Unions

Redpill me on unions.

I've noticed that at my workplace, the biggest supporters of Unions are quite lazy workers.
They almost feel commie in nature...
I want to know how cancerous they truly are in terms of the effect they have on companies and how it financially screws over the average tax payers?

bump

Unions politicize the workplace and disincentives employees. It inflates business costs unnecessarily and places union loyalty above merits of performance and work ethic.

Let's put it this way, when unions in the US were most prevalent, you could have a manufacturing job and work 40 hours a week, then support a wife, two kids, have a car, a nice house, and 1-2 vacations per year.

You could also assume what I said above is due to post-WWII US being dominant in manufacturing and other sectors due to every other country being bombed out and ruined economically until the 1960s, but yeah.

I'm technically a communist, but I actually have a job, and work hard. I simply believe that if you work 40 hours a week and can do your job proficiently, you shouldn't have to struggle to get by. You're obviously never going to be able to own a Ferrari, but you should be able to live comfortably.

I'm also not quite sure what you meant by "financially screwing over the average tax payers".

I have heard that unions have a negative effect on the average taxpayer.
I'm not sure how.

Glorified Pyramid Scheme.

That's all it is

>I simply believe that if you work 40 hours a week and can do your job proficiently, you shouldn't have to struggle to get by.

Nobody who works 40 hours a week in a skilled trade struggles to get by.

If you flip burgers on the other hand, then maybe you should leave the McJob to the teenagers and find a big boy career.

Have you ever worked retail or at one of these other jobs?

Unions ensure that nothing achieved in the workplace is based upon actual merit.

Unions defend workers rights what the fuck are you smoking?

Unions protect the rights of the employees. .In all industries without a strong union, the workforce has been replaced by immigrants.

easy flowchart
I should make one for scabs too

Naive piece of shit. They're full blown socialist shits here in Germany and don't give a fuck about the workers. Unions here are highly politicized left wing groups with too much money. They're either corrupt or damage the companies they work for.

>when unions in the US were most prevalent
which was never. did it ever even crack 30 percent? venezuela however, guess what their membership rate is?

The original intent was that a skilled work force would know a job better than the employer, therefore seizing the means of production for their benefit. This would be respectable, the employer would acknowledge highly skilled laborers and collective bargaining could be on equal terms. But these lazy niggers and the communist fucks that back them have forgotten that you have to work to gain anything, they think their entitled to a paycheck for existing. In my experience it's normal to see well paid employees intentionally breaking shit, praying that production is halted so they can collect without effort.

>tfw lifer at Walmart
>tfw I'll never know what it's like to be in a union

I'd gladly give a pittance out of my check for heads to roll here, but it will never happen

Destroy the unions and promote immigration. Cucks like you can't see reality. You are to busy regurgitating the rhetoric.

There will always be problems obviously, but I've noticed locally that trade unions that offer a higher skill set tend to be ethnically homogenous(white competent men). There are fewer positions for these workers, and the membership is smaller than a trade union that requires less talent. There's always one white crane operator working hand in hand with the foreman, a few welders or craftsmen doing fabrication on smaller details, then fifteen Mexican or black laborers standing around with a shovel or broom watching the ten whites work.

They take $90/month (state road engineer)

To negotiate like shit... no raise even to match inflation. Full ofvliberals & people who think protesting helps

>before:
Electrician union,
Don't like to take any inexperienced people. Give all jobs to favorites. Not allowed to find yourself more work

>workplace (((Politicians)))

They used to be based and tolerated even by conservatives as necessary in a free society, now most are infected by the same ultra left rhetoric we're all familiar with and are leading the charge into Marxist oblivion.

Unions are at best a reactive response to a genuine problem with management, and at worst a scheme by the lazy to do less and get paid the same.

There's surprisingly little middle ground between those two scenarios, and the transition from a union as necessary to protect workers rights to a corrupt machine is very quick. Especially as unions became unionized themselves into larger organizational bodies.

The best examples of why unions are unecessary are probably large companies that are still family owned but don't have an IPO or didn't for a long time.

Uhhhh, take Trader Joes, the predominantly grocery chain. That's a non-union chain and they stay non-union because they actually do a good job of management.

