Unions are not necessarily a response to bad management. Often they can be because the workers want to force the good management to stay good.
It’s far more effective to unionize when things are going well rather than when things are going bad.
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.