As a small government advocate, i have no issue with labor boards.
the alternative is violence or unionization, neither of which are optimal in resolving disputes like these in a civilized and efficient manner.
the alternative is violence or unionization, neither of which are optimal in resolving disputes like these in a civilized and efficient manner.
Unionization is a great way of solving disputes. Many big corporations need to be counter-weight with some other big organization.
To put violence and unions at the same level seems uncalled for.
Wage theft is illegal. It should be treated as a legal issue where the state gets involved and uses its monopoly on force to enforce the law. That's what the state is there for.
[Aside, putting violence at the same level as unions: I've been around a union, while working in a factory in the midwest US, that had "kneebreakers" that "encouraged" members to vote a certain way by threat-of-force, support certain candidates for union leadership, and used the Union to blatantly extort local businesses and politicians. Not every union is like this, but blue-collar unions in the US have a history of going this way. Which, even tho I like unionization in theory and cheer a bit inside when I see union action at e.g Starbucks or Amazon, I have seen a very terrible union and so they scare me.]
In this case, the union was a giant ball of mud whose only existence was to hold the government hostage.
As much as I dislike Thune power corporations can hold, unions are not a fix all and can become the same overlords.
"Companies save billions of dollars by giving employees fake “manager” titles" is fraud. If you do not like unions because ONE did something that you do not like , how much do you hate companies were you have thousands of examples of bad behavior?
> As much as I dislike Thune power corporations can hold, unions are not a fix all and can become the same overlords.
I do not know what concept do you have about unions, but it seems come from anti-union propaganda and not from any reasonable definition of what a union is. Unions gave us the eight hour work week, vacations and many more rights. That is not "overlord" behavior but being able to negotiate with powerful corporations.
Not the person you are replying to, but I think discounting the behavior of unions as one-off is not helping. The examples I have are from outside US though - there are entire states where union presence is strong. Those states had a good industrial sector but over several decades the unions made it so problematic for the industries there that majority of businesses moved to states where there were no unions. Public calls for "strikes" and other work-stopping behavior and violence is common occurence in those states. So the risk of a union becoming mafia-like is more than just propaganda - it has plenty of examples worldwide in several countries.
My experience with unions was they were shady, jobs were given out based on nepotism, work was given out solely based on seniority and most work you did for them involved kickbacks.
Every system is only as good as the people in them.
You tell us, is a 47% increase in pay "normal"?
why did the body intended to help with the negotiations write this:
The union’s proposals “do not appear realistic for what should be a fairly advanced stage of negotiations. The numerous proposals are not focused and they would result in an increase to compensation far beyond what is reasonable,” reads the unanimous report signed by three commissioners.
Maybe. Depends on what the value they provide is.
In the tech industry, getting a 47% raise by job hopping to a new job that does the exact same thing, isn't unheard of, so it seems entirely plausible it could be justified. If it actually is in this case, i don't know, but its not crazy on its face.
Beyond his political vision, Black attempted to compete directly with Kenneth Thomson's media empire led in Canada by The Globe and Mail, which Black and many others perceived as the platform of the Liberal establishment.
--wikipedia
Is your point that you can copy/paste from wikipedia and provide no actual commentary??
Given that PSAC are asking for 4.5% raises during a period of high inflation I’m skeptical that this is that unreasonable rather than that there’s political hay to be made claiming it is. If they haven’t had cost of living increases for a while, they’ve already effectively had a pay cut.
Assuming that you did not read the article, I am not stating it is unfair, the independent board they engaged to help with the negotiations stated this.
Many people lost their jobs and had to take pay cuts during COVID, why are federal employees exempt from market forces?
https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/federal-union-wants-4...
Because it is not going anywhere, they had an independent body get involved, their commentary says it all:
"The union’s proposals “do not appear realistic for what should be a fairly advanced stage of negotiations. The numerous proposals are not focused and they would result in an increase to compensation far beyond what is reasonable,” reads the unanimous report signed by three commissioners."
These same union employees are also fighting "unilateral contract changes" that mandates they return to the office, but did not fight the unilateral contract changes that allowed them to WFH in the first place?
The contract they signed was for "IN_PERSON" work, so they are simply being asked to do what they signed up for prior to COVID.
