Striking should be legal, but firing employees for striking should also be legal.
Or social stability. We came to a consensus on striking workers because before that it was violent. Reprisal against those speaking a common view on despised conditions is how you make martyrs.
In Sweden we have a very good social safety net, but just that isn't enough.
If workers want to use their power to pressure companies, so should companies be able to do the same.
Yes? Was this disputed?
Why is that?
If by “same standard” you mean equal footing, then I don’t see how you’d square that circle.
By definition an employer-employee relationship is asymmetrical, so is landlord-tenant, corporations-consumer, doctor-patient, teacher-student, etc.
In all those relationships one has more leverage than the other. Which is why, in most developed nations, there are guardrails in an effort to equalize that relationship.
If I wanted to go to a coffee shop and that shop wanted to serve me coffee but the mafia is standing outside saying I have to pay them before I can go in, they are in fact forcing me to pay or turn away.
[edit] I’m getting the sense that if we just restructure this so the union exists and does normal union stuff but you don’t have to “be a member” (but do have to abide by its decisions or else leave, as with a board) you’d be ok with it? Like it’s mainly a semantic problem?
Also freedom of association is very clearly intended as freedom to associate, not freedom not to associate, so it's a little confusing for you to refer to it.
This model does not put you in a group anymore than being an American citizen puts you in a group by giving you the right to vote on things. In my version it is like how you get to be in a political party if you want to and not be in one if you don't, but you get to vote either way. The right to have some say against your manager's power in your life (short of quitting, that is) should be unassailable.
The fact that quitting is "all or nothing", and often not an option to people because the cost of finding a new job is high and often prohibitive to specifically the people who are most disenfranchised, makes it a poor and almost useless way to exercise power. Unions allow, in principal, for there to be intermediate pressures between "quitting" and "asking nicely".
Not all unions are great, but the median unionized worker earns more than a non-unionized worker in the same field. So the main reason people wouldn't want to join a union is because they've been conditioned to think they're bad, against their own economic interests.
Except I think switching trades (which you would have to do since the union is all encompassing and forces membership) is a lot more onerous than emigrating, and emigration is no slice of cake.
Daily reminder that Norway has NHO, a national union for employers/enterprises. (I don’t like it but it is what is.)
They'll bring back company towns if you let them.
In fairness, I'm not actually against company towns, in theory. I'm sure company towns existed in Scandinavia the same way they did here. However, following WWII, when they adopted their current economic model, that same town's residents inherited rights from the larger collective bargaining agreement, allowing them to bargain in good faith with the company that basically owns that town.
You see how their model of basically having cascading collective bargaining agreements that start from the top and empower everyone under it make me less opposed to company towns? However, it works better in countries where most people aren't brainwashed into thinking they'll all be billionaires one day and should look out for the interests of billionaires first.
It's equally pathetic that you think the role of the state is to expend unlimited funds to keep the enemies of private enterprises incarcerated, even when it would cost us all far more than adopting an enlightened policy regarding collective bargaining.
Only someone ignorant of history can spout nonsense like this.
Consider the Homestead strike [1] where companies hired private mercenaries (ie the Pinkertons) to commit violence to break the strike. People died.
Consider US auto makers [2]:
> Tesla workers earn on average about $55 an hour in wages and benefits, compared to $66 to $71 an hour at Detroit’s Big Three, according to CNN research. If the Detroit automakers come to agreement with the UAW, it will widen the gap between those unionized and non-unionized wages.
Unions benefit non-union members too [3]:
> Each 1 percentage point increase in private-sector union membership rates translates to about a 0.3 percent increase in nonunion wages.
The disdain for unions (by Americans in particular) while being completely oblivious to the benefits they enjoy because of unions has to be one of the most successful propaganda wins of the last century. Siding with the world's richest man over your own interests makes absolutely no sense.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_strike
[2]: https://cleantechnica.com/2023/10/26/tesla-continues-to-be-a...
[3]: https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/labor-unions...
Every. Single. Time.
If someone can give me one example where the poor oppressed strikers were 100% in the right and did not actually start with the violence or credible threat of violence before being set upon by the state/company I would really appreciate it, because so far after going through dozens of such events not once have I found one
If you want to say a company was evil for sending armed goons to break up a group of armed goons assaulting people or destroying stuff, then you're just plain in the wrong.