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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

The labor movement is in the most dire straits it has been since the 1920s. They have no support from anybody with power. Their longtime ally, the Democrats, are now solidly the party of management, of companies operating global supply chains, and of knowledge workers who want their Amazon packages delivered on time. As a result Biden will face no meaningful backlash from his party for knifing railroad workers in the back: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/dec/01/joe-bi....

At the same time, the GOP's support of its growing working class base is merely lip service. There's lots of fluff pieces about "the New Right" and moving beyond zombie Reaganism, but the fact is that the party is structurally incapable of achieving any policy wins for those voters. Indeed, the GOP elite would love nothing more than to ditch rail workers in Ohio and win back upscale suburbanites in Westchester or Arizona or Georgia.

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Its even more lopsided. The Police unions hold vast amounts of power and broker what I'd consider very aggressive contracts and bipartisan support comes out in droves. They include things such as[0][1]:

- Neutralizing independent oversight boards

- Inhibit ability to discipline problem officers

- Cops (largely) investigate themselves rather than independent investigators

And, while I couldn't find an article that averaged the US, this year alone there have been big increases in police salary and pensions[2], they're even offering bonuses in some areas[3][4]

[0]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-police-rochester-take...

[1]: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-police-union-po...

[2]: https://detroitmi.gov/news/mayor-announces-landmark-agreemen...

[3]: https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2022/02/portland-police-con...

[4]: https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/local/15-largest-cities-me...

Neither of those is particularly new (so I’d say they’ve been at their lowest ebb since the early 2000s).

What is interesting is that union popular support is growing and is back to the 60s levels: https://news.gallup.com/poll/398303/approval-labor-unions-hi...

If that trend holds some political coalition will take advantage.

Labor parties are traditionally pro union, anti-immigration, free trade skeptical, mildly xenophobic, anti-elite, pro working class benefits (free tuition, healthcare), pro state investments in manufacturing, and less interested in programs that seem like condescending handouts. Which US party does this describe?

Neither

Right, neither. You’ve got the party that regards your average rail worker as a “deplorable” and then you’ve got the one that regards them as chumps they can use to get into a position to pass another corporate tax cut.

Well perhaps Labor needs to exercise its power instead of caving. That's what management has been doing to essentially steal their productivity over the decades.

It's a class war, but the wealthy are the ones attacking.

A rail wildcat today would result in the national guard out, it just is not the same as it used to be.

and the national guard will do what? I'm serious, what will they do, run the rails in their place?

Let them. That won't last forever either. Someone's gonna bluff.

I think the biggest issue will be PR. Corporations have PR machines at the ready. Unions haven't always invested in smart PR for their causes. You'd need spectacular media management to ensure this doesn't get turned into a situation where workers get blamed for more rising prices and economic turmoil, even though they shouldn't be once you have a fairly straightforward understanding of why they're doing what they're doing. If you can manage public opinion effectively, it would probably work, honestly.

I'd like to introduce you to what has happened historically when labor was met with the national guard. Whether or not this would happen in the modern era I cannot say.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_strike

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre

I do think, in 2022, anything of this nature happening on US grounds would not go over well at all. See the counter example, such as the Kent State shootings[0] which lead to a massive public outcry. It would, from a PR perspective at a minimum, completely obliterate public support for the railroad companies & the government and immediately give it to the workers.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings

I do believe you are correct and that it would end up with a humongous outcry from the public in support of the workers.

Counterpoint police unions have successfully manipulated the public for decades.

> it just is not the same as it used to be

It's the other way around. That phrase could come straight from the 19th century.

Look into the Battle of Blair Mountain. Yes, it's not as it used to be because the striking workers won't be attacked by the army.

What power? They are not that big and the rank and file are not united anymore.

If they all pulled together they could do something, but i don't think they will anymore.

The rank and file were reportedly all willing to strike, and even more so now that Biden has enforced the current rail agreement.

Which will see Biden call the national guard, forcing them to work.

Forced work? That’d fly like a lead balloon.

They have no power, why was it so critical for Congress to force their hand?

Management has the power here.

The reason the government has the authority to insert itself into railroad union negotiations is because the railroad unions used to have a habit of blowing up bridges when negotiations broke down. Maybe it's time to give that another go.

Indeed. And not just rail workers. Every week there is a post on HN asking why we don't have a shorter work week already. Folks seem to have forgotten how much dynamite was involved in getting it down to 40 hours.

Criminal acts should be dealt with by the same laws that would get me (no relation to the railroad) if I blew up a bridge.

And businesses have had the habit of killing striking workers. Interesting that only one has the government intervening on their behalf.

Preach brother.

Everyone is just a temporarily embarrassed millionaire

http://www.temporarilyembarrassedmillionaires.org/

It's truly disheartening when promoting labor organization always incites rejoinders who repeat the same anti-social anarcho-capitalist lines that amount to: "Not my problem", "You know the USSR went bankrupt", "Work harder", "Screw you, got mine" etc... lines.

The religion of the efficient market hypothesis, as the path to freedom and happiness, is one of the most destructive myths promulgated.

True freedom is mutually supportive communities

They lost all their power from completely squandering whatever esteem they had by being so egregiously corrupt and abusive with their power.

I know this is a commonly accepted narrative, and I won't dispute that it, in many instances, it did happen

With that said, is there any well documented, nonpartisan historical evidence to suggest that in broad strokes unions show corrupt and abusive behavior?

Unions are for losers unfortunately. That idea just doesn’t work in a modern globalized economy any longer. It’s a relic of a short period of time.

I mean you’re right — that’s why Amazon and Starbucks aren’t fighting unionization drives that hard, or why US police departments have famously weak unions of their own, or why the Pinkertons still exist after over a century, or why reactionaries still make regular targets of schoolteachers, or why this very HN thread only exists because unionized rail workers pose such a threat to American money and security that the federal government writes laws prohibiting them from striking.

The police don't have weak unions though. Evidence suggests otherwise, see my comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33991186#33992777

(the comment you were replying to was sarcastic, though they accidentally dropped the sarcastic negation of the examples they brought up halfway through the list)

Yes. That's the point. That is exactly the case with everything in their fully tongue-in-cheek comment.

"Unions are for losers" is the propaganda of the capitalist class. Unions are how we exercise and defend our rights.

Or to put it more generously: in the globalization era where capital can move more freely than labor, most labor is at a negotiation disadvantage when capital can just leave and invest in a friendlier locale instead (ie China).

Railroads can't. If you want to run a railroad to transport stuff in the US, you can't just move that to China.

hence why I said "most labor"

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