Here’s some data with a little something for both of us:
You may not catch my drift but that’s OK.
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I’m as pro-Union as they come. Old style European Social Democrat. And yet: a few years ago I saw a construction site on the street between Washington Square and the NYU library in Manhattan. A very small site, about two car lengths, occupying about a third of the street width. It was safely cordoned off, and there were warning signs for drivers in place. Two or three people worked on the whole in the ground, doing whatever. And yet, on both sides of the construction, there was also a worker doing nothing but holding up another warning sign that said something like “construction”. Two people, carrying the sign, doing nothing else. AND it was a one-way street. Even I felt that this was the tiniest bit over the top…
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Most migrant laborers would disagree with you. Most are not motivated by money to do well.
Have you ever had a job?
Happy to hear it!
Unions are overrated and it has become a dumb partisan issue where being staunchly pro-union all the time has become a litmus test of liberal wokeness. That is stupid. Honestly if Amazon is paying better than anywhere else in the rural community then why would they rock the boat by unionizing? It’s not a big surprise at all. It would be easy enough for Amazon to decrease operations at that site in favor of other sites which can easily be guised as a business decision even if it is motivated by anti union animus. So that’s scary. Now you could say that it’d be worth it because the union can negotiate more breaks or whatever. But all a union does is let you NEGOTIATE with your employer without retaliation. It doesn’t require any particular outcome. And if the union did ask for more breaks or other conditions then it would seem logical that Amazon would demand to pay lower wages because of the decreased productivity. Maybe the workers would rather keep the status quo than open up Pandoras’s box.
To be clear, I completely support livable wages and comfortable jobs. But the incentives to make workers uncomfortable and pay as little in wages as possible are systemic problems. It’s really not clear to me why garnishing your wages to pay union dues just for the right to tell your boss what terms of employment you would like is the solution.
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What was it Henry Ford said about workers? I think it was Henry that said something about paying workers enough so they could buy the products they made?
Correct. He thought it was a great way to advertise and sell cars, his workers driving Ford cars around town. Additionally, he paid them twice the wage of the times b/c of high employee turnover, doing the same repetitive assembly line task all day long. He eventually got real wacky.
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Nice post but you’re way too sensitive hugo. OMG, two people carrying a sign when one can do it!
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Give it up tetrisd, your post is indefensible.
Don’t be surprised if in 6 months we see all of the union organizers and biggest supporters at Bessemer have been fired.
And being a right-to-work state, they won’t have to say why.
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My experience with my nonprofit unionizing and the insane mindless union zealotry made me think about voting Republican for the first time
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Not sure why they’d want their test case to be in Alabama. Should have done it here in Washington state.
It escapes you that wasted resources is wasted money which is a drag.
Unions can help but unions can also lead to idiocies like what hugo cited which is wasteful.
Hardly.
Except to knee-jerkers.
Well, there were five people at the construction site, two of them doing nothing but carrying a sign. And there were plenty of warning signs already on the street, without anyone carrying them. AND it was a one way street, so one person was holding a warning in a direction where no car could possibly be coming from.
That means that this site was overstaffed by 40%, with two people getting paid for doing nothing of value. I don’t think I’m overreacting when this feels like a waste of money. It may not be a lot of money, but it seemed to be a symbol. And I am reasonably certain that I did not stumble, by some accident, over the only place in the United States where this type of waste occurs.
Congress?
My point being, after reading all the cheap shots at unions in this thread, and yes some were justified as you posted, it’s all small change in the bigger argument: union membership has been eroded, down to a paltry 10% membership nationally, a reduction by more than half in 40 years, along with zero growth in wages (adjusted for inflation) and an unprecedented growth in wealth - not for the many but the few. The purpose of union membership is not just to protect workers’ rights and raise wages but to protect against income inequality, the driving force and major threat to our democracy and way of life.
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Unions can help but unions can also lead to idiocies like what hugo cited which is wasteful.
You want to talk waste? Let me know the next time the DOD’s bloated budget is audited. Because it will be the first.
JC, what’s next, Medicaid people having to justify their extravagances, caviar and Obamaphones! And let’s not leave out “personal responsibility.” You gotta be kidding me. Tell me it’s snark.
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My Congressman went to Alabama to push the workers to unionize. I hope he paid for his own flight and hotel.
It was the wrong state for a union to ask workers to step up against income inequality and unsafe working conditions. They have been brainwashed for centuries to think an aristocracy must rule over their lives. That the Top 1% know what they are doing and will “take care of them.”
But the times are a changing everywhere on this planet right now. Try again in a few years after Amazon workers in a blue state show them what is possible. Something’s not right in the conservative universe and it’s corrupted everything to the point that nothing works.
Americans are used to expecting the best and now we are having to settle for the unacceptable by Republicans? I don’t think so.
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If you haven’t read TPM’s Editor’s Blog, “On Bessemer #2” yet, the author makes a suggestion for Congress to update the 2000 ESIGN Act. I just shot off a quick email to my rep asking him to support this.
Couldn’t hurt if more people reached out to their reps…
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