No, it doesn’t prove a damn thing.
Can you find a single video of yourself having sex? Does that mean you’ve never had sex?
Even if you did have a good data set, I already posted why this is a logical fallacy. Read the link.
I have asked no such thing. I asked to prove a positive.
Key word: “imagine.”
Stop it already.
You obviously don’t understand even the most basic principles of logic or statistics or all that. I’m not going to waste my time explaining them to you. I’m done.
I have witnessed more than one peaceful picket line. I never thought to take a video.
The picketing nurses were non-violent however there were definite threats of intimidation and retaliation. The nurses who chose to come to work had to do so under duress and hide their arrival from the union cameras. Intimidation can be non violent. The union would issue consequences for scabs in due time. Mostly financial consequences. UGH.
PS: The word “scabs” is an ugly word for a person who is following his/her personal conscience. Being called a “scab” is hostile. And stupid. It is not an intelligent thing for the unions to allow because it gives the public MORE REASON to think poorly of unions in general. Which is what this thread is about.
It’s always possible to define the standards of evidence so strictly that they’re impossible to meet, and then claim that everything you disagree with is unsubstantiated, while retaining some kind of moral high ground by making no claims. Intellectually honest debating involves making counterclaims and supporting them to the same degree that you expect those who disagree with you to meet.
Ok, I agree. Clearly “almost universal” is a difficult claim to prove on either side, since it’s poorly defined. How about disproving that it’s absolutely universal? I’d consider it interesting if you could produce evidence of even one such picket line. It wouldn’t prove anything about how common such things are. But it would prove that they exist. So far in my lifetime I’ve seen zero evidence that they do. Granted, violence and strife are magnets for news, so it’s not surprising that I hear about the cases gone bad. But as Bricker pointed out, the “editorial” standards of Youtube are absurdly low. Surely there’s a union supporter out there who wants to counter all the claims of union intimidation with some evidence of polite picket lines who don’t harass people who cross them.
My standards are perfectly reasonable in this case.
You can’t just go saying something is “almost universal” and then not support it. Otherwise anyone could do that.
What would that accomplish?
Sorry, but none of this is good evidence. I’m not going to play into it. YouTube is simply a worthless source for this.
Somebody claimed that something was “almost universal.” If he can’t back that up, how does HE know it in the first place?
It is not irrational to ask for evidence from someone who makes a positive claim.
That’s a fair request, too.
Even fairer would be for us to find some way of quantifying and tracking the rate of “threateningness” at picket lines, and to see what variables we can correlate it to (what industry, what issue, what individuals make the threats, etc…)
I don’t suppose this has been done?
It’s really hard for me to understand anything said in that video, but as far as I can tell it was just people yelling “scab!” Where’s the threat you’re talking about in the video?
He’s probably not engaging in argument from ignorance. He’s probably not saying “Since I’ve seen no evidence of non-threatening pickets, they don’t exist.” Rather, he’s probably saying “I’ve seen no evidence of non-threatening pickets and I would have if they existed, so they don’t exist.” The question is, is he right when he thinks that he would have heard about them if they existed?
Bricker, this is a terrible analysis. It’s 101 stuff! Come on!
Lance is asking for proof of a positive claim that violence is almost universal. A series of videos doesn’t even address that claim, much less prove it.
Come on man, I know you know this. I hereby remind you.
Guys, what exactly would a video of a peaceful picket look like? It would be dozens of hours long, and would cover every square foot of the picket line. I’m not sure what you think you’re looking for here, but whatever it is it is almost impossible for it to exist on purely pragmatic grounds.
So, with that in mind, what are you looking for?
Also, what counts as “threatening?” Is it threatening simply to yell “scab?” I wouldn’t have thought so, but do we differ on that?
Exactly - I doubt he has personally visited most of the picket lines in America.
There are some differences between Japanese EMPLOYERS and US automakers as well.
Japanese companies traditionally put the welfare of their employees over making profits and regarded creating secure jobs for their employees as being more important that paying dividends to their shareholders. Companies are often resistant to making changes that sacrifice the well-being of employees in the name of increased efficiency.
