Post: #26

^^

Post: #27

I would agree with Debeguilded on that even if some unions do to too far - there were French unions which kidnapped and physically attacked managers:


But those guys were communist psychos who later got blacklisted for life.

But as I mentioned before - it's overblown.

And keep in mind one thing - in Poland the unions were the ones which fought the communist regime which is odd since the Communists are supposed to be the friends of the workers, while this time the workers opposed the dictatorial shitheads.

It's the same concept in the US which has no poor people - just inconvenienced rich people.

Meanwhile in countries like Switzerland or Germany you are naturally joining the union if you start working in many jobs - it's taken for granted and no one thinks about it twice. (Both countries still have surprisingly large manufacturing industries.)

I could quote countless examples from history and the current state especially in the US where companies take advantage of people - not only in service industry, but essential jobs like pilots where some 30%+ of young co-pilots have to be on food-stamps while the European ones enjoy a solid middle-class lifestyle instantly.

Post: #28

Public sector unions are a joke. I firmly believe government employees should not be able to vote. The incentives are too strong to misuse taxpayer funds for their own benefit. NY, NJ, Cali, and Ill have terrible fiscal issues as a result of this.

Post: #29

(06-29-2018 02:47 PM)debeguiled Wrote:  We have been programmed to dismiss and laugh at unions. It is part of the intellectual air we breathe.

But if you shake a scorpion and a salamander up in a bottle, they will attack each other, because neither sees the hand shaking the jar.

Thanks for highlighting some of the good that unions can do.

Do you think that most unions in current times (I'll say in the US) actually have the average worker's interests in mind when it comes to working conditions?

I think there are good unions but that especially the public sector unions tend to be bullies and force draconian protections for their workers that screw the public out of hard earned tax dollars.

As for being programmed to dismiss and laugh at unions, actually it's much the opposite. The vast majority of teachers in our educational system are members of unions and I can't think of a single person that didn't have a neutral to positive view of unions due to their education and societal influences during their upbringing.

Unions were essentially laid out as holier than thou and once I started to realize how far that is from reality (essentially some are very good...mostly ones that existed in the past) and that some (maybe many nowadays) are more on the bad side.

RvF'ers did you have the opposite experience in the US educational system/society while going through childhood? I'd be fascinated to hear otherwise, but I just don't think it's that common.

Post: #30

There is also a rich and beautiful tradition of labor/union music.

Again, hardly anyone knows about these songs:

Quote:Come all of you workers who toil night and day
By hand and by brain to earn your pay
Who for centuries long past for no more than your bread
Have bled for your countries and counted your dead

In the factories and mills, in the shipyards and mines
We've often been told to keep up with the times
For our skills are not needed, they've streamlined the job
And with sliderule and stopwatch our pride they have robbed

But when the sky darkens and the prospect is war
Who's given a gun and then pushed to the fore
And expected to die for the land of our birth
When we've never owned one handful of earth?

We're the first ones to starve the first ones to die
The first ones in line for that pie-in-the-sky
And always the last when the cream is shared out
For the worker is working when the fat cat's about

All of these things the worker has done
From tilling the fields to carrying the gun
We've been yoked to the plough since time first began
And always expected to carry the can

This one's pretty funny. Festive almost:

