Labor Unions

[Ramo]

Bull****. Closed shops inhibit the ability of businesses to hire/fire employees based upon business needs.

Nonsense. The collective bargaining process is part of what constitutes business needs. Again, prohibition of closed shops is an unlibertarian imposition by the state.

[Sikander]

Re: Re: Labor Unions

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly


Probably not good for the company.

But how is it good for the worker? Easy. And since we're going with personal observations, let me compare two very similar assembly-line jobs I held in the 80's, when the national minimum wage was $3.35/hour:

Union job: $17.50/hour, full health benefits, full retirement benefits.

Non-union job: $4.00/hour. Period.

Had I been a protege in the union shop, I would have had to wait my turn to rise -- all the while earning a living wage and good benefits.

Had I been a protege in the non-union shop, I could have zoomed to the very top of the pay scale for workers like me -- and maybe made a whopping $7.00/hour. Of course, I also could have gotten fired (and in real life did get cautioned) for suggesting that working conditions would improve if the place were unionized.

It's not even a contest.

Not even a contest is how people in Japan etc. described the competition between their companies and ours. There is a very good reason why union membership in the U.S. has been dropping for decades now, and that reason is that Unions have destroyed industry after industry in the U.S. by making it impossible to compete effectively against foreign competition. The only way to change that is to largely do away with international trade.

What those wage figures don't tell you is how much people overpaid for almost every industrial good in the past. They also don't explain the tensions within the working class that occur when people with connections can get a job for $17.00 an hour while people without connections can only get $4.00 for essentially the same work. The difference? Dad has some pull in the union. At least a capitalist can hurt himself by practising nepotism. He has to contribute capital in order to wield influence, and nothing will burn through capital like incompetent progeny, (except perhaps for the incompetent progeny of a large number of Union workers). The union man only has to be a member of a labor cartel with vast legal advantages over their "customers".

Unions play at economics as if it were a zero sum game. They fight increases in productivity at every turn, as well as most measures to assure quality. In general they are terrible in dealing with customers because they are used to being at odds with the company they work for, and have little incentive to make nice with mere customers for the sake of a company they have no loyalty to. Unions increase costs and decrease productivity and quality. They tend to be corrupt or inept which is probably explained by the fact that their leadership has historically been split between organized crime and commie / pinko activists. Neither group has shown much willingness or capability to deal with a truly free market, which makes them a deadly lode stone to any corporation that hopes to compete internationally.

The scariest thing to me is that unions are retreating into areas where they cannot be touched by international competition, which is the public service sector. Look at the product quality we get from our teacher's unions for instance. In this instance there is no cheap efficient and quality solution from overseas to replace them. Instead they have protected themselves against most challenges to their incompetence by weilding huge amounts of political influence at all levels of government.

The result is that in many parts of the country there is complete lack of trust in any of the parties responsible for education. Teachers unions are not trusted because they are out for their membership and nothing more. The Democrat party is not trusted because it is a wholly owned subsidiary of the teachers unions and the Republican party is not trusted because they are the enemies of the Democrats and therefore the teachers unions. In the end administrators threaten to axe popular programs in order to create panic among the electorate for more funding, the electorate eventually wise up to the fact they are being blackmailed, and then bond issues which are completely reasonable and necessary get voted down because the people have lost faith in the system.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


Unions were formed to counter the massive exploitations of captialists. Just read some Dickens to see how bad the working conditions were and how nasty the capitalists were.

Bah, my fictional source will make mincemeat out of yours!

[SlowwHand]

I'm not talking about 100 years ago. Polio used to be a dreaded disease. Not now. Not here.

Unions had a purpose in their formation, before OSHA and numerous other agencies.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Unions are by and large impediments to local prosperity. The effect ascribed to in turn of 19th to 2th centuries was sustainable because markets were not nearly as fluid or globalized.

As long as unions continue to be regionalized to specific nationalities their long term effect will simply be a redirection of production to more advantageous venues.

[Fake Boris]

Unions have become 'counter-productive' because it's easier for corporations to bypass them than it was before (capital moves freely but not workers).

Some people think that the essence of economic growth is corporate profit, which is just insane. That's why they happily claim that the best solution to workers being screwed is for them to assume the position and STFU.

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by Bill3000
Labor unions are cool because they allows me to build Mechanized Infantry.

I was wondering who would be the first to make this comment. Bill, you win

[Provost Harrison]

And on topic, it's collective bargaining people. Companies hold other companies by the balls if they are big enough and call their price. Heaven forbid if people collectivise and do likewise getting themselves a living wage...the amazing thing about the trade union is that it is actually so elegantly capitalist in its concept, playing the players at their own game

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

As a player then one needs be prepared to lose, as the game stakes have changed from merely being the only game in town to one of many games in the globe.

[Wycoff]

Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe
As a player then one needs be prepared to lose, as the game stakes have changed from merely being the only game in town to one of many games in the globe.

That's why we need international labor and wage standards... that way, corporations can't beat the system by fleeing to some country with poor labor standards.

[Provost Harrison]

Bingo...it's very convenient for capitalism that it can play one population off against another.It's why internationalism is more important than ever!

[flash9286]

Re: Labor Unions

Originally posted by SlowwHand


I only use Zkribbler's quote from another thread, because it somewhat epitomizes a common belief, with which I disagree.

Has anyone ever worked in a union shop? In the USA would be more true to my point.

For example, lets say you're a 25 year old machinist in a union. You're a prodigy at what you do. You like it, and enjoy doing it. You don't want to be involved at a managerial or supervising position. You want to work with your hands.

You'd be a Machinist III. Newbie. Doesn't matter how good you are. It's union. Unions serve senority.
Eventually, I would suspect that as time rolls on, this machinist prodigy would like to go up in level. More money.
The thing, you have groups of machinists ahead of you. Remember, longevity is to be served.

At this point, the only thing going to keep that machinist motivated, is pride in his work. No rewards of pay. Only pride.

Besides that, he has to keep that pride of work going, while senior union members show zip motivation. Why are they lazy? They're not going anywhere. Comes layoff? That prodigy is gone, leaving the lazyass senior union members still there.

Now I ask. How is that good for workers, and how is it good for a company?

I contend it's not.

My dad works a truck manufacturing plant for Freightliner and I work there too over the summer, and its unionized. And I think your example is unrealistic, first off if you work on the assembly line, there really is no room to be a "prodigy" either you can put a hood and fender on in 5 minutes or you can't and if you can't you get fired, there is not extra time to be a prodigy, unless you have 4 hands. Now if you work on the offline, if you are a so called "prodigy" you would easily get moved to team leader, the highest level a regular worker and achieve, but not many people work on the offline unless they have a degree.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Wycoff


That's why we need international labor and wage standards... that way, corporations can't beat the system by fleeing to some country with poor labor standards.

Not a realistic likelihood any time soon when growth countries see no advantage to doing so and no compelling need to observe even a modicum of human rights.

[MRT144]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
I'm not talking about 100 years ago. Polio used to be a dreaded disease. Not now. Not here.

Unions had a purpose in their formation, before OSHA and numerous other agencies.

OSHA

Do you know about what kinda bark and bite OSHA has now? Theres a good frontline about it...

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by David Floyd


If the company is driven out of business, or at least prevented from being an attractive investment opportunity because of high labor costs and a general inability to manage staffing effectively, this isn't relevant. I never said my assumption was right, just that if you don't find a way to reign in unions, the companies for which they work will be competed out of business.

And having an average wage 4x higher than the national average with full benefits strikes me as a union that has not been adequately reigned in.

Yet corporations are often seen bragging that they're pulling in record profits. That's along way from "being driven out of business."