"Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution."
Even if the workplace is not adversarial, any union will try to preserve the conditions that necessitate its continued existence.
No union ever said "Wow, this new CEO and management are super fair and reasonable. We are no longer necessary, let's dissolve and let them take the reigns."
What an odd point of view. Homicides are down; should we loosen the laws? If management are "fair and reasonable", what do they care if there's a union on premises? Everyone just goes about their business.
Sure, why not? Why does additional overhead added to systems always need to be permanent? It's like installing Norton Anti Virus and then never being able to uninstall it ever again. Sometimes I think it would be okay to say:
"Wow, aviation has been safe for 20 years since 9/11, maybe locked cockpits and increased public awareness are good enough, let's cut out the most onerous parts of the TSA and make our airports more lean and efficient"
You should compare "dissolving the union" to "abolishing all air regs" or "easing up on union activism" to "loosening the more onerous regs".
Do you realize that you have to pay monthly dues to a union? If I were paying union dues and the union didn't serve a purpose (due to fair and reasonable management practices), then I wouldn't want to pay those dues anymore. Everyone just going about their business still involves me paying union dues.
It should be "homicides are down, should we reduce the number of cops and investigators?"
And the answer is probably yes. But of course we know that in practicality no municipality would say they are letting a bunch of cops go because crime is down. Even though they arguably should. Or at the very least, don't replace them as they retire and let the number naturally decrease. Because the number of people who will go out murdering people solely because there are less cops is near zero. That's not really a driving factor.
There is absolutely pressure to loosen the (enforcement of) laws when crime is down
If we can assume you're talking about USA, absolutely we should. We have more people in prison, in both absolute and percentage terms, than any society anywhere in the history of the human race. There is nothing about our situation that makes this a reasonable state of affairs. Reversion to the mean would contribute to justice.
Name a company with a CEO and management who are super fair and reasonable (e.g. paying employees the full value of their labor instead of profiting from the surplus value created by the employee)
Most of pro-union comments incorrectly assume that unions create some worker utopia.
Name unionized company that offers salary and perks comparable to Google.
Not to mention that pretty much all unions have very strong pro-seniority rules. Work harder than others? Produce more value than others? Doesn't matter, the guy that has been 5 years longer gets paid more, gets more vacation time etc. How is that fair?
In context of programming jobs, this is a case of "be careful what you wish for"
As a tech worker in a union, about the only union negotiated pro-seniority rules apply to layoffs; my employer does have tenure-based rules that apply to vacation, etc., but those apply equally to non-union employees, and tenure-based vacation formulas are common in non-union shops, too.
I've not heard that about the UK's second largest union, Unite. I know people who work are part of that union (the people I'm thinking of work for BAE) and when they've talked about promotions and so on, they've never mentioned any kind of union-driven pro-seniority rule, and there is certainly no different vacation allowance for union members.
Socialism is not the definition of "fair". One could argue that it's not "fair" for e.g. workers manufacturing BMW's to make more than those manufacturing Kias simply because BMW's demand a higher price or have better margins.
Why wouldn't the employee work for themselves if they expect the full surplus of their value to go to them? I mean, it's not like the company is a charity, right? It's designed to be profitable for it's owners.
No, the guard is a check that deters burglars form taking advantage of you. After a burglary is too late to bring guards on board, and after dramatic unmerited changes in the terms of employment is too late to start a union -- or, at least, later than you'd like.
(Not commenting on whether the union will actually work as I've described, just trying to spec out what a reasonable union would look like here, and refute the idea that it's "doing nothing" when the union has a good deal that lasts.)
When an individual negotiates and works for a company, they make the company X$/yr. And they only pay the person YX$/yr where Y is a value from 0-.99 . That's because the company relies on this imbalance across its workforce to extract money from employees' labor. Your value may be X$/yr, but you are compensated for .2X$/yr . The .8X/yr goes to the company as their profit.
In unions, the workers align themselves together in order to exert more fair (read YX$/yr where Y is closer to 1) wages. They do this because, as a group, they can effectively strike and threaten to cut the life-blood (extracted labor value) from the company for a time. In the end, the company still retains a significant amount of percentage from laborers and maintains the bulk of the money. And since there is still a monied interests vs workers condition going on, propaganda and laws can be affected by the owner class to disenfranchise the laborers. Example: look where the US is now, with anti-union, anti-worker, and "right to work" laws.
In a worker owned cooperative, the labor value is closer even than that of a union/company. There still exists a need to keep the organization going on (maintenance, upkeep, hiring), however the aforementioned strife is combined into the same group of people. And when profit is paid out, it is paid to the very people who worked for it. In other words, the labor theory of value approaches 1 under worker owned cooperatives. We have organizations like Mondragon to look at how they implemented this.
