FCA UAW corruption scandal | Hacker News Reader

FCA UAW corruption scandal

jalopnik.com

17 pointsjiveturkey5 comments

What are the current tactics for labor to combat corruption or crony capitalism?

Back in the summer, I was listening to a radio interview with the union head talking about their latest negotiations with Fiat, and I was surprised to hear that they were on personally amicable terms. So much so that the union rep mentioned getting to see Marchionne's personal car collection, and 'negotiating' over fancy dinners.

I know there's an answer for this in raw labor economic/game theoretic terms, but is it ever possible to for labor to treat the owners of capital as anything other than amicable? I'm not saying hostile, but it seems that the point at which the line blurs between labor working for the workers, or just being another arm of corporate executive leadership, seems like something we should've fixed with modern corporate practices.

Corruption is a thing. The specific organizational model really doesn’t seem to matter much. In a game theoretic sense, I think the only option is to make whistleblowing optimal.

I like rules. Weird shadow rules that aren’t written down make me unreasonably angry. Corruption likes having two sets of rules.

I don’t know the mechanism. Automatic immunity for alleged whistleblowers _seems_ reasonable. There are ways to exploit that. But for an institutionalized system, maybe the losses are worth it.

Did a quick skim of literature, and it seems accountability in structures is the check on two sets of rules. Whistleblowing, but also shorter terms, punishment, and trust seem like good strategies.

Alas, defensive complexity should be the answer, but the appearance that it's not is what is confusing to me.

Open shops would help. The US is closed shop, by law, which means that you can only have one choice of union, which makes it extremely hard to get any sort of actual representation for actual complaints without getting a massive organization to change contract negotiations, etc.

The union’s only real incentive is to be just good enough to not be voted out and replaced (and I doubt the big well-funded national unions engage in many turf ware)

  The US is closed shop, by law,

Actually, Closed Shop (by its standard definition , meaning only union members may work) is illegal, but the problem you describe is real enough. Agency Shop (typical except in right-to-work states) is effectively closed for new employees.

There are workplaces where different roles have different unions, like CNA and SEIU in certain CA hospitals.

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