I’m not comfortable with that idea. I don’t think people had a higher opinion of unions because management was violent too. But maybe you’re right. Maybe unions were perceived as defending themselves.
Good comments. I think that’s true too, but there’s clearly a bias against unions, backed by false information and poor critical thinking, that makes that harder.
Okay. Just pointing out that this right is under attack.
It was also attacked in Ohio, by the way, but the voters there overturned it.
If they can do that, it would pretty much destroy unions, so the prohibition against that is part of protecting collective-bargaining rights by law.
A workers should be able to choose a union without fear of retaliation, or it’s not a choice.
How much are the union dues?
The company offered more in salary increases than this amount, before the union was certified?
This is how it went:
Claim: “Violence is near universal.”
Counter: “Prove it.”
Claimant: “Prove it’s not!”
Choose a union? Sure. Choose to stop doing his job? No.
Some union don’t have a legal right to strike, such as airline and rail workers and some federal workers. But those workers have far greater legal protections of their rights to represent workers and collectively bargain than those with the right to strike. if you want to extend those to all workers, I would be happy with it, and they probably would be too.
Why shouldn’t a worker be allowed to choose to stop doing his job?
He can… but he cannot expect to keep his job after refusing to do it. To review, here is the discussion that led to my statement:
I think everyone should have the legal right to strike, and everyone should have the right to fire their own striking workers. If some parade of horribles resulted from that, I would be open to changing my mind.
If strikers can be fired, though, there’s no point in having a legal right to it. It would be completely toothless.
No one has a general right to keep a job.
The presumed advantage the union has is to say to the employer: you will lose all of us, at once, and have to make do with untrained replacements. Our value to you is in a trained workforce.
When the union demands laws that forbid the employers from firing striking workers, they are saying, in effect, “We can force you to capitulate, because we can refuse to work at no real risk to us.”
This reminds me of the scene in Princess Bride in which the Westley, the Man in Black, faces Fezzik, the role played by Andre the Giant. After Westley wryly observes that Fezzik might have a slight advantage in hand-to-hand combat, Fezzik replies, “It’s not my fault I’m the biggest and the strongest. I don’t even exercise!”
The proper role of government is not to step in and equalize the perceived differences between contestants. It’s to provide a framework in which all persons can act freely. I’m free to quit; my employer is free to fire me. If they think I’m not adding value to the company, they SHOULD fire me. If I think they are treating me unfairly, I should quit – or threaten to quit unless they make right what they are doing wrong. If I’ve banded together with 5,000 of my co-workers, that should be a more potent threat, but they should still be free to take the loss, fire me and my pals, and hire new faces.
Just as I am free to walk away and get a new job.
Sometimes that works. Sometimes, as in the case of unskilled work with easy replacements, it consigns workers to desperate poverty and no recourse. It makes unions toothless.
There is plenty of risk to workers in a strike though. They lose their pay, and they risk losing what they asked for anyway. They also risk putting their employer out of business, which is something they don’t take lightly. I’ll remind you that employers can and sometimes to use the lockout, which is the reverse of a strike, against workers.
The law was designed to provide a framework where everyone can act in their own best interests, including choosing to give up a little freedom in exchange for something else.
But that’s basically saying there should be no unions.
More like you are free to walk away and be unemployed for a long long time.
Do you believe an employer has an obligation to provide jobs for particular employees? Or that a worker has some sort of right to a job?
Yes, you’re right – sometimes, and especially in the case of unskilled work, it’s not a potent threat. So what? The government’s role is not to force a company to provide jobs for one set of workers over another, or even to force a company to provide any jobs at all.
But in this case, the company doesn’t choose to give up the freedom – it is taken from them.
No – it’s saying that unions should operate in the framework of freedom.
Maybe so – but that’s a consequence of my freedom not to give you a job. And if you’re competent, then someone will hire you.
Right: My question can be phrased, why can’t the worker expect to keep his job after refusing to do it?
It’s not about an obligation to provide jobs in perpetuity. It’s about whether the government can impose limits on *what *a person can be fired for. As I understand it, even in at-will states, it’s illegal to fire someone for being the “wrong” race or gender. That doesn’t create “an obligation to provide jobs” or a “right to a job”, does it?
Striking is not the same thing as simply stopping working. Otherwise we might as well talk about the right to quit your job, or go on holiday, or be ill. Striking is the temporary, collective withdrawal of labour as a tool of negotiation. The right to strike without being fired for it simply means that you can’t be fired for negotiating effectively.
An unskilled worker with job security is more likely to be able to either get skills or have children in the position to become skilled workers.
An unskilled worker without job security is more likely to remain unskilled and have unskilled children.
A nation with more skilled workers is better off than a nation with fewer unskilled workers.
An inability to fire striking workers leads to increased job security.
So, an inability to fire striking workers is a viable path toward improving a nation with a lot of unskilled workers.
No. I’m saying that your statement that a worker has a right to a union is negated if strikers aren’t protected.
Unions aren’t about that. They’re about getting decent pay for the work.
By that standard, there should be no unions.
Lots of unemployed competent people out there now.
And everyone should go to college and get an advanced degree too.
Maybe. Not necessarily.
If a company cannot fire striking workers and is hemorrhaging money, that company may decide to pull up stakes and go erect their tent elsewhere. Decreased job security.
I remember a grocery workers strike in Los Angeles a few years back. Ralphs Market.
The strikers gave a very clear message to the public, which was “Buy groceries somewhere else.” A large portion of the public did shop elsewhere. Many of them discovered lower prices in “elsewhere” and once the strike ended they never returned.
The outcome of this strike was interesting.
“New hires would be on a much lower pay scale than existing workers and receive far less generous health benefits.”.
The striking workers screwed new hires to get what they wanted.
The other remarkable thing about that strike is that Ralphs hired “scabs” to work. Some replacement workers were, in reality, striking workers.
“On October 16, 2006, Ralphs agreed to pay $70 million to settle felony charges that it illegally rehired locked out employees using false names and social security numbers during the strike. Fifty million dollars of the settlement was to be paid to eligible UFCW members, with the remainder being paid in fines to the federal government.”
Check out the union boss in “On The Waterfront”- “Johnny Friendly” was the kind of union boss I had in mind.