Volkswagen's US workers vote against joining union
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
Framing the unionization effort as a "works council" was ingenious marketing on UAW's part, but apparently wasn't enough to persuade the Tennessee good old boys to take the Rust Belt gambit. If you've ever heard stories about how GM & Co. run their factories you'll be amazed anything gets built at all.
the same dysfunctional individualism that make so many workers opt out for the short term (or in this case the promise of middle term) extra profit also make the leaders shaft the ones that join for a little criminal profit.
german workers have the cultural pragmatism on their favour.
American auto unions fundamentally undermined any incentive auto manufacturers had to innovate. If a man with dynamite digs more holes than one with a shovel, is that man's increased productivity the result of his own effort? No. Auto unions claim pay raises proportional to increases in output per worker (productivity), regardless of the sources of these increases. This means manufacturers have no incentive to invest in better facilities or to innovate, as any profit from this innovation would be eaten up as wages.
I think the theory is that if all workers were unionized, they would be able to negotiate for a larger share of the profits that are currently taken by the owners of capital.
>Auto unions claim pay raises proportional to increases in output per worker (productivity), regardless of the sources of these increases.
You are assuming a world where the union has absolute power; The role of a union in a market system is to negotiate with the owners of capitol.
Agree or not, (and my personal beliefs are closer to yours than to the comment you are responding to.) it's important to at least understand what your opponent is trying to say.
How would them negotiating for a larger share of the profits be a good thing when they were already taking enough of a share of the profits to drive auto companies into bankruptcy?
>You are assuming a world where the union has absolute power; The role of a union in a market system is to negotiate with the owners of capitol.
If you have laws where only union members are allowed to work in auto factories, or that non-union members aren't allowed to work there, then the unions do have absolute power within those industries.
>It's important to at least understand what your opponent is trying to say.
I understand what they're trying to say. I'm just responding that paying auto workers more would not result in a net benefit to the middle class. If as the parent's scenario implies there is nowhere else for manufacturers to find labor (which implies no outsourcing), then for every increase in automobile prices that's brought about by increases in auto workers' wages, that means less resources available for car buyers to spend on other things.
Unions in the American style cannot make the pie bigger, they can only divide it differently. More pie to unionised workers hence means less pie for everyone else (including the other workers who now can't find work as auto makers can afford fewer employees as they have to pay them more).
There is another party to the transaction, the owners of capital. Generally speaking, pro-union people argue that capital is in too strong of a negotiating position, and the workers need to unionize to negotiate against the owners of capital. If capital takes less profit, in theory, you can have lower prices and higher wages.
Yes, in the real world, it's messier than that. But, in all real-world business deals, yes, there is surplus value, but who gets that surplus value?
But the bit you are missing here, I think, is that the owners of the capital are a third party, and the more profit they take, the less surplus value is left for consumers or workers. (I'm not saying that eliminating profit would be a good thing, or even that minimizing profit is a good goal. I'm just saying, there are three parties to that negotiation. Three parties negotiating over that surplus value.)
you said:
>Unions in the American style cannot make the pie bigger, they can only divide it differently.
Which is exactly the point. Joining a union is very much the equivalent of hiring a lawyer (or other professional negotiator) to negotiate a business deal for me.
So yes, there is a conflict of interest. but there is /always/ a conflict of interest when trying to decide who gets the surplus value.
That's not about their image. The German steelworkers union, IG Metal, has several seats on the Volkswagen board and they made sure that Volkswagen wouldn't oppose the unionization. Actually, between the Union and the Workers Councils, they hold half of the board.
In any case, this is a big win for the conservative movement/establishment in the US. If the workers had voted to unionize and if the (Republican led) government had penalized Volkwagen (as they threatened), it would have been interesting to see whether Volkswagen might moved to a less union-unfriendly state.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/12/business/automaker-gives-i... has some additional details.
I guess it depends on whether an industry is growing in employment and importance (where any union-based programs to recruit/train/regulate employees can be helpful to everyone), vs. in declining industries (ie virtually every unionized sector in the US, in total employment in most sectors or in retail price (for services)).
They don't exist in a void though, they can do that because they're empowered and treated as partners by companies, rather than treated as a plague.
Seriously I think there are reasons on all sides:
The German government started early with the social welfare system in 1883, which set the tone. (even if it was only designed to keep the commies at bay, it still has a stabilizing effect on Germany today)
This made the employers not go as bat shit crazy as they did in the UK and the US - overworking people straight into hospital means that you're paying their wage for not working. The UK built its industrialization on a constant stream of new workers.
Which again let the unions run cooler compared to their UK/US counterparts since the situation wasn't _all_ that bad.
The second and third step then formed a feedback loop (with some effects on Government, too), which was cooperative in Germany, and adversarial for the Anglo-Saxons.
It looks to me as if at some point, both unions and employers in the US and the UK could claim with good reason that they're only defending themselves against the other party.
But first, according to some circles, when it's about social policy in the UK, Thatcher is always to blame. I just couldn't resist :-)
Second, I suppose Thatcher would have implemented a different policy given a different history in that area. The union/employer feedback loop influenced policy (and still does), and that includes Thatcher's for sure. Which makes that snarky first sentence a reversal of cause and effect.
That's the funny thing about IT, if you do your job well no-one knows you're there. So it makes you an easy target for cost cutting. Some executive signs an outsourcing deal and looks like a business genius for saving so much money. Then the wheels come off, but by that time he's already gotten his bonus/promotion/new job.
Looking at the auto industry, i think programmers just don't want that happening to them, including the "benefit" of having one more layer of clueless bosses and additional set of processes ("work rules") - the existing managers are clueless enough and existing processes definitely a drag to add more of them.
I'm not against all unions. I'm against unions how they exist in the US - auto industry, BART workers', police, teachers - police one actually works really well for its members, though it is more like an exception because of its power as a racket organization ...
Coal mines and steel mills and oil rigs are expensive to set up because they're so capital intensive. If a coal mine worker decides he'd like to start his own coal mine probably he won't have the capital or the connections to get the capital. There's no path between company-worker and company-owner or vice-versa so the two groups seem like distinct classes.
On the other hand, in programming all you need to start a company is a computer and an internet connection - and we all have those at home already. Probably you've got a few friends from university who have their own startups now. There's a clear path from being an employee to being a founder/owner, so employees and owners don't seem like distinct classes.
No, it depends on the country's cultural background. The US (and France, for instance) have a history of adversarial labour relations, where labour negotiations are a war and the goal is to defeat the other party into submission (for labour) or destruction (for companies). Germany and scandinavian countries are rooted in much more cooperative labour relations which is why e.g. they don't need legally mandated minimum wages, they have minimum wages from collective agreements.
And when a company whose culture is rooted in the adversarial model lands in a cooperative country things get bad[0]. I'd also expect an interesting time with a company built around the cooperative model in the midst of an adversarial culture and hoped VW's TN plant could be one such, but apparently that's not going to happen.
[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/05/business/workers-of-amazon...
It's not quite as romantic as it looks from the outside: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/jan/13/germany.automot...
Basically the law states that company unions are illegal and the work-council without an external affiliated union would be a company union.
From wikipedia:
>Section 8(a)(2) of the NLRA makes it illegal for an employer "to dominate or interfere with the formation or administration of any labor organization or contribute financial or other support to it."
I guess the objective is to avoid "puppet" unions, though if the "formation" part was stricken from this, I feel like the problem would be solved (VW could form the union but have it be independent).
BTW there were 2 managers for every science bee.