They pay their employees decently well relative to similar grocery stores with unions, but not as well as the unions do, so why don't the workers ever unionize to get more $$$?

Because more importantly, management at TJ's makes sure to be prompt with regular reviews and guarantees benefits packages on a specific and achievable timetable. They also focus on promotion from within so there's decent upward mobility if you stick with them long enough (and you're cool with topping off in life as the manager of a grocery store, which is completely decent and honest work so lots of people are).

But they're also strict in discipline, and fire layabouts very quickly if they underperform or make any medium to large mistakes. So they (intentionally or not) get rid of most of the layabout types that would want to start a union as a side effect. Their management style is "tough but fair" and they pay decently well and get people access to benefits quickly and that takes away pretty much any major issue that a union might say it's fighting on the behalf of the workers for.

(for a similar example on the national level - CostCo, which acts in a very similar manner)

No gripes from workers = no need for unions.

You didn't read that pay the first two sentences, did you?

Because sometime right about when Hoffa went missing it became less about representing workers and more about funding politicians campaigns

In USA it's impossible for an employer to fire a black union member.

Shit it's hard to fire any union member. Companies have to hire workers based on ethnicity and gender instead of skill and ability. Thanks diversity

*predominantly west coast grocery chain

Also, to continue:

meanwhile at other grocery chains, the workers are often unionized.

This leads to a lack of much upward mobility, as union guarantees mean that people stay in the same exact positions for years on end.

You can be the bag boy for years upon years if you end up in a unionized grocery chain before even getting a shot at teller. Why? Because the union makes sure that the teller position will go to the next union due paying member in line before you. And since you didn't arrive first, that could be a while.

That's the thing with unions, they try to freeze time as much as possible. They keep people locked into their positions for as long as possible and wages the same (relative to the economic average) as long as possible.

But this means they do something terrible - they protect bad employees. It's ridiculously hard to fire a unionized worker.

So that means the layabouts in the union have good job security and that means do to the line that newer members wait in, the ability to move up relies less on ability (good or bad) but more on patience.

This whole system ultimately is good if you're a worker who values security of position more than potential for advancement. It's worse for the business though, as it means poor performance is hard to punish, and wage costs remain high. The end result can ruin individual business a lot of the time..

BUT I still argue that the fact that a union formed at all is reflective that at one point the business wasn't managing their employees well. They gave them too much to complain about and it wasn't an industry with infinite scab potential (this is the tech industry on all levels - unions/guilds have a tough time forming there due to large numbers of recent grads desperate to break in), which means the union's formation was basically the fault to mismanagement.

In a way, unions are often like suicide: a permanent solution to temporary problems.

American Unions, from my understanding, are complete garbage because there's this hostility between the management and any potential unions, because other Unions fuck up.

Here, unions work very well - if you're educated as a teacher/welder/policeman/electrician or anything else that requires some kind of know-how, you're probably in a union, and your workplace has a union rep for you to communicate with, that also communicates with the management.

I think our flatter hierarchy is what separates us from the US when it comes to unions, your management has gotten it into them that they deserve "respect" and treat the ones "lower" with hostility, which leads to workers treating them with hostility back, souring up the relationship between worker and management.

That's not to say some crazy, far-left nutjobs don't manage to influence unions here as well, but the members (usually middle aged males or females, depending on field) are very good at shutting that shit down.

They can work if both sides are competent and willing to make deals. So they never work.

They're fine as long as they stick to looking out for workers (safety, collective bargaining, etc).*

Problem is a lot of union leadership, particularly as their union gets larger and more influential, want to spend their time on their pet political causes, and view their union members as their personal army (and their dues as their personal warchest).

* Lazy fuckers will game any system; there should always be efforts to eliminate abuse and deadwood, but you're always going to have to accept some of it.

Your blatant whataboutism deflected those two sentences.

Of course all of that is just the deal with unions at the micro level - between the firm and the workers at that firm.

At the macro level unions are nothing but trouble and communism.

The big problem is the same as it is at the micro level - unions promote the layabout workers who have the most patience to get ahead, and discourage people with drive and a desire for meritocratic advancement.

This is exactly how you breed truly communist ideas, which is why commies and other crypto-commie ideological shards fucking love unions. It's just a step along their path.

