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Why are Americans so anti-unions?
- Thread starter Lant_War
- Start date
People don't believe corporations are corrupt?
Who other than politicians believe that?
I never said unions are bad as a whole in fact they are way better han the alternative. They just are the beginning of the fix not the final solution.
Unfortunately the political discourse tends to be you are either pro ir against union instead of looking for a more nuanced solution.
A combination of years of rhetoric propaganda which were combined with those same crowds pointing to legitimate bad examples of unions gone wrong (it happens, contrary to what the 100% pro union crowd would have you believe) as if its the anywhere near the norm.
Unions, and the threat of unions, is what helps keep capitalism in check. If the workforce is unionized they can better fight for their rights. If the workforce is not unionized the company either cracks down on it hard (Hi Amazon) or it tries its best to give workers good pay, good benefits in order to avoid a union. Which I see as a positive as well.
Unions, and the threat of unions, is what helps keep capitalism in check. If the workforce is unionized they can better fight for their rights. If the workforce is not unionized the company either cracks down on it hard (Hi Amazon) or it tries its best to give workers good pay, good benefits in order to avoid a union. Which I see as a positive as well.
I can't speak for all Americans, because we're quite the diverse bunch in terms of opinions.
Personally, I'm not a fan of being required to be in a union to be able to hold a job in a specific field. I don't like the idea of having to pay dues to an organization that will spend that money to lobby on things not necessarily related to the area of employment I'm in and/or on political topics I don't agree with.
That's just me.
Unions made a lot more sense at the beginning of the 20th century when there weren't nearly the protections and regulations we have today. In my personal opinion, they served their purpose, but they've become largely outmoded. Especially if your employer provides good health coverage, paid vacation, and you take care of your retirement on your own.
But hey, more power if you want to be in one. My mom is certainly still in the teacher's union and really likes her retirement benefits.
Personally, I'm not a fan of being required to be in a union to be able to hold a job in a specific field. I don't like the idea of having to pay dues to an organization that will spend that money to lobby on things not necessarily related to the area of employment I'm in and/or on political topics I don't agree with.
That's just me.
Unions made a lot more sense at the beginning of the 20th century when there weren't nearly the protections and regulations we have today. In my personal opinion, they served their purpose, but they've become largely outmoded. Especially if your employer provides good health coverage, paid vacation, and you take care of your retirement on your own.
But hey, more power if you want to be in one. My mom is certainly still in the teacher's union and really likes her retirement benefits.
The uber elite successfully pitted middle America against each other. They pitted blue collar workers against their middle management white collar counter parts while the elite laughed the fake war they created between the groups.
Because both major parties have spent decades dismantling unions and union protections while demonizing the very concept of organized labor. After a while, that kind of concerted effort has the effect of inducing many people to believe it actually is a bad thing.
What protections do you think you now have as an American worker such that unions are no longer necessary? Because you really don't have any.
The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938?
The Family and Medical Leave Act?
IF the company is still profitable this is not a problem. We are influenced to think working ourselves to death is the only proper way to live, its not.
Unions slowing down production, is always a good thing until the company sees a downturn, then the union works with the company to get back on track.
So the right to a minimum wage (that is nowhere near enough to live on no matter what part of the country you are in), the outlawing of child labor, time-and-a-half pay for overtime (so long as you aren't salaried and therefore exempt), and the right to take unpaid leave without being fired?
I mean, if you're satisfied with these bare-ass minimum concessions, that's cool I guess. I find them grossly unsatisfactory for a number of reasons.
Yup. The unions during the 70s and 80s were vicious. My dad's got a story where he was working a warehouse job and kept getting warnings to slow down and not thinking anything of it, kept doing his job at the same rate. Then, his boss came over and told him to go home for the day and pointed out the two union guys who had been watching him all day and heavily implied if he didn't leave his shift then, he wouldn't be leaving his shift on two legs. Basically, the unions got to the point where they were protecting their nastiest members more than they protected the people who needed the unions the most at least in my neck of the woods. Combine that with the overall decline of unions and over a century of vehement anti-union propaganda and if you have an ecosystem that is outright hostile to the idea of a union. It's very unfortunate.
Simple.
We've been taught that America has unlimited opportunity. You can dream about it, then achieve it if you work hard enough.
