[Discuss] [OT] unions

[invalid at pizzashack.org (Derek Martin)]

On Thu, Apr 19, 2012 at 04:51:56PM -0400, john saylor wrote:
> without unions don't conditions for workers just get worse? 

Do they?  I have never been unionized, and my working conditions have
either remained the same or improved over the 20 years or so I've been
working in technology, depending on your perspective and niggling
details...

> and do you enjoy weekends? you can thank unions for that.

Great case in point.  My mom, who I was just mentioning worked for
unions her whole life, pretty much always had to work Saturday.
Whereas I, never a union worker, have never had to, other than very
rare and special circumsances (discounting my pre-degree employment in
retail, which makes most of its money on the weekend, even when it
happens to be unionized, e.g. Stop 'n Shop).

The one and only job my mom had where she was always treated fairly
and never had a legitimate grievance against her employer was
non-union.

> hasn't wealth been accumulating more and more in fewer and fewer
> hands? 

Sure, but:

> isn't the union movement on life support in this country?

I don't know, is it?  Do you have any statistics that correlate loss
of spending power of the average household to a downturn in union
participation?

> do you think there's a connection here?

No, I don't, but I haven't seen any numbers to support either
conclusion.

> The number of people in poverty in 2010 (46.2 million) is the
> largest number in the 52 years for which poverty estimates have been
> published.
> [from http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/about/overview/index.html]

First let's clarify: you mean in the USA, specifically.  Is that true
world-wide?  China and India have been rapidly developing economies
for some years now, and combined contain the majority of the world's
population.  So, taking into account local differences in what is
called poverty, is it more, or less?  I'm not so sure...

Now we'll go ahead and consider USA, specifically.  Do you think it's
at all possible that the cause of this is something other than the
decline of unions (which I don't think is proven, and tend to doubt)?
Could it perhaps be that globalization and the high price of American
labor has priced us out of manufacturing and other industry sectors?
Or perhaps other factors?

> how do workers stand up for their rights without unions?

I did say that unions, at a certain stage, serve a useful purpose.
The problem is that, as with all entities involving humans, once they
attain a certain level of power, they become corrupt and abuse their
power, and at that point cease to be a force for good.  They do very
little for the workers that need it the most (like my mom), and do too
much in the defense of poor workers who don't deserve to be defended
(like the police officer in her town who was found sleeping at home
when he was supposed to be on duty).

-- 
Derek D. Martin    http://www.pizzashack.org/   GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
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