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On March 09 2011 03:31 xjoehammerx wrote:
Do you think that large businesses care about their employees enough so that unions aren't necessary? Do you really think that without unions typical human greed won't take over and lead to the freezing of worker wages despite increase in company profits (to an even greater extent than is happening already)?
Exactly. It's like a necessary evil. They contribute very much to the problem, but flat outlawing unions would just lead to corporations fleecing workers left and right. You can't simply create legislatures to replace the positive things that unions do
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In a sense, I find it necessary that a balance of power be struck between corporations and their labour, which doesn't really occur if labour is unorganized. On the other hand, the higher wages demanded by unionized industries increase inflation in the economy at large and create a wage imbalance between them and similar, non-unionized industries. And of course, there is a tendency for unions to restrict job availability to some extent. For these reasons, I won't call unions an inherently good or bad thing.
What I would consider a bad thing, however, is the state's imposition in restricting any group's collective bargaining rights with a corporation. I don't believe that the government should aid or restrict the dealings of unions seeing as they are only organizations which enter into private contracts with employers and their members.
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On March 09 2011 03:48 Sm3agol wrote:
As a member of a union, unions are crap. They lower your wages down the the lowest common denominator, and keep worthless pos people in good jobs because companies are too afraid to fire them.
This was my experience as well. Unions tend to have no beneficial effect. Rather, they stagnate economic processes.
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YES , no unions mean capitalists (wich is people that DONT WORK and win money solely and the work of others) WIN
(well,with unions the win anyways..but its a step towards helping workers..)
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The problem with unions is that by the time they become powerful enough to defend the rights of the union members, they become a corporation in and of themselves, complete with the corrupt executives (union leaders) and the big time politicking.
I personally think the union system as it is today is a load of crap. Could it be made better? Possibly. Probably. Will it be made better? Doubt it. Too much political clout.
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5003 Posts
On March 09 2011 04:02 Hawk wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2011 03:31 xjoehammerx wrote:
Do you think that large businesses care about their employees enough so that unions aren't necessary? Do you really think that without unions typical human greed won't take over and lead to the freezing of worker wages despite increase in company profits (to an even greater extent than is happening already)? Exactly. It's like a necessary evil. They contribute very much to the problem, but flat outlawing unions would just lead to corporations fleecing workers left and right. You can't simply create legislatures to replace the positive things that unions do
If someone else is willing to do your job for cheaper and better, why shouldn't the firm hire that guy instead of keeping around someone who has proven to be ineffective?
Unions give bargaining power to these replaceable people. Why should large businesses care about you if you are so easily replaceable? IMO, the only bargaining power you should have is from your own merits, not by this artificial union that effectively operates like a mob.
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Depends on what your goal is. If you think the goal of a nation is to maximize profit and maximize economic growth then sure, unions are in the way. If you think the goal of a nation is to serve its populace, to make sure people are doing well, then you need unions.
Corporations are huge powerful institutions. An individual can't hope to make a deal with an entity that powerful on fair terms. Unions are needed to make sure there is a balance of power withing corporations between people and capital.
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Your weekend, worker safety regulations, vacation time, any pay decent pay all has to be taken from Corporations by force. Don't think we got any of that shit for free because they think we deserve it.
The US has a very violent labor history, especially at the turn of the 19th century. Don't think ANY of the luxuries were enjoy today weren't hard earned, and would remain indefinitely without some sort of leverage. To somehow outlaw unions would be ridiculous. I can't believe its even discussed by the people who need it most.
As for your outsourcing and the collapse of our economy, don't blame our high cost of production because of wages and safety standards... its our inadequate government that is unwilling to tariff the influx of slave labor imports from china and other countries. Don't for a second think that our country somehow depends less on Slave Labor now than it did in the 1700's ... the slaves are just in other countries. We need to stop buying that shit, outlaw it, or tariff it into the ground so the motivation to produce here increased.
Also, don't be fooled into thinking that we benefit at all from the slave labor, we get slightly cheaper goods, with 80% of the profit going to one or 2 people in a company.
I really find it hard to believe this post is even debatable, and that the OP was so biased with the thread title. Ugh.
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5003 Posts
its our inadequate government that is unwilling to tariff the influx of slave labor imports from china and other countries.
Why does this mean our government is inadequate?
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As for the "unions are corrupt" bit. Yes they are. So is anything that humans devise that is bureaucratic. It's human nature to use your power to your advantage. People do it at my job, at the local city government level, at the PTA, on sports teams... in BroodWar... its just human nature.
