Unions

[Malorn]

Meh.

[Figment]

Without unions, a lot of protective legislation would not exist. So yes, as long as the legislation is there, there's less need for an active union. You therefore see a decline in the union members in the Netherlands as well. In some countries it is almost tradition to be a union member when employed.

That doesn't mean that unions are obsolete.



Regarding your statements about how the USSR formed... I think you're better of checking out this and reading it fully:
http://europeanhistory.about.com/od/...stimeline1.htm

It was a time of great turbulence in Russia and a lot of alternate paths could have been walked. Also, you should check out this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidar...sh_trade_union)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolut...s_impact_grows

Solidarity, a Polish trade union that's at the base of the fall of communism in the Warschau Pact nations. Malorn: Socialism =/= Communism.

The type of socialists labour parties fall under are Social Democrats.

Traditional social democrats advocated the creation of socialism through political reforms by operating within the existing political system of capitalism. The social democratic movement sought to elect socialists to political office to implement reforms. The modern social democratic movement has abandoned the goal of moving toward a socialist economy and instead advocates for social reforms to improve capitalism, such as a welfare state and unemployment benefits. It is best demonstrated by the economic format which has been used in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland in the past few decades.[60] This approach been called the Nordic model.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy

There's lightyears of difference with Social Democrats and the socialism as perceived by for instance South Americans. Social Democrats have embraced capitalism, but seek to improve (worker/civilian) conditions and restrict excesses.


You should really do a bit more research Malorn, because you tar everyone with the same brush. It's like those people who claim that mass murderers are always atheists. Even though it's quite easy to name genocides performed by religious people. Always pointing at everything "more left than themselves" as leading to Communism without understanding anything regarding socialism is a typical American right wing trait.

Liberalism (from the Latin liberalis)[1] is the belief in liberty and equality.[2] Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights, capitalism, and the free exercise of religion.

I'm a liberal. You are a libertarian, correct?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism

Some liberterians are anarchists. Are you an anarchist just because some libertarians are?

[Malorn]

Meh.

[Figment]

A lot of things.

[CutterJohn]

Originally Posted by Malorn

If unions were all that was holding employers back, why don't we see their membership growing to combat the evil employers? And why do we not see press coverage of the private sector and the non-union public sector employer injustices?

1. Not all corporations are evil. There are plenty with bosses that do actually care a lot about the welfare of their workers.

2. There is a HUGE risk involved in unionizing. Many/most states are at will employment states, meaning that they can fire you without cause. If you don't have overwhelming support and can't spring it on the company by surprise, you stand a very good chance of simply being fired. Its exactly like a revolt against a government.. you need a critical mass of people willing to risk everything.

3. Some people have spent a lot of money for decades painting unions in the worst possible light. Kinda like the anti socialist rhetoric.

But in the modern era I'm not seeing the necessity.

The threat of unionization undoubtedly keeps some of excesses in check, and even if you don't need a union because you have a great boss/owner/whatever, you still have no power. You depend on your bosses good will, and if he changes his mind, or gets replaced, it can all go to shit.

[Warborn]

Originally Posted by Malorn

If that were the case why are there many workers without unions getting along just fine?

The reason you in your non-union job aren't expected to work a 10 - 12 hour shift, 6 days a week, for far less than whatever you're making right now is because of unions and the standard they set for workforces in the developed world. It's unions and government regulation that gives you your vacations and your weekends and your 9 - 5. If capitalism had its way, it would work you to death for a pittance and then simply replace you when you died at 40, just like it did in the good ol' days.

Anyway, none of this shit is actually about unions or money or what's fair for workers. It's about the Republicans trying to gut one of the main sources of money and organization behind the Democratic party. The bullshit in Wisconsin and other places, where they're trying to castrate unions, is because Democrats traditionally receive a lot of money and votes from unions. No unions means an easier time winning elections for Republicans.

[Malorn]

Meh.

[Vash02]

Originally Posted by Malorn

I'm not questioning the role unions have had in shaping labor laws. There was a time when they were required. But that was a different time, not the modern era of mass media, well-established laws, and a culture for lawsuits. I'm more interested in the value they have now, which doesn't seem to be much.