Work your way from the bottom to the top, and own a company/successful business.
No one wants to have to deal with Unions/Taxes etc when they get wealthy. Obviously. You don't want people meddling in your future enterprise.
meanwhile, you're working 50 jobs at 2 cents a month. But you will get there one day. Business/success is the dream. Which is why they get away with murder socially/legally speaking.
We've been taught that America has unlimited opportunity. You can dream about it, then achieve it if you work hard enough.
Work your way from the bottom to the top, and own a company/successful business.
No one wants to have to deal with Unions/Taxes etc when they get wealthy. Obviously. You don't want people meddling in your future enterprise.
meanwhile, you're working 50 jobs at 2 cents a month. But you will get there one day. Business/success is the dream. Which is why they get away with murder socially/legally speaking.
That's still more an argument for labor reforms at the state and federal level than for unions per se. Especially since unions can be a bulwark against reforms that may benefit more people.
This is it.
Understanding the latter is really important, because Unions, while generally an overall positive, are very much fighting fire w/ fire as many of the same problem incentives people complain about in business operations also apply to unions. Things like Police and Transportation unions deliberately seeking to understaff their positions so that they can rack up overtime is one way in which this happens and will sour people on them based on their experiences.
The former is the easy one for people on the left to grasp. The latter is the harder one, especially if people are coming from a middle/upper-middle class+ perspective where they've had little to no interaction with them.
They didn't pit the blue collar workers again middle management, they pitted them against nonwhite groups. Disrupting unionization in the 80s was politically beneficial for Republicans because when the racist white person who only voted Dem because of the union directly providing benefits, they started to vote with the hyper racist party while claiming that the black people only voted Dem for the benefits (because they were projecting.) IIRC a state being RTW in the 80s gave the GOP a +3% bump in their overall electoral results. (not sure on the exact number but I think it was 3- It was low single digits in the 3-5% range.)
And how do you think you're going to get those reforms without unions pushing for it? Do you expect the two major parties who have spent the last 30 years dismantling as many worker protections as possible to just magnanimously duke us these reforms out of the goodness of their hearts?
Not going to happen. Workers rights are never gifted to the populace by benevolent legislators, especially in a system of government where major corporations with vested interests in stripping away those rights can lobby congresspeople with tens of millions of dollars every year. They are fought for and won through organized and collective bargaining that pressures government into acceding to their demands.
Unions aren't perfect, but they're the reason you have any protections as a laborer at all, and they're still necessary to not only achieve greater protections but to even keep the meager ones you already have.
For real. That hospitality workers strike last year must have cost Caesars a bundle.
It's still so weird to me personally, seeing people organize and succeed in blue states, because I've spent the entirety of my professional career in a red state where unions have almost no bargaining power.
That compounded with being in the tech industry, which is already massively underrepresented as far as unions are concerned nationwide.
Seriously though, I actually can't imagine myself going on strike because my brain would immediately tell me, "Why are you doing this? You will lose everything."
And in Georgia, yeah, my employer would need no other reason to terminate me, then I would be ineligible for most assistance in the interim.
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Because people like to free-ride, and are ignorant and susceptible to really bad arguments and just-so anecdotes, such as the below:
Of course, the union as institution has no incentive to understaff positions, but rather the opposite, since dues are typically not assessed on overtime. Moreover staffing is a management right that is rarely bargained.
That's because RTW states were, until recently, in the south. This also completely ignores the role of unions, especially the UAW, in pushing for integration.
As we see, "woke" neoliberal types whose interaction with working people is limited to asking for more milk in their frappucino are just as susceptible to right-wing propaganda as any Fox-news watching boomer is.
Of course, the union as institution has no incentive to understaff positions, but rather the opposite, since dues are typically not assessed on overtime. Moreover staffing is a management right that is rarely bargained.
That's because RTW states were, until recently, in the south. This also completely ignores the role of unions, especially the UAW, in pushing for integration.
As we see, "woke" neoliberal types whose interaction with working people is limited to asking for more milk in their frappucino are just as susceptible to right-wing propaganda as any Fox-news watching boomer is.
Honestly, reading these replies about union horror stories makes me question if a union in the US and here in Europe are even the same thing.
None of my employers ever had a problem firing someone. And everyone here has union rights.
