When a company spends money to discourage collective bargaining, whether that's in production of "training" videos, or closing facilities, or punishing organizers (who are more likely to call foul on that illegal activity), it means that they think that will cost them less than bargaining with labor in good faith.
They know they're taking advantage of labor, and it costs them less to keep the bootheel on than it does to negotiate. Seize the means of production.
sure sure seize it, then who's gonna manage it afterwards, and how much will they get paid, more, less, the same, for what sort of responsibility, who determines that, do managers count as much as front line assembly staff, do they have to work more or less. sooner or later the pigs become the man and the man becomes the pigs. seize it, we'll all be back here in a hundred years telling people to seize it from you.
It’d be managed democratically by the workers in the way that best fit their needs. You act like those are all questions that couldn’t be discussed and voted on.
as evidenced by how successful the ussr, china, cuba and venezuela, and every other fucking group who has ever tried it, have been in their efforts in this regard, yeah yeah i know, you've got a "better plan". see you in a hundred years.
Im not as familiar with Venezuela but the first 3 you listed massively increased the quality of life for their citizens versus how it was pre revolution. Cuba today is still a massive achievement considering the embargo. Just like capitalism didn’t achieve its optimal form when it first came to being, socialism hasn’t been perfect either but we learn from past mistakes and strive for something better than thinking that the current system that only benefits the global north at the expense of the global south is somehow the peak of how human society can be.
A lot of people don’t realize the USSR went from being relatively technologically primative to launching satellites into space within 35 years. It wasn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination but what other country can claim the same?
China and the USSR didn’t “try” it. They just claimed that thsy do it in the workers’ interest. Don’t know too much about Guba and Venezuela, but I’d wager that the same happened then.
Hurdy durrrrrrr what about Guba, the Ruskies, and Vuvuzela?! Where’s your Karl Marx now?! He’s dead, another victim of Gommunism! Checkmate, libtard!
It’s like there’s a playbook for how to sound like someone with issues with, but no actual knowledge of, alternate economic systems and you’re quoting directly from it.
Idk if you noticed but unions arise naturally in free markets in democracies. There’s a reason dictators like hitler tend to go after unions and labor organizers - they don’t like workplace democracy similar to how they don’t like fair elections.
Right… since people never step in to fill a power vacuum and no matter their intentions become corrupt… because absolute power corrupts absolutely… and once you get a taste historically people want more…
Seizing the means and fantasizing about a functional democratic version of communism in the workplace is absurd…
The real goal should be to regulate the wage gap. Because the top won’t voluntarily shrink the wage gaps laws need to be in place or bargained for that set a limit to the gap between the top and bottom… i.e. the CEO can only ever make 30% more per year than the lowest paid employee in their business. That way when the business is more successful everyone is brought up. There is recognition that various roles have more or less responsibility (and should be compensated as such) but everyone in the org benefits equally when the org does better…
I mean under that same logic capitalism is always going to be corrupt because at its core it concentrates wealth and thus power at the top in the hands of a few. I’d rather at least try a way of organizing that puts the power in the hands of the people. No matter how much you try to regulate capitalism the rich will always try to gain more wealth and power.
I mean… I’m not anti Union… have lived and worked in TX and CA… TX is as anti union as anywhere and it sucks because of it.
I’m anti corrupt unions, anti blind faith in “unions”, I’m anti overly simplistic internet bullshit rhetoric that sounds good in a vacuum but isn’t helpful in the world we live in…
But you do you Boo… nothing much our internet discourse here will accomplish other than both of us being annoyed and feeling morally superior to the other for no reason. 🍻
I’m anti corrupt unions, anti blind faith in “unions”, I’m anti overly simplistic internet bullshit rhetoric that sounds good in a vacuum but isn’t helpful in the world we live in…
We agree on all those points, even if you're implying that my position is "overly simplistic internet bullshit rhetoric that sounds good in a vacuum but isn't helpful in the world we live in."
