Comment by dijit
6 years ago
Well, sorry to be blunt but that's fucking stupid.
Contrast that with my experience with Unions in Sweden; and that is that they basically don't exist except to ensure that workers rights are not infringed.
So they'll be involved in a termination, or help negotiate overtime pay.
There is no such thing as a "union job", it's just having what's referred to as a "collective agreement".
For years now I've seen comments like this from Europeans every time unions come up in conversation online. You all need need to come work for a large union in the US. They are just not the same thing. I've had direct or indirect experience with Teamsters, CWA, NEA, IBEW and UBC. You can dress it up however you like but there are definitely 'union jobs' with all of the connotation that brings.
Yes there are benefits to the worker (esp when your job puts you in harm's way). Yes collective bargaining is awesome. Unions, if run well, are fantastic. In my opinion we tend to mess them up.
This is the same argument I see americans make a lot.
"Unions are bad!", no, the concept is fine, you have some bad ones.
"Police are bad!", no, the concept is fine, yours are just untrained and overburdened.
"Public transport is bad, I need a car!", no, the concept is fine, you just have bad public transport and that forms your opinion.
Not really your main point but there are quite a few US "metro areas" with fairly sparse layout/wide scope, so I think public transit actually is a harder problem in the US than it is in e.g. Europe. That said even the cities that don't have this excuse tend to have mediocre at best transit here (for example Boston).
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"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Michael Scott
We're not going to get different results when we form a union in the US unless we make an attempt to get different results.
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You are failing to acknowledge the underlying issues associated with all your examples. This isn't American's whining about anecdotes while the system overall is sound. The system overall is a setup for unions, police, public transportation, etc to turn out bad way more often than they should (and probably way more often than they do in Europe, hence the confusion about why people are hostile to these things). People pushing the superficial and polarizing positions you've listed do exist sadly but largely, IMO, because they directly benefit from that polarization or they've been lied to and manipulated intentionally into taking those positions for the benefit of special interests and large corporations that dominate what laws actually get passed in this country.
And all of those are certainly opinions, but trading them as fact is overreaching.
Please give an example of good public transport. (I'm living in Germany)
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I hate to use the most cliche word from California startup culture, but... maybe someone needs to... umm... disrupt unions?
Could you start a new kind of union as a kind of non-profit startup?
If I wanted to do this I'd leverage modern information technology to create covert communication channels for organizing and leverage big data, machine learning, and game theory to drive organization and bargaining strategies. You could apply pressure across supply chains, not just in individual industries, and you could really be quite a pain in the ass. Cambridge Analytica for the working class?
Also ditch the work rules and other antiquated industrial era ideas. Just go for pure financial and quality of life outcome. Work with industries if they're willing to play ball, but be a major pain in the ass when they don't. Negotiate, you know.
Honestly the hacker in me would be tempted if I had the time, skills, background, and connections. It would be a chance to wear a black hat and feel good about it. :)
If you did this you'd also have to be damn serious about opsec and tradecraft. When you threaten to increase labor costs, the gloves come off. I'd be about as worried about security doing this as I'd be running a dark web drug market.
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Don't forget "I don't trust the government [to regulate X]".
It would really help if people would just use some qualifiers "US Unions", "US Police", "US Public transport", "US government".
How many times does a concept need to be executed badly before you can call it a bad concept?
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OK - but your response could be abstracted to
Q: "Why is X so bad?"
A: "You're doing it wrong"
Could it also be that Y is always/sometimes just better?
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We don't have 'some bad ones'. We have a different definition and different goals for them. The unions are trying to pad jobs and pay, while keeping employees safe. Too much under one umbrella perhaps. But not just stupid American's who do it wrong. US unions are doing a great job, but to the wrong ends.
What's sorely missing from this discussion is the understanding that different cultures are differently suited for each system of government. There's simply no reason that what works in Sweden will work in the US, or China, or Zimbabwe, etc.
The last two generations of western civilization were raised, out of good intentions, to be culture blind, and now with what's happening in the country we are seeing the result.
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Is that not exactly the point? "It's not unions that are bad, it's the concept of union jobs. Collective agreements would solve the problem you're pointing out."?
Here’s the thing, if you set up a new union, you don’t have to follow the same model as the ones that don’t work well in the us, you can follow the ones that do. You also don’t have the same incentives or personnel as the unions you mentioned, an engineering union would look quite different just in terms of the personality types of the people involved if nothing else.
You don't get to just decide how your union will run in a vacuum, the US has laws that standardize a lot of things about them.
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Sounds like American individualism tends to skew work arrangements to the point of them instituting what outsiders would say is corrupt systems. American unions are positioned in opposition of their management, when the situation is supposed to be collaborative cooperation. And I suspect this situation is a result of active opposition by the businesses. Individualism is a nice word for selfish.
I don't think it's that the unions are bad, it's just that definitions of work came from factories, where moving or installing equipment would come as a part of retooling assembly lines.
Those definitions should be loosened in an office setting, rather than dismissing the entire idea of a union.
You don't need to be rude to the parent poster.
They have real experiences of a union in their company. You have examples of unions in your country. Who is correct?
If your answer is yourself, then you're not understanding the point or the concern that people who are against unions have. It doesn't matter if Sweden implemented it well and somewhere else implemented it poorly. Bottom line is that the poorly-implemented scenario can happen, does happen, and in fact happens more often than anecdata of "oh no true union does that".