I certainly see criticisms of LTV (like any economic theory), but there is no discrediting from what I've seen.
Care to share links about this discrediting?
First job I ever had was in the financial industry but was part of a larger conglomerate in the media business. As such, we were forced into the union that the writers for the media company were all a part of. Its unusual to have a union is a "professional services" type role. Speaking first hand, I can tell you the union did absolutely nothing for us except collect a portion of our wages. They didn't care about us. Perhaps it was because we were the smaller/niche part of the larger business and their focus was on the writers that far outnumbered us. Or maybe they were just shitbags. But when it came time to discuss keeping the reps we had, I asked why we should keep them since there was no clear benefit. They basically admitted they did nothing for us by promising to make our unit a focus going forward. Uh huh. Well, an opportunity showed up where we got bought out by a competitor (purely in financial services) and we took that opportunity, as per the labor laws, to determine whether or not we wanted representation at the new entity. We voted them out by a wide margin with 80% in favor of getting rid of them. My salary increased after that, and substantially so in the years since (although I did leave soon after).
The NLRB really, really didn't want us to get rid of the union and tried hard to convince us to keep them, which is weird because that's not their role. The NLRB is just supposed to oversee the process to make sure the rules are being followed. Also, we were given a mere one day to file the petition - the day the new entity was legal. If we didn't do it that day, we'd have to wait an entire year to revisit the issue! One of the many reasons it's hard to get rid of parasitic organizations one they get their hooks in.
There really isn't a need in most cases to be unionized. The primary focus of unions was always working conditions and fair wages. Working conditions are light years beyond what they once were so unions have focused basically myopically on always fighting for higher wages and benefits. But the only time I think this is appropriate is in cases of similar, easily comparable work - meaning things that are usually "blue collar". It's hard to compare a lot of professional and "creative" jobs or the people filling those positions. I think people should be forced to negotiate for their own wages in most cases. Only simpler, lower-wage type work where people may not have the personality, skillset, and ability to negotiate for themselves as to avoid taking advantage of people makes sense to me.
I encounter this a lot in IT.
"YOU IT TYPES NEVER DO ANYTHING! YOU JUST SIT AT YOUR DESKS!"
"And your files, when you deleted them last week, what happened?"
"Well I put in my request and 20 minutes later.... Nevermind."
When we in IT do your jobs, we aren't noticed because we make technology work and smooth it out. When labor unions do the same thing, and make sure benefits and salaries and disputes are smooth and work on a pre-agreed upon process.
That may have been the case for you ; you didn't need union services because they already did the hard work before you showed up.
> We voted them out by a wide margin with 80% in favor of getting rid of them.
As was your right. Now tell me, on a union charter documents and federal procedures, there are ways to initiate an election to do this at non-standard times. If they are not adequately representing you, did you look into this?
> There really isn't a need in most cases to be unionized.
Basic economic theory shows why a force as powerful as a company is needed in dealing with them. And that counteracting force is a union. I, as an individual, have very little collective power. A company has a tremendous force.
> The primary focus of unions was always working conditions and fair wages.
And with the Labor Theory of Value so low for workers, we need unions now more than ever. And yes, that include for technical, intellectual, AND labor. One needs only look at how profits keep climbing per unit of labor, yet wages are stagnated for most workers.
> Working conditions are light years beyond what they once were so unions have focused basically myopically on always fighting for higher wages and benefits.
Please tell that to the current "Walmart"-equivalent employees working at Amazon peeing into milk jugs, because they can't get enough of a break to even go to the bathroom without the threat of firing.... But they don't need a union?!??
We technical staff have it loads better. We get free drinks/food in the breakroom, gameroom, and plenty more benefits. But I've also worked at the low paying jobs. You get: no insurance, no 401k, no benefits, no breaks, and work at $8/hr.
> I think people should be forced to negotiate for their own wages in most cases.
Seriously? "Forced"?
How about I get together with my colleagues and volitionally come to an agreement? NOPE Can't do that, we must be 'Forced' to negotiate individually...
> Only simpler, lower-wage type work where people may not have the personality, skillset, and ability to negotiate for themselves as to avoid taking advantage of people makes sense to me.
Arrogant much? "Oh those poor dumb people, they just don't know how good they have it!"
Also, there's no such thing as a non-adversarial company that would require a union and vice versa. If you're building an employee-owned structure (or similar structure in which all stake holders are able to help sculpt company decisions), you don't need a union. And if you don't have employee ownership, you're not giving your employees a real seat at the table and thus don't represent their best interests.
