Unions the good and the bad.. In general I'm all for unions..They create higher wages and good benifits.... But there are some bad points.. What about the guy who sits across from me who we can't fire? he's been here longer so he makes more but does way less?
I think its fair to say sometimes unions go to far?

Good managers, and there are many, let people alone, have some experience in being managed themselves and afford people a modicum of respect. They try to develop a system of mutual regard that, when succesful, immediately dissolves this artificial barrier.

Good unionists also have these qualities. Just because I am a Wayne Gretsky on the job does not mean that I get to judge someone else. Human beings each contribute to the organization they are involved with in an organic and individually efficient manner based on their native abilities and personalities. Unionization allows for this organic organization to flourish.

The severe "management A personality type" or culture attempts to apply a cookie cutter approach to everyone. In the modern parlance this has been transmuted somewhat into offering "choices" or "opportunities" which really are just as ineffective and useless as the old Taylorism of "scientific management".

Unionization is good for business or the market would have long ago eliminated it. In my view most of the problems with the economy stem from really inadequate captains of finance - dinosaurs old and new - holding on to old prejudices about unionization. The flip side is that they are clinging to an antiquated notion of how organizations and businesses should be run.

There are draw backs. Many of the old time members are weary with the struggle. They have to somehow convince people who are self interested and rewarded for taking the "corporate" point of view that there is a greater good to be served than the company bottom line. Sometimes weak unions get their leadership compromised by a desire to avoid conflict.

It all seems fairly dumb a lot of the time. Petty things become lightning rods for other issues.

Overall howevver, they work. The people in them are individuals and in most cases hard working, committed, and their goals for the immediate group and the larger community laudable and often of a better character than the average corporate policies of business.

Unions define work in human terms and resist the drive by capitalists to make us cogs in the wheels of finance.

[ 28 October 2004: Message edited by: Boinker ]

The U.S. and Canada have the lowest rates of unionized work force in the developed world, and coincidentally, the highest rates of child poverty and infant mortality by comparison, too.

Does anyone remember the old Coca Cola adverts on TV and radio, the very symols of capitalism and mocked in a Stanley Kubrick film ?

I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect har-mon-Ey

[ 29 October 2004: Message edited by: Fidel ]

In public sector cases, the good of union presence is that it makes the two units negotiating of at least comparable size, so you'll get a less distorted market result (and I realize that if that system looks ugly sometimes or causes a kerfuffle, it is a functional ugliness, as is found in our adversarial justice system).

I am wary of large unions for the same reasons I am wary of big business and big government--large systems can become more fixated on their own self-pepetuation than on the goals they were supposedly assembled to achieve for the people they represent in the first place.

I would like to see an economic system where no union could, nor would need to, make any moral claim (and could just function as negotiation collective), because we had a livable minimum wage, really toothy workplace safety and harrasment regs, and an economy so hot that businesses were really competing for workers at all levels.

So, to me, unions are (right now, in Canada) at worst neutral, but more often neutral than not.

I do, however, have some problems with old school unionism, which seems like a rusty ideology that could maybe take a fresh look at some of its supposed pillars--for instance the seniority business--but that applies no more to unionism than to any other world view or system from the last century.

And I always try to remember: anyone who complains (from a worker's point of view) about the low motivation in unionized environments always have the option of getting a job somewhere else.

ETA: Whew, after that dose of windbaggery, I can probably retire from this section of babble altogether.

[ 29 October 2004: Message edited by: Publically Displayed Name ]

I agree with John Kenneth Galbraith that it's time for a revival of trade unionism in North America and the spread of basic human rights around the world in general.

[ 29 October 2004: Message edited by: Fidel ]

It's when big multi-national corporations are allowed to devour the most benign competition and giving them more economic power concentrated in their few hands than any government elected by the people can wield is where the problem lies.

Coca Cola sees fit to hire death squads in Colombia and Mexico to keep unions in check, to put it mildly. In Colombia, big government colludes with big business to physically eliminate trade unionists attempting to gain living wages and safe work environments for their workers.

In the States, American's don't apologize for their "flexible" labour markets and what is the highest percentage of low wage jobs in the developed world. Low wage philanthropy and flexible labour markets were supposed to be the answer to high rates of unemployment and competitive economy. The Yanks point to wages in Germany and France that are 50% higher on average as the reason for 10% U rates in Europe. The Yanks have low U rates of 5 and 6% and crow on about that endlessly. But the truth of the matter is that European and Sandi nations report real unemployment statistics whereas the Yanks tend to fudge the numbers to a greater extent. The unaugmented U rate in the States right now is a little higher than what the Ministry of Plenty is admitting to down there. It was above 10% during what was a stretch of 43 consecutive months of job losses in their manufacturing sector and ended this March.

The Euro-socialists realize that full employment is elusive for any economy. About a third of the world's work force, and where liberal democratic reforms are in place or are taking place, are currently unemployed.

