26-07-2005 18:51									#61
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From the DanS article:

quote: Anna Burger, chair of the coalition of rebel unions called Change to Win, added: “We have different strategies, but we are not into competition, we are going after the 87 per cent of the workforce that wants a union but does not have one.”

Gotta love the true believers.

	26-07-2005 20:54									#62
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quote: Originally posted by Wezil Gotta love the true believers.

We wuv you too, Wezil.

	26-07-2005 20:57									#63
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quote: Originally posted by Dr Zoidberg Your seven weeks of vacation is thanks the the strong unions you despise so much. if it weren´t for those you´d have to work 12 hour days, 6 days a week and have (maybe) 2 weeks of unpaid vacation...

That's 7 days a week and noooo vacation.

	26-07-2005 21:06									#64
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But what have the unions done for us lately? Let's say, in the last 60 years?

Squat.

	26-07-2005 21:19									#65
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I would surmise their dropping membership has more to do with progressive legislation than anything else. Laws and regs govern most aspects of the workplace today.

	26-07-2005 23:18									#66
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quote: Originally posted by DanS But what have the unions done for us lately? Let's say, in the last 60 years? Squat.

Well, in my courthouse alone...

Got the employees cost-of-living raises after nine years without any raise at all.

Got me "regular" status after being employed for a decade as a "temporary" worker.

Two years ago, when the court was going to close down & not pay its employees for eight days, it was the union which discovered the million of dollars in managerial waste to keep it operating.

We are currently undergoing a "reclassification" plan, which should bring out salaries up to market value.

We forced a manager to quit after he threatened to beat up his employees.

We got an "open meeting law" passed for all government entities, not just executive agencies.

Statewide, we successfully battled to save our pensions and to protect the death and disablity benefits of police officers and firefighters.

	26-07-2005 23:31									#67
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So how do you explain dropping union membership? It is by no means a recent trend.

	26-07-2005 23:37									#68
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quote: Originally posted by Wezil So how do you explain dropping union membership? It is by no means a recent trend.

The two main ones are: aggressive anti-union activity on the part of corporations and declining manufacturing jobs. If the plant shuts down and moves to Mexico, hundreds or even thousands of union jobs may be lost. In addition, most growth has been in low wage, high turn over sectors, which are notoriously difficult to unionize.

It certainly has nothing to do with the pittance of social welfare our government drops from the table. Europe and Canada both have far more substantitve social walfer systems, and also have much larger union movements.

	26-07-2005 23:53									#69
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So you ascribe no blame to the unions themselves?

Agressive anti-union tactics? Yeah, like that is new.

Declining manufacturing base - I'll give you that one but why then have unions been unable to move into service sector positions?

The only unions I ever belonged to (one service sector, one manufacturing) were worse than useless. They took dues regularly but offered absolutely no benefit I was not entitled to under law. Both of these unions are no more.

	27-07-2005 00:08									#70
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quote: Originally posted by Wezil So you ascribe no blame to the unions themselves? Agressive anti-union tactics? Yeah, like that is new.

I mentioned the problems of the unions earlier, in another post. They are too busy trying to restore the old labor-management accord that they've basically refused to fight back for the last 25 years.

As for aggressive anti-union tactics, in the old days they would simply crack heads, fire people, kill them, etc. They are much more sophistocated these days.

	27-07-2005 00:11									#71
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You'd have to employ pretty damn sophisticated tactics to have a greater effect than you would cracking heads, firing, and killing people.

	27-07-2005 00:13									#72
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quote: Originally posted by DanS But what have the unions done for us lately? Let's say, in the last 60 years? Squat.

Well the decline of the unions has been tough on a lot of people, and we would certainly be better off with more union power. Union work pays better. I think that's a pretty well established fact.

	27-07-2005 06:47									#73
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quote: Originally posted by Wezil You'd have to employ pretty damn sophisticated tactics to have a greater effect than you would cracking heads, firing, and killing people.

Well, those methods are illegal now (though firing is still pretty common, and frequently gotten away with). Now they do things like, for example, tell the employees if the union comes in, they'll have to fire the current employees to bring in the union people with more seniority, how unions bring strife to the work place, etc. I've gone through union organizing training, and seen some of the stuff union busters pull.