One way to make sure that no unions are corrupt is certainly to have no unions at all, but I highly doubt that that would reduce overall corruption in business. I believe it is better to have strong unions first, and address all corruption, wherever it hides, than to abandon unions and kneecap their ability to fight corruption in ownership. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
And you’re right. Elimination of unions across the board would absolutely not lead to a positive outcome.
I’ve just become cynical and disillusioned with society and that leaks out sometimes… but you’re right, we should not let perfect be the enemy of good. 🍻
Understanding what conditions lead to business unionism, in which the people at the top of the union no longer represent the rank and file members, is a vital part of the current labor movement. Every other post you have made in this thread lack any nuance whatsoever.
Rank and file union members need a militant approach to business owners. Being apart of a union isn’t just paying dues and expecting other people will take care of it. No full time union staff should take home more than the average union member wage, keep their skin in the game and give them a reason to fight. Unions power doesn’t come from a leaders ability to negotiate with the bosses, it is in fact the opposite, unions leadership ability to negotiate comes from the power of the rank and file members.
And they’re engaging in one of my favorite logical pretzels: presenting their ignorance as proof in and of itself that their opponents are ignorant. “I don’t know what your plan is, which means you don’t have one!”
I think they also referenced Animal Farm, a book written by a socialist.
I agree… unregulated capitalism will always be corrupt. We’re seeing that now…
But again… you literally can’t place power in the hands of the people because someone (or a small cabal) will always rise to the top and assume control and we end up in the same spot under a different name…
If you looks at history “regulated” capitalism eventually deregulates because it’s in the interests of the rich to do so and even “regulated” capitalism has exploited the global south for decades and decades. I reject your idea that a few will always rise to the top and be malicious with the power, but even saying that’s true how is that any worse than the current state? I would rather at least try to find a new way to do things than resigning the world to having this be its peak where millions are hungry and destitute.
Yes, we've already seen that in every version of "owners taking advantage of labor" from feudalism to capitalism has tended to produce corrupt people at the top. It's kind of built into that kind of system. People are incorrectly assuming that changing the fundamental system to "labor produces and is compensated for it" will experience the same corruption. Maybe it will, if corrupt people gain ownership of that system, and take it back to "owners taking advantage of labor."
But how about we fucking give it a try and see what happens? You're right; it can't be worse than what we already have.
Management of labor resources is labor. So is accounting, and marketing, and training. Ownership is not labor. Stifling collective bargaining serves the purposes of owners by ensuring that more of the compensation for work product is taken away from those who labor and given to those who own.
Everyone forgets that things like leadership and management provide value, and deserve fair compensation. Simple ownership can provide some value, if the owner(s) are putting real capital at real risk in order to operate a business which creates a product or service.
For large companies, there is no real risk. They regularly get bailed out by government (i.e., taxpayers, all of us). "Privatize rewards, socialize risk," you know.
Owners ultimately determine the direction of the business, and the compensation of all labor. When executives have giant compensation packages, where a huge proportion of that compensation is in the form of company stock - more ownership - and they're protected by giant golden parachutes, so that they get a big cash out even if they fail miserably, those owners take on no risk whatsoever. Executive ownership inappropriately pits labor (that which adds value but does not have control) and ownership (that which does not add value, but does have control) against one another, in the same person, high on the power ladder of a company. Executive owners are incentivized to serve the purposes of the ownership portion of their roles, because that is what brings them personally more wealth.
Not only should "regular" labor see a greater share of compensation, the amount that anyone is compensated with company stock should be limited to a very small fraction of their overall compensation amount. If you want to add a stock incentive to someone's compensation, it should really be in the form of options.
the amount that anyone is compensated with company stock should be limited to a very small fraction of their overall compensation amount.
I don’t understand. Why? Wouldn’t more stock options to regular workers be a form of seizing the means of production? Always sounded like a good idea to me.
Let's first clear up the difference between a stock option and a stock grant (in the US).
A stock grant is "Here's some stock, you own it." It is taxed as income at the price it has when you take full ownership of it. Many employee stock plans also include a vesting schedule, where you have the stock, can vote with it, and receive dividends on it - but you cannot sell it until it vests. In that case, you would pay taxes on its price when it vests.