Quote:Oh the price of gold is rising out of sight
And the dollar is in sorry shape tonight
What the dollar used to get us now won't buy a head of lettuce
No the economic forecast isn't right
But amidst the clouds I spot a shining ray
I can even glimpse a new and better way
And I've devised a plan of action worked it down to the last fraction
And I'm going into action here today
I am changing my name to Chrysler
I am going down to Washington D.C.
I will tell some power broker
What they did for Iacocca
Will be perfectly acceptable to me
I am changing my name to Chrysler
I am headed for that great receiving line
So when they hand a million grand out
I'll be standing with my hand out
Yes sire I'll get mine
When my creditors are screaming for their dough
I'll be proud to tell them all where they can all go
They won't have to scream and holler
They'll be paid to the last dollar
Where the endless streams of money seem to flow
I'll be glad to tell them what they can do
It's a matter of a simple form or two
It's not just renumeration it's a liberal education
Ain't you kind of glad that I'm in debt to you
I am changing my name to Chrysler
I am going down to Washington D.C.
I will tell some power broker
What they did for Iacocca
Will be perfectly acceptable to me
I am changing my name to Chrysler
I am headed for that great receiving line
So when they hand a million grand out
I'll be standing with my hand out
Yes sire I'll get mine
Since the first amphibians crawled out of the slime
We've been struggling in an unrelenting climb
We were hardly up and walking before money started talking
And it's sad that failure is an awful crime
Well it's been that way for a millennium or two
But now it seems that there's a different point of view
If you're a corporate titanic and your failure is gigantic
Down to congress there's a safety net for you
I am changing my name to Chrysler
I am going down to Washington D.C.
I will tell some power broker
What they did for Iacocca
Will be perfectly acceptable to me
I am changing my name to Chrysler
I am headed for that great receiving line
So when they hand a million grand out
I'll be standing with my hand out
Yes sire I'll get mine

Post: #31

(06-29-2018 02:47 PM)debeguiled Wrote:  More divide and conquer.

We have way more in common with people running unions than we do with their corporate masters.

This is also an example of what we used to call the second foul rule in basketball, a concept where one player keeps fouling another player, the refs never call it, so the second player gets frustrated, fouls the player back, and the ref calls that foul.

I would wager there is practically nothing a union does that gets criticized that isn't in response to something fucked up that management did beforehand that was much worse.

Everyone wants to talk about how pointless and wasteful it is that only one union member is allowed to flip a light switch, or pick up a hammer in a specific situation, but the reason this things happens is that management is constantly trying to get people to do things that don't fit their job description.

I have experienced this first hand in a non union shop. I was waiting tables at a place, and after a shift waiters always have side work, like filling salt and pepper shakers and changing table cloths, basically getting his section ready for the next shift.

Managers at my restaurant, a corporate place owned by Pepsi, had the bright idea of extending side work so instead of 15 minutes at the end of the shift, it was an hour of cleaning the restaurant, the floors, washing the walls. Why? Because they have to pay janitors more than they pay waiters, so if the can get the waiters to do janitorial work, call it 'side work,' they save money.

They are always doing this cost cutting shit at the expense of employees. That being the case, can you see why unions have to come up with these hyper picky rules that that only the carpenter can nail the picture back up on the wall? It is because these become loopholes that the bosses exploit endlessly.

Even at union places I worked, they were always trying to cut corners to fuck with employees, and you felt lucky to have a union having your back. At a hotel I once worked at, the hotel had to provide a meal for employees, not off the menu, but something. So they got the bright idea to just give us leftovers from banquets, and then they didn't have to prepare anything, not even sandwiches.

I went back to get my meal and some of the cold cuts actually had mold on them. It was like the biggest fuck you you could get after working your ass off for a company. I took them food to my manager's office, showed him the food in good faith, not confrontationally, thinking he didn't know what we were getting, and he got a hard look on his face I had never seen before and said, you got a problem, go to your union.

It's like that.

We spend a fair amount of time talking about the psychopaths who run things, that tiny percentage, and you don't think that filters down and normal workers don't get shafted by corporations? You actually think the unions are the problems?

This is some second foul shit.

In the old days they didn't negotiate with strikers, they just hired thugs to come in and kill them. You won't read that in history books.

Seeing this was a public relations problem, they came up with the Mohawk Valley Strategy, which is worth Googling if you are interested. This was in the early 1930's.

The basic idea was that instead of killing unions, you destroy their reputations. This strategy was so successful that it has been adopted by businesses everywhere, to the point that much of the talking points of the Mohawk Valley situation persist to this day, and have been internalized by the public at large.

Repeated even in this thread.

We have been programmed since a young age to be hyper-critical of unions and to identify with owners.

That is the real American way, people at the bottom, identifying with the people at the top, because when their ship comes in they don't want to have to deal with a bunch of regulations.

