On the subject of automation: industrialists and singulatarians (including some BBS denizens) always claim that automation doesn’t put people out of work, instead it frees human beings from repetitive, dead end jobs so that they can do more meaningful, creative work. :eyeroll:
On the subject of drunken employees: with the possible exception of cop unions, I do not believe there has ever been a union that has successfully negotiated a right to being intoxicated during working hours. Any shop (such as the local Chrysler plant when I was a kid) that permits this behavior is not suffering from any problem inflicted by unionization, it’s suffering from profoundly incompetent management, and will eventually go out of business due to that incompetence (although Lee Iaccoca and several taxpayer-funded bailouts kept the local Chrysler plant going for a long time, that factory no longer exists - because it built crap products).
Bringing these two points together: Unions don’t act to keep drunks on the production line - that’s a counterfactual myth. Hiring and firing responsibility rests entirely on management, who have the ability to fire anyone who is intoxicated at work in every state in the USA - not just in “right to work” states. Unions do try to force management to live up to their claims that automation won’t cost jobs, by negotiating to retain headcounts; but that has nothing to do with retaining bad workers.
I like @fnordius’s suggestion of using Germany as an example of successful unionization, at least when dealing with white collar Yankee types. Even Americans who disdain all “furriners” usually have a respect for German engineering and product quality - it’s rare to find someone who believes an American-made car is built better than a German car of the same price range.
In my experience you usually won’t have to “sell” unions to blue-collar Southerners, instead you have to sell them on allowing people of all colors, creeds and ethnicities into their unions.