None of my employers ever had a problem firing someone. And everyone here has union rights.
The union is made up and beholden to employees. Just like the DCCC is beholden to sitting reps. Just as the DCCC's membership is very interested in protecting themselves from primary challengers, union members can be very interested in protecting lucrative overtime that new workers threaten.
https://www.washingtonian.com/2015/12/09/why-does-metro-suck-dangerous-accidents-escalator-outages/
This is not a behavior unique to the WMATA workers- you see it w/ police protecting their overtime. I bring this up not to shit on unions, but to point out that not all aspects are positive, and that the overall benefits are dispersed, while the negatives can be quite acute and the part most likely to directly impact someone personally.
Those unions sure as hell didn't start out pushing for integration-
https://www.lib.umd.edu/unions/social/african-americans-rights
Labor unions actually embracing civil rights was a very slow process, with the AFL/CIO split coming in part from the CIO faction being more progressive on the topic. The initial response of unions was to view the black population as a threat to their status, not as partners.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Federation_of_Labor#Immigration_restriction
This is again, something we see to this day. Unions are hostile to immigration because they see immigrants as a threat to their jobs instead of people adding onto the existing economy alongside them.
Hilarious that you'd complain about "woke neoliberal types" when you don't actually know the complicated history of the topic.
Yes, unions are responsive to the wishes of their members. Where in that article does it say that the collective bargaining agreement restricted staffing? Blaming unions for the DC Metro's problems without knowing the first thing about how collective bargaining actually works is peak Right to Work Foundation nonsense. I recall you did this same routine at Neogaf, so save the weak disclaimer about how you're not shitting on unions. That's what you do whenever the topic comes up.
This is "did u know the Dems were the party of the klan" level "argumentation." The fact remains they were ahead of where the country was and played a vital role in the civil rights movement, which you obviously know nothing about. And why on earth would you post something about labor opposition to immigration restriction from Europe and Asia to support a claim about labor hostility to African Americans?
Except for, you know, the SEIU, the largest union in the country. And the AFL-CIO's support for immigration reform.
Hilarious that you'd make that accusation after posting the derpy neolib "union workers are teh racist" meme when you know jack shit about the topic other than what you learned in some undergrad management course and read in two minutes on wikipedia.
Because Americans are a deeply indoctrinated people defined by their love for individualist myths about ourselves, and their refusal to learn anything more complex about history or economics than the fairy tales we learn in elementary school.
It's actually a running joke with the culinary union that someone would need to kill someone to be fired from one of the hotels on the strip.
People keep talking about how unions make it so hard to fire someone, like a bad teacher. I work in eduction and I've seen a bad teacher get fired plenty of times. They just have no concept of how a union works... because they don't work in jobs that are unionized.
i'd assume propaganda, corruption, stories of lazy workers, and usually some unfair "seniority" system that pushes away new hires. union dues also suck. there'e also shadyness with what unions do with their dues: cupw has 54,000 members and they pay $80 a month. That's 4.3 million a month. No one really knows what they do with the money besides buy property and rarely use it. I think a lot of people have valid grievances to what a specific union does or what unions do altogether. That can vex a person especially if it's personal.
Kirblar never argues in good faith. just put him on ignore and stop responding to him.
I'm not blaming unions for the entirety of WMATA's problems! You're claiming that in order to avoid dealing with the fact that the same reason unions work as a check against companies (their self-interest on the part of workers) can also spill over into negative behaviors rooted in the same self interest. Just as you have negative side effects from business practices, you get the same thing w/ union ones. I'm not saying that they're universally negative (that one guy at the old place got his job restored from a nepotistic manager because of one!) but people who dismiss those negative interactions are failing to grapple with how those upsides are created when they dismiss these experiences.
No, it is not "Dems were da Klan" argumentation. The union history on integration is very, very complicated, with dueling factions throughout their history splitting, branching off, remerging, etc. due to substantial differences.. Today, yes, they are in a much better place on the topic, but it took a long ass time to get there and it was not a path where the unions were some universal source of enlightened leadership. Yes, the UAW were excellent on this topic. Others were much less so and it took a lot of time and conflict to bring them onboard a platform supporting that. But despite the nominal support, you still had conservative social views among parts of the membership. And when the GOP deliberately went after unions in the '80s, they did so in part because they wanted to increase their margins by peeling off those socially conservative Union Dems.