If you have the inclination, do some research on the Mohawk Valley strategy, or The Ludlow Massacre.

We have been programmed to dismiss and laugh at unions. It is part of the intellectual air we breathe.

But if you shake a scorpion and a salamander up in a bottle, they will attack each other, because neither sees the hand shaking the jar.

Great post.

History books discuss these things, just not a grade school level in any depth. Usually it is a footnote for Industrial Revolution and Child Labor.

Unions were created because owners treated people like absolute shit. Human societies were absolutely savage.

Pre-Industrial and Industrial America (not to mention Great Britain) were absolute meat grinders. Child labor to some extent was the straw that broke the camel's back. Some things like food issues helped, but the momentum was started from issues related to labor.

When people are discussing slavery, some people wonder how something so awful could exist in the first place. That's simple. Human beings were little better than animals in terms of their general regard for human life. Life was extremely cheap. Look at how they treated free people.

All this goes back to the issue of Feudalism. We tend to study Feudalism in terms of just a political system of governance. Feudalism was a culture more so than just a mere style of governance.

"Respect your betters."

Ring a bell? Of course. The class structure you were born into was how your life worked out. Feudalism did not even fully end into the mid 1800s. Yeah, the mid 1800s. The end of WW1 was like that time you found yourself balls deep in an old ex girlfriend (feudalism), then once you nutted, you realized what a terrible mistake you made. WW2 was the time you found a new girlfriend that was no different than the ex because your mindset never changed even though you realized the mistake of the previous woman.

So in a technology booming Earth, people are still treating each other like dogs in the street, trying to eat any and all other dogs, because the culture had not caught up with the sheer speed of technology gains. The brutality just got more efficient and automated. You are talking about people that are 1, 2, or 3 generations removed from being born serfs. That's not enough time using history as a guide on how fast/much human culture changes. People are stubborn and old bad habits take a long time to die, especially those that are hundreds of years old.

General wealth is also a factor. More wealth tends not to change general greed, but if the average person has more wealth or income in general, these issues tend to lessen. Even a janitor in the USA is loads wealthier than your average person in a disorganized undeveloped country, like Congo for example.

All in all, you have to have unions if the laws of the jungle are still valid in your society in any way shape or form.

Post: #32

(06-29-2018 03:58 PM)AneroidOcean Wrote:  

(06-29-2018 02:47 PM)debeguiled Wrote:  We have been programmed to dismiss and laugh at unions. It is part of the intellectual air we breathe.

But if you shake a scorpion and a salamander up in a bottle, they will attack each other, because neither sees the hand shaking the jar.

Thanks for highlighting some of the good that unions can do.

Do you think that most unions in current times (I'll say in the US) actually have the average worker's interests in mind when it comes to working conditions?

I think there are good unions but that especially the public sector unions tend to be bullies and force draconian protections for their workers that screw the public out of hard earned tax dollars.

As for being programmed to dismiss and laugh at unions, actually it's much the opposite. The vast majority of teachers in our educational system are members of unions and I can't think of a single person that didn't have a neutral to positive view of unions due to their education and societal influences during their upbringing.

Unions were essentially laid out as holier than thou and once I started to realize how far that is from reality (essentially some are very good...mostly ones that existed in the past) and that some (maybe many nowadays) are more on the bad side.

RvF'ers did you have the opposite experience in the US educational system/society while going through childhood? I'd be fascinated to hear otherwise, but I just don't think it's that common.

It seems to me like most institutions today have been twisted from their original purposes and would be unrecognizable to their founders, and this probably includes most unions, unfortunately.

As for teachers and what they teach about unions and the history of labor, I sometimes forget that I am a lot older than most forum members, and what applied when I was going to school doesn't apply anymore.

When I was in high school, no one had even heard of "A People's History of the United States," and even later, when I was in my thirties, trying to research the history of the labor movement, in '93, this was still before the internet, and I had an entire University library to browse, and I only found a couple books about unions and their history.

