees in a tight labor market (the unemployment rate in Southern Wisconsin has hovered around 3% for years now), and attract better employees. I can’t say that such an attitude would persist unchanged with high unemployment, but my experience of the president is that he sincerely believes that it’s simply a good business practice to be fair to the employees. The owner of the company actually lectured management on how important it was to make employees want to work at the company as an essential ingredient of a good company.
I wouldn’t assume that this is a widespread attitude, but it’s there in some cases.
I haven’t thought much about unions and never have belonged to one but, based on what I read here and despite stupid abuses, they seem like a ‘good’ thing.
I have one question though. Let’s say I get my college degree and join a company. I want to move up and get promoted. Can I do this in a union environment? Can management promote me because I’m really competent and work hard and not someone else that has more seniority?
Unions do not cover all employees in a company, only certain “classes” of employees. For example, in our company’s case, the union was trying to unionize the machine workers, but not the distribution. A union cannot unionize anyone; they have to have similar concerns; therefore, the electrical union could unionize our production employees who worked with machines run on electricity, but not distribution workers who moved boxes around.
Thus, the union cannot stand in the way of your promotion, except that certain cases of promotion can be viewed as unfair labor tactics. For example, promoting a union organizer in your plant during a campaign can be viewed as an attempt to remove a key person from acting in the campaign, thus hurting the union’s chances. The union’s recourse is to file a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board.
Since unions don’t concern themselves with unionizing management, climbing the corporate ladder rarely matters to them. The seniority issue might cause problems because of stated company policy, but not through a union complaint.
Thanks hansel. I wasn’t thinking of management itself but something where you start off in an entry level position and then hopefully can work up higher but not necessarily management. Is it that unions only really have blue collar workers or do they also have college grads?
Also, my question still has merit, I think. If I was a machine worker and wanted to ‘move up’ and I was really, really good at being a machinist, could I still get promoted or would the whole seniority thing hold me back?
It would depend on the union and agreement negotiated, really. The union contract would probably have stipulations that certain open positions be offered to certain people first, usually by seniority. The interest of the union isn’t in screwing you, it’s avoiding hard feelings among the membership, and possible dirty tricks by management to restructure the organization in certain ways.
I should say that a smart union would negotiate some means for you to move up the ladder if you were obviously a superior machine worker, since it’s not in the union’s interest to hold people back, either.
I can solidly second this from a standpoint of someone who has worked in AE shops as a stagehand/technician/etc for years. AE is a total pain in the ass for the cast and the crew. I don’t want to imagine how much hair our casting director on many shows would still have if he didn’t have to deal with AE and getting things like exemptions and “umbrella” contracts and such.
So, Jarbaby, don’t judge all unions on the AE standard, there are some that are still useful.
Clarissa, there are unions for chemists, at least. Pretty much a good rule of thumb: if it ain’t management, it has been unionized somewhere.
Which, IMO, begs the question about a “natural” conflict; seems pretty fucking artificial to me. I always wanted to form a management union to fight the regular union. In paintball.
On the contrary; class society always breeds conflict. If you’ve got classes, you’ve always got someone (or several ones) who are at the top, and whose riches come from the labor of many, many others. Up through feudalism it was the monarch; in feudalism itself you had the nobility as well. Under capitalism, you have the capitalists. Bill Gates, for example, did start off rich but he couldn’t have gotten as rich as he is now without the thousands of people who work for Microsoft. And his goal is to maximize his profits while minimizing the money he pays the people who work for him. The source of conflict right there.
The problem with that is you’re arming workers. A very dangerous situation, no?
[anecdotal evidence]
I belonged to a union during my first job, in a factory.
I spoke to the shop steward on exactly two occasions. Once on the day I started, when he explained that I had to join the union to work there, and the other was about two weeks later, when he told me to slow down - I was making the rest of the “workers” there look bad. [/anecdotal evidence]
I’m with Bricker. Any worker can go on strike whenever he feels like it. Any company who can find a permanent replacement for any striker is free to hire him.
And let us not forget that it was a labor union, Solidarity, that helped drive the stake of freedom though the heart of the evil empire of communism.
The masters in Moscow, richer and more powerful than all the Tsars from the sweat of the masses, watched incredulously as ordinary workers exposed their lies and hypocrisy.
There had been attempts at free unions before, of course, - crushed by murders from the secret police. But Stalin and Lenin were long dead, and their bureaucratic heirs had lost their stomach for such “class conflict”.
Ironically enough, the Solidarity strike in July 1980 was at the Lenin Shipyards.
And in 1989, workers in the breathing corpse called the USSR, threw out the phony nomenklatura and students of Marxism who were selected as party “union” chiefs, formed free unions, and led massive strikes throughout the country.
The world wept tears of joy as students and workers (sorry, no Bill Gates - but he, like all, were welcome) pulled down the symbol of communist lies, murder, and tyranny in Berlin.
But some wept bitter tears. They weep today. Let them keep weeping.
Can I also chime in and point out that unions are usually the only democratic (small “d”, I’m not about to endorse one of your silly political parties) formations found in the workplace? A union may be run poorly, much like a government, in both cases there is the opportunity to vote the bstrds who are running it into the ground out of office. Considering the amount of our lives that are spent in the workplace, and given that so many of us believe in democracy, I am surprised not more of us are unionized. Frankly, I am shocked at how many of you are willing to accept an essentially feudal structure in your workplace.
Different unions (or union-like organizations) represent different jobs.Everyone knows about the plumbers,electricians, etc, but there are also nurses’ unions, lawyers’ unions, medical residents’ unions, etc. Every lawyer isn’t a union member, but neither is every electrician (Union electricians generally work on big projects,not for the guy you hire to put a couple of outlets in). The skilled trades usually have some sort of promotion based on seniority- for example, my friend the electrician had to be an apprentice for a certain number of years and then automatically moved up to a different level of the same job- he didn’t supervise anyone, but got a higher pay rate and was able to do more complex work.In other unions, seniority has little or nothing to do with promotion.I have worked in civil service for about 15 years, and have belonged to 2 different unions. In both jobs, promotions were based partially on an exam and partially on an interview. In one, seniority didn’t matter at all.In the other,the actual written test was worth 95 points and the other five were based on seniority.People with three or four years of experience are often promoted over people with twenty years experience.
Since I belong to a civil service union, we’re not permitted to strike by law,which has the effect of management not really negotiating with us. They don’t make any real attempt to compromise and essentially say “take it or leave it”. [ And for those who say there’s nothing wrong with that,I ask you which is more disruptive- a strike that can be settled within a couple of days, or UPS having to suddenly replace the majority of their workforce ].We usually end up working for at least a year without a contract. The union ends up essentially being a means to fund and provide personnel to file lawsuits,pursue complaints to an independent employee relations board and lobby legislators, or in my favorite way to get management,organize people to follow every one of management’s rules to the letter (for example, if management’s rule is “All overtime must be authorized in advance,in writing” and management is acting stupid,then nobody’s working overtime based on a promise to sign the authorization tomorrow.If the person with the authority to sign has already left,I’m going home.)
