The Joys of Labor Unions

[Sparko]

Right from the beginning Unions were corrupt and run by such outfits as the mafia (Jimmy Hoffa, anyone?) and today they are no better. They are bullies and their racket is making their "members" pay "protection money" (union dues).

[Sparko]

I think, particularly in situations like the coal mines in West Virginia, there was pretty much only one option to earn money -- the coal mines. Black lung disease, collapses, poison gas ---- these are the things that seemed to demand unions for safety.

Yep I agree (my family is from Eastern Ky, where there is not much more than coal mining available) and at one time I think the unions helped. But not any more.

[One Bad Pig]

Funny how that didn't really work out that way historically, which is how we got indentured servants who were treated worse than slaves. Supply and demand does not guarantee good treatment because frequently the workers have no leverage (except the threat of mass violence) since it's not that hard to get more immigrants to do their work.

Yes, that can happen when supply is rather greater than demand.

[Littlejoe]

I'm a born and bred Texan, and proud to be in a Right to Work state, but Unions certainly did have a use back in the day. I don't see the need for them as much today, but I fear without the threat of unions, some industries or companies will not do the right thing and take care of their workers. Maybe in todays society, those companies will not get people to work for them...but I think when people get desperate they will do whatever they have to do to take care of their families. Also, as we have seen here in Texas, a lot of jobs go to immigrants because native Texans/Americans will not do a particular job for the money offered. Companies always seem to find ways to find workers willing to do the job...

[Psychic Missile]

To those who say that unions have outlived their usefulness, what changed?

[Darth Executor]

Yes, that can happen when supply is rather greater than demand.

Which is normally the case when it comes to labour.

[KingsGambit]

To those who say that unions have outlived their usefulness, what changed?

At least here in the US, there are labor laws and basic safety standards and fines for non-compliance as a direct result of those. They certainly had their place back in a time of 14 hour shifts and where it was acceptable to lock the exits despite the fire hazards. Again, I am pleading ignorance on whether they are still necessary in manual labor/manufacturing fields. I have a low opinion of the unions that I am familiar with (teachers' unions) as they tend to spend time lobbying on political issues that have nothing to do with education.

[Teallaura]

With regards to the OP, I voted yes and no. Many of today's unions are utterly corrupt extensions of the Democratic Party (adjust specific party for country) and thus less than useless. Some of them still do their actual job (namely, looking out for their members) so they're not a complete bust. On my end I've worked on a teamsters work site (terrible, pretty much existed so that workers were nearly impossible to fire unless they were really, really terrible) and a carpenters union (very good, no forced membership, if you didn't pay your fee they just kicked you out and people paid because it was well worth the money, largely maintained high wages by being productive and thus worth hiring).

Yeah, that.

[Epoetker]

I take the Steve Sailer position that the quality of a union is directly related to the quality of the trade:

Sailer’s Rule of Unions that unions are strongest for the guys who seemingly need them the least: baseball players, Chicago Symphony musicians, and so forth.
The Port of Los Angeles/Long Beach represents an enormous fixed investment that can’t be easily replaced anywhere (although the government of Mexico has been trying to build a competitor for many years now, and the government of Panama is expanding the Canal to siphon off business). Therefore, the Harbor generates huge amounts of wealth and the various parties involved clash over how to divvy it up. The dockworkers are a tough bunch and when they are not happy, unfortunate things seem to happen. When the workers are unhappy you should probably, you know, watch your step, because accidents can happen. Thus, they get paid well.
You see similar strong unions where there are huge fixed investments that can’t easily be moved somewhere else in pursuit of cheaper wages, such as Detroit auto factories and mines.

But the SoCal dock unions have managed to stay within within limits that keep the other players from pulling up stakes and relocating to a different port.
In contrast, the dockworker’s union in mid-20th Century San Francisco (led by Harry Bridges) was so larcenous that San Francisco’s remarkable natural harbor was bypassed by shippers in favor of the artificial harbor of Los Angeles. Now, containerized shipping makes it harder for stevedores to outright steal cargo, so the customers are more or less willing to pay high wages in L.A., at least until Mexico’s new Pacific ports get up to speed.