Do you really not understand that labor opposition to immigration was driven by the same core reason that labor unions would oppose integration? (in addition to the omnipresent racism/xenophobia/etc.) From the Union's perspective, opposition to both is driven by restricting labor market competition in order to protect the position of the union membership. It's the exact same rationale you see with businesses trying to restrict competitors from a product or service market.
Dan Lipisnki is still in the House because of union machine politics (and open primaries), and he's ridiculously conservative for the district. The reason the GOP went after that demographic hard w/ taking the southern strategy national was because non-college white men were and are the most socially conservative group in the country.
(edited out response to troll alt)
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I'm claiming that the article you cited to support the proposition that unions are responsible for understaffing does not support that proposition. Because it doesn't. Like, at all. There is absolutely nothing in that article stating that union pressure or a union agreement is the reason for insufficient staffing. You can blather on about incentives all you want but since you don't understand anything about collective bargaining you have no idea how it plays out in reality. Like, it's cool that you took a couple economics courses in college and have a very basic understanding of simply supply and demand principles. Really it is! But since you have no experience or knowledge of how unions and employers actually relate to each other, that and $2.25 will get you on the Metro.
So, like, basically the same as the Democratic party.
See, if you had said something like that at the outset, instead of the ridiculous "unions are RAAAACIST" bullshit you actually posted, this may have gone better.
The GOP went after unions because they were the party of capital. Union-busting was the ends, not the means. Unfortunately a lot of woke Dems like that about them.
Do you really not understand that life is more complicated than what you read in Baumol and Blinder? Like, for all your claims to be Mr. Nuance you seem to fail to understand that like any representative body, a union has to respond to a variety of interests and goals of its membership. Sure, there is an elemet of protectionism, but your Econ 101 explanation completely fails to explain for why many unions now favor immigration reform. One would think that would give you pause instead of doubling down on simple answers to complex questions.
The issue with deliberate understaffing is going to come up primarily in union/govt interactions instead of union/business ones, due to the business having a stronger interest in pushing back against actions that deliberately run up their labor costs. It's one of a laundry list of reasons why I'm for banning police unions, this is something you see pop up there due to how lucrative the OT is for them.
The GOP goes after unions both because they've always been the party of big business and also because it directly helps them at the ballot box and they know this.
To quote the piece from noted neoliberal shill Sean McAlwee (/s for anyone not familiar with him)-
I think the guy who is, you know, actually providing sources and not resorting to name-calling comes off with a little more authority than you.
I'll take this theoretical assertion as a concession that you have nothing resembling actual evidence for this proposition. Certainly the article about the DC Metro (is that not a public sector employer?) contained zero evidence that any of its unions had anything to do with controller understaffing. I also note with amusement tthe ease with which you will echo GOP talking points against unions (long a pillar of the Democratic coalition) but complain vociferously when you perceive people to be doing so about Kamala Harris (who is not).
Of course it helps them. Nobody disputes this. Labor is the best organizational force for Democratic turnout (which makes it even more strange that ostensible Democrats hate them) and reducing their treasuries and membership will obviously reduce their ability to turn out voter. But your unsupported theory was clearly not that Rs union-bust to reduce D organizational strength, but rather that the Republicans union-bust because they think they can switch union members to Republican by getting rid of unions. As if Joe the Plumber will vote D until his union is decertified, and then switch to R. This, of course, has no support outside your prior that every white person who earns less than $70,000 is a Klansman.
That's nice. I've worked in union-management relations for 15 years and negotiated dozens of collective bargaining agreements, so your opinion of my credibility is not something I particularly care about. Sources don't really add much unless they actually support the argument. Perhaps you should read them.
Exactly. Americans are actually pro-union but the masses have been brainwashed into thinking it is no longer possible to unionize.
Lots of people I've heard in my personal life who talk shit about unions usually fall in two categories:
- They've never been part of a union/been in a situation where there should be one
- They automatically equate that being unionized=laziness.
Republican/capitalist propaganda.
Replace "informed" with "uninformed" and this is accurate.
because they have been poisoned by republicans opinion news pandering to their fears.
