No we don’t. We are probably the most privileged workers in the world. If we are mistreated, we can quit and get another job down the street, likely with a raise. It’s not worth trading for all the bullshit that comes along with unions.
I’d like to see stats on union participation among doctors and lawyers. I’d bet it’s vanishingly small, especially for lawyers.
Stars have surprisingly little leverage against studios. Only a few actors can consistently sell a movie regardless of quality--currently, only Dwayne Johnson and Tom Cruise. When stars have leverage in negotiations, it's generally because other putative participants (usually investors or producers) have hinged their participation on the participation of one or more specific actors.
I’d like to see stats on union participation among doctors and lawyers. I’d bet it’s vanishingly small, especially for lawyers.
Almost all public sector lawyers belong to a union. This includes those working for the county, state, and federal governments in a legal capacity, as well as those working at most major cities.
The same is generally true of doctors working for the public sector. Notably, in contrast to the legal field, there are a number of doctors unions for doctors employed by private sector employers.
I am told a switch to green energy is necessary to save the climate. Shipping containers enabled affordable products to be sold globally which has improved the standard of living for many. Should we ban modern modes of transport so all the horse drawn carriage factory employees can get their jobs back?
Yes, unions add some friction to an overnight change that is made by grinding up the futures and fates of a company's workforce. That doesn't need to mean it "stops all human progress," for example, it can manifest instead as a requirement that company switching to green energy take a chunk of the money from efficiency gains to give their coal miners comfortable retirements.
I think unions historically have sometimes been great, and sometimes horrible. Two examples of unions actually making the world a worse place are the police unions and the teachers' unions in the United States.
If you wonder why we can't fix police corruption, it's because the union protects them - so you can't have both. If you wonder why we can't fix education, it's because the union actively defends teachers that are demonstrably bad for learning (and have visible apathy to the point of sleeping in class while "teaching" students) - so you can't have both.
There's more to the world than worker's rights.
The teacher's unions protect teachers at the expense of students. Basically the union doesn't care - at all - about teaching students (it's for the teachers, after all). They only care about stopping teachers from getting fired. It's our youth that suffer from receiving a shitty education. The assumption that "the teacher is always right" is profoundly damaging to our youth. The decline of the American education system (below college) is well studied.
https://hechingerreport.org/third-indication-u-s-educational...
Just to throw out a counterpoint, there are some who feel the education system is not declining, although I disagree. I encourage you to come to your own conclusions.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2018/10/15/how-are-...
There's a movie about it if you want to watch it:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1566648/
Yes, it's a documentary with an angle, but there's enough information in there to convince me.
As far as teachers unions, that is an argument that a lot of people would disagree with but i've decided i don't want to discuss it in detail here.
Do you value the teachers or the students more?
It has become so hostile, the dichotomy really is that stark. All attempts to negotiate with the teachers' union, even offering them substantial bonuses to fire teachers well known for terrible performance, have been met with "fuck you" by the union.
You're right, not everybody will agree. Some people will side with the teachers. I think those people are ruining future generations.
The movie you link "Waiting for Superman" spends allot of time talking about the charter school movement which is not mentioned in your post. Arguably charter schools are an extension of "the parent is always right" motto as it is touted as giving the parent more choices. To talk about the decline of education and this movie without mentioning the role of charter schools is a disservice to the movie and the discussion.
It has nothing to do with the schools. You can't fire teachers with tenure (edit: actually it's even worse - this is for any teachers not just with tenure) except under pretty outrageous circumstances. So even if they show up drunk, they are still gainfully employed.
If we have universal disdain for police and perpetuate the idea that they are thugs, what type of workforce do you think will be willing to take that job, and how hard do you think the existing workforce will be motivated to behave better? In your own job, or in school, do you tend to be motivated more by encouragement, or by being made to feel like shit?
If we view it as respectful and honorable work, we are more likely to attract a workforce who values these things. When people are judged prematurely, I find that they tend to live up to those judgments, for better or for worse.
Unions are terrible, and only appropriate when your employer or industry is even more terrible than a union. That does apply to many industries unfortunately, but not Google employees. Not even close. It’s also a safe bet that tech workers will earn less under a union.
A family member works in an industry that has only a single employer within about a 500 mile radius. He has absolutely no leverage and he needs a union. Even under the net-beneficial union, he’s had many negative effects, including losing his job and requiring his family to move, because of the seniority rules that many unions have. Too many older union members moved to his (more prosperous) city, and they get scheduling precedence, so he was reduced to an on-call who was never called. He eventually got “permission” to transfer and was able to move to a remote town where his lower seniority would still allow him to get work.
I constantly hear of stories where senior union members are not doing their jobs and taking the spot of someone who really wants to be there, but it’s nearly impossible to fire them due to union rules and their proficiency in gaming the system.
Don’t get me started on teachers unions. If you have kids, that one should really piss you off.
Seniority rules in unions are chapter-based, and chapters themselves are city- or business-based. If someone is moving in from a different chapter, that seniority generally doesn't carry over to their new chapter, and even when seniority does carry over it can't result in the transferring member displacing another union member's job.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/12/10/fiat-d10.html
but nobody said it has to be _those_ unions.
It's a bit like saying that since the Republican and Democratic party are, on the whole, corrupt and subservient to corporate interests (which they are), then political organizations are a bad idea.
It isn't - you just need independent, uncorrupted, accountable, distributed-power organizations. And it's the same with unions.
This isn't the case, the wage-fixing cartel that Google was part of is proof.
Also, organized labor only gains it’s power through contract law and state law (especially in non-right-to-work states, where it’s illegal to opt out of a union and cross the picket line), so this argument doesn’t really work.
Their leverage in contract negotiations comes entirely from their ability to organize mass action.
Their rights under state law are derived entirely from their political power arising from their ability to organize mass action.
And notably, with respect to the SV anti poaching case: the companies won that case because they ended up paying only a few thousand dollars to each affected worker instead of the hundreds of thousands per employee they would have owed if the case hadn't settled for pennies on the dollar.
A union absolutely would have protected its employees from being exploited so badly. (And note--unions can be organized to respect individual bargaining power, like they are with the SAG, where they set minimum pay scales and benefits but not maximums.)