I wasn't even conspiracy minded, or learned in geo-politics at the time, but it was fucking weird that it was so hard to find anything about labor that looked at things from the point of view of the workers.

Meanwhile, everyone had an opinion about unions, and it was all along the lines of how lazy, corrupt, inefficient, anti-American they were. Same type of jokes you would hear from comedians on tv.

And no one said a word about how corporations work, how they will screw their workers if they can, not even from human evil, but just the pressure of shareholders on a CEO to keep being more profitable.

It would be interesting to hear what people have been taught in schools about unions.

I can't imagine how any union could escape corruption today, not to mention identity politics, feminism, etc..

Post: #33

(06-29-2018 04:12 PM)debeguiled Wrote:  

(06-29-2018 03:58 PM)AneroidOcean Wrote:  

(06-29-2018 02:47 PM)debeguiled Wrote:  We have been programmed to dismiss and laugh at unions. It is part of the intellectual air we breathe.

But if you shake a scorpion and a salamander up in a bottle, they will attack each other, because neither sees the hand shaking the jar.

Thanks for highlighting some of the good that unions can do.

Do you think that most unions in current times (I'll say in the US) actually have the average worker's interests in mind when it comes to working conditions?

I think there are good unions but that especially the public sector unions tend to be bullies and force draconian protections for their workers that screw the public out of hard earned tax dollars.

As for being programmed to dismiss and laugh at unions, actually it's much the opposite. The vast majority of teachers in our educational system are members of unions and I can't think of a single person that didn't have a neutral to positive view of unions due to their education and societal influences during their upbringing.

Unions were essentially laid out as holier than thou and once I started to realize how far that is from reality (essentially some are very good...mostly ones that existed in the past) and that some (maybe many nowadays) are more on the bad side.

RvF'ers did you have the opposite experience in the US educational system/society while going through childhood? I'd be fascinated to hear otherwise, but I just don't think it's that common.

It seems to me like most institutions today have been twisted from their original purposes and would be unrecognizable to their founders, and this probably includes most unions, unfortunately.

As for teachers and what they teach about unions and the history of labor, I sometimes forget that I am a lot older than most forum members, and what applied when I was going to school doesn't apply anymore.

When I was in high school, no one had even heard of "A People's History of the United States," and even later, when I was in my thirties, trying to research the history of the labor movement, in '93, this was still before the internet, and I had an entire University library to browse, and I only found a couple books about unions and their history.

Meanwhile, everyone had an opinion about unions, and it was all along the lines of how lazy, corrupt, inefficient, anti-American they were. Same type of jokes you would hear from comedians on tv.

And no one said a word about how corporations work, how they will screw their workers if they can, not even from human evil, but just the pressure of shareholders on a CEO to keep being more profitable.

It would be interesting to hear what people have been taught in schools about unions.

I can't imagine how any union could escape corruption today, not to mention identity politics, feminism, etc..

I actually read Zinn's book in the 90s before I went to college on my own volition. My father owned that book. He had a personal library he started from back in the 70s when he was flirting with Afrocentrism and Civil Rights stuff. Anything from We Wuz Kangz illustration books a Hotep or BN would love to read today to stuff like Zinn's book.

That book changed my life because it was so riveting, non-PC, straight fire as you could get. For those times at least anyway. I think that book is one of the few books I read cover to cover as a kid and could not put down. Keep in mind I have ADD-i as a kid at the time, and still managed to read that book nonstop completely. That's how good that book is.

When I took history coursework in college I had to read it again for a class. It was still great. That said, we also had plenty other books to read that covered labor etc. I also took courses on British Empire and British history, so I got to learn their side of the same issue. They were worse than we were and that is saying something. I bet they have a much different experience education wise for your average UK student today.

The treatment of miners, railroad workers, and other workers in US territories, Republic of Texas, and other professions before and after the Civil War and Reconstruction are eye opening as well.

People today are aghast at school shootings, but there was a time where the HBO show Deadwood is a daily occurrence and someone was always getting shot over beefs, labor disputes, strikes, land related claims, etc. People walked over the dead bodies and kept it moving...

