Great examples from around 100 years ago. Would you like to address the present situation and tell me why a union is relevant today? That is, after all, the crux of the matter, wouldn’t you say?
A a true conservative, here’s IMHO what I have against most unions:
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Unions protect the terms and oftentimes the method of production at the expense of quality and competitiveness of the final product. What this often leads to is a super-bloated infrastructure and the eventual demise of the original product.
– Teachers unions are the classic example here. Everone knows that the #1 concern of parents is the “product” of a good education for their children. However, since the advent of teachers unions, oftentimes school districts are forced to keep ineffective teachers in the classroom, and teachers unions are often squarely in the way of any real necessary school reform at the expense of teachers jobs (which they view often as more important than the “product” of a good education). And they wonder why parents and teachers unions are often at odds? No wonder those with any means have left the inner city (with powerful teachers unions) and fled for the suburbs where the teachers unions are either not yet as powerful. And the cycle repeats. -
Unions are a throwback to an era before we had the ADA, Worker’s Comp, Minimum Wage laws, OSHA, Social Security, and other safeguards. In short, with all of that and more, do we really need unions anymore?
–Before the advent of OSHA, Social Security, etc., unions were necessary to literally protect worker’s lives and well being. But much of the original tasks unions were formed to do are now duplicated by government programs. So I say either do away with OSHA and other goverment programs, or get rid of unions. It’s easier to disband the unions. The only ‘strong point’ unions have anymore that isn’t taken care of by gov’t is the collective bargaining of salaries and ‘means’ of production (but see my first point #1, above, for my gripes on this).
The AFL-CIO, UAW, and other holdovers from a bygone era are smaller than they’ve ever been. And rightly so. In America, anyway, unions were once the instruments of advancment and progress.
Anymore, however, unions are simply standing in the way and preventing the very things (progress and competition) that they once were designed to foster.
So don’t sign a union contract. What is more fair than that?
I don’t necessarily disagree with much of what you say here about health&safety/pensions, etc, etc. In many cases (see Detroit), I’ll agree that unions are dinosaur-like entities standing in the way.
I do strenuously disagree with the following:
Firstly, I don’t think it’s “easier” to disband unions. I might suspect there’s a first amendment right to free association. If workers want to get together into a “club”, that’s their right. Again, you as the employer can refuse to sign a union contract-but you can’t demand that some other organization just go away.
Secondly, if you have a problem with collective bargaining, tough. Get better at bargaining, or offer incentives for employees not to unionize. Collective bargaining breaks down into
- bargaining about terms of employment ent, or if the thing they dislike is that they aren’t being offered enough money? (everyone has turned down jobs that don’t pay enough-arguing that that isn’t allowed is, in effect, arguing that employees HAVE to take jobs they aren’t willing to accept-which is absurd).
and 2) Talking to other employees and agreeing to act together.
-you certainly can try to convince employees they don’t want to do this. But if they do, how do you intend to stop them?
Again, we come back to the right of an employer not to sign a union contract. But if you can’t find employees unless you do, that’s your problem–just as if you couldn’t find employees because you don’t pay enough)
And to reply to
A union is relevant today because certain employers can’t hire the employees they want without agreeing to a union contract. If they could, unions would go away overnight.
But as long as employees have a desire for unions, and as long as they organize and form unions, and as long as employers can’t find substitute employees, unions will be around. I bet detroit auto workers probably can’t (easily) find other jobs, either-apart from big 3 work-so it works both ways.
To keep things from going back to what they were like a hundred years ago. Basically, to keep the protections and benefits that they have gained for workers.
On Edit, I se that shallora has addressed those issues.
Wealth redistribution?! It’s a form of negotiation in the marketplace. What’s un-conservative about that?
It doesn’t automatically make the business owner god and king.
Unions were once necessary, and now enable the unskilled and uneducated to demand higher wages than they realistically deserve.
It’s no wonder American corporations have built plants overseas. Labor is ANY industry’s single biggest cost.
Where some wrench jockey on an auto assembly line that only graduated from High School deserves more than $12 an hour to do some repetitive bullshit job is beyond me.
