Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/08/02/power-in-the-union.html
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I now really regret voting no for Teamsters representation for all the IT folk at my former place of work. It just seemed like a really odd choice for them as opposed to the engineering union also wanting to represent which I would have readily voted yes for. 
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Stay strong Brothers & Sisters, we are rooting for ya!
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That would be the idea, yes. May the workers succeed, and may this be a wedge to get more factory work unionized in the south.
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Unions are useful, but just like any organization, they get to the point where they are more of a hindrance than anything else. What Nissan is doing doesn’t surprise me in the least anyhow. Neither does the TGOP governor telling people that a living wage and good working conditions are BAD!!!
Fuck humanity…
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It’s like they’re saying that for capitalism to exist a certain percentage of the population has to live in poverty.
This is the same argument used to surpress the minimum wage.
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Capitalist businesses are useful, but just like any organization, they get to the point where they are more of a hindrance than anything else.
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And in support of slavery.
edited to add…I’m actually a little surprised by this. Japanese and German automakers are usually accustomed to reasonably good relationships with employee unions and so aren’t nearly as anti-union as Republican politicians. Witness the way the BMW seemed content to have it’s employees in Spartanburg unionize until the Governor threw a conniption fit and stopped it.
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Just a mild reminder that, even if you or your family’s main income earner(s) aren’t in a union, 90% of the benefits of employment were earned literally by the blood and sweat of unions.We get to celebrate that achievement in the USA just over a month.
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Pretty much.
Were there bad union chapters? Absolutely, I had a poor view of all unions when I was younger because of what I knew about a handful of unions.
Was it the union’s fault? Not particularly, what is mostly widely accepted as the worst union chapter in the UAW was selected to go to Japan in an experiment to see if the US auto workers could improve their quality using the Toyota system. When they returned the factory became one of the best factories in the United States with the same chapter and same people. Many of the faults laid on unions are caused by the poor decisions and management of the parent company. Auto executives elected to end the quality training program because of their pride alone, and the Japanese auto market overtook the US one. Those executives were never blamed, but the unions sure were.
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Exactly the case in the UK too. The joke is that during WW2 British operational research developed the ideas that became ISO 9000. After the war the Japanese read the books and believed we were actually doing it.
Managements were terrible. They tended to be under-educated private school products who had to emphasise their superiority to the workers and created the us-and-them culture. I worked for a time for a company that had one profitable plant out of 6, coincidentally run by someone who treated unions positively. When he was moved to another country, the profitability went with him. Just a week ago I learned that he was eventually awarded the MBE for services to manufacturing. But when he was working, he was regarded as “not really one of us” by the other managers.
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IT seems like it would be a hard field to unionize. Seems like that the Service Workers Union would be a good fit - or the CWA. Teamsters, I’m not so sure.
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I’d say that they are just as capitalist as any American business and would like to not have to deal with collective bargaining. It’s just that they know they can’t get away with it at home. That’s part of the reason why they come here, to the American south, because they can cut on labor costs due to many states being right to work and historically hostile to unions.
[ETA] Also, most likely the people in charge locally are probably Americans anyway.
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Yeah. Lots of organisations have that problem. Employers’ federations. Industry representative bodies. The US military. The US government. And so on, and on, and on and on. /s
Seriously, that was a very generalised sweeping statement that screamed for some further explanation of your thinking.
What you just wrote was, in effect “Unions are useful but they get to the point where they are not.”
Given the rest of your comment, I suspect we agree on this issue both in general and in particular (the Nissan story) but your opening statement did rather stick out like a sore thumb, to me, I’m afraid.
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That’s been the plan since Reagan. It’s worked remarkably well for a very small percent of the population (and finance assholes). They are heartless, ruthless sociopaths. There really is no other description for these people. And they won’t stop until they perceive a true and obvious threat to themselves. It took a global depression, bank holidays, and unfortunately, the existence of an actual communist nightmare state to get it through their heads last time. I wonder what the hell we all have to go through now?
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TV ads? T-shirts? This is the dirtiest anti-union campaign since forever? Union organizers in many countries are tortured and murdered. It could get much worse here; the right people are just awaiting their orders.
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It’s actually pretty hard to find bad actors in union membership, the same thing cannot be said about board rooms.
But which side buys the ads from the people with the presses? I wager if unions had a hand in the advertising buys, coverage by the free press (that has to get paid for somehow) would be less one-sided overall.
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thank you, that.
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And will interpret the unions to the folks back in Japan.
But sometimes you do wonder at the intelligence of workers. Nissan in Sunderland, UK, warned the workforce that if Britain left the EU, jobs would be at risk (the MD said “Including mine.”). A local pub landlord recounting how on referendum day workers were going in and telling everyone they voted Leave, and they were all very excited. The next day the place was half empty with some of the people crying into their beer because they had voted themselves out of a job.
There are 5 guaranteed things in the Universe, the Laws of Thermodynamics and human stupidity, and the Laws of Thermodynamics are probably the least reliable of the five.
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