BF2S Forums Modern unions

I'm not sure how you can force people to pay for nothing in return.

'Freeloaders' are a fact of life. Unions need to ensure there is a net benefit to joining.

Because it's for the benefit of the whole industry. Better working conditions shouldn't be hoarded just because they are part of a club, unions should have everyone's interests in mind.

Never said it was their responsibility, but if they are pushing for better working conditions, it makes sense that the system should benefit as a whole.

So the same people who put in the time and effort, probably better employees, but aren't part of a union, don't deserve better working conditions. Sounds like the industrial age.

Macbeth wrote:

If they aren't contributing to the union's effort then fuck them. That is just how these things have operated from the start. It is the only way to get people to actually get on board and put in the sacrifice in order to get the results. Some idea of grand worker solidarity sounds nice but it just doesn't work when it comes to these sorts of things.

Sounds like the exact argument that social darwinist conservatives would make.

RichardBlais wrote:

Macbeth wrote:

If they aren't contributing to the union's effort then fuck them. That is just how these things have operated from the start. It is the only way to get people to actually get on board and put in the sacrifice in order to get the results. Some idea of grand worker solidarity sounds nice but it just doesn't work when it comes to these sorts of things.

Sounds like the exact argument that social darwinist conservatives would make.

So? Both sides, the capitalist, and the unions, are stuck in a struggle for their very existence. There are no good guys and bad guys here. Just two groups trying to get more out of the other.

Last edited by Macbeth (2013-01-14 18:49:42)

It is just the reality of the situation. You don't contribute to the cause, you get the benefits of the cause. This isn't ethics. It is mechanics.

And you bitch about DST sucking. hmmmm

Macbeth wrote:

It is just the reality of the situation. You don't contribute to the cause, you get the benefits of the cause. This isn't ethics. It is mechanics.

Arguments such as these are the foundation of right wing anti-welfare rhetoric. Judging from your post history, you come off as being in favor of wealth redistribution, so how do you reconcile that position with statements like the above?

As for the unions themselves, they possess plenty of freerider members even without right to work laws in place. They represent the worst amongst them just as strongly as the very best, even though the worst largely provide nothing more than a warm body capable of holding a sign in a protest line when the time comes. If unions honestly cared about their 'cause' they would be more willing to kick out the loafers in order to improve the product that the employer offers in the marketplace. This would mean higher profits for the employer and would make collective bargaining more fruitful in general.

In short, right to work laws compound issues that unions already implicitly carry around with them, the loss of revenue from dues is just more obvious. If unions were to raise their standards for membership and continued employment, we would not have had the rush to outsource that we've experienced. Why keep a job here when you can export the job, pay three people instead of one for the same job, and get workmanship that is equivalent?



I apologize for the long, rather unfocused post, but apparently I'm limited to one message per thirty minutes.

Narupug wrote:

Are we suggesting that the Unions should look out for more than just their own interests?  Why isn't anyone complaining about how the corporations employing these workers will sacrifice just about anything for an extra buck?

The relationship should not be adversarial. It doesn't have to be. It is in the unions' best interest to maximize profit and marketshare for the parent company because it strengthens their hand in negotiations. If they can sit there and say we've done X, Y and Z to improve the company's ability to compete and we want an increased share of the pie, it would be difficult to argue with them. Because of the adversarial relationship that most companies seem to have with their union labor reps, and the unions' insistence on protecting every last worker, you end up in a situation where management does everything they can to destroy the union. Wouldn't you? In the current work environment I would never attempt to start a company in a state that didn't have Right to Work laws on the books. The inefficiency of being forced to carry deadweight workers would grate on me tremendously.

RichardBlais wrote:

Narupug wrote:

Are we suggesting that the Unions should look out for more than just their own interests?  Why isn't anyone complaining about how the corporations employing these workers will sacrifice just about anything for an extra buck?

The relationship should not be adversarial. It doesn't have to be. It is in the unions' best interest to maximize profit and marketshare for the parent company because it strengthens their hand in negotiations. If they can sit there and say we've done X, Y and Z to improve the company's ability to compete and we want an increased share of the pie, it would be difficult to argue with them. Because of the adversarial relationship that most companies seem to have with their union labor reps, and the unions' insistence on protecting every last worker, you end up in a situation where management does everything they can to destroy the union. Wouldn't you? In the current work environment I would never attempt to start a company in a state that didn't have Right to Work laws on the books. The inefficiency of being forced to carry deadweight workers would grate on me tremendously.

Sure, in an ideal world, the Unions and the companies would work together for the improvement of the product and the betterment of society.  Sadly, this is not what happens because big business has earned a reputation for trying to cut costs any way possible.  They want to pay as little as possible for all the factors of production to limit their production costs, and one of the easiest factors of production to reduce the cost of is labor. The purpose of the union is to concentrate the the power of the workers so that it is an better match for the power of the business employing them.  A large employer has a large share of the demand for a certain type of labor and a single person has a very very small share of the supply.  This discrepancy makes it easy for the employer to push the worker around and force them to accept things they wouldn't usually accept.     

You can't just tell the coal companies that you're gonna pay them 5 cents less a pound because you're cutting costs because they can just sell the coal to someone else (assuming that you aren't a large market share, but let's just keep things simple for the sake of argument) if you won't pay their price.  They probably still want your business in the long run (because they're probably not a perfectly competitive market), so they might be willing to negotiate some sort of price decrease in exchange for your business, but you aren't going to be able to push them around because you need coal and they want your business. 

Now compare that to cutting costs with non-unionized workers, you basically just start paying them less money and their choice is either accept the lower wages or stop working in protest and try and find a job somewhere else.  This is all well and good if there are plenty of jobs in town that are willing to pay you higher wages, but if the company you were working for is either the only employer or a very large employer of people with your skill set in town, you're out of luck and it's basically a choice of accepting the lower wages or no wages.  The employer doesn't care if you quit because they can either force the rest of the workers to work harder to make up for your slack, hire someone to replace you, or just deal with the most likely small loss in production from you quitting.  If an employer has to bargain with unionized workers, that's where the power comes in.  Then if they get too aggressive trying to cut wages, then they're at risk of losing all their labor force, which is just like bargaining for any other factor of production. 

My apologies if that's a little convoluted. I got a little carried away.

I'd like to think that were the case (you would pay because you see the value, not because you're forced), but I've never actually seen evidence of that working except for on a very small scale. In fact history tells me it's not very realistic at all.