Comment by tw04 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tw04 | Hacker News Reader

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>This pattern isn't as simple to dismiss as "anti-union FUD", especially since it's seen among people who are already union members in closed shops.

You act as though anti-union FUD can't affect members. That's kind of ridiculous... if it didn't affect MEMBERS as well as non-members, what would be the point?

If I'm a less-educated union member who has no concept of what life was like before unions, and constantly hear that unions just take my money while providing no benefit, I'm probably likely to be swayed. What's the union going to do? Tell me about how 50 years ago companies would literally put my life at risk because there was no downside for them. And then the people financing the anti-union movement are spewing "Well that was 50 years ago, that would NEVER happen again" - all while doing everything they can to drive up hours, drive down safety, and insulate themselves from any responsibility RE: workman's comp.

For the average joe who just wants to go to work and get a paycheck, the bigger picture is often lost.

> You act as though anti-union FUD can't affect members. That's kind of ridiculous... if it didn't affect MEMBERS as well as non-members, what would be the point? If I'm a less-educated union member who has no concept of what life was like before unions, and constantly hear that unions just take my money while providing no benefit, I'm probably likely to be swayed. What's the union going to do? Tell me about how 50 years ago companies would literally put my life at risk because there was no downside for them. And then the people financing the anti-union movement are spewing "Well that was 50 years ago, that would NEVER happen again" - all while doing everything they can to drive up hours, drive down safety, and insulate themselves from any responsibility RE: workman's comp. For the average joe who just wants to go to work and get a paycheck, the bigger picture is often lost.

Honestly, it's rather patronizing to say that union members who disapprove of their union and want to decertify or deauthorize it must either be ignorant or under the influence of external propaganda or FUD. Maybe they have access to information you don't? Or maybe they just have a different set of values from you? Maybe they hold different priorities from what you hold? Maybe they should be assumed to have their own agency?

I'm not going to say that democracy is infallible - in fact, I'm usually the first to point out the exact opposite. But "they don't know what's best for them the way I do" is a pretty dangerous line of reasoning to start heading down.

>Honestly, it's rather patronizing to say that union members who disapprove of their union and want to decertify or deauthorize it must either be ignorant or under the influence of external propaganda or FUD.

Is it patronizing to say that workers who respond to threats like this:

http://www.nysun.com/business/wal-mart-threatens-to-close-un...

might not be making the best risk/reward trade off?

The employer is hardly going to tell you if they're making an empty threat and the prospect of losing your job because they pulled the nuclear option is probably quite terrifying.

Democracy is fine and well (caveats apply etc.) but the crux of the OPs comment is the "50 years of anti-union FUD". Maybe union workers indeed have a different set of values and priorities, which prefers the weakening/dismantling of unionized labor. Or maybe they were swayed by decades of a propaganda war waged by american corporations against unions, organized labor or anything that could be somehow be viewed as anti-corporatist. I think discounting that possibility entirely is also a bit dangerous and possibly even simplistic/naive.

>I'm not going to say that democracy is infallible - in fact, I'm usually the first to point out the exact opposite. But "they don't know what's best for them the way I do" is a pretty dangerous line of reasoning to start heading down.

I guess it's a good thing I never said any of the words you both put in my mouth and "quoted". Not once did I say I know what's best for them. Not once did I say they couldn't make decisions for themselves. What I DID say is that it's ridiculous to pretend that propaganda doesn't affect people IN unions. Which is EXACTLY what you implied.

Your words were dismissive of union members whose opinions differ than your own (they're less educated and missing the bigger picture, incapable of evaluating anti-union FUD on their own).

Don't be disingenuous, "they don't know what's best for them the way I do" is a very fair representation of your words. Maybe you do? If you're going to take that position, own it.

It's easy to read tw04's original comment and focus entirely on the "less educated" part, but tw04's point still stands without that — union workers can and will be affected by opposition arguments, and therefore we can't ignore that when analyzing declines in union membership.

In my opinion what's disingenuous is to ignore the main point in favor of picking some nit.

> Don't be disingenuous

"My interpretation is objective reality, but your interpretation is dumb". How about don't be an asshole, man?

"Propaganda works" is a fact, it's not being patronizing.

The point is that whether you are pro- or anti-, your opinion doesn't carry well-informed weight unless you've seen the world both with- and with-out.

If we're going to be so open-minded about not knowing what's best for a worker, recognizing that they have their own agency and so forth, then while we're at it, why don't we also admit that we don't know what they're thinking, or why they supported or opposed this or that? Meaning we have no idea what information they based their decision on, or whether that information included disinformation or a FUD campaign.

>For the average joe who just wants to go to work and get a paycheck, the bigger picture is often lost.

Isn't it possible the armchair talking heads like us are the ones missing the bigger picture and the actual workers are the ones who actually get it?

Let's consider the Boeing workers in South Carolina:

- 2009-09 74% of employees vote against the union and decertify it[1]

- 2009-10 Boeing breaks ground on new South Carolina plant to build 787 airplanes[2]

- 2017-02 again, 74% of employees vote against IAM union representation[3]

The "uncertainty" and "doubt" in "FUD"? The South Carolina workers are quite certain and have no doubt that in 2009, Seattle lost the extra 787 assembly work and it was given to SC workers without the union.

It's not irrational that SC workers fear the loss of jobs in Seattle could happen to them. The upcoming 797[4] model is in the works. It's not irrational for South Carolina workers to think that unionizing for better wages will move that 797 production elsewhere. (E.g. Seattle may end up losing all of the 787 production.[5])

>Well that was 50 years ago,

Well, the struggle & benefits gained 50 years ago is an abstraction. The events of 2009 are very fresh and real in the minds of workers.

