I’m sure I could find some bad shit that happened in any branch of the armed services (Abu Ghraib?), and by your logic, the military blows. Or how about some corporate corruption? Corporations blow. Or crooked small business owners. Small businesses blow. Or abusive marriages? Marriage blows. Or predatory priests? Churches blow. Etc, etc, etc.
Sorry your experience sucked, but that’s not representative of all unions. Do some unions suck? Yep. That’s life with humans-run organizations.
It would be very unwise to assume management has changed over the last century to the point where labor disputes would be settled fairly. Given the amount of instability within business nowadays, CEO’s skimming money from the company, guys like Ken Lay, and the disparity between CEO pay and a typical line workers, we need more protections now than ever before to prevent that from happening again. Your ideal is great; we have laws now that protect workers so we can disband the unions, but without constant pressure from unions and regulators, where’s the impetus to continue?
Pull up any business ethics topic we’ve had and you’ll see conservatives trump over and over that businesses are to make profit, not to be ethical, or provide jobs, or make their workers happy. The inherent goal of business runs contrary to the inherent goals of labor unions, which is why one can never be sure that without one, the other won’t abuse it’s powers
Even now, there are businesses like the oil companies who rather pay fines than clean up their messes or install safer protections. Why? Because it’s cheaper to pay the miniscule fine! Management hasn’t changed as much as you hoped they did in the past century. Don’t be naive to their vices and don’t overestimate the corruption of unions. They are there to protect their workers, vehemently, zealously, and with all their resources. Think of them as a defense lawyer: they don’t care if you’re guilty, they’re job is to defend you to the best of their ability. Because you can be sure that management is doing the same
If the point is that unions are fucking useless, I think that a good case can be made for that position in many cases. Certainly the federal employees unions are pretty damn close. They can exercise almost no power, like I said, I think the most they have extracted from the government is a free trainpass and the right to work from home a few day a month if you have the type of work that permits that.
I’m saying that the vilification of federal employee unions (and federal employees generally) is not only misplaced it is based on fictitious premises.
Which is part of why I’ve gone off unions in recent years, particularly the teachers’ union.
Here in VT we have gone through a student bubble; a number of years back we hit a peak number of students, and the number of kids in the schools is declining and is projected to continue to decline for some time. We’re also in a bit of a budget crisis.
The gov. and others suggested that we cut teachers through attrition (ie, when people retire, don’t hire a replacement) as a way to save money, while not firing anybody, and still maintaining an incredibly good student/teacher ratio.
The president of the teachers’ union was on the radio being interviewed and protesting vehemently against the governor’s recommendation.
When the radio host asked her what she would recommend then to get the education budget under control, and she responded, “it’s not my job to make those recommendations” (or something along those lines).
I realized then and there that despite what individual teachers may feel, the union cares nothing for kids, nothing for the community, and is only interested in grabbing and maintaining money for teachers. The fact that she could sit there on the radio, be presented with undisputed facts, and say that state budget issues aren’t her problem, and then at the same time argue that it’s all “for the kids” was disgusting.
Granted, the teachers’ union is in a unique position compared to general business unions, but hearing that exchange left a very sour taste in my mouth.
Well, the teachers’ unions need to be smacked upside the head. One reason I want a national school system is to remove the power imbalance between local school boards & national teachers’ unions. Not sure that would work, though.
Why? Granted, I didn’t hear the interview, but why do you expect the union to have an opinion on overall budget issues? Why is that part of what they are tasked to do?
The reason the right-wing now claims to be okay with private unions, but against public employee unions, is that they have already destroyed the private sector unions by outsourcing jobs. Most union members are in the public sector, and this mild competition is all that keeps corporations from depressing private sector wages even further. Hence, this charade of not being completely anti-union, and the need to create divisions within the working class.
The “Right wing” doesn’t outsource jobs, businesses do.
