Workers involved in union activities say Tesla is illegally intimidating them (opens in new tab)

> Do unions have problems? Yes, absolutely, and we shouldn't neglect those either. At the same time, scrapping them would be a very bad idea.

Existing unions are not taking much in the way of steps to address those problems or clean up their image in the eyes of the public. Until unions can once again demonstrate openly and conclusively that their primary concern is the welfare of the worker rather than just being another power player jockeying to get their share of the pie, scrapping them would be a very good idea.

Unions are a necessary evil in my opinion. Haven't had a positive experience with them in my own life[1], but life without unions has been done (a lot), and it sucks.

[1] The first of these was telling the team I was on that because we were part-timers, we wouldn't get union resources allocated to resolve an issue we had. Funny that, we didn't pay 'part-time' dues, and our work was still just as necessary to putting food in our bellies.

>> If employers can band together to form a company and present a unified front to the people they pay...

How does this statement even make any sense?

IANAL, but I'm interpretting this as deliberately conflating the term employers with people within a company whose duties include making hiring decisions--themselves employees.

Collective bargaining is never mandatory on the employee side. The employee is not forced to work for a particular collective. The employer on the otherhand is forced, by law, to only hire people who are part of some government-recognized collective, known as a bargaining unit.

In other words, employees can monopolize the employer's hiring options, using anti-free-market laws inspired by the 'labour' movement and socialism.

The teachers unions keeps terrible teachers employed. In California some school districts have pulled teachers from classrooms because they are unfit to teach, but they can't fire them because of union rules. They are literally paid to do nothing [1]. Many of the teachers I've talked to hate the union, but it's a very strong union and not much can be done about it.

[1] http://articles.latimes.com/2009/may/06/local/me-teachers6

I think people have a definitive right to organize! It disappoints me what they use it for sometimes

> why can't people organize themselves if they want to?

That's fine, don't force people to organize and pay "dues".

oh, that's easy, the unions fought for what was fair, and when they got it they KEPT GOING. we need a good balance, not for the side who happens to have the power at the moment taking all they can get.

> Without the labour movement we'd have Triangle Shirtwaist fires and Ludlow massacres every week

It's a little disingenuous to conflate the labor movement with NLRA-regulated unions, especially in the context of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and the response to it. They're not one and the same, although modern unions have done their best to erase that distinction from the historical narrative.

You might also want to consider the other things unions of the time were involved with. Early 20th century unions passed bylaws excluding non-white members from their ranks, and then (successfully) lobbied for federal laws excluding them from the country altogether.

Without the AFL, we may not have had the Chinese Exclusion Act, and we might not have stripped Americans of Chinese and Indian descent of their naturalized citizenship, seized the homes they legally bought with the money they earned, and then given the land to white Americans.

You're wrong. The Triangle Shirtwaist fire was a result of the economy being primitive at the time, with very little resources available per capita for risk reduction. Work place accidents were decreasing every single decade before cookie-cutter work safety standards were mandated. The world today would be extremely safe in and out of the workplace in the absence of such mandates.

This bias toward central economic planning and mandated standards is a consequence of the great complexity of a modern economy not being appreciated by the typical person. Central economic planning is based on oversimplifications that are easier to reason about.

As for the Ludlow Massacre, that was largely a result of illegal and violent actions by unions. We don't have those anymore, because unions impose their will through political decree nowadays.

Most teachers in the United States are unionized, and an increasing percentage are under collective bargaining agreements, to the great detriment of education:

https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/111/3/671/1839...

The education system is consequently heavily biased toward unions and their dishonest narrative. Here in BC, teachers openly tell their students they hate the governing party (which stood up to the teachers union) and kids almost uniformly hate the governing party as well.

It's absolutely ridiculous.

The chinese coal industry?

http://www.jpma.org.pk/full_article_text.php?article_id=1811

Do unions work differently in the US? Because I am pretty sure that while you can't get fired for being in a union (or strike action), you can get fired for every other reason you could get fired for.

Thats not exactly true - you can be fired and laid off in a union, I've been both of those things while union.

No one choose a job based on the union. How many unions in the private market can really claim you wont get fired.

Well, in fairness, it does not seem to be the case that that mollified the workers.