Post: #34

Yeah, I can't help but love that book, even though the SJWs claim it as their own.

Post: #35

(06-29-2018 02:47 PM)debeguiled Wrote:  Everyone wants to talk about how pointless and wasteful it is that only one union member is allowed to flip a light switch, or pick up a hammer in a specific situation, but the reason this things happens is that management is constantly trying to get people to do things that don't fit their job description.

I have experienced this first hand in a non union shop. I was waiting tables at a place, and after a shift waiters always have side work, like filling salt and pepper shakers and changing table cloths, basically getting his section ready for the next shift.

Managers at my restaurant, a corporate place owned by Pepsi, had the bright idea of extending side work so instead of 15 minutes at the end of the shift, it was an hour of cleaning the restaurant, the floors, washing the walls. Why? Because they have to pay janitors more than they pay waiters, so if the can get the waiters to do janitorial work, call it 'side work,' they save money.

They are always doing this cost cutting shit at the expense of employees. That being the case, can you see why unions have to come up with these hyper picky rules that that only the carpenter can nail the picture back up on the wall? It is because these become loopholes that the bosses exploit endlessly.

To be honest, you described a situation at nearly every coffee shop, fast food, deli, or slow food restaurant where staff takes 30 minutes to clean the place. The problem from a business owner's perspective is that if you hire janitors, you hire more employees. More employees not only means more wages paid out, it also means more payroll taxes and more workers compensation payments. This results in higher costs to keep the place running and less net profit to the owners. And if the owners aren't making enough profit to make running the place worthwhile, then the whole business shuts down and the employees are out of a job.

And most Pro-Union arguments always reference the 19th and early 20th century working conditions as reasons for a union, but those conditions don't exist anymore. As Traveler Kai mentioned above there has been sweeping federal and state legislation protecting workers that didn't exist in those times.

Also, pro-union advocates always reference the predatory corporate JD Rockerfeller-type owner who counts his money while his workers starve. But that's not the reality anymore either. Most corporations are run by boards and shareholders and many of the biggest ones would shit bricks if they a had a potential PR disaster from poor working conditions.

And if you think about it only 1% of all corporate business owners can afford to needlessly fuck around with employees and not have to worry about the resulting loss of productivity or inefficiency from disgruntled employees, or from protracted lawsuits. That's another point missing from pro-union advocates is that there has never been a time in history where employees (or everyone for that matter) has access to lawyers with a simple Google search. And with modern courts rules and state laws, it's never been easier to file lawsuits no matter how ridiculous the claim. And on the flip side, litigation has never more been expensive.

So that's my personal deterrent for not screwing my employees. Because even the dimmest one can find a lawyer who can sue me, which forces me to spend money and time on protracted litigation that may end with me paying a settlement, or losing at trial and being at the mercy of an ultra-liberal judge when they assess punitive damages against me. And that fear is what gets non-union employees their breaks, lunches and overtime.

Post: #36

I've always wondered if there is a comparative study of US unions versus those in other fully developed countries.

The hatred in the USA of unions come from several things, but the biggest two things are:

THEY EXTORT PEOPLE.
THEY MURDER PEOPLE.

I'm not even exagerrating.

Under the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 decision U.S. vs. Enmons, unions are exempt from a federal anti-extortion law known as the Hobbs Act.

In the late 1960s, they murdered Joseph Yablonski and members of his family for daring to challenge their corruption.

Guess what? That makes people not like you and your organization very much.

I have never heard of German or Scandinavian unions extorting or murdering people who got in their way. Even if those countries governments treat them better, that does not excuse American Unions.

Post: #37

Unions destroyed manufacturing in the UK in the 70s.

It is a double-edged sword. If it weren't for unions, these companies would pay workers next to nothing.

Post: #38

(06-29-2018 06:02 PM)Dodgy Wrote:  To be honest, you described a situation at nearly every coffee shop, fast food, deli, or slow food restaurant where staff takes 30 minutes to clean the place. The problem from a business owner's perspective is that if you hire janitors, you hire more employees. More employees not only means more wages paid out, it also means more payroll taxes and more workers compensation payments. This results in higher costs to keep the place running and less net profit to the owners. And if the owners aren't making enough profit to make running the place worthwhile, then the whole business shuts down and the employees are out of a job.