Stock options, on the other hand, are the ability to buy the given stock at the price it had when you were issued the option. You pay no taxes upon receiving an option, you pay no taxes when you exercise the option (choose to buy the stock at the option price). You do pay taxes on the profit made between the price at purchase and the sale price, as with any stock trade. Options can also expire, and if you don't exercise them before they expire, they are gone.
For regular people, you would do a trade which exercises and sells your options at the same time. Option price $5, current price $10, exercise and sell, and you have $5 cash. This requires no outlay of funds from you. It is also possible to just exercise the option and the hold the stock, which has a tax benefit if you hold it longer than a year, when it is taxed not as income, but at the lower capital gains rate. But regular people don't have the liquid cash to be able to lock up for a year like that.
Anyway, the amount of stock grants that are given to regular workers are an absolute pittance compared to what is given to executives. There is no practical way to wrest corporate power away from primary shareholders by increasing the amount of stock granted to employees - especially since the primary shareholders are usually the CEO and board members, or some capital organization (venture capital, holding company, what have you). The primary shareholders would never let that happen. Even if they would, employees who need that wealth to live right now are far more likely to just sell their stock grants when they vest and pay off loans and bills, do home/car repairs, maybe go on a short vacation. They're not going to hold the stock and wield their ownership votes - which are far too few to challenge anything anyway.
I think that, for public companies, separating control of the company direction from ownership is the best choice. Shareholders (really the primary shareholder) should be able to vote on corporate board members and executive committee roles. And that's it. The board and executive committee should have control over the company's direction without being primary shareholders.
Just so you know. This idea is literally the same idea the evil guys have in the book 1984. They convince the main character that revolutions never make anything better, they only change who is in charge, and so there is no reason for anyone to change the dystopian system they have created.
I find it funny that the protagonist’s arc peaks at him realizing (what he already knew) that the one thing that will free people is the lower class learning class consciousness but somehow* it’s the big gobbunism bad book.
People don’t want to accept that Orwell was a socialist. Probably because of Animal Farm. Being disillusioned with the Soviets didn’t make him less of a socialist.
And the bosses have no vested interest selling this idea to you. Corporate media has no vested interest feeding this narrative to you. Worker owned co-ops are a thing, and seizure from a corporation can be successful.
sure sure seize it, then who’s gonna manage it afterwards
The people the workers choose to be managers?
how much will they get paid, more, less, the same, for what sort of responsibility
They will be paid by what the workers and the individual agree is fair?
who determines that
The workers…
do managers count as much as front line assembly staff, do they have to work more or less.
I feel like all of that is hard to apply to every situation… the whole point is that labour will able to come to a consensus about all of these organizational theoreticals you’ve erected.
later the pigs become the man and the man becomes the pigs. seize it, we’ll all be back here in a hundred years telling people to seize it from you.
Lol, are you saying that certain people are inherently the management and owner class? And after a hundred years of a system with a completely different organizational hierarchy, they should somehow still inherently perceive themselves as a higher class?
Do you hold the same insane opinions about other political hierarchies. Do you think there are like a group of deposed Royals that people are just aching to put back on thrones?
Believe it or not, there’s actually a lot of books about all of those things, and even better, they aren’t fantasy books used by North American and other capitalist schools to make young kids think communism is bad and drive them to inaction.
The one time I worked at a place with a union they won $25/hr wages. 3 months later I didn’t have a job because the place went bankrupt and I was making $0/hr
Spent about an hour genuinely researching your claims through every news and government entity I could find, including bankruptcy court docs. Couldn’t find a single hit. I’m doubtful of your claims.
It’s pretty wild to me that healthcare workers would only earn $5 more per hour than McDonald’s workers.
It’s also wild that the $30,000,000,000.00 that the UPS drivers are splitting, would have only gone to a few incredibly wealthy people, had the workers not made a stand.
They unfortunately didn’t fight to end the two tier system for part time workers, which is why your math is off. The part time employees aren’t very engaged with the union and there was/is little attempt from the union the reach out to that section of their members to educate and involve them.