	27-07-2005 07:25									#74
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quote: Originally posted by Dr Zoidberg Your seven weeks of vacation is thanks the the strong unions you despise so much. if it weren´t for those you´d have to work 12 hour days, 6 days a week and have (maybe) 2 weeks of unpaid vacation...

Ehrm, no. That is thanks to the fact that I got 13 days of last years vacation moved to current year,

Further, you may have a reading disability - I support them wich my postings say, I just don't think that they should be involved in crime .. oups, politics.

	27-07-2005 09:29									#75
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quote: Originally posted by Wezil You'd have to employ pretty damn sophisticated tactics to have a greater effect than you would cracking heads, firing, and killing people.

But the thing is that these are emotive tactics. Seeing this sort of thing only makes people angrier and more dedicated and garners sympathy for the union's cause from the general public. It's not good PR for a company, and history has shown that it's not a good way for the ruling class to win a long-term victory against the workers.

They've been considerably more successful in waging the propaganda war - demonising unions in the eyes of workers and the general public. It's been so successful that there's a huge reservoir of anti-union sentiment even amongst the very people who would benefit most from unionism. And I think that a large factor in the weakness of many of the large unions these days is that they've acted in response to this by saying "hey, we're actually okay, we're modern and progressive and we don't do anything as vulgar as actually striking and whathaveyou".

And without a more general pro-union sentiment, getting a united workplace all out on strike is more difficult, getting in scabs is much easier, and plenty of people are willing to commit what was once rightly considered a grievous sin and cross a picket line.
Not to mention that scabbing has been elevated to a sickening artform, and there are actually professional scabbing companies whose entire occupation is bussing around and doing the work of striking workers.

I'll be the first to admit that the unions have brought a fair bit of their bad image and ineffectiveness on themselves, but the union-busting tactics of companies and right-wing governments are a far greater contributor.

	27-07-2005 09:58									#76
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And today's unions have the wrong priorities. Basically unionization only helps workers once you get a certain density in an industry, but what counts as an industry now is much bigger since it doesn't matter much if an entire industry is unionized if production can be easily moved to another country. The biggest way that unions can be effective is by gaining real power is by gaining a real stake in companies and yanking them around that way.

What they should do is:
1. Get administrative control of workers' pension funds (definatley doable, but unions have often been very very bad/corrupt at managing them in the past which really really needs to change)
2. Invest this money in companies where the union has a presence/wants a presence.
3. Use this to influence management (i.e. "don't shut down the factory, or we'll vote for the next hostile takeover offer that comes around)
4. Intelligently increase share of companies until the union/workers can take them over (something like strike -> watch the share price drop -> buy stock cheap -> stock price drops more as investers get afraid of a worker takover -> finish striking once you've finished buying)
5. Run the company effectively (worker-managed corporats have tended to be quite efficient since workers know that their jobs are on the line, but they don't tend to expand much so you don't see many of them).

But that's not going to happen any time soon

	27-07-2005 18:07									#77
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quote: Originally posted by BlackCat I support them wich my postings say, I just don't think that they should be involved in crime .. oups, politics.

How do you expect them to survive politically if they're not involved politically.

	27-07-2005 18:50									#78
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Bosh: What gives you confidence in the unions to do well with more power?

Basically, you've just listed a lot of stuff that the unions we have now aren't qualified to do and then washing your hands of the matter with an "it's not going to happen any time soon."

	28-07-2005 02:33									#79
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quote: Originally posted by Kidicious How do you expect them to survive politically if they're not involved politically.

In the old days when most union members voted for left wing parties it was reasonable that they also gave money to these parties, but today their members votes for the whole spectre of parties, and they find it rediciously that they should support a party they are against.

This hasn't weakend unions because they now concentrate on working conditions, salaries, security at workplaces etc. - things most mebers can agree upon.

	28-07-2005 02:44									#80
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quote: Originally posted by BlackCat This hasn't weakend unions because they now concentrate on working conditions, salaries, security at workplaces etc. - things most members can agree upon.

That's true.

I was at a union strategy meetings a few weeks ago. It mainly involved how to counter California Prop 75, which is designed to strangle the collection of union dues wtih red tape.

But conservatives have also placed -- I think it's Prop. 70 -- on the ballot, a measure which would impose a waiting period for abortions for minors. Many of our members wanted the union to come out against it. However, the majority decided that abortion is not a union issue, and that taking a stand (one way or the other) would just divide our members.