Germany is not a fire at will employment jurisdiction, you can only fire for cause or if there is an urgent buiness requirement for layoffs, it is generally done on a seniority basis.
Sooo, Japan has cheaper union labor and Germany is more expensive union labor.
So can we conclude it has little to do with the wage level?
Can we conclude it has little to do with unionization per se?
Considering how much harder it is to fire an employee in Japan and germany, can we even conclude it has little to do with how hard it is to fire employees in japan and Germany (both for legal and societal reasons)?
Perhaps the problems weren’t on the employee side.
Yes, of course. These stories of management malfeasance are totally unfounded.
In my experience, public employees (at least at the federal level) are fairly public minded, they aren’t looking for a teat to suckle at. Most them (at least in the DC area) tend to be well educated professionals who could make at least as much in the private sector but choose to work in the public sector at least in part out of a sense of public mindedness.
I agree but when people ascribe that to unions, then I call bullshit.
I don’t even think its automation. Do you know how automated a garment factory is? Its not very. Thats why the labor costs are so important. Thats why we could never keep the industry. US seamstresses are not really much better at using a merrow sewing machine than a Chinese seamstress. The learning curve flattens out pretty fucking quickly.
Its generally the first rung on the ladder towards industrialization. Remember when all the clothes were made in Korea. Try finding any clothing made in Korea these days. They make flat screen TVs now.
It doesn’t help that all the new machines are being used in factories in China instead of the US.
Particularly in the primary grades, in the early years of public schools, women teachers were minimum wage workers, as far as such a thing was possible. The pay scale was geared towards young single women who were expected to remain with their parents, or possibly live in boarding houses, until they were married–at which point they could be fired.
While this doesn’t entirely surprise me, do you have a cite? If substantiated this needs to be more widely known.
My reasoning is: given the ubquity of scenes on YouTube etc, it seems likely to me that someone would have posted snippets of their picketing experience somewhere. Are all such examples violent? Or are there some that show peaceful experiences?
The lack of any that show peaceful experiences, given the fact that there are YouTube videos for almost any other public experience, suggests their rarity or non-existence.
Federal employee pensions are 1% per year of service so if you work 30 years, your pension is 30% of the average of your highest 3 or 5 years base salary. You seem to think that the Federeal employees get whatever they want. Are we going to go back to the notion that federal employees are overpaid?
And yet federal employees cant do that. Or are you under the impression we are talking about how the perception of unions have changed above the 45th parallel.
It could be thirty seconds long and satisfy me. It just needs to show picketers, someone crossing the picket lines, and the lack of any abuse, threats, or intimidation.
It’s not threatening to yell “scab,” but it’s abusive. I wouldn’t mind even seeing a picketeer explaining his position, or expressing sorrow at the choice to cross the line. That’s OK by me.
Are you saying there’s nothing like that out there? Isn’t the difficulty in finding such a snippet indicative of SOMETHING?
It would be a nice video to find. I have to register, though, that this does not change the fact that the videos we’ve seen so far in this thread constitute no evidence at all for the claim that violence or threats (or whatever it is we’re talking about) is almost universal on picket lines. For that we’d need something much nearer to randomized sampling etc.
I don’t think I can find it within me to object to people yelling “scab.” Well, I mean, it’s not pleasant and I wish they wouldn’t. But I’ll put it this way–if that’s the worst they do, I don’t think any real harm has been done. People let off steam. I don’t draw any conclusions from someone letting off steam, especially in a ritualized context like a picket line.
Ironically enough, government employment follows the same line. (the seniority line)
Wow.
I think I’ve stumbled on a reason that unions are villified - those who want to believe bad things about them have laughably low standards of evidence.
Satisfy you in what way? To withdraw your entire claim?
It’s not hard to find.
Let’s be clear - posting this does NOT prove, or disprove, a damn thing - except that you’re wrong about the ease of finding this video.
http://blog.thenewstribune.com/photo/2011/09/16/video-from-the-picket-line-strike-day-4/