The union leadership has a vested interest in selling that they got an amazing deal, but this was a huge failure to fight over. Two teir pay is used by the owners to ensure their employees aren’t a united front.
Let’s not get too caught up on comparisons, everyone deserves a living wage. McDonald’s is a job just as much as healthcare work is, an hour of your life takes just as much of your time no matter where you work. The big question to me is why this minimum wage isn’t being applied across all industries
Nobody is saying it’s not a job. You’re required to be there and commit your time for both industries. But the effort required to get a nursing job is magnitudes greater than the effort to get a McDonald’s job, and the pay should reflect that. $5 an hour more isn’t enough to justify all the hoops a nurse has to jump through to get the job, and the ridiculous shit (sometimes literally) they have to deal with. Some other commenters pointed out that the $25 is for anyone who works in a hospital, not necessarily for healthcare workers in the traditional sense, which makes more sense.
You’re latching onto the examples meant to illustrate a point, instead of understanding the overall message. And no, they wouldn’t necessarily be making more. EMTs are notoriously underpaid. Since it still hasn’t been clear to you, I’ll try to spell it out plainly: Working at a hospital in the healthcare industry is orders of magnitude harder than working at a fast food restaurant, and I don’t think $5 more per hour reflects that reality.
It’s harder because you have people saying “well at least you’re doing what you love, caring for people” as if it justifies making their job more shitty.
How is making cafeteria food caring for people? Why do they deserve more than $25 an hour when people doing the same work in a fast food restaurant get $5 less?
This reminds me of the “heroes work here” signs as if the people washing the linens were heroes.
I have a kid who enjoys their school food because people there care. Fuck anyone actively denying that my kid actually receives a benefit from that service and from people actually caring about doing their job well.
You’re hung up on individual positions, so let’s use the two I mentioned. I looked up EMT Salary Central California: Average annual salary is $39,152. Divided by 52 weeks, divided by 40 hours in a work week is $18.82 an hour.
Now these new laws will almost double the income for fast food workers, but give EMTs and Phlebotomists a far smaller increase for work that is more stressful, more dangerous, and requires more training. Why should their equivalent income go down proportionately?
I think you’re maybe reading what I’m saying as “fast food workers are getting too much”, but what I’m really saying is “healthcare workers aren’t getting enough”.
We’re already in a healthcare worker crisis. What do you think is going to happen when they can just quit their stressful, dangerous job, and go work at McDonald’s, making $2 more an hour than they were before? There’s going to be an even bigger shortage. Sure, you’re probably going to counter with “well then the market will demand their pay goes up!”. But that’s what this whole post is about. Right? The workers getting their fair value. I don’t think the healthcare workers are getting their fair value, and I think it has the potential to cause an even worse shortage of healthcare workers. Sure, it’ll probably be temporary, but how does that help anyone affected by it during the crisis?
Edited for a bunch of mobile phone typos and formatting.
I know what you’re saying. Maybe you just have a lot more faith in hospitals and the free market than I do. You’re making an assumption that the hospitals are going to voluntarily give them proportionate raises above the new minimums. I don’t think that’s what’s going to happen. They’re going to get bumped up to the new minimum until market factors force them to go higher, and the industry and employees will suffer until that all shakes down. Anyways, it’s sending a message that saving someone’s life in a crisis on a daily basis is only worth 25% more money than running a cash register. Perhaps you agree with that. I don’t. We’re both entitled to our individual perspectives on this subject.
Honestly at this point, I feel like $25 should be the minimum wage. Because let’s be honest, 7:25 might as well be slavery with how much it can buy you.
I feel like we need to get inflation under control and prices back to reasonable, rather than making sweeping pay changes across all industries, while prices soar, and our currency valuation falls. Changes that are too drastic and far-reaching can cause the entire economy to collapse and our currency to falter.
I’ve worked food service, retail, office work, and currently I’m a janitor. Of these office work was the least demanding. The most demanding, definitely retail.
