> Social and economic justice are paramount to achieving just outcomes
Social justice is not justice
Social justice is not justice
In a traditional sense, social justice is referring to the balance between the individual and society at large. Distribution of wealth, public services/schools, taxation, regulations of markets and more are part of what social justice is, at least in this part of the world.
That does sound like justice to me. It's not criminal justice, which you might be referring to, but more justice in the sense of "just behavior or treatment".
"Social justice" is an awkward term for an immensely important project, perhaps the most important project, which is to make the world a more equitable, fair, and compassionate place.
But the project for social justice has been captured by an elite strata of post-collegiate, digitally-enabled children of privilege, who do not pursue that project as an end, but rather use it as a means with which to compete, socially and professionally, with each other.
In that use, they value not speech or actions that actually result in a better world, but rather those that result in greater social reward, which in the digital world is obvious and explicit. That means that they prefer engagement that creates a) outrage and b) jokes, rather than engagement that leads to positive change.
In this disregard for actual political success, they reveal their own privilege, as it’s only the privileged who could ever have so little regard for actual, material progress. As long as they are allowed to co-opt the movement for social justice for their own personal aggrandizement, the world will not improve, not for women, people of color, gay and transgender people, or the poor.
Maybe this isn't the kind of "social justice" Google union activists are arriving for. But if that's the case the union activists should lay out specific goals, like establishing name-blind resume reviews, eliminating gender and racial quotas, or something else. Otherwise, my instinct is to lump their views into the same trend as the social justice activists I have encountered during my time working in tech which tends to be hostile to meritocracy and desires picking outcomes a priori.
To be clear, it's fine to be in favor of affirmation action as an individual and I often support it myself, but I definitely wouldn't want a union enforcing it and I could see why many people would be alienated by a union movement espousing it.
1. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2017/...
Social justice is an arbitrary judgment based on subjective examination of inputs. It's collectivism. Disregard for individuals.
This is a clear misunderstanding. We're talking about two different social justice's here. The social justice you're talking about is the current moral panic many feel in the US today. The social justice I'm (and hopefully the future union) talking about, is balancing society at large and the individuals. Not disregarding, balancing. That means that sometimes the individual has to have less of something and society more, and sometimes the other way around.
But maybe the word "social justice" in the US has been completely co-opted by TV politics, so us in the rest of the world now talk a different language...