Huh? They fight against contract changes they don't like, and don't fight against contract changes they do like? Sounds pretty crazy to me.
Its a negotiation. The union asking for the highest number it can get is what its supposed to do.
Only relevant in a spirit-like sense, but reading this line immediately reminded me of this scene in Intolerable Cruelty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PpQk63iIWw
There is however a third choice, which is government regulation. Unfortunately government regulations can't adapt as quickly as a union can to changes.
Maybe the relatively inflexibility of regulation is what is needed to maintain a minimum necessary commitment to living wages and reasonable benefits though.
Just like planes which survived battles only had bullet marks on their wings.
Such as labor boards, or rather the government that gives them power.
[1] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w10481/w104...
My working class family members (all in the same trade) universally hate unions and their reasons are quite reasonable; my grandfather was in union leadership until he was run out by the mob and my cousin had to pay tribute (e.g a protection racket) to the new leadership.
Recently he had to go on medical leave. When he was ready to go back to work he had to take a physical. He had to go a week without pay until the results of the physical came back. It is total bullshit but he didn’t have a Union to back him and not worth it to sue.
Update: He’s only had a few of these issues in his career, so maybe the union dues he would have paid outweighed the cost of getting stiffed. Adding this because my point wasn’t that unions are awesome, but they can have value… the question is at what cost.
By the time she retired in 21st century, she hated her union.
She particularly hated their support for Obamacare. They had an exception so it didn’t affect their agreements. But that ignored the fact that the nurses had to actually implement it.
It was an administrative clusterf*ck. Nurses spent hours listening to consultants telling them how to improve patient reviews, which were now tied to compensation.
The unions were like “the Democrats now owe us, so we will get paid back down the road.”
She literally quit over that.
The reality is that you are adding a lot of extra 'management' on top of the existing company management when you bring in a union. At the end of the day, a union is a business and it is a profit-seeking business. Employees have to raise a massive fuss and get momentum from members in the union to receive any sort of defense from the union for their grievances.
The rotation aspect is also annoying. If you enjoy a particular job, you are forced to rotate out so that other members can have a chance. The juiciest roles always seem to go to the senior members. If you an apprentice, you just have to take what you get, and endure whatever hazing, teasing, and abuse you receive (tech workers jaws would hit the floor if they witnessed what I lived through).
At the end of the day you have to remember that there is one pie. Everyone wants a piece of the pie... management, employees, and union. Adding more overhead and more bosses is not always an effective way of getting more pie to the employees.
I think there's some truth to the old adage that there's a class of Americans, especially represented among the HN crowd that "see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."
There are many reasons for the decline of organized labor in the US. Some cultural yeah, but just as much, if not more, legal...
"Right to work" legislation
Employers fighting harder against unionization
Decreased enforcement of labor laws
Judges (including SCOTUS) who keep striking down labor protections
Media portrayal of unions
source?
People are being bled dry by unsustainably high interest rates and housing costs due to the insatiable appetites of big business.
>source?
>> If wages matched the increase in housing prices alone
Ah. I thought you meant wages were low relative to other countries, when they are actually among the highest.
This is sort of the nature of inflation though, prices increasing faster than wages- but there is a feedback loop, as increasing wages increases prices.
> People are being bled dry by unsustainably high interest rates
Asset price inflation is probably more driven by low interest rates. Higher rates should bring down asset prices, ceteris paribus.
High tech and Hollywood generated huge money, and Wall Street style money was always anti-Union. It is worth saying that Hollywood movie production is very heavily unionized, and that small system works pretty well.
Some of these laws hurt unions, others help.
For example, a union contract can’t require an employer to hire only union members.
That would create a situation where people would apply to the union first, and if they union accepted them, then they apply for the job.
That would give unions too much power, so it’s not allowed.
Another law forbids sympathy strikes. Unions can only strike against their own employers, not in sympathy with other strikers.
Modern labor law also seeks to discourage strikes by using a war-game like approach to negotiating. Maybe a good idea, maybe not. But certainly not something that happens for non-union orgs.
If we adopted a “hands off” approach to unions, we could easily wind up with insanely powerful unions.
If 2% of the working population went on strike simultaneously, the economy would stop working quickly.
So general strikes are very illegal, even though they are 100% in accord with libertarian ideology.