At this point a worker Bill of Rights for retail workers needs to at bare minimum not only include pay being triple, but workers absolutely need the right to self-defense from an unruly customer. Main reason don’t work retail is because a drunk asshole got me fired by calling up corporate because I ask him multiple times to leave the store instead of hearing out his crazy rant about how flat the Earth was. To make matters worse it was closing time, so if I hadn’t had let him out, I would have been fired for not escorting him out of the store. Making it a true damned if you do damned if you don’t.
Personally all the office work was easier, I prefer being a janitor because I don’t have to sit and stay in one place, I am autistic and I have attention deficit disorder, I can’t sit in one place for too long it drives me crazy both physically and mentally.
I remember back when the fight for 15 first started, I had plenty of people on Facebook that were quick to point out that EMT workers only made 15 an hour, and that how Ludacris it was that fast food workers would want to be paid that much and claimed you wouldn’t have EMTs anymore because they would all go flip burgers.
Missing the point that if 15 is so low it is what fast food workers would need to cover their expenses and nothing more, and maybe EMTs need a raise of Their Own.
I quickly learned a slogan that I would give these people that, just absolutely, I am a big fan of, and that slogan is. We all do better, when we all do better
I elaborated on this and even specifically included EMTs much further down in the comment chain. To summarize it, I don’t think this is doing enough for healthcare workers, especially those doing actual healthcare work, like phlebotomists and EMTs.
It’s pretty wild to me that healthcare workers would only earn $5 more per hour than McDonald’s workers.
A lot of people would look at that statement and think that fast food workers are going to be overpaid here in CA, but in reality, both groups were being severely underpaid and to a degree healthcare workers still are way behind what they should be earning considering the massive windfalls that for-profit healthcare providers are raking in. Billions to the top, peanuts for the rest.
I’m not sure how to overcome those hurtles. But check out the SEIU website. That’s the union that organized the justice for janitors movement. I know that they’re currently working on unionizing other marginalized employees across the country (like adjunct faculty). I’m sure there are resources on their website.
Thanks, because I am in North Carolina and the labor situation down here is terrible.
That said my supervisor in coworkers are pretty cool, I’m pretty sure that if we lived in a different state we would already be in a union. I’m on a first name basis with my supervisor, and you know I’ve rubbed out those with her and her people enough times to know that basically everything that goes tits up around here is the fault of corporation, heck, my boss is boss is pretty much admitted during one meeting that the only reason he doesn’t have it bigger budget or a company card is because he’s pretty sure he’s not the right color to get it.
Basically almost every job I have worked in this state, which is the only state I’ve ever worked in, with the exception of the job I have now. Had this whole seminar about how we should never trust Union people and even threaten penalizing employees who speak of such things. Which I’m sure is not legal.
I have been asked this several times, I need time I have asked why people seem to think that moving is free.
It isn’t that I’ve just never considered the possibility that I could get up and move to a different state, it’s the fact that I have the support network here in my home state that I would not have anywhere else, and that support network is the only reason I’m not on the streets.
Crothal took over the housekeeping department in the hospital that I work at. The difference in how clean the place was before and after they took over is night and day, and not in a good way.
Crothal is all about theater. As long as it looks like someone is cleaning, that’s good enough for them
Where I work now, Big Lots, is the greatest example of a company that needs a union I have ever seen. However in the less than 6 months I’ve been there the staff has almost entirely changed and we’ve gone from about 15 employees to about 8. It’s the worst corporate nonsense, the worst pay, the worst hours, the worst benefits, the worst recognition, and the worst job in general I’ve ever fucking had by a MASSIVE margin, so naturally it forces employees to watch the strongest anti union video I’ve ever bore witness to in my life. I would love to start a union here, but by the time I even talked to everyone half of them will have quit already.
Bro I’m barely hanging on. I can’t pay my bills anymore, I can barely afford to eat, I have zero energy and I’m depressed constantly. I have easily put out hundreds of applications on Indeed in the past few months and had no luck finding anything close to decent at all, I get a few calls here and there but the jobs are always wild as fuck, like the Amazon company that called me yesterday that wanted me to only work Saturday and Sunday for 12 hours each day. I have honestly considered pan handling as I know I would legitimately make ten fold what I’m making for 1% of the effort, but primarily these days I just think about ending it all.