	28-07-2005 03:05									#81
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quote: Originally posted by DanS Bosh: What gives you confidence in the unions to do well with more power? Basically, you've just listed a lot of stuff that the unions we have now aren't qualified to do and then washing your hands of the matter with an "it's not going to happen any time soon."

Well the incompetance that many Americans unions have shown in the running of their pension funds is pretty frightening. However, there's two points that're important. For the sort of thing I talked about to work you'd need a very different kind of union than what we have now and it isn't necessarily more power than unions had in America/Europe in their heyday, just a different kind of power.

Also historically, like I said, worker-run corporations have tended to be efficient. Their main problem is that they're hard to form and tend not to expand, union involvement is kind of a theoretical workaround for those problems...

All very theoretical unfortunately

	28-07-2005 19:03									#82
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quote: But what have the unions done for us lately? Let's say, in the last 60 years? Squat.

You have a strange definition of squat.

quote: Data from the March 2002 Current Population Survey (CPS), for example, show that unionized workers are 16.4 percentage points more likely than similar nonunion workers to be covered by an employer-provided health insurance plan, and 18.8 percentage points more likely to participate in an employer-sponsored retirement plan

http://www.bls.gov/opub/cwc/cm20050616ar01p1.htm#2

	30-07-2005 09:49									#83
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Go rebel unions. Kick Wal-mart in the ass.

Why should unions throw away money to a political party that has abandonded labor and have become Republican-Lite ever since the DLC takeover?

quote: 4. Intelligently increase share of companies until the union/workers can take them over (something like strike -> watch the share price drop -> buy stock cheap -> stock price drops more as investers get afraid of a worker takover -> finish striking once you've finished buying)

This is so evil, I love it.

	30-07-2005 10:16									#84
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The service economy in theory can function on an agglomeration of small businesses better than a manufacturing economy can, and perhaps employee ownership is the new way, as opposed to unionization.

There are a number of emplopyee owned stores around berkeley, with a wide range of success and failure. In general these businesses are able to support their higher wages by being higher quality. For example the two best pizza places in town are employee owned. On the other hand theres this employee owned bakery that has been bordering on bankruptcy for the last couple of years because of poor business practices - for example, when sales started dropping, they decided to close at 6PM, which means commuters coming back in the evening (like me) can't get to the store before it closes anymore.

	30-07-2005 10:27									#85
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quote: Originally posted by Odin Go rebel unions. Kick Wal-mart in the ass. Why should unions throw away money to a political party that has abandonded labor and have become Republican-Lite ever since the DLC takeover? This is so evil, I love it.

Hostile takeovers for the REVOLUTION! Its so logical that I'm surprised I've never heard it proposed, and it should be relatively feasible with union-run pension funds.

	30-07-2005 21:55									#86
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quote: You have a strange definition of squat.

By "us", I meant everybody, the vast majority of whom are non-union.

Put another way, what have they done for us lately that demonstrates that unions having political power makes sense?

	30-07-2005 22:08									#87
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Unions aren't supposed to benefit non-members. You might as well ask what the AARP has done for young people lately.

	30-07-2005 22:19									#88
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A big part of Sweeney's argument is that even though unionism is a modest force in the workplace, the union movement should strive for political influence in order to carry out its goals that impact all workers. Like moving from a 48 workweek to a 40 hour workweek 70 year ago, f.e.

So it's a fair question to ask what have the unions done for us lately.

	30-07-2005 22:24									#89
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Among their goals are better healthcare coverage for all and better retirement plan coverage for all. Their lack of success would seem to be an agurment in favor of them getting more political power not less (unless of course, you are against those goals).

	30-07-2005 22:58									#90
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quote: Originally posted by DanS Like moving from a 48 workweek to a 40 hour workweek 70 year ago, f.e. So it's a fair question to ask what have the unions done for us lately.

Here in California:

The unions fought off Gov. Wilson's attempt to do away with the requirement to pay overtime for working more than 8 hours in a day. (BTW, the Governator is attempting to resurrect Wilson's vile and evil plan.)

The unions are also pushing Calif. Senate Bill 840, which will provide heathcare to all Californians.

Ever since a disgruntled Pakastani subcontractor threatened to put medical records up on the internet, unions have been fighting to keep patients' medical records in California.

Unions have been fighting off corporate attempts to privatize Social Security and public-employee pensions.