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Comment by hedora | Hacker News Reader

How does the behavior of European unions prove that the big national unions in the US aren't corrupt?

Switching the US to be open shop would change my mind. This would allow people to easily switch away from or negotiate with abusive unions.

The unions I have dealt with have universally been more abusive than my employers, to the point where employers would try to sneak unauthorized employee benefits through contract loopholes. In one case the union agrees to let the company hire non-union labor (with capped, low pay and benefits) to do the jobs of union employees with seniority that refused to work and could not be fired.

If you think my repeated personal experiences with multiple national unions are all anecdotal outliers, then explain why wildcat strikes have become common in the US in recent years.

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I'm not from the US so I may offer the viewpoint of an outsider

It seems pretty obvious to me that if you find that some US unions are rather bad, which is probably true because most of everything is bad, the right solution would be to strengthen the good ones. And if really there aren't any good ones, a good solution would be to organize to create better ones based on what has worked in the history of the labor movement united States. And based on what is working abroad, especial in more democratic societies like in Scandinavia

This is how it has always worked. No worker right we take for granted - and in the US you are missing some! - has ever been gifted to us. They happened because a small group of people decided to organize and do something about it.

Not saying that's easy, but the base principle is pretty simple and according to the research paper - and history in general - clearly worth it.

And to be transparent, if someone says to me that what I describe is impossible, i will listen to the arguments, but my baseline assumption would be that he spreads corporate propaganda, or worse, is victim of it.

Unions outside of the US are also full of corruption, at least the 3 that I have information from my family members. One of them was the union representative in their branch, and after a few years left the union altogether after seeing what goes on and that none of the organizers actually care about doing something. In general members extracted extra vacation days that were given to do union work and that's it.

Unions are just like political parties after a while, the people that get involved in them have a particular personality, and pretty much none of them think you should take pride in the quality of your work, it's generally people who are very sour and see only enemies in their work life. Otherwise they'd be doing the work and getting rewarded for it.

What is strange though is that we hear all the time about unions being sometimes full of corruption, but not about the other political players.

Aren't the democratic and the republican party sometimes corrupted? What about the Koch Brothers and the Tobacco companies and the Bitcoin/Blockchain sector and the fossil fuel companies and the alcool companies? What about the tech monopolies? What about everyone that has a political stake in everything?

Who decided it was important to associate corruption with the unions and only the unions?

> Who decided it was important to associate corruption with the unions and only the unions?

I literally already compared them to political parties in my comment, this is a strawman.

This is a very common straw man argument against unions and it's indeed not one that you are using. I think we are both right.

If people were considering voluntarily giving the Koch brothers or Tobacco companies union-like powers over their lives ("mandatory smoke breaks and maga hats for all!"), then I'd be expressing similar concerns.

Fair enough.

Then if was you I would express similar concerns because the Koch brothers and powerful economic players in general have by definition way more power over political decisions - or non decisions - and our lives than the unions. Unions are merely a weak counter power.

I'm not even making a negative jugement here, this is just how power works.

Like I said, I don't really have an interest in arguing with folks about it, unless they tell me what will change their mind. Otherwise it's just okay but one more thing.

"Switching the US to be open shop would change my mind" Literally, closed shop is illegal in the USA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_shop#United_States

Give some names if you want to provide anecdotes, otherwise I think you're someone arguing in bad faith on the internet.

Look at the data, look at how kneecapped unions are in the USA, and you'll begin to understand that you're being manipulated.

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