And most Pro-Union arguments always reference the 19th and early 20th century working conditions as reasons for a union, but those conditions don't exist anymore. As Traveler Kai mentioned above there has been sweeping federal and state legislation protecting workers that didn't exist in those times.

Also, pro-union advocates always reference the predatory corporate JD Rockerfeller-type owner who counts his money while his workers starve. But that's not the reality anymore either. Most corporations are run by boards and shareholders and many of the biggest ones would shit bricks if they a had a potential PR disaster from poor working conditions.

And if you think about it only 1% of all corporate business owners can afford to needlessly fuck around with employees and not have to worry about the resulting loss of productivity or inefficiency from disgruntled employees, or from protracted lawsuits. That's another point missing from pro-union advocates is that there has never been a time in history where employees (or everyone for that matter) has access to lawyers with a simple Google search. And with modern courts rules and state laws, it's never been easier to file lawsuits no matter how ridiculous the claim. And on the flip side, litigation has never more been expensive.

So that's my personal deterrent for not screwing my employees. Because even the dimmest one can find a lawyer who can sue me, which forces me to spend money and time on protracted litigation that may end with me paying a settlement, or losing at trial and being at the mercy of an ultra-liberal judge when they assess punitive damages against me. And that fear is what gets non-union employees their breaks, lunches and overtime.

I don't disagree with anything you say.

I was fleshing out what was being written by showing some of the history of the labor unions.

I am assuming you are not a multinational conglomerate, and the example I wrote isn't aimed at you and your situation.

It is a different thing for a guy who owns one restaurant to have everyone pitch in and get it done, and for a massive Pepsi owned chain to expect the same thing.

The place I worked, it turned out, was shorting everyone 45 minutes a week, and that would make no sense for a small business owner to do, but if PepsiCo did that to every worker at every restaurant, we are talking some bank.

I also said clearly that it was different today and that it is hard for institutions like unions not to be corrupt.

This thread was pretty much 'unions suck' and that is why I posted, to hint at some of the history.

Post: #39

(06-29-2018 06:13 PM)rudebwoy Wrote:  Unions destroyed manufacturing in the UK in the 70s.

It is a double-edged sword. If it weren't for unions, these companies would pay workers next to nothing.

This is the whole point.

It is a double edged sword!

Post: #40

(06-29-2018 06:13 PM)rudebwoy Wrote:  Unions destroyed manufacturing in the UK in the 70s.

It is a double-edged sword. If it weren't for unions, these companies would pay workers next to nothing.

It's not really Unions it's globalism. Companies can incorporate in the lowest tax country, manufacture in the country with the lowest unskilled labor cost and do R&D in the countries with the cheapest educated countries. It's the best thing since sliced bread for companies. Apple incorporated in Ireland has R&D in India/America and manufactures in China and Taiwan. Companies making stuff in highly unionized high salary countries can never compete.

Post: #41

(06-29-2018 06:43 PM)zigZag Wrote:  

(06-29-2018 06:13 PM)rudebwoy Wrote:  Unions destroyed manufacturing in the UK in the 70s.

It is a double-edged sword. If it weren't for unions, these companies would pay workers next to nothing.

It's not really Unions it's globalism. Companies can incorporate in the lowest tax country, manufacture in the country with the lowest unskilled labor cost and do R&D in the countries with the cheapest educated countries. It's the best thing since sliced bread for companies. Apple incorporated in Ireland has R&D in India/America and manufactures in China and Taiwan. Companies making stuff in highly unionized high salary countries can never compete.

This was long before Globalism.

The unions had too much power, they had workers doing nothing and getting paid.

I remember as child in the UK, the garbage truck would come down the street with 10 men picking up garbage. All of them getting a nice wage, no doubt.

The steel industry left the UK along time ago.