This does not mean that we should dismantle the workers only institutional leverage vs the Monarchical structures that are corporations.
The US is supposed to be based on democracy? Its not. Your job is a top down structure, your education is a top down structure, banking is top down, the media is top down- lets even pretend the politics were 100% legit. Still, that would leave 90% of your daily life at the whim of undemocratic institutions.
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On March 09 2011 04:12 Milkis wrote:Show nested quote +its our inadequate government that is unwilling to tariff the influx of slave labor imports from china and other countries. Why does this mean our government is inadequate?
Because its being run by the Companies its supposed to govern/regulate, and not the other way around.
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On March 09 2011 04:10 cursor wrote:
Your weekend, worker safety regulations, vacation time, any pay decent pay all has to be taken from Corporations by force. Don't think we got any of that shit for free because they think we deserve it.
The US has a very violent labor history, especially at the turn of the 19th century. Don't think ANY of the luxuries were enjoy today weren't hard earned, and would remain indefinitely without some sort of leverage. To somehow outlaw unions would be ridiculous. I can't believe its even discussed by the people who need it most.
As for your outsourcing and the collapse of our economy, don't blame our high cost of production because of wages and safety standards... its our inadequate government that is unwilling to tariff the influx of slave labor imports from china and other countries. Don't for a second think that our country somehow depends less on Slave Labor now than it did in the 1700's ... the slaves are just in other countries. We need to stop buying that shit, outlaw it, or tariff it into the ground so the motivation to produce here increased.
Also, don't be fooled into thinking that we benefit at all from the slave labor, we get slightly cheaper goods, with 80% of the profit going to one or 2 people in a company.
I really find it hard to believe this post is even debatable, and that the OP was so biased with the thread title. Ugh.
i agree with paragraphs 1 and 2 , but i dont think taxes on imports are the REAL answer..they are a narrow sigthed short term answer. maybe it would be a good thing to implement temporarily , but if you do that your market is now loosing lots of money just becouse you r putting your own country man in front of those of other countries.. instead you could educate your people to develop new ways of production , not only machines and stuff, but also managing,doctors,etc.
taxing would also cripple the other country`s economy wich in the long run wont be good for you.. unless you want them to lower prices and end up broke.. wich would be kind of selfish..lots of people would die in china...
edit: not only education , also public investments, industrialization,etc
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Human greed is just as present in management and ownership as it is in working for a wage. The fundamental fallacy behind "unions are needed to curve evil businesspeople's greediness" is that it assumes that a larger group of self-interested people will be less greedy than a smaller group. Modern history has not provided any of the missing backing for that viewpoint.
The key economic issue here is that unions used to be all about controlling the supply of labour to corporations. If corporations weren't providing a fair value for employees, they could "make themselves scarce" by refusing to compete with eachother for jobs, thus increasing their salaries. This is fine, at least in my opinion. The problem, now, is that Unions have legal and contractual rights in most developed countries. This gives them the power to deny jobs to people who would accept them for less pay, who are often the people who need them the most. It's no longer a case of Unions working against the tyranny of business for the sake of the working man, it's a case of inside-groups working for their own self-interest at the expense of the outside-group. (Economically, higher wages plus termination restrictions force the net up, at the expense of higher total employment.)
Without unions, you get more short-term employment, better international competition, less oursourcing leading to long-term employment, and wages distributed among the workforce, albeit at a lower level. With unions, short-term unemployment increases, jobs are outsourced over time for countries with looser labour laws, companies are less profitable so international investors withdraw capital from the country, and income is concentrated on a smaller group of the workforce who have no defining characteristics other than seniority in an organization.
This is basically a key example of why supply-limiting wealth distribution is a bad idea. Cut union power, increase tax on profits and give that to the population in forms of infrastructure. For clarification on why this is better, the key is the marginal utility of a worker. Taxes will not bring the "worth" of hiring an extra worker below zero if it's not negative already. Upward pressure on wages will bring the worth of hiring an extra worker below zero. People are accusing businesspeople of being greedy, but any businessperson will hire a worker who costs less than the product he creates, in theory even if the difference is a dollar or two. The real, sickening greed is people who would both lower the money the government gets in taxes and put someone else out a job just for a wage increase that economics doesn't call for.
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anyone else read "Are Onions necessary..."
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If you want to compete with people, internationally, for jobs, who work 7 days a week 12 hours a day with no safety regulations... please be my guest.
