Comment by jcims
6 years ago
"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.
No doubt about that.
I’m just arguing that the concept is fine, and the implementation is corrupted. Removing the corruption would be great but the issue is not the concept itself.
No, the concept is different in the US. It's conceptually not the same as an EU union.
If you think EU unions are great - then you'll need to first educate American union advocates about what they're doing wrong.
What if the concept is what leads to the corruption?
E.g. communism.
Im for unions, it beats the current situation, but im weary of the sales pitch.
But there are non-corrupt unions in other countries?
Even some in the US as some commentators have suggested (Screen Actors Guild being one)
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The "sales pitch" that is relevant here is the one put forth by the DoD and their enormously powerful SIGs for the last 75 years, namely "unions = communism" and "communism = bad".
As much as I would like to believe that there is a massive pro-working-class institution in the US that can afford to spend billions per annum on under-the-table PR/propaganda campaigns to shill collective action, it just isn't the case. The MIC on the other hand... putting those socialized taxpayer dollars to work against the evil working class (around the world).
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Are you arguing that unions lead to communism? While Europe has a rich weave of social-democratic governments, that would hardly constitute communism. In fact, I'd daresay actual communist parties in Europe with any real power are a distinct rarity.
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Yes, like dijit said, something modeled after the Screen Actors Guild. You rockstars get your million dollar salaries, no one gets overworked.
Great point. Guilds in general are a great way to reboot collective bargaining in the US. That thought occurred to me earlier this year and I completely forgot about it in this thread.
Although as one anecdotal counterpoint, read about some of the experiences Mike Jittlov had making Wizard of Speed and Time. He is playing it for effect in the film but it is at least semi-autobiographical.
https://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/31/movies/review-film-a-wiza...
One of the liveliest things about ''The Wizard of Speed and Time,'' aside from the frantic Mr. Jittlov himself, is the film's animosity toward Hollywood in general and the movie unions in particular. Mr. Jittlov, who himself resigned from the Directors' Guild in order to make this film free of union requirements, includes a sequence in which he visits one union office after another, being told in each that he must play by expensive and archaic rules if he expects to play this game at all.
When he tries to rent studio space, he is given a list of costs right down to the fee for a parking space, and winds up shooting in his own garage. And when he films an outdoor sequence in a park, a helicopter appears overhead with a loudspeaker to chastise him for trying to film without a permit. ''Maybe I shouldn't make films for a living,'' he muses dejectedly at one point. ''I've got a bicycle. I could deliver Steve's Pizzas.''
What's the difference between a union and a guild? Do Americans just have an aversion to the word union now?
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