The Euros understand that if full employment were achieved in a capitalist society, we'd outstrip our natural resources in nothing flat. So they do shared work weeks. People work three or four days of the week at most. They're productive and happier for it. My cousin drives a truck in England. His wife works, but they do Spain and Italy like three times a year. They have money to spare and have travelled to Canada three times to my one trip over there in seven years. And unions are ever stronger in Germany and Sweden where about 85% of the workforce is unionized. If your're on the dole in Sweden, there's all kinds of job re-training, benefits and access to university education for up to five years of your last full time job. And the Swede's health stats make Canucks and Yanks look sick by comparison.
The Yanks can only boast having the highest rates of cancer in the developed world. Capitalism is making American's sick.

But this model for middle class capitalism based on consumption, as it stands now, is unsustainable over the long run. To prop-up this abominable system called capitalism means global poverty in the long run. And as JM Keynes once said, "we're all dead in the economic long run", just a little faster is all.

Unions might as well fight for a slice of the pie while there's still oxygen to breathe and clean water to drink, in my opinion.

[ 29 October 2004: Message edited by: Fidel ]

The former problem is a general problem with size and scalability; democracy, especially participatory democracy, doesn't scale all that well. But there are things that can be done to improve that; big unions can be reformed, at least to an extent, just as democratic governments can. Corporations cannot, really, because they're undemocratic from the ground up. You can regulate them from outside, but they'll still be squirming to get out of those regulations.

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Originally posted by Fidel:

The Yanks have low U rates of 5 and 6% and crow on about that endlessly. But the truth of the matter is that European and Sandi nations report real unemployment statistics whereas the Yanks tend to fudge the numbers to a greater extent. The unaugmented U rate in the States right now is a little higher than what the Ministry of Plenty is admitting to down there. It was above 10% during what was a stretch of 43 consecutive months of job losses in their manufacturing sector and ended this March.

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Originally posted by Budd Campbell:

This is a new one to me. You're saying the US CPS data is fudged? By whom?

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Take a look at the way Paul Martin has pared down EI-UI-O in Canada. In the 1970's, about 85% of unemployed workers were eligible for UI benefits. Now, it's less than 40%. The Yanks have led the way in making UI benefits/access to retraining more difficult for workers to qualify for since the Reagan years. This was a parallel agenda along with the war on unions and working class American's in general since Raygun. And if workers can't access the fund they've paid into, then they're also not counted as unemployment statistics.

Here's a diddy from last February ...

The True Unemployment Rate - 10.9%
February 07, 2004

"Alternative measures of labor underutilization?" Hmm...What does it mean in English? Also known as the U-6 number, it is a more accurate measure of the nation's unemployment rate.

This page estimates the "total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers at 10.9%. What are "marginally attached workers?" According to the BLS, "marginally attached workers are persons who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the recent past. Discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached, have given a job-market related reason for not currently looking for a job. Persons employed part time for economic reasons are those who want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule. " Do you know anyone like that? They're not counted in the big, pretty headline number (Unemployment rate falls to 5.6%) that is reported on the six o'clock news. How come?"

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Originally posted by Publically Displayed Name:
I would like to see an economic system where no union could, nor would need to, make any moral claim (and could just function as negotiation collective), because we had a livable minimum wage, really toothy workplace safety and harrasment regs, and an economy so hot that businesses were really competing for workers at all levels.

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For the most part, the only thing that gets me about unions is the bogus morality model

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Originally posted by Nam:

I see you live in Canada, so if you could enlighten me please on which province ...

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My choice of tense seems to have confused you. This is the environment I would like to see, not one that currently exists.

... unless you did understand what I was saying making a different point, and your choice of tense or phrasing has confused me, or something.

ETA:

Wingnut: Boy howdy!

(Actually I don't have a problem with people who are socially conservative, it just bugs me when they think their chosen lifestyle is a good basis for public policy.)

[ 30 October 2004: Message edited by: Publically Displayed Name ]

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Originally posted by Publically Displayed Name:
I would like to see an economic system where no union could, nor would need to, make any moral claim (and could just function as negotiation collective), because we had a livable minimum wage, really toothy workplace safety and harrasment regs, and an economy so hot that businesses were really competing for workers at all levels.

So, to me, unions are (right now, in Canada) at worst neutral, but more often neutral than not.

I do, however, have some problems with old school unionism, which seems like a rusty ideology that could maybe take a fresh look at some of its supposed pillars--for instance the seniority business--but that applies no more to unionism than to any other world view or system from the last century.

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I'd just like to add that unions were once pointed to as a driver of inflation in an economy. We have no fear of that anymore in N. America.

i read a couple of months ago that unionized physio therapists for a home care company in the london area see less clients a day than the non-unionized physio's do. the difference was if i remember correctly an average of 3 and change clients a day for union and 5 and change for non union.

I also believe the evidence of higher productivity for unionized workers is pretty strong across the manufacturing sectors. The cement industry study I mentioned above is the one that I understood had the best methodology and most robust result, but there are certainly others.

In my opinion the question is really whether you believe, at whatever level of "productivity," whether the fruits of industry should accrue primarily to the workers who toil to produce, or the shareholders who seek a return on their capital.

[ 08 November 2004: Message edited by: robbie_dee ]