The only good jobs left in this country are union jobs. The unions are not the problem with our system, or why it is collapsing. The problem is that corporations have too much power, run the government, run the regulating institutions and are 90% of the time running them with the same people. Dismantle the only counter balance to corporate power, as corrupt as it is, and see what happens. You think minimum wage is low? lol. Hope you like working weekends.
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On March 09 2011 04:07 Mortality wrote:
The problem with unions is that by the time they become powerful enough to defend the rights of the union members, they become a corporation in and of themselves, complete with the corrupt executives (union leaders) and the big time politicking.
From what I've understood, unions in the US are a bit more extreme than what I've grown up with. But when it comes to negotiating saleries, that statement is quite true. Usually the process goes: a big union with lots of workers (say miners) manage to negotiate a raise since the mining buisness is doing great at the moment. Then all the smaller unions will argue that their followers should also get a raise, just because the miners got one... And it doesn't work the other way around... I've never heard of anyone getting a paycut when the company is doing worse than usual, people just get fired, or offered reduced working hours.
What unions do great tho, is negotiating health and safety procedures and equipment.
On March 09 2011 04:07 Mortality wrote:
I personally think the union system as it is today is a load of crap. Could it be made better? Possibly. Probably. Will it be made better? Doubt it. Too much political clout.
Besides for the saleries thing... I think unions overall here is doing quite fine, tho I have come across some bad apples, the ones that basicly work with the companies, and against the workers that are paying their wages to help them...
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On March 09 2011 04:08 Milkis wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2011 04:02 Hawk wrote:On March 09 2011 03:31 xjoehammerx wrote:
Do you think that large businesses care about their employees enough so that unions aren't necessary? Do you really think that without unions typical human greed won't take over and lead to the freezing of worker wages despite increase in company profits (to an even greater extent than is happening already)? Exactly. It's like a necessary evil. They contribute very much to the problem, but flat outlawing unions would just lead to corporations fleecing workers left and right. You can't simply create legislatures to replace the positive things that unions do If someone else is willing to do your job for cheaper and better, why shouldn't the firm hire that guy instead of keeping around someone who has proven to be ineffective? Unions give bargaining power to these replaceable people. Why should large businesses care about you if you are so easily replaceable? IMO, the only bargaining power you should have is from your own merits, not by this artificial union that effectively operates like a mob.
Yeah, I know. This is what the other train of thought in my head.
It's not a simple debate!
Getting fair wages, the original goal of unions, is one thing. But having some barely literate person screwing bolts onto a shitty made GM car for $40/hr is different. I don't even know how you remedy that
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Unions are terrible devices which should only be used in extreme situations with workers that have little to no ability to understand there own basic needs. Though, on a major front, unions inhibit business (public or private) by advocating for a baseline of business and not rewarding excellence. Their worst crime though is the baseline of business is not an average of what a person can do, but usually falls to the lowest level of quality they can attend. Perhaps in the 19th century these organizations are needed, though currently many state and the federal government have government entities which act as watch dogs and regulators of minimum wage and other labor practices.
In a previous post, the question was raised if big business cares about their employees. The truthful answer to this question is, only those that are currently performing well for them. To me, this is the way it should be, a situation the forces people to look to shine and be recognized, to get promoted or do a job they want to do. With out the ability to rise based on merit, people will usually fall to the basic level needed to survive the next budget cut.
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The triangle cooperation, competition, and in last resorts, conflicts, between the government, labour unions and employers (companies) organizations form the basis of the wealth of the nordic countries.
So I would say yes, unions are absolutely necessary.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model
I think you americans are completely blind to the detrimental effect on the economic output of a nation that comes from a lacking security for the worker force.
And I would like to say that i am currently not a member of any union because i am an IT professional and as such are at the nice end of the salary spectrum, and i vote at the right-wing. This doesn't prevent me from seeing the bigger picture.
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Unions are the biggest waste of anything, ever. These are the people who whine, complain, and eventually protest/riot all because they are stuck in an hourly job and are only getting paid slightly more than a burger-flipper. I was completely outraged that the average hourly rate for a union employee at those car plants in detroit was something like 75 or 80 dollars/hour when Obama bailed them out!!! These people have no skill that would ever amount to that much money. I'm sure that figure included stuff like insurance and benefits, but still....It's no wonder foreign cars are becoming more popular, they pay a line worker much closer to what that skill is actually worth and we in turn pay less money for the same quality. I'm all for giving americans jobs over foreign workers, but not at the expense of charity, and that's all that unions are ever after. They just claim that it's in the name of "equality".....
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EPT
