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Comment by duxup | Hacker News Reader

I wouldn't assume that.

I think what you are missing is that Labor Unions are people that are generally trying to do the right thing. So were probably working for awhile with the mold, and raising concerns, but as time goes by, and issues are ignored, you have to start complaining louder and louder. Then by the time someone listens, it seems like you are screaming about nothing.

The article directly says the opposite, and reinforces what GP comment was saying about the union not being helpful:

> Although Dugan, Shaffer, and other members say their union stewards on site helped press their concerns to management, they say that local and international IBEW officers who visited the facility scoffed at their concerns. Dugan says a local officer refused to file a grievance on his behalf about the mold in January. One worker requested to stay anonymous out of concern that union officials might withhold his future job placements if he spoke out.

Guess we need to separate the local union members from the national organization.

This is a labor focused web site talking about labor issues. Not run by any one particular union, it isn't a union controlled web site that is trying to pump a particular message.

It is an article about labor, where the factory, local union, and national union organization, all had some part to play. So this article is covering all of those issues, not trying to be all 'super pro union'.

A reminder to the audience that Ford's labor unions voted to reduce their wages by like 30% back when Ford was struggling in 2009. A labor union WANTS to work, so they can make money. They aren't going to strike the second the first moldy crate comes in, because they want money. They will do their damndest to work within the system to solve things, because they worked very hard to build those resolution systems into their working contracts during the previous negotiation cycle.

Union laborers didn't want to stop working, they wanted to stop breathing in mold.

the NLRA/B don't cover managers, and union leadership is a separate role from on-the-job management. for the readership of a magazine targeting current or prospective union members and leadership, this is fundamental knowledge, so it won't ever be spelled out in an article

it's also worth clarifying that labor notes is _pro labor_, not necessarily _pro union_, and especially not _pro one specific type of union (e.g. industrial vs craft)_. when a labor union fails its members, this is one of the canonical publications covering it

If the article only works if you approach it as preaching to the choir ... maybe it does make sense.

But it certainly makes it a poor article if they're "advocates for a revitalization of the labor movement" beyond the the rank and file union choir who would assume the union took action. You'd think they'd want to appeal to others too.

For the record, I don't so much care what the union did or didn't do, my comment was more about the article itself.

right, i'm not taking a side either, just saying your comment showed you lacked the context to understand what you were reading. as you stated and defended. you made a misinterpretation that can only happen if you _don't know the basics what a union is_ — important context for reading a labor publication targeting labor people.

Right. It's also assuming knowledge about the auto industry. Ford is building what they call "Blue Oval City" near Glendale, Kentucky, an all-new complex of plants.

[1] https://bestneighborhood.org/race-in-glendale-ky/

...why not? The article seems to clearly imply it to my eye.

I would think a publication would have explicitly said so in order to as they say "advocates for a revitalization of the labor movement".

I got no problem with that goal, it's just a strange article to try to do that with.

Not sure why that is - you can see from the first paragraph that there are problems that are the result of poor workers rights.

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