It’s far more effective to unionize when things are going well rather than when things are going bad.
Detroit was the wealthiest city in the US in 1950, with the highest per capita GDP in the country. Over the course of the 1950s, 60s and 70s, the UAW union took over, with membership eventually peaking in 1978.
What followed was industrial collapse, and eventually, Detroit becoming a ghost town.
Unions are not good for labor at large, just the labor that is on the winning side of the zero sum rent extraction scheme.
There are anti-union folk who try to blame the unions for Detroit dying. This is ignoring the fact that GM took money that was meant for pensioners, and started spending it on non-pension related stuff.
Their pension savings dropped, and the companies couldn't meet the obligations they promised to. Those obligations were put in place because of the unions.
So yes, you could argue if it wasn't for the unions those pensions would've never been promised to. However, that's victim blaming the folks since the company decided to spend money that effectively wasn't theirs and was put away, and then cry for help after it got caught. Short term profits over long term longevity is what killed Detroit.
There were a lot of other things happening at the same time:
- NAFTA fucked over US industry. - White flight, caused by a multitude of reasons including xenophobia cut down the taxable population of the city. - Lack of oversight and regulations and mismanagement of the city of Detroit.
Blaming Unions for what happened is wild. Without the Unions, detroit would've never seen the boom that it did, and without the unions, the workers would've ended up in a worse situation considering what NAFTA did to US manufacturing.
Retail ownership may now make up a greater population but for the lower 50% of Americans, stock ownership has been declining. And for all but the top 10% of Americans, the amount of stock owned (as a fraction of all stock in circulation or even inflation adjusted value held) has been declining.
So in a very real sense, the stock market has an increasingly negligible direct impact on the lives of a significant chunk (if not a majority) of Americans (however it still may have an indirect effect via exposure from their employers).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_Unite...
> Unions are simply a rent-seeking mechanism to extract more wealth from the shareholders by restricting their contract rights.
and the choice between that money going to the workers creating that value vs the shareholders matters.
If ownership of stocks is concentrating and fewer working class Americans are owning stocks, then shifting wealth distribution from the shareholder towards the worker should generally be regarded as good for the working class. And regardless, maybe if more of the money went directly to the workers, they'd me more willing to put money into the market than they currently are.
Wages have stagnated, cost of living has continued to rise, and corporate profits have soared. It's really not a surprise why working class Americans don't invest in the market, they just don't have the money to "waste" or "risk" on it.
Capitalism is the only model that can maximize economic growth and social development. No amount of ideological wishful thinking will change that.
Wild. Even ChatGPT would yell at you for this hot take lol.
They were tenable. The execs literally spent money that wasn't theirs and then said oh no we don't have money left.
They took short term profits, over long term goals and commitments.
The tech workers are under the false assumption that they have the upper hand, in the midst of higher interest rates, competition between companies (reducing profit margins), AI (boosting non-english, non-western workforce skills higher bringing them near par to average western knowledge workers).
Companies will accelerate firing and blocking these groups going forward.
I, on the other hand, have worked multiple jobs where an expectation of 18 hour days 6-7 days a week is not out of scope for the role during periods of crunch. This brings my hourly wage based on salary down to that of someone working at McDonalds.
Who exactly is entitled?
I hate that there's no easy way to run the experiment, but when I talk to my parents about their life at my age, I'm often astounded at how much wealthier my life feels at $27k a year (though I am fortunate to rent a room for free, so my living standard is effectively ~10k higher than it would be for others at the same wage as me).
For what it's worth I'm from Denmark, so maybe its totally different in the US.
Even today tradespeople get paid $50k more per year than I do and they have far better conditions. They strike all the time and refuse to do work they aren’t paid for.
To weigh in a bit on some of the differences between employment in Denmark and the US.
- In the US there are no mandated (paid or unpaid) vacation days/time off (with the exception of 3-4 of the 50 states).
- There are no mandated paid sick days.
- You are granted at most 12 weeks of unpaid sick leave per year by the FMLA however if you actually take advantage of this, most companies will simply let you go for another, unspecified reason (as you are not required to document or explain why you have let go or fire an employee).
- There is no mandated paternity leave, paid or unpaid. Maternity leave falls under unpaid sick leave.
- On average (but not required), employees get 10-20 days of paid time off (combined between vacation and sick time).
- The US obviously has atrocious health care costs that unless you are very lucky end up eating non-negligible portions of your paycheck. (just insurance before any actual received care is on average is ~450USD/month)
- US Universities cost a lot of money and if you aren't going into the trades, you will be dedicating a large, non-negligible portion of your paycheck towards paying loans (avg: ~40k USD loans, ~150-300USD/month).
- In almost any part of the US outside of a small selection of major cities, you cannot work or live without a car. (avg car insurance ~150USD/month, avg cost of fuel ~150-200USD/month, maintenance, etc can be assumed to be another 25-100USD/month).
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That works out to on average around ~900-1200USD/month or ~10.8k-14.4k USD/year in costs (if you aren't going to university you can subtract 450USD/month or 5400USD/year from this) that are essentially unavoidable for the overwhelming majority of Americans which likely are avoidable in a country like Denmark as long as you don't live in an overly rural area.