I remember years ago buying shirts in the UK, that had the royal crest and were made in England. Good luck finding that today or be prepared to pay through the roof.

Even the British car companies died out, Jaguar is owned by the Indian company Tata.

Post: #42

For those interested in labor movement history I find the West Virginia Coal Wars of the 1910s and 1920s to be very interesting, especially the Battle of Blair Mountain. The heavily armed miners went to war against management and their private army of strike breakers. Planes were used to drop bombs on the miners, and the military was called up to intervene on behalf of management and stop the miners.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_o...r_Mountain

Post: #43

(06-29-2018 06:13 PM)rudebwoy Wrote:  Unions destroyed manufacturing in the UK in the 70s.

It is a double-edged sword. If it weren't for unions, these companies would pay workers next to nothing.

That's a misconception. Manufacturing was closed because they intended it.

They tanked UK coal by simply importing cheap communist coal (thus propping up communist regimes) and by similar examples done in other industries. You have old statements made by elite planners who talk about the planned de-industrialization of the UK.

Oh of course - you could say - they should compete with communist EE! But that is nonsense as those systems were utterly alien and built on something artificial.

Even government unions or wages are not that much of a problem - it's the predatory and globalist-directed structure of government jobs. Some countries especially - Germany and Austria - had a long history of moderately well-paid organized government working class. Many joined the lower middle class, but got a safe job for life in return. It worked for almost 200 years without fail. The excesses you see now are more based on cultural marxist propaganda.

This is a good documentary about one of countless factory towns that existed in the US up until the 1970s:





See how the people live in shacks for generations. That is how most White Americans lived up until the 1950s. It wasn't about cowboys and settlers - the majority worked in factories and factory towns aside from rural America. It was no wonder that they preferred to wander out into dangerous Western territory on their own if those were the options.

As for comparing this with "restaurants going out of business" if they don't squeeze out the last drop out of staff - that is why I said that those things need to be done at least on state, but better national level. No one "squeezes out" workers in Switzerland or Norway. The waitresses help clean up the place, but they get paid doing that - it won't kill them to pay them for 30 minutes of basic cleanup - especially when everyone else has to pay for it too.

And the funny part is - it's often not the small shops, but big corporations who have 2 bio. $ net gains who do it.

I am not a socialist here - I am for all free markets and close to zero taxes with my economic model - a super-tiny government, best almost non-existent, but I understand the balance that needs to be struck in life. An economy must serve THE PEOPLE - all people. It must give the opportunity for the worker to make a decent living wage and it must give the option of a business owner to make money and get wealthy. And guess what? You don't have to guess which system works well - just fucking copy Switzerland and see how restaurant owners even make more while paying their restaurant staff 25$/hour. How? Because the plumber gets paid 50$/hour and the professor more than that. It's not a lose-lose situation, but a win for 99,99% while maybe 0,01% lose. In the US it's often win for 0,01% while 99,99% lose.

Post: #44

(06-30-2018 02:40 AM)frozen-ace Wrote:  For those interested in labor movement history I find the West Virginia Coal Wars of the 1910s and 1920s to be very interesting, especially the Battle of Blair Mountain. The heavily armed miners went to war against management and their private army of strike breakers. Planes were used to drop bombs on the miners, and the military was called up to intervene on behalf of management and stop the miners.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_o...r_Mountain

Good stuff. Very shameful event. Checking around other links, I may have to take it back that Britain was worse than us. According to some 1969 study America is the world's worst country in terms of labor violence. Well we do have guns everywhere so yeah I can see that.

Post: #45

I don't know much about unions, but I do know these things:

After I killed all the terrorists and got out of the US Navy I was going to get a job that would have required me to be in the Seafarers union. Basically they wanted me to go to some school somewhere and learn stuff I already knew. The paperwork process was such a ckusterfuck I gave up.

Second, my grandma getsba pension from the hotel workers union. She has to have a form notarized twice a year that says she isn't dead. Thenrules of this pension were the mostvscrewed up shitshow I've ever seen. She has a "pension pot" that's worth enough money for her to get the current payments for another forty years, guess what, she pushing ninety.