Public sympathies have turned very anti-union over my lifetime. In fact, I’m not sure they were ever all that pro-union. Strikes are extremely agitating for 3rd parties, partly because they happen on the strikers’ schedule, not the bystanders. Presumably, the dock clerks picked the Christmas Rush for a strike precisely because so many businesses across the country are desperate to get deliveries before December 24.

Similarly, if you own a business, you don’t want to be in a perfectly competitive market, either. You want to figure out a way to grab a little bit of monopoly power. You want to be Apple not Dell, Microsoft not Digital Resources, Carlos Slim not some unconnected telecom entrepreneur.

I know they teach you all about the wonders of perfectly competitive markets in Econ 101, but, you know what? You don’t want to be stuck competing in a perfectly competitive market. You want to be well set up in a defensible corner where you aren’t facing perfect competition.

Of course, the corollary is that perfect competition is a perfectly fine situation to put your enemies in:

If set workers don’t like, you know, who the producers had started hiring, things could get, just hypothetically speaking, dropped. I’m just saying. And little accidents on the set could be really upsetting to the neurotic stand-up comedian who is the star of the show. And if he’s upset, his timing could go off, and the show’s ratings would drop. So, maybe we don’t want to mess up this nice little set we have here by trying to chintz on pay for the guys who lift stuff. Understand?

In contrast, Mark Zuckerberg has organized a coalition of billionaires and near-billionaires to lobby Congress to grant more visas to lower the pay of his programmers. You might think that Facebook’s current programmers might have a certain amount of leverage in this situation. For example, Zuckerberg’s current employers could, just theoretically speaking, sabotage his campaign to lower their pay by inserting code that would, say, reveal embarrassing personal details about their owner on his Facebook page.

But this would never occur to them. It would be unsporting. What would Ayn Rand say?

My general opinion is that managerialism as such has done more to degrade American business acumen and labor quality than a thousand labor/business owner clashes.

In its own more confused, less advanced way, New Dealism too has spread abroad the stress on the state as against the individual, planning as against private enterprise, jobs (even if relief jobs) against opportunities, security against initiative, "human rights" against "property rights." There can be no doubt that the psychological effect of New Dealism has been what the capitalists say it has been: to undermine public confidence in capitalist ideas and rights and institutions. Its most distinctive features help to prepare the minds of the masses for the acceptance of the managerial social structure.

[Cow Poke]

To those who say that unions have outlived their usefulness, what changed?

Society.

[Psychic Missile]

At least here in the US, there are labor laws and basic safety standards and fines for non-compliance as a direct result of those. They certainly had their place back in a time of 14 hour shifts and where it was acceptable to lock the exits despite the fire hazards. Again, I am pleading ignorance on whether they are still necessary in manual labor/manufacturing fields. I have a low opinion of the unions that I am familiar with (teachers' unions) as they tend to spend time lobbying on political issues that have nothing to do with education.

So your opinion is that there was a need for labor laws and basic safety standards and fines, and until those needs were met unions fought for them? Do you feel there are no additional labor laws or safety standards and fines needed?

[Psychic Missile]

Society.

Care to elaborate?

[Epoetker]

Society.

True.

[KingsGambit]

So your opinion is that there was a need for labor laws and basic safety standards and fines, and until those needs were met unions fought for them? Do you feel there are no additional labor laws or safety standards and fines needed?

Obviously the threat of fines has to be ongoing. I'm sure new labor laws and standards are at times needed, but what I am getting at was that at that point in history, there were none at all and unions were certainly instrumental in establishing them. Perhaps in certain sectors continued unionization is necessary at keeping them honest (I'm thinking in particular of industries like coal mining).

[Epoetker]

Other great comment at my link:

If you work as a temp (no chance to form a union) for a subcontractor (formed as a buffer for a main contractor, it will fold and move if a union forms) for a contractor (formed as a buffer, ditto) for a main company (which set up all three buffers to avoid doing the 'runaway shop' to another state or country, which it's used to doing anyway), then, no, you won't have much 'experience of unions'. No, that's not hypothesis, it's personal experience, with news stories about 70% of big companies doing it.

The old middle class hatred of unions came from seeing factory workers make more than most English teachers or middle managers. That's a distant memory.

Now, when the teachers and middle managers hate on the lower classes, they just call them racist. And their unions (well, totally-not-unions in the case of the managerial class) aren't violent, which makes them automagically more honest and less thieving.