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Comment by dencodev | Hacker News Reader

It's less about education, and more about "fuck you got mine" for a website full of engineers whose average salary is probably 6x that of the average American

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It’s partially self-interest, true, but speaking for Americans, there really is no widespread, institutional education on what labor unions are or do, and what benefits they can bring. Most people simply don’t think about them or believe whatever their employers’ PSAs tell them to believe because no one else ever talks about labor organizing to them.

You're talking about union education as if it's equivalent to mathematics or something, like there is an absolute truth to be learned. Surely even the most pro-union people would acknowledge that not every implementation of a union is equivalent? And that some have caused harm?

I would say I'm union agnostic, I'm not against them but I have about the same amount of faith that a union will improve things in a given situation as that the government will. Both are supposed to be a representation of the people, run by the people, and both are often too bogged down by bureaucracy and power seeking to actually do anything constructive. Sure there are great historical examples of unions accomplishing great things, just are there are great historical examples of governments passing landmark laws, but neither of those guarantees that these institutions will do the right thing in any future scenario.

And to the extent that I am going to put trust in one of these institutions, I'd rather choose the government. I'd rather see, for instance, healthcare given as a right to every citizen, than healthcare given to employees in just one industry. And in fact, unions have been some of the strongest opponents of medicare for all initiatives in the US in recent years. They've already negotiated good healthcare benefits for their members and they don't want everyone else who's not a member to get it too. This kind of "us vs them" incentive system doesn't appeal to me. And more fundamentally, I strongly believe that a lot of basic things (again, like healthcare, or disability insurance, or the ability to invest in a retirement account) should be much less coupled to employment than they are today, and unions are a force in the opposite direction.

> You're talking about union education as if it's equivalent to mathematics or something, like there is an absolute truth to be learned. Surely even the most pro-union people would acknowledge that not every implementation of a union is equivalent

Just like in school civics class you probably learned about the concepts of the government is structured, the principals behind it, a bit about other approaches, etc, I don't see why you couldn't learn the same things for unions. Of course the government doesn't really quite work like that, but isn't it better to have a baseline understanding and shared idea? The situation with unions now is that basically the only thing people know about them is propaganda from anti-union groups, unless they happen to be in one. I fail to see how this is better. It would be like if you first learned about democracy from a monarchist telling you how bad democracy is.

The government isn’t a good comparison. Unions hold no illusions about acting in the interests of the general public. Their express purpose is to protect the members of the union, even if that comes at the expense of the general public.

Police unions defending corrupt police and ensuring they can collect expensive public-funded pensions after blatant misconduct against the public is a prime example.

Most unions try to act in solidarity with labor in general, through organizations like the IWW and the AFL-CIO. Police unions aren't labor unions, as the role of police in society is to enforce the current capital distribution. This is counter to the goals of the rest of the labor movement, and there's currently a push to boot the IUPA from the AFL-CIO.

I routinely see people postulate that unions act primarily in the interests of the general public. Unions may not claim that, but at least some of their supporters do.

I don’t understand this desire to dismiss any criticism of unions as ignorance. This attitude that the only way someone might oppose unionization is because they’re too dumb to understand the concept is extremely condescending.

Take a look at the current situation with police unions defending bad cops, for example. The union is just doing its job in protecting the cops, right? But in reality, this can come at the expense of others who are adjacent to the unionized employees. It’s not a simple matter of employees versus their employer.

I am not dismissing any criticism, just the problematic fact that no one talks about unions except corporate PSAs. There are no institutions or traditions to support labor organizing in the way there once was. Like the idea of joining or forming a union is alien to most Americans.

> they’re too dumb to understand the concept is extremely condescending

This is a bad faith interpretation of my post. I did not say people are dumb. I believe the opposite; working class and middle class people can absolutely understand unions. My point is that there are no movements or institutions to bring awareness or organize people, and so people forget the history of labor organizing in this country. People intuitively get what’s wrong, there’s just no longer any vocabulary to express it. It’s not stupidity, it’s a multi-decade effort by capital to erase unions from the public consciousness. People just don’t talk about organization anymore, it’s a social phenomenon, not an individual one.

> Take a look at the current situation with police unions

Police unions are not part of the unionization movement because police are not on the side of workers. Police are tasked with defending property and the owners of property are overwhelmingly capitalists or other relatively wealthy individuals. In fact, many of the most deadly anti-union activities (e.g. attacking strikers) have been performed by police.

Agreed. My high school economics education was limited to supply and demand curves. It would be so beneficial to having a class about household budgeting, loans and interest, credit rating, mortgages, property, investment, stocks, LLCs/corporations, capital, unions, labor law, taxes, government budget, deficit, trade balance, etc. All the things that people have to learn later in life, hear biased people/media who pretend to know the answers, or never really understand (I guess such a course wouldn't get to Quantitative Easing anyway).

> "...there really is no widespread, institutional education on what labor unions are or do, and what benefits they can bring"

I watched the UAW's behavior in Detroit for a couple of decades. That's all the education anyone needs to conclude that unions aren't in anyone's best interest.

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