How about massive paycuts/layoffs and the repealing of some workers rights laws (like the equal pay law in Wisconsin).

[Malorn]

Meh.

[Vash02]

Unions arent stupid, they want to keep the business afloat just as much as the owners do. The majority of unions have accepted this and have taken pay cuts and layoffs the past few years. But when it comes, for example, to closing down a call center/factory and moving all the jobs to India/China when the business is healthy...

Also, businesses dont dont have much incentive to pay women equal wages to men when the average pay for women is 20+% below men's. Women cant really quit their job and move to another business and just get the same, unequal, pay.

[Malorn]

Meh.

[Figment]

Malorn, you say you don't think in black and whites, yet every topic you show you do think in absolutes and almost nothing but absolutes. Still, glad you see there's actual relevancy. The need for unions differs per region though, in well-fare states the need for unions (also from a worker pov) has degraded severely over time. So much that some are struggling to get members. That's a good thing as it indicates the system is healthy.

The easier it is for unions to acquire new members, the harsher the working conditions.

China? India? Could definitely use more union influence.

EDIT: In the case of your wife, if she had been layed off in some states in the US, her pay would have dropped to 0 within a day. This has lead to disastrous situations for a lot of US citizens, since they cannot pay their bills in an event like that. Especially not since pay wasn't that great to safe up a lot of money in the first place.

Look at how many people had to take multiple jobs, leaving no time for family and hence have a very stressful existence. That doesn't create a healthy society if it is completely dependend on good times.

If a company has to take into account lay offs well ahead, they plan and think ahead and they simply keep lay-offs in mind in their budget. If there's a transfer period, the household situation is more stable as there's time to find a new job or even to create your own initiative while you still have a bit of income left, change to a lower cost living, etc. It is not healthy to go from one extreme (full pay) to the other (no pay) at all. This leads to instant need of a new money source, meaning debts are almost unavoidable.

Does it cost money? Yes. Does it cost society more if people go into debt, lose their house and can't find a new job in time? Good question, not?

On the other hand, it can be too hard to fire someone. In which case they can become nothing but a drain of resources. There should always be a healthy balance. But tipping the scales too far either way in the end can cause severe problems in a crisis.

[Noivad]

What you describe is a guild, which tended to monopolise the trade of particular craftsman in a city as a form of job guarantee by controlling the competition.

Trade, worker or labour unions were founded to protect the worker's from exploitation.

Actually It was not a Guild it was a Union, one of the oldest types in fact it was A Construction Labor Union local 767 in south Florida. I was an apprentise, and learned how to be a laborer for a few different trades like Carpentry, Plumber, and Sheet Rock installers on High Rise buildings. I paid dues, went to the union hall for work, ect. We called non union people scabs. We only worked on Union Jobs. I got paid well, a lot more then scabs who did the same types of work on non union jobs. I received training in various construction work from the bottom up. If I had stayed with it I could have gotten into one of the Main Unions.

[Malorn]

Meh.

[Figment]

Originally Posted by Noivad

Actually It was not a Guild it was a Union, one of the oldest types in fact it was A Construction Labor Union local 767 in south Florida. I was an apprentise, and learned how to be a laborer for a few different trades like Carpentry, Plumber, and Sheet Rock installers on High Rise buildings. I paid dues, went to the union hall for work, ect. We called non union people scabs. We only worked on Union Jobs. I got paid well, a lot more then scabs who did the same types of work on non union jobs. I received training in various construction work from the bottom up. If I had stayed with it I could have gotten into one of the Main Unions.

Perhaps it was called an union, but the way you described it is not quite a "normal" union. Unions are political organizations to back up workers, not organizations that train workers as apprentices. But you could be right.

Possibly that union was set up with the old guild system in mind though, especially if it was intended for carpenting, plumbing and smith works which were traditionally strong guilds. Guilds are interest groups of specific craftsmen and the attitude towards people from outside of the guild is also quite typical: only those within the local guild are accepted, others of the same trade but outside the union were typically shunned as 'illegal' rivals. In contrast to earlier forms of unions, it was obligated to join a guild in order to even practice a particular craft. The guilds were, beyond a form of union, a means to completely regulate the market.

