Let’s all hope that the next hissyfit ragequit from another entitled, unskilled, inherited wealth man child will come from the residence in the White House. Fingers crossed!
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News flash: you already had an us-vs-them dynamic. You were just upset that “us” got a stronger voice.
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That’s part of how anarchist Barcelona got started in the 30s. Basically most of the bosses decided to go Galt and the workers just took over.
I bet Ayn Rand never mentioned that.
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This was a lifestyle business for Ricketts. He didn’t need the money. With lifestyle businesses, it’s often about whether you enjoy your job, and feel good getting out of bed each morning to do it. Given his animosity towards unions, it’s not surprising that he would decide that dealing with the union would turn this into a job he didn’t enjoy.
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Fair enough about the free-rider effect, but what I’m describing is different. The shops weren’t only closed in the sense that you had to join the union to be employed, but the unions themselves were often closed to outsiders with long seniority-based waiting lists (or no lists at all, but a simple, but corrupt “sign-up fee” to whoever had the power. Yay the free market!). This excluded otherwise eligible people from becoming employees in favour of those who were already inside. Closed books and seniority-based retrenchment/re-employment arguably had the upside of more stable employment for the incumbents, but made merit-based recruitment and retention extremely difficult. The businesses themselves may have been less stable as a result.
When I started work, you could indeed force employees to be members. The union had legal rights to certain industries and work-types. Both practically, and legally you had to be a member. That is not freedom of association. The legislation that outlawed fully closed shops only became a thing during my career. Even once the legislation was passed, in many industries to be non-unionized in a union environment was/is untenable due to severe harassment of the worker and their family at work, and in the community. This true to this day.
I get ya. Seniority issues and line jumping is also a (entirely legitimate) complaint many people have about unions across the board.
My general argument is that although unions can harbor corruption, corporations do as well, also making them unstable in and of themselves. And their corruption are often state backed and sanctioned. And it’s not like employers only virtuously hired on merit, especially when it came to race and gender (but again, unions at times also participated in this exclusion on race/gender - thought sometimes they acted as a positive force for change along those lines).
Institituions, no matter their nature, when they are connnected to money, are going to harbor corruption. There is no such thing as a corruption-free society in a capitalist system. As long as “competition” is the ruling ideology, people are going to work to stack the deck in favor of themselves and theirs through many different means. that doesn’t mean that unions didn’t have generally positive effects that we should just ignore because of this. the alternative is being entirely subject to corporate corruption, which is literally poisoning people, our planet, and our societies. We have to figure out a bulwark and the only way to do that is together.
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We agree on much, here. I agree that effective unions can (and often should) level the playing field in terms of the relationship between employers and employees. I’ve been fortunate enough to always have been treated more-than-fairly by my employers. Would I have liked a stronger negotiating platform in some cases? Sure.
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Do you think there is a way to get a stronger negotiating position vis-a-vis your employer, sans union? I’m not being snarky here, either. I’m genuinely interested in alternatives into the future. It seems to me that collectivity, of what ever variety, is a necessity. Whether or not that’s in the form of traditional labor unions we’ve had since the 19th century is up for debate, I think. As you note, they aren’t free from serious problems, so is there an alternative we can structure for the future that serves the same function in this economy, do you think?
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It’s an interesting question. Being informed of the options and consequences helps. But what helps most is having an acceptable walk-away position (or a least to convince your employer that you do) . If you don’t NEED the job you can expect a fair deal. If you desperately need the job, you are negotiating from a position of very low power. Minimum wage levels and other labour laws are a backstop, but don’t go far enough for many.
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In my experience it’s always management that 
all over the esprit de corps. The esprit de flows downhill.
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Sure, but individual negotiation only gets people so far, I think. It’s more equitable in dealing with smaller companies, but especially with large corporations, they have a lot of leverage that average individual isn’t able to counter, I think.
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Pop-Up unions could be one option.
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Interesting! I had not heard of this phenomenon!
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It’s more than that. If that were the case, he could have sold the business to someone else, or to the employees. But he didn’t do that. He just kicked everyone out and closed the doors.
That shows a level of vindictiveness that belies his why-can’t-we-all-just-get-along bullshit excuses.
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I’m still optimistic this will turn out for the best, as it often does to those who (attempt to) SHUT DOWN THE INTERNET!
The problem with trying to shut down the internet is that a lot of the telco workers that actually do the grunt work are unionized.
I worked for a multi-national ISP a number of years ago- was never part of any union, never asked to join it, but I’ll cop to enjoying the union-negotiated benefits package that the company had.
I expect that one of the reasons why unions are not more prevalent in the IT industry is because we are paid and treated decently. (for the most part, anyway)
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Yeah, as you note but there are examples of real exploitation, even among well paid IT folks (working extended hours, etc, with no overtime compensation, for example, or always being tethered to work or rampant violantions of an individuals off-time). I think we shouldn’t just imagine unions as working for compensation packages, but also for fairer and safe work environments and a more unified voice to the employer. We also don’t know what the future will hold as more of the economy becomes digitized or automated in general.
I’d also guess that enough tech workers imagine themselves as self-made people, who have no need to work with others on common issues. Libertarianism tends to be pretty strong in the field, I think (of various varieties of course, but still).
the real vulnerability will happen when the field itself becomes flooded with more workers than the industry can employ. That could very well drive wages down as there is increased competition for jobs, and those compensation packages start to become less attractive, too.
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Well in the United States you can thank the business and the government that works for them for the existence of corrupt, politically middling labor unions. Those were the only unions left standing after the communist and anarchist unions were violently suppressed at the beginning of the last century.
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Good point. I wonder what it would have been worth.
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