I suspect that what’s wrong with it is that the workers are demanding the respect to be treated with at all.
“Why oh why won’t these pestilent workers just stfu and do what I tell them? How dare they demand anything!” and all that.
Airman, you are a military member right? You are protecting the ideals and freedoms and prosperity that good men (and women) fought and died to secure, right?
Well, that’s why we need unions too. Good people fought and died for the freedoms, security and prosperity that all workers enjoy today. Can you in good conscience tell me that I need be less vigilant in keeping and securing those things than you need be to keep and secure the things your predecessors fought and died for?
Pro union people keep going on about unions having created OSHA and workers rights, but what the hell do these guys do now? Why can’t Boing decide what to pay its mechanics the way Genentech decides what to pay its scientists and programmers? Of course there are crappy jobs out there that don’t pay enough to live on, lack of crappy jobs would imply lack of crappy workers, of which there are plenty. If someone unionized programmers I would be very much in favor of having an Executive Outcomes type company roughing them up if they tried to prevent me from getting to work during a strike.
Sorry about the rant, but these people just piss me off.
No, the crux of the matter is why conservatives are against unions and always have been.
Well, that’s just one of many things they were wrong about. Unless you are arguing that they were right on that point…?
A broad brush ideed. Conservatives are more keen on the economic welfare and rights of the individual while liberals have more concern for the welfare and rights of the community and the collective.
That is only possible if the union has not established monopolistic control of the provision of labour. I don’t know what it’s like in the United States, but at least one of the local unions has no qualms about sabotaging attempts to work around their strikes.
First, there’s a straw man here - we’re not talking about unions in general, we’re talking about using government to give unions power they would not have if they had to rely on market forces (i.e. free bargaining).
If you want to form a union, that’s fine. However, if the business owner does not want to deal with a union, he should have the right to fire everyone in it and hire replacements.
Unions still have power, as the threat of an entire workforce walking off the job, forcing the employer to close his doors until he can hire and retrain a new workforce, is still a powerful negotiating tool.
But using government power to force business owners to knuckle under to their employees demands is a very Orwellian way to achieve ‘freedom’. When the government gets involved, we’re talking about expanding freedom, we’re talking about taking freedom away from one group to give another group more power.
Conservatives generally support the rights of business owners. If I save for 20 years to raise the capital for a business, I should have the right to offer employment on my terms. If you don’t like my terms, don’t work for me. At no point does the government have the right to step in and tell me that I must meet the demands of the employees or a government arbitrator with my own money.
I feel strongly enough about this that if I owned a business and the employees unionized and made demands I didn’t want to accept and the government told me I had to agree to it, I’d just shut my business down and put them all out of work. No one has a right to demand that I pay employees something I’m not willing to pay.
So conservatives don’t like unions because a union is a collective?
For the same reason people are against monopolies. By being the sole supplier of workers, the unions drive the price of labor higher than it otherwise would be. There is also the factor that conservatives are more likely to be in management, and may have seen what Unions can do to a business.
I’d also object to the metric we are using to define anti-union here. If someone doesn’t support the numerous protections for unions, does that make them anti-union? I don’t think you will find many conservatives that will object to unions if businesses weren’t, for example, prevented from firing the lot of them.
Are conservatives against monopolies?
I don’t know, go look it up on wikipedia.
Hmm, is it too easy to say that negotiations between employer’s and employee’s are simply about salary. It’s equally possible that they could be over working conditions, for example Managers trying to enforce unpaid overtime or from your perspective trying to make people do things not specified in their contract.
For the individual it may be easier simply to go along with it as they don’t have the bargaining power to do anything about - they may be passed over for pay rises and promotions - whereas a union allows them to do something about it.
And saying that the individual should just quit I think ignores some of the harsh reality of just how difficult that is to do. I think the employer should be forced to uphold their side of the contract as well.
As a side note, and I may be totally in the wrong here, many Americans seem to think Unions = UAW which is just not true. Germany’s unions are immensely strong yet they have accepted below inflation wage increases twice now - in order to keep the company running smoothly.
Just like Enron doesn’t discredit all public companies the UAW doesn’t devalue all unions.
Just my two cents.