This is somehow connected to her medicare advantage insurance. They readily admitted the misbilled my dear old grandma when her monthlybrate went up. She just keptvwriting the check for the same amount with her sweet little withered fingers, well eventually the past due balance built up to the point that they cancelled the policy.

This has required a clusterfuck of papers, much like the seafarers union. They dont get mail, they say the shit is late, they say its damaged, etc. Its just stupid.

So I say no unions.

Aloha!

Post: #46

I always viewed unions as a poor man's lobby and an overall good thing. It's nice to think that the law will always have your back against massive, faceless corporations, but we've seen what corporations get up to in unregulated environments against lone workers.

In a sane world where the markets were never tampered with and corporations were not up to slick shit we would not need unions, but I think banding together with a tribe of guys in your same industry is a necessity these days. It's like having a tribe. In these atomized times, we tend to think we can do everything by the sweat of our brow, but just look to the past and see how long that lasts.

I don't co-sign every union, but I do understand why the unions exist.

I'm a bit biased, though. My family is mostly composed of laborers working in the various construction crafts. Almost impossible to avoid fuckery unless you sign on with a union to get your back.

Post: #47

I have worked in both the public and private sector and I'm all for unions. I have had my run-ins with various shop stewards but the overwhelming majority of union lads I worked with were sound. I was glad my union had my back a few years ago when my former employer laid me off with a minimum statutory redundancy payment. I had served 7 years with the company and was getting pittance until my union called them out and stated that I was entitled to a lot more. One month later and €25k more in my bank a/c I bid adieu and headed off into the sunset.

I have never looked back since.

Post: #48

I think we've all agreed that it's a double-edged sword.

For my own part, I have to admit to some anti-union prejudices brought about from my childhood in the UK. I grew up in a mining community and the Miner's Strike of '84-'85 caused nothing but misery for friends and family.

It was turmoil and probably as close as I want to get to what felt like a civil war. One day having sympathy for the striking miners, and the next day seeing someone you know beaten and bruised or his house and car vandalised because he broke the strike and went to work cos his family was starving. The whole thing was genuinely unsettling and caused permanent fractures in the community and families (including my own sadly). Kids used to fight other kids at school over it, and they were innocent and knew nothing about what was happening. There is still strong anti-police sentiment in mining areas and older folk have long memories and still bring up past transgressions.

I can't lay all that on unions of course, but I can't deny that I've learnt to 'associate' the word with bad things as well as good. I guess being human, I tend to remember more of the bad. The good things? Those have been very well documented and argued for on this thread and are mostly undeniable.

Post: #49

(06-30-2018 05:10 AM)Fortis Wrote:  I always viewed unions as a poor man's lobby and an overall good thing. It's nice to think that the law will always have your back against massive, faceless corporations, but we've seen what corporations get up to in unregulated environments against lone workers.

In a sane world where the markets were never tampered with and corporations were not up to slick shit we would not need unions, but I think banding together with a tribe of guys in your same industry is a necessity these days. It's like having a tribe. In these atomized times, we tend to think we can do everything by the sweat of our brow, but just look to the past and see how long that lasts.

I don't co-sign every union, but I do understand why the unions exist.

I'm a bit biased, though. My family is mostly composed of laborers working in the various construction crafts. Almost impossible to avoid fuckery unless you sign on with a union to get your back.

The only issue I have with the union is that there are government agencies who only exist to support the unions, such as the NLRB.

The union should have to stand on its own two feet in any labor dispute against the company, without Uncle Sam's backing.

Post: #50

The day corporations stop abusing their powers is the day I'll agree that the common man doesn't need unions. Corporations lobby and the common man unionizes. It's just the ebb and flow of the world.

If you really think about it, a lobby is throwing money at the government to affect the outcome of regulations. How is that any different than a union having government backing?

It's hard to argue that unions receive some sort of unfair support when you have corporations (fucking facebook) that straight up can tamper with elections through targeted ads designed to make uneducated people vote a certain way.