Unless you can propose a foolproof way that the "wrong way" is always prevented, then you will get opposition to your beliefs. Calling people or things stupid doesn't solve that.
The way to prevent "the wrong way" is to have a collaborative relation to the unions, rather than one of all out war.
Don't like your deal, which doesn't let everyone move tables? Negotiate a new one. Maybe you can offer them something they'd rather want instead.
Having a let hostile environment also let smaller, more agile unions thrive, instead of forcing them to all join together.
>There is no such thing as a "union job", it's just having what's referred to as a "collective agreement".
I won't retort with a similarly vulgar comment because:
1. we probably agree on the value of unions
2. I understand your exasperation with American ignorance and cultural bias on the subject
3. it's not constructive
However, it brings me no joy to assert that you are dead wrong. Union jobs can and do exist in places. The deleterious nature of these jobs is a subject of frequent debate in France: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_syndical
> "I understand your exasperation with American ignorance and cultural bias on the subject"
"Ignorance and bias" is apparently now equivalent to "decades of experience that differ from your preferred reality".
Nice try, but no. The issue is literal ignorance of how things work outside of America (as you damn-well know).
Unions in America are clearly a dumpster fire, but only someone profoundly ignorant (and arrogant, to boot) could claim that unions are a failed concept.
Often, things that seem to not make sense are the result of historical practices at that workplace or others. In a situation like the comment describes, usually it's at a partially unionized workplace.
If you don't have these kinds of things in the contract, what can sometimes happen is a situation where all the "monitor movers" are unionized, but then management hires a new "screen transporter" for $10 an hour who isn't in the union.
In Netherland, unions negotiate with employers, generally with the government also at the table, to agree on workplace conditions and pay scales that apply to the whole industry, and not just the union members. The employer gains nothing by hiring a non-union member, and besides, a non-union member can always join the union if they want to.
The same system is used in most of Scandinavia, the union-government-employer tripod where the government acts as a facilitator and the union and employers negotiate a collective agreement.
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Given political realities in the US, I would hold out more hopes for the revolution coming than for nationwide sectoral bargaining.
I think a lot of people worry about these pay scales being limiting. In the US, they tend to end up being based on years of service or credentials, rather than about productivity or quality.
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oh good... a THIRD organization of bureaucracy. What could go wrong?
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Well if you live in Sweden maybe being a unionized software engineer isn’t that bad. If you live in USA it’s another story. Sweden has different history, culture, and labor laws than US and so Swedish unions don’t work the same way as US unions.
...and this is one of the main problems with online advocacy.
You can say "unions are a no brainer - America is so backwards not to have them".
I can say "unions are awful and poisonous to a company."
...and given the different definition of "union", we are each correct within our national context, but often incorrect when saying it online.
US unions != EU unions.
You are lucky to be living in Sweden then. My experience from other EU countries is that unions are leeches that once in a while defend "high-ranking" union members that did something bad from being fired. (although admittedly it is not nearly as bad as what GP described)
I think that unions in Sweden would be better classified as Professional Societies. There are unions for different professions, and they help with training, education, discounts etc. A lot of people in UK and America unions are associated with striking miners etc.
Yeah, this, same in the Netherlands. Where a large company tends to put share holders first because that is where the CEO's bonus depends on, the unions put the employees first. I see it almost a necessary thing to keep the balance. But the way I see it, with the very little workers rights there are in the US the anti-union movement has basically won there. Reminds me of that quote [0] or this meme [1]. Yeah, you don't need a union, it's a privilege that your boss can fire you on the spot without proper reasoning. It's also a privileged for a woman to get 2 weeks of paid pregnancy leave (can you even walk normally when you're expected back at work?). Working on chemo sounds great as well. Keep telling yourselves that you don't need unions. I feel American work culture completely ignores the fact that the vast majority of people is nice, social and wants to make nice things they feel good about, even if they didn't go to an "ivy". This attitude is reflected by employees. You would do good just being a bit nicer overall.
[0] Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
[1] https://m.9gag.com/gag/aoP1WMg
In the US, a big part of the anti-union movement's success has been the fact that states retain enough autonomy to rig the rules in pro- or anti-union fashion, while also competing for business that can typically be located anywhere in the CONUS.
As a result, it's a race to the bottom as governors try to pursue business-friendly policies to attract jobs. And on the other "side", to pursue union-friendly policies to attract votes.
Both of which tug decisions to the extremes, the better to win their base, rather than seeking compromise that's acceptable to both parties.
One reason proletarian internationalism remained a hotly debated topic in communist theory for decades.
Sorry to be blunt but when you give unions power, this is the bullshit that comes from it
Why do you trust corporation-backed power (small amount of people in charge) versus union-backed power (power distributed across many people)?
I find it fascinating, particularly in a country like America where democracy is a core part of our being.
Unions allow people to vote on their own preferences, then use their collective voice to negotiate. If you don’t like some bullshit union practice, then that is the fault of the people in it not the unions themselves.
Ask any nurse, plumber, or teacher in the United States if they really feel they have the power to replace union reps that are perpetuating such practices.
Power perpetuates power
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No. That's what's happening in some American unions (not all!), but it's not true in Denmark (for any union!), by the sound of it from the above post, in Sweden.
Unions in Sweden (and Scandinavia, Germany) are powerful to defend workers interests, it doesn't mean that unions are requiring to have union-only jobs or trying to micromanage the workplace. The bullshit you are seeing is from your own bubble and worldview, don't make broad platitudes out of it, that is bullshit.