The problem with this theory - aside from the fact that it’s an unsupported assertion - is that American unemployment, while high, still isn’t 100%, so someone’s got jobs out there. There are still about a hundred million Americans employed by the private sector and no, they’re not all working at Wal Mart.
However, the smoking guns are all over the place with the current patterns of employment:
Wages going down against inflation.
Higher paying jobs going overseas.
Manufacturing AND research (innovation) jobs leaving the country, almost all of which are going to cheap labor nations.
Unions being bashed while CEOs get away with multimillion dollar salaries while they drive their company into the ground.
The flaw in what you’re saying is that while we have less than 100% unemployment, there is a hypocritical war being waged on labor unions based on standards NOT being applied to corporations and corporate management.
Yep, it is. But what is the mechanism to address and correct such behavior? In a free-market, sucky organizations ultimately become non-competitive and go out of business. Unless the government steps in to bail them out or prolong the agony by distorting the market. Ref: GM. Ref: Public Teachers Unions.
I don’t know what “corporate corruption” or “crooked small businesses” means to you exactly, but the words “corruption” and “crooked” imply by their very definition that somebody is breaking the law, or engaging in fraudulent activity. I don’t think you’ll find anybody on the board who is going to condone engaging in fraudulent activity. So yes, it might “blow”…but there are mechanisms to address such behavior.
Plus, “corruption” also by it’s very definition implies the mis-use of the legal use of force by government. It is impossible to have corruption without government.
Marriages are a voluntary arrangement between two consenting adults. Or at least, they should be. I have no idea what you were thinking of with that one.
The military is also a very special case of a government-run organization, with a command-and-control structure that is not subject to the principles of the free market.
The point being, many of us support workers’ rights to form a union. We also support shareholders and management’s rights to get rid of the union, if it creates the risk of making the enterprise uncompetitive.
The problem arises when the government steps in and tilts the playing field to give one side or the other more “rights”…or in the case of government-employee unions, to put both sides on the same side of the table. The only party on the other side of the table is the taxpayer (you and me) and they are pointing a gun at us, to take our money.
You claim that the free market is a self-correcting system. It is made of human beings; nothing that is made up of human beings is ever self-correcting. If it was, we could just set a bunch of computers to run everything.
I challenge you to show how it is that you believe the market is self-correcting.
And if we accept your definitions, there are plenty of instances of law-breaking and fraudulent activity by corporations.
What definition do you give for a small business whose owner accumulates tons of gambling debts and then lays off employees to cover it? What definition do you give for CEOs who encourage employees to buy their company stock and then drive said stock into the ground while leaving as millionaires?
No, but being humans I imagine there’ll be plenty of debate over what qualifies as fraudulent.
And where does the market come in to address such things?
Why not? We have mercs out there working in Iraq as we speak.
So organized shareholders and organized management should have the power to disband organized labor?
Bring back Teddy Roosevelt - he made union leaders and corporations sit down as equals…
On an off-topic note, I always wondered what would happen if, say, California’s public workers all went on strike at once. Teachers, prison guards, cops, all that. I wonder how long it would take to hire scabs to replace these people only for everyone to find out that the scabs gasp don’t have the skills to fill those shoes. There’s not enough home schoolers in America to handle California’s teachers going on srike… end off-topic note. 
“Out Of Business,” of course. Assuming this ever happens, it wouldn’t make any sense to lay employees off to make up an unrelated debt. Think about it.
If you’re funding your business out of your own pocket and business credit is tight, it makes perfect sense. I have had commercial general liability customers who actually laid workers off so they could siphon some extra cash for a vacation. It’s akin to robbing their own till and AFAIK that’s legal if not common.
P1. Persons A and B engage in a voluntary transaction. Person B doesn’t like the outcome of the transaction. Person B no longer does business with Person A. Person A no longer has a business partner. Pretty simple.
P2. It’s his business. He owns it. He can do whatever he wants with it. The employees aren’t entitled to a job provided by the owner. The owner isn’t entitled to the employees’ labor, if they wish to resign and go somewhere else.