Not sure if you're aware of the history of guilds, but in Europe these ran and dominated cities together. A lot of guilds had their own militias even up to the end of the 18th century.

Basically (and given Malorn's concerns with paranoia regarding market regulation, quite ironically), they were capitalist cartels motivated solely by self-interest. Governments in those days were very decentralised (cities ran the local area) and the ruling classes in the city and townships, meant basically the leaders of the wealthiest guilds. They dominated everything out of self-interest up to the point that new inventions were outlawed because not the entire guild could profit from it - if innovation was done outside of the guild a lot of pressure was enacted to get them into the guild or simply stop. Furthermore, people within a guild had to think alike.

Guilds existing well into the 19th century in Eastern Europe has been seen as one of the reasons that these areas were not industrialised as much as the west and therefore economically fell behind.


So one could argue that the smaller the central government and the more power to the local government and private owners, free trade is actually at risk. At least locally. Especially the western dutch shipping guilds profited immensily from the dutch international free trade doctrine, where a lot of other guilds were far more mercantile (examples of mercantile factions within Europe were The Hansa and Ligurian and Venetian trade leagues) and had trouble competing elsewhere.

Now that we got to the topic of free trade. Some funny things about free trade:

Economists that advocated free trade believed trade was the reason why certain civilizations prospered economically. Adam Smith, for example, pointed to increased trading as being the reason for the flourishing of not just Mediterranean cultures such as Egypt, Greece, and Rome, but also of Bengal (East India) and China. The great prosperity of the Netherlands after throwing off Spanish Imperial rule and pursuing a policy of free trade[9] made the free trade/mercantilist dispute the most important question in economics for centuries. Free trade policies have battled with mercantilist, protectionist, isolationist, communist, populist, and other policies over the centuries.

Trade in colonial America was regulated by the British mercantile system through the Acts of Trade and Navigation. Until the 1760s, few colonists openly advocated for free trade, in part because regulations were not strictly enforced—New England was famous for smuggling—but also because colonial merchants did not want to compete with foreign goods and shipping. According to historian Oliver Dickerson, a desire for free trade was not one of the causes of the American Revolution. "The idea that the basic mercantile practices of the eighteenth century were wrong," wrote Dickerson, "was not a part of the thinking of the Revolutionary leaders".[16] Free trade came to what would become the United States as a result of American Revolutionary War, when the British Parliament issued the Prohibitory Act, blockading colonial ports. The Continental Congress responded by effectively declaring economic independence, opening American ports to foreign trade on April 6, 1776. According to historian John W. Tyler, "Free trade had been forced on the Americans, like it or not."[17]

It gets funnier here:

The fledgling Republican Party led by Abraham Lincoln, who called himself a "Henry Clay tariff Whig", strongly opposed free trade and implemented a 44-percent tariff during the Civil War—in part to pay for railroad subsidies and for the war effort, and to protect favored industries.[18] William McKinley (later to become President of the United States) stated the stance of the Republican Party (which won every election for President from 1868 until 1912, except the two non-consecutive terms of Grover Cleveland) as thus:

Under free trade the trader is the master and the producer the slave. Protection is but the law of nature, the law of self-preservation, of self-development, of securing the highest and best destiny of the race of man. [It is said] that protection is immoral…. Why, if protection builds up and elevates 63,000,000 [the U.S. population] of people, the influence of those 63,000,000 of people elevates the rest of the world. We cannot take a step in the pathway of progress without benefitting mankind everywhere. Well, they say, ‘Buy where you can buy the cheapest'…. Of course, that applies to labor as to everything else. Let me give you a maxim that is a thousand times better than that, and it is the protection maxim: ‘Buy where you can pay the easiest.' And that spot of earth is where labor wins its highest rewards.[19]

On the other side:

The growing Free Trade Movement sought an end to the tariffs and corruption in state and federal governments by every means available to them, leading to several outcomes. The first and most important was the rise of the Democratic Party with Grover Cleveland at its helm. The next most important were the rise of the "Mugwumps" within the Republican party. For many Jeffersonian radicals, neither went far enough or sufficiently effective in their efforts and looked for alternatives. The first major movement of the radical Jeffersonians evolved from the insights of a young journalist and firebrand, Henry George.