Posted By freeeekyyy on 28 Mar 2011 06:12 PM

I would say that companies face the same issues as unions if they don't meet certain demands for ethical treatment of employees. They either end up with less productive employees, or with no employee at all from people leaving. Either way, that has an impact on their bottom line. I think the disappearance of private sector unions is evidence in itself of their relative non-necessity compared to the past. Companies have no more power to eliminate unions than they did 50 years ago. But the percentage of jobs which are unionized is way down, because public perception is that they are no longer such a necessity. There are jobs where they serve an important role, and in those cases they are still strong. In other cases, they are not.

I see a dangerous flaw in your logic here. To say that the disappearance of private sector unions is evidence of their non-necessity is a stone's throw away from saying the fact that women are paid less than men is evidence of their lesser worth. Circular logic.

Companies do have more power to eliminate unions through their large political contributions and billions of dollars in lobbying.

I agree that public perception is against unions at the moment. But that doesn't mean that the public is right. Like the cookie analogy. The public may not have noticed that the other 11 cookies were taken. They only see the lone cookie that goes to his peer.

 

A CEO sits at a table with a dozen cookies, a worker, and a union member. The CEO takes 11 cookies, looks over at the worker and says: "Watch out, that union guy wants your cookie."

Lol (in a sad, but true sort of way)! Yes, and while the worker and union member are fighting over the cookie, the CEO runs his/her company into the ground through ineptitude and hoarding of cookies, spends maybe one of the cookies to lobby against unions and another to lobby for government bailouts/tax breaks/ grants/subsidies etc... by threatening to take all of his/her cookies elsewhere and one more to ensure that he/she will be rewarded by endless cookies no matter what the outcome. And he/she usually takes his cookies to India etc... in any event, but with loads of extra cookies stuffed away.

And then there's electing a president (twice) who isn't opposed to gutting the collective "cookies" of a nation to line pockets of contracting friends, contributors, and the elite 1%.

Think, and use your vote wisely. You may end up in the poor house or debtors' prison.

Think, and use your vote wisely. You may end up in the poor house or debtors' prison.

Very wise/true indeed.

Heck, even if we look at the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911 we can see why the ability or option to collectively bargain is greatly needed in some cases. The garment workers were fighting for better and safer working conditions for at least a year before the fire and much of NYC knew of their efforts to improve conditions. Then, one day a fire then broke out on the 8th floor. Management kept one of the doors locked for fear that employees would try to steal garments. The workers resided on the 8th, 9th, and 10th floors. Most of the actual garment workers worked on the 9th floor. Management worked on the 10th floor and a bookkeeper notified the 10th floor by phone but there was no alarm to notify the 9th and no one went back to tell those on the 9th floor. The fire swept through and only a portion of those on the 9th floor could escape since only one of the exits was accessible. 146 garment workers died that day.

And that's just one story. History tells of quite a few others in which people didn't die in such large numbers so nothing was improved for workers. Do I agree that unions can sometimes go too far, yes, but unions are absolutely necessary in plenty of instances.

And public unions aren't the reason why the US is in debt. That is because of a 1.) grossly inflated military budget 2.) un-necessary and really expensive tax cuts for the wealthy and 3.) a medicare, medicaid, and social security system that is quite large in scale and hasn't been adequately funded in the past. All three of these are ridiculously expensive undertakings and when combined together the result is: debt.

i'll chuck in my 2c

In my experience unions are there to help union leaders first and everyone else second. There appears to be a big difference between unions as they first started and what we have now; now its all about union fees and trying to enforce union labour rather than employee protection. The unions are just as corrupt as any other organisation. Witness the actions of the UAW as a good example, they didnt give a crap about the employees, they just wanted a bigger slice for themselves.

Now, that said i think that collective bargaining does have its place, however its not in the form of fee-based unions. You simply dont need that system, collective bargaining by employees with self-representation from volunteers within their ranks will accomplish just as much when fighting for rights. Especially when its a skilled workforce...its not *that* easy to replace skilled workers without substantial cost.

I also wanna comment on business as it stands today. I think that in the Western education system there has been too much emphasis placed on profits at the expense of everything else. Almost everyone you encounter in business is thinking short-term, because thats the way people have been educated. Its all "shareholder profits" which means short term dividends per share metrics etc. This is driven a lot by the public listing of companies, who then have to appease short-term investors and analysts that only care about the profit. A "long-term" strategy in this environment is 3 years...just ridiculous!

Running a business properly means looking at the long-term future profitability and strategy, and all the stakeholders involved. This includes employees and customers. If you want to make a quality product then you will need to be employing the good, skilled employees. If you want to keep them, you will be treating them well as opposed to treating them like slaves. Then all of a sudden you can produce quality products that will last, with good service, and build up a loyal customer base. if you go with cheap labour and the lowest common denominator you are looking at short-term gain for long-term pain, and attract the bottom-feeding customers. People are still willing to pay for genuine quality.

unfortunately our business schools are not teaching this kind of thing anymore, its all about the finance sector, active trading and short-term incentives. I hear continually financial services companies talking about how they want to compete on service, but they are always just trying to undercut their competitors while offering a level of service that is just adequate to appease customers. Its a race to the bottom really in many industries, and that has hurt employees as its all about trying to employ cheap labour rather than quality labour.

So pity us in the UK with the Con Dem coalition. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. The Conservatives are the enemies of the working class. The unions have no power as there is too large an immigrant workforce who will work for next to nothing and are coming in from EU countries. I as a Socialist would like to see a return to old Labour values, wage caps, increased taxation on the mega rich, and a stop to public sector cuts which is ruining our country and creating mass unemployment.

@Freeeky
Collective bargaining does not mean public sector employees get everything that they want. It means that they get to bargain collectively with the government. As a taxpayer, I expect government officials to be the adversarial party and push back against excessive demands while acceding to other demands so that an agreement may be made. As for the threat of public sector employees simply striking if their every whims were not met, well then they would squander the good-will of people and that would be the end of them.

@zvezdar
Can you give us some examples of collective bargaining without a union?

Also, I think the market already does quite a good job of protecting those with specialized skills that are in demand, naturally. Unions exist in my mind because most wage-earners, sad to say, are easily replaceable. They can work hard and provide the company with a lot of value, but see their own share of the profit pie cut down to a sliver because they are cogs that could be replaced individually for no cost at any time. That is the reason for solidarity, so the "cogs" who makes the whole machine go can get their fair share of the grease.