Voting "YES" for a union doesn't necessarily mean you get a wage increase. It means (1) you might get a wage increase or (2) you might have no job.

How does a worker properly weigh those possible outcomes?

[1] https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boein...

[2] http://www.nbcnews.com/id/33521235/ns/business-us_business/t...

[3] https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boein...

[4] http://money.cnn.com/2017/06/20/news/companies/boeing-797-pa...

[5] http://www.heraldnet.com/news/future-of-boeings-787-seems-se...

Yes, but nothing in this speaks to the value of unions. It speaks volumes to the US legal climate allowing massive corporations to subtly coarse employees to vote against their economic interests. Basically what you're describing is "If you'll ask for more rights or better compensation, we'll close down this factory and move it somewhere where people will just say Thank You and shut the hell up". I think that phrase is overused, but this is one of the most obvious examples of Race to the Bottom ever.

It's not exactly subtle (watch the video):

https://labor411.org/411-blog/1688-this-is-the-anti-union-vi...

>The "uncertainty" and "doubt" in "FUD"? The South Carolina workers are quite certain and have no doubt that Seattle lost the extra 787 assembly work and it was given to SC workers without the union.

That's where a properly functioning government steps in and stops it. OF COURSE private companies are going to break a union any way possible if the government isn't there to step in. If the US military said "you close that plant, all of our contracts are going to Airbus", exactly how many seconds do you think it would take the CEO of Boeing to change his mind?

How about instead of that, we let the people of South Carolina decide for themselves whether they want a union or not.

The people of South Carolina seem to be quite happy with the current situation.

Let's see what you think when those jobs move outside the US.

great example

Of course, unionising doesn't necessarily mean asking for higher wages - that's one of a number of things unions traditionally do. It can also be used to bargain for increased safety, increased job security (making it harder/more expensive to fire people), better-overseen disciplinary procedures, and provides the guarantee that there'll be someone at the table with any employee when the company starts picking on them.

The idea that unions can only be used to bargain for wages is propaganda in its own right.

This happens because unions in the US are fragmented. In countries with bigger unions (e.g. France, Italy) those unions act at national level. This means that moving the assembly line from Seattle to South Carolina would simply move the strikes from one place to another. The underlying idea is that the behavior of the S.C. is just a race to the bottom and in the same way that those jobs arrived they will be gone one day once another plant accept even worse wages.

The downside is that if the union's approach is too strict, those jobs may simply disappear because it is not feasible to pay those workers more, or it may be cheaper to move those job abroad and import the resulting products.

This also requires workers to struggle and strike not for their job, but for someone else's.

(I am not saying one approach is better than the other, in fact I am usually not too fond of unions, but I am trying to explain the union's point of view)

The union in italy have been extremely damaging to the local economy in the last 20 years. You see national union goals are too distant and misaligned from workers’

For example one of the problem is that not all professions are unionized for example, so o get more profit and power the unions need to stifle innovation and steer the government only toward heavy industry to the destriment of almost every other sector

Also being national they seldom talk directly with workers and plant owners, and prefer to play their hands at the political table, often ignoring the specificity of issues.

And since their decision have national level ramification, every singe one needs months if not years to mature, implement and execute. Like, most national contracts are expired and have wages that are ridicolous by 2017 standards and base salary need to be supplemented in various, highly taxed ways, and new form of contracts are impossible to create (IT for example is hired under industrial or commerce contract, as the gategory didn’t exist at the time and there’s no reasonable way to create it now)

What a whole bunch of inaccuracies. I have no time to waste rebutting all the multiple falsehoods in this post, but I want people living in other countries know that it is filled with inaccuracies and plain falsehoods.

No way. You can’t assert that someone is lying through their teeth and then utterly fail to provide even a single counterpoint. This is equivalent to yelling “fake news”.

The parent comment might be full of lies, but I’m actually more inclined to believe it when the best you can do is call them falsehoods with no evidence or argument.

You are FUDding. I'm an Italian living in Italy, and I 100% agree with the parent comment. Also, I'd add that most members of Italian national unions are retired people, so unions mostly care about pensions,ending being often in contrast with younger workers interests (for instance, keeping retirement age low, even if it's one of the lowest in the EU). One must also consider that there's a strong divide between unionized, older workers with "permanent job" contracts, and younger workers with precarious jobs, whose issues are completely ignored by national unions.

thanks. as an Italian I'm baffled how someone can be so blind at what's really happening with unions here

Do you feel Italy is a model of productivity thanks to union involvement?

Italy is not a model of productivity for several reasons. Reducing this problem to the union involvement of workers looks intellectually dishonest to me.

The SC Boeing plant doesn't exactly come off looking very good in the Aljazeera documentary [1] on the 787. Just having a job shouldn't necessarily be the goal...the quality of the job and the rights of the workers to advocate for the safety of workers and the public are also things the Unions have traditionally done. I don't usually advocate for or against unions...I think they make sense in some situations and less so in others, but the Boeing case doesn't seem to be a good argument against unions. Boeing prospered tremendously when working with the unions in Washington state and it seems that a lot of their recent anti-union behavior is part of a number of decisions they've made that are quite short-sighted.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvkEpstd9os

All you are showing is that management has power over labor when the labor force isn't closed-shop. Management hired scabs from SC to bust the union in WA.

What you're talking about is a result of the union not being unified (i.e. across states). It's the result of less worker unity, not more.

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