They can start their own business if they want to. In your example above they would certainly be successful if competing with the previous owner, because he is obviously a loser who cannot afford to pay his employees.
Was that the best you could do? Are these your examples? What are you…in the 8th grade?
P3. “Disband”, no. The employees in the organization can stick together for as long as they want. Fire the employees? Of course. It’s their business. They own it. They can do whatever they want.
Wow. Some great debating skills you have there.
Why should stupidity be illegal?
And it can’t be common, because it’s insane. What you are describing doesn’t make any sense. If you have so many extra employees that you can actually make money by laying them off you should have laid them off anyway, and if not, then by laying them off you are losing money. Think about it.
So… have we got a cite yet for which state(s) force people to join unions in order to work, Shodan?
You think insanity doesn’t exist in the business world? Really?
Companies lay off employees all the time and squeeze more work out of the ones they have left. For any of a large number of reasons. Think about it.
More like simple-minded. (Hey, you started the personal attacks, don’t start crying to the mods because it came back to you.) Your argument has failed to show how this is in any way self-correcting.
The question was
P2. What definition do you give for a small business whose owner accumulates tons of gambling debts and then lays off employees to cover it? What definition do you give for CEOs who encourage employees to buy their company stock and then drive said stock into the ground while leaving as millionaires?
Your answer did not in any way address any part of that question.
8th graders can directly answer questions, which is more than you have been able to muster in your “response”.
That’s funny considering you failed to comprehend the questions I asked you and had to come up with a standard boilerplate right wing response.
And no, business owners cannot just do whatever they want. There are laws that govern what they can do. Just because you own a business doesn’t make you God - you still have to consider the good of the people and country that you live in.
Of course, there are many who want to get rich off America and then leave. I would invite them to leave and not be allowed to sell their goods here, either. We can rebuild without them; in fact, we’d be better off without businessmen like the ones who treat workers like crap.
We need more Winco and Costco and less Wal Mart. Oh and um, guess how well Winco and Costco are doing…
Oh, sure it does. There’s morons everywhere. But it doesn’t last long before going belly up. Look, I know small business; working with small and medium businesses is what I do. Some are better run than others. Some have good bosses and some have bad bosses. But a company run by someone stupid enough to lay off employees to cover gambling debts will be out of business in three months, and it’s a wonder the business ever existed in the first place.
I’ve seen businesses fail. The #1 reason an established business fails - far and away - is that they don’t diversify their customer base and die when their one big customer dies or moves or stops buying from them.
I’m not sure you understand.
Laying off employees **in an effort to cover an unrelated cost **does not make sense. It will not save any money.
Suppose I own a small machine shop with 25 employees, 18 of them my machinists and general labour. I have $150,000 in personal debts - gambling, coke, whores, whatever - that I want to pay off.
If I lay off $150,000 worth of labour how will that save money? If I was employing 25 people, I must have had some reason for employing them. If I lay off three machinists to save $150,000 over the course of the next year, I’m losing three machinsts’ worth of output. So either they weren’t needed in the first place - in which case they should have been laid off anyway, irrespective of my personal debt problems - or else I am laying off productive workers, in which case I will save the money but will also lose the capacity to produce product, thereby putting the business further behind. I must have employed those 25 people for some reason; if I reduce staff for reasons unrelated to the lack of need for those staff, it won’t make me money; in fact, it’s a deadweight loss, since the business is vbleeding the $150,000 to my dealer/bookie anyway. The company will in fact be down $300,000 or more, since it loses the money AND the production - unless, again, I didn’t need those employees anyway, in which case they should be let go whether I have debts or not.
If you could just make more money willy nilly by laying people off, all companies would lay everyone off and make oodles of money with no employees at all.
Perhaps you have seen a lunatic actually try this. Well, lunatics will be lunatics. What’re we supposed to do, legislate sanity? A business run by someone that stupid is going to die one way or another.
I think the point is that the company has at least as much power over the labor’s life as a union would have in a closed shop.