(btw, Fascism is based on the fasces, which is literally a metaphor for unionization - so whenever you see a lefty who loves unions talk shit about fascism, just point out that all fascism actually means is "union" and ask them why they hate the concept of unity, this will fuck with them if you can pose it correctly)

Anyway, unions at national levels bring all of the problems of the micro level with them and when combined with government employment, mean you create permanent drains that promote larger and larger government to support their growth.

They become cancerous to a state and eventually come to control it. This is because nameless bureaucrats ultimately are the ones in charge of every state rather than figureheads of power. And if those nameless bureaucrats are unionized?

Well, you're half-way to communism friendo.

For the example here, look at Teacher's unions in the US. They leverage a lot of political power, do very little for actual teachers or aiding in the education of the youth, and yet consistently prevent educational reform because if you oppose them, they convince the public at large that you're endangering the future success of everyone's kids.

Nurses unions in the UK (for another example) are the primary driver of the Labour party there and are essentially one giant machine that shovels increasing amounts of money from the government into the NHS.

>retail
>a skilled trade
Pick one

In poland Coal minig unions inflate the prices so much that the govement have to pay up, and we lose money on every ton that is mined. Unions are cancer

In the UK the whole reason most public transport is rip off expensive is because of the union's and their members actively just making their job/lives as easy and high paying as possible.

Oh and the royal mail has gone to shit because of the union's literally striking for no reason.

Keep fighting to discredit the unions, I'm doubt Pablo cares when he will be employed instead of Americans. Look at the bigger picture.

Forgot to add on the royal mail stuff, there are some BBC documentaries on yt you can watch. I remember part where the workers knowing they were protected by the union's would laze around and do half assed jobs.

Your unions sound a lot closer to trade guilds in the US. They tend to have that flatter hierarchy for the most part.

There's obviously a lot of overlap between the two concepts, but (usually) guilds in the US are better run than the unions for this reason (and they're smaller).

But in general, a lot of ideas that might work in European countries can't in the US due to the size differential.

The US is fucking huge. And other than a few East Coast states, most every concept transferred over here from Europe has to be scaled up.

This is why most socialism and socialist ideas have a much harder time functioning here.

(in part - the other part is general lack of homogeneity which most Europeans took for granted, and most Americans ignore as a potential factor since it's alien to them)

I've been a union member for 20 years now, but sure user. Fuck me for planning value in competency rather than diversity right?

Yeah, this is pretty good. I wrote a bunch cause I didn't see this. Goddamnit.

I don't think it's only the fact that you're bigger, but also that our cultures are vastly different, even if people want to ignore that fact.

People who bitch and moan about "muh expensive healthcare in the US" and "why can't we just have le swedens system?????" don't realize you guys have a very different culture when it comes to liberty (I.E, you'd rather have more money on hand and no health coverage then paying extra tax for health coverage) and individual choice. They also ignore the fact that you have a huge industry built on insurance.

But yeah, trade guilds and unions are basically the same, they evolved from the same concept - that anyone deserving to be in them should have a decent pay. The only difference is that trade guilds have people be their own bosses, so what they did is that they all set a price floor so that they don't just undercut each other all the way down, and make sure everyone is licensed.

Unions are supposed to work with the employer, but the US upper class managed to meme every single worker into believing Unions are evil for the entire 20th century, and now you got that legacy to take care of first before unions become viable.

>says the guy who never had to actually sell something

I agree though that some dumb cunt who can push buttons at a register doesn't deserve representation but if you are out there Jewing somebody into spending money on something they wouldn't otherwise then that is pretty skilled.

>Implying
I worked for two years selling furniture. But then I graduated high-school and got a real job.

In less prosperous times in Ireland you could be working and still have too little money to feed yourself.

Then there was union movements which brought up wages and working conditions and it really was an improvement. I suppose you could remove unions and rely on the state to guarantee wages and working conditions but Americans don't like government involvement either.

We already know from the history of Europe that before democracy, state involvement and unionism, workers could be working every single day and still going hungry.

It lead to the democratic revolutions across Europe.

Unions aren't bad, but they should be state ran unions that purge the communistic elements within them, like they did in fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.