I used to make good money and threw it all away due to stress. Big fucking idiot I am had no idea what small stress I was trading in was going to be replaced by the biggest stress and the lowest points of my life.
You can also look at other countries that have been through all of this already. For example Austria. Now in 2023 nobody would ever dare to say that a Union is a bad thing.
There is a tech union :) Unions and pro-union movements have been growing a lot in major tech companies in recent years and they have already had significant achievements in improving workers’ conditions. If you would like to join don’t hesitate to check out CODE-CWA and remember the most important thing is to start building support for unions among your coworkers!
If you have to go back to someone who disappeared (and probably died) in 1975 for an example of why unions are corrupt, I don’t think you have much of an argument.
Hoffa and Taylor have chosen to deliberately ignore the wishes of UPS Teamsters and side with the company against their own members, despite significant portions of the UPS Teamsters who want to take the fight to the company. In June, 90 percent of UPS and UPS Freight Teamsters voted to authorize a strike, and now a majority of UPSers have voted down both Teamsters contracts. Hoffa and Taylor don’t care.
“Here’s proof that his year’s organized labor uprising is working:”
The next few paragraphs are in yellow:
"340,000 UPS workers won $30 BILLION in raises, more time off. and more full-time jobs after threatening to strike.
"Writers beat the greedy Hollywood CEO’s replacing them with AI and won increased residuals, healthcare, and pension contributions.
"Half a million Fast Food Workers in CA won a $20 minimum wage and a seat at the table determining future wages, benefits and working conditions.
“Half a million California Health Care Workers won a $25 an hour minimum wage.”
The final paragraph is in white again:
“Unions work. You can bank on it.”
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It’s not evenly distributed, but it’s pretty well distributed. Average UPS drivers will make 49$/h (roughly 100k a year), and up to 170k a year on the higher end.
The workers are the union and the union only works if the workers participate. You should encourage your partner to get with her coworkers and put some pressure on whoever is in leadership to get contract negotiations started. It all starts with a conversation with her coworkers.
I feel like part of this needs to address the common claim that the businesses in question will go bankrupt as a result of the increases in pay for labor.
It’s great that unions increase pay. But that hasn’t been the argument I’ve heard against unions. It’s that increasing the pay will tank the company and everyone would shortly be out of work. Which I don’t believe at all, but that’s the common argument against unions
I can’t think of a quick indisputable rebuttal to that claim, like I could say the companies have paid higher wages in the past relative to the value of the dollar and stayed in business, but there are a lot of factors involved that would need examining. But like another comment said risk is inherent in any business, if your business can’t succeed with these wages another company will fill your place. If no company can succeed with pay rates and benefits that are bare minimum for living then there is a root aspect of this setup that needs to change.
One thing we could do is look at companies that have unionized or increased wages and benefits for workers and were successful as a business afterwards. I don’t know any specific companies off-hand that are good examples, but there are probably some that could be mentioned if people doubt the possibility.
In reality won’t these costs just be passed on to the consumer because there is absolutely no chance corps are going to stop worrying about shareholders and profits above all? I’m all for unions and people making more but it all seems like a waste if the cost of these changes just translates to more expensive everything.
You think corpos could sell you a burger for $8 but are only charging $6 out of the goodness of their hearts?
Companies always have charged and always will charge as much as consumers are willing to pay. If consumers won’t pay enough to keep them profitable, they go out of business.
The whole concept of “passing on costs to consumers” is just a psychological ploy tricking you into accepting higher prices. If we don’t accept higher prices, they won’t charge higher prices.
If enough people believe that higher wages = higher prices, then it will become so. In fact it likely already has become so.
But higher wages COULD = lower profits/exec salaries/stock buybacks etc. If we refuse to pay higher prices. Or if there’s nowhere else to make up the costs, they go out of business. Capitalism baby!