Realistically this means that for the average American (~31k/year), anywhere from 17-46% of their income goes to expenses that aren't necessarily applicable to people in a decent chunk of western Europe (particularly the urban/suburban parts). And on top of this, for many Americans, any life complication or sickness that prevents them from working causes that percentage to rise (both from increased costs and decreased income).
If you made 31k/yr your healthcare subsidy under the ACA would put your premium at $0-10/month https://www.goodrx.com/insurance/aca/aca-income-limits
While there is no federal law for sick leave, many states have them, and even for states that don’t, local municipalities do which means a large portion of US workers do receive mandated sick time. https://www.paycor.com/resource-center/articles/paid-sick-le...
To a lesser degree, the same goes for maternity leave https://www.zippia.com/advice/average-paid-maternity-leave/ https://www.ncsl.org/labor-and-employment/state-family-and-m...
The car insurance part is also wrong. As is the part about being fired for taking sick time; it costs the average employer 7 figures to fight a wrongful termination suit. So even if they win, it’d have been cheaper to keep you on even if you did nothing. Employers in at will states can fire you for any reason but if you’ve had fine performance reviews leading up to your medical leave, only the stupidest employers would expose themselves to massive legal liability by firing you. I’m guessing you’re pretty naive to running a business because most employers and entrepreneurs I’ve talked to are quite aware of this and truthfully do have good will towards their employees anyway.
There’s more to pick apart here but tl;dr - no one in the US making 31k/yr is spending half their income on health insurance and car insurance. At the income level, your effective tax rate is 0% too cause of tax credits.
Which is an employer in every state except Montana. And let's not pretend that employees who are wrongly fired are willing/able to fight a long legal battle to prove their termination was illegal, so no matter how much it costs an employer it's still on the terminated employee to start proceedings. Unless it's a "slam dunk" case that a lawyer will take pro-bono and take money from the settlement or win, that person will need to pay out of pocket, which is out of reach for almost everyone.
I also would like to see the "7 figures to fight a wrongful termination suit" citation.
> While there is no federal law for sick leave, many states have them, and even for states that don’t, local municipalities do which means a large portion of US workers do receive mandated sick time.
Sure, but not everyone lives in the states that have paid sick leave, and only 14 states plus DC, plus a handful of other cities, actually do offer it. The majority of them additionally have a cap of 40 hours, after which it's going to be unpaid, so if you're unfortunately sick for longer than a week, you're kind of out of luck.
On top of this, the parent most likely meant mandated as in federally mandated, which is true, there is no federally mandated sick leave.
While the US isn't as bad as some people like to make it seem to be, it's also not that good for a lot of people, so please don't pretend it is.
You can start a new software company and run it the way you want as opposed to parasitizing an existing one. This isn't the 1800s where you have to go build an entire factory. This is software.
Employees forming a union isn't 'parasitizing' an existing one. It is clear you don't even understand the basics of what a union is or how it works. It is for the best if ignorant people like stop acting like you know what you are talking about instead of posting brain dead takes on the internet.
If the existing organization wanted a union, it would have established the union itself.
If it did not, it's parasitizion of an existing organism.
This is a mischaracterization of what unions do. When have you witnessed a union do this? That must be a remarkably powerful union to be making decisions for the entire organization.
Unions simply negotiate things related to their members, on behalf of their members. There's no "forcing" involved.
If a company doesn't want to meet the union's expectations for the wages and benefits of their members, it can simply fire all the union members or wait for them to strike and hire their replacements. After all, it's just software, how hard could it be to replace the entire team? Surely no harder than a single person simply quitting and building a competitor to Blizzard.
Not agreeing with OP, but you generally can’t fire striking workers. Replacements are difficult as you still owe the striking workers their positions if they return.
Lots of caveats to all of that, but it’s definitely not simple. If it were there would be very few private unions.
Regardless, unions are a net positive.
https://www.epi.org/publication/unions-and-well-being/
> We find that, on average, the 17 U.S. states with the highest union densities:
> have state minimum wages that are on average 19% higher than the national average and 40% higher than those in low-union-density states
> have median annual incomes $6,000 higher than the national average
> have higher-than-average unemployment insurance recipiency rates (that is, a higher share of those who are unemployed actually receive unemployment insurance)
And Especially "just form your own union" was precisly what this example demonstrated that is not valid. That union had enough political power to Force the State to autoenroll People that did not want to be part of that union because they did not see any benefit.
Anyway in the usa the population at large is utterly allergic to workers rights laws. The most rational way in the usa to ensure better labor rights is to form a Union.
For the Communists, I come from an ex-Communist country. Me and my children are still suffering from those conseguences and the communists in Italy tell me stories how they watched us in the television from their villas and Envied us..., while our govenment gave contributions to the Italian Comunist party and we the people had the moto "We will eat grass if we have to". that's the Disconnect they live in.
You're not replaceable. Those... those workers... They're replaceable. You're special. You negotiated and got a whole dime more for yourself. That makes you better than those... others.
Of course, if you'd joined a union, you'd have got a buck more, and better benefits. But no, you're Speshul.
Solidarity forever.
See how that works?
My parents were in a union and their parents before them. What are you talking about?
Of course they feel entitled to this, many young workers just entering the workforce (myself included) haven't known anything else their entire adult lives. How can you blame them and not the government and corporate cronies for instituting these terrible policies in the first place?!
thanks for the chuckle