Minneapolis PD Suspect Dies On Video While Handcuffed. FBI Investigating.

[Half Moon]

I've got mixed feelings on unions.

From a meta perspective, they were key to forcing businesses to correct a lot of ugliness. They also pulled a lot of folks out of poverty. From a personal perspective though, every contact I've had has felt like an exercise in obstructionism.

Probably the most memorable - we were going onsite to install equipment at a client. As me and the other tech come down the hallway their chief engineer, a short, 300 pounder, comes sprinting at us, arm outstretched, hand up, and shouting "NOOOOOoooo!". Looked like a slow mo movie scene. Now I'm thinking, is someone getting killed? What's going on? Should we seek cover? And I'm a looking around but there's no one about but me, the other tech, and a now huffing and puffing Chief Engineer.

Turns out their union contract required any outside material be carted in by union labor. By carrying our toolboxes we were creating a union beef. Chief Engineer escorted us back to the entrance so a union guy could carry our bags for us...

[blues]

Unions are a double edged sword for sure. There have been many important breakthroughs because of them...there have been many setbacks because of them.

I haven't been able to come up with a satisfactory way of addressing their pros and cons in my own mind. Seems like there should be some way to achieve balance.

[peterb]

I've got mixed feelings on unions.

From a meta perspective, they were key to forcing businesses to correct a lot of ugliness. They also pulled a lot of folks out of poverty. From a personal perspective though, every contact I've had has felt like an exercise in obstructionism.

I hear you. I worked in the auto industry in Michigan and saw some stuff that reinforced every bad stereotype of labor unions.

But I’ve also been in factories in mainland China that made me appreciate all the advances in worker health and safety that unions helped force through.

[OlongJohnson]

To paraphrase a greater mind than my own, "Bad faith kittens up everything."

[Baldanders]

Unions are a double edged sword for sure. There have been many important breakthroughs because of them...there have been many setbacks because of them.

I haven't been able to come up with a satisfactory way of addressing their pros and cons in my own mind. Seems like there should be some way to achieve balance.

I would say the same thing about corporations.

Of course, corporations have basically been able to make unions almost completely impotent, aside from public employees in a few spots, and the UAW. The best recent example would be the DeVos family astroturfing the hell out of the debate in their home state.
.
I wonder if stagnant wages are at all related?

OTOH, income disparity is typically worse in states with long standing Dem dominance at the polls.

ETA: my view on politics is "conflict is the nature of the game." I don't expect any group to act against their own interests. The problem comes when there is only one side. Labor has had to rely on corporate-friendly elitist leftists with no real connection to labor for about four decades now, while major corporations are highly organized around pushing their agendas in government, usually with no counter-voice to be seen.

The Clinton administration was the death knell of Dems being a voice for labor, IMO.

Which is why many people can only see "socialism" as a different path to our current one. The idea of any different system beyond "big business gets precisely what it wants" became a heresy in the 90s.

The destruction of all civic institutions from the 50s on has left us with a corporate-dominated milieu. There are no institutions that bring citizens together much anymore. Even churches seem to be on the way out.

[Kanye Wyoming]

Unions are a double edged sword for sure. There have been many important breakthroughs because of them...there have been many setbacks because of them.

I haven't been able to come up with a satisfactory way of addressing their pros and cons in my own mind. Seems like there should be some way to achieve balance.

I practiced management side labor law for many years. The conclusions I drew were:

It’s good for the idea of unions to exist, and therefore for the possibility of a union organizing a given workplace to exist, so that there is a deterrent against abusive treatment by management. Sort of like armed citizens being a deterrent to tyrannical government behavior.

Some unions, but they are the exception, actually are interested primarily in the welfare and advancement of their members, as opposed to just their dues or funding of the international union’s multi-employer pension fund, and understand that the employer’s success and stability and ability to adapt and compete is the ultimate guarantor of their members’ welfare.

The main problem is that unionization is the nuclear option. The law makes it extremely difficult - close to impossible absent a perfect storm - for an ensconced union to be made to go away, even 10 or 20 or 50 years after the circumstances that led to the initial organizing effort, and even after those who wanted the union are long dead or retired or have otherwise moved on.

The Wyoming solution - periodic secret ballot union retention elections, both in the public sector and private sector. This would enable an employer to demonstrate that it has learned its lesson and “turned its life around” such that the reasons for the employees initially wanting a union no longer exist. Say 10 years after the initial certification so that the union doesn’t get thrown out on its ass too soon after making the substantial investment in the organizing effort. And then every 5 years thereafter, so that the union has a greater incentive to act in the best interests of the employees and not the union.

[Baldanders]

I practiced management side labor law for many years. The conclusions I drew were:

It’s good for the idea of unions to exist, and therefore for the possibility of a union organizing a given workplace to exist, so that there is a deterrent against abusive treatment by management. Sort of like armed citizens being a deterrent to tyrannical government behavior.

Some unions, but they are the exception, actually are interested primarily in the welfare and advancement of their members, as opposed to just their dues or funding of the international union’s multi-employer pension fund, and understand that the employer’s success and stability and ability to adapt and compete is the ultimate guarantor of their members’ welfare.

The main problem is that unionization is the nuclear option. The law makes it extremely difficult - close to impossible absent a perfect storm - for an ensconced union to be made to go away, even 10 or 20 or 50 years after the circumstances that led to the initial organizing effort, and even after those who wanted the union are long dead or retired or have otherwise moved on.

The Wyoming solution - periodic secret ballot union retention elections, both in the public sector and private sector. This would enable an employer to demonstrate that it has learned its lesson and “turned its life around” such that the reasons for the employees initially wanting a union no longer exist. Say 10 years after the initial certification so that the union doesn’t get thrown out on its ass too soon after making the substantial investment in the organizing effort. And then every 5 years thereafter, so that the union has a greater incentive to act in the best interests of the employees and not the union.

My father has worked with guys in your position quite a bit in stopping unionization at two companies.

I have sympathy for your position, and if I was management, I would want a union like I want a tumor.

But if unions are just a threat against "really bad"`corporate behavior, who ends up being the voice of the labor to counterbalance the lobbying of our government by business interests? Right-to-work laws completely obliterate ANY power unions have to be a threat that way anyway, at that is a good chunk of the country.

Unions may have a point beyond being the Sword of Damocles. How to implement that well? Beats me.

[Baldanders]

So what about police unions?

Positive or negative for their members and society?

Have they helped us get to this crisis point?

[Crawls]

Want to see a Karen completely mauled? This is righteous!

That black lady was awesome. She single-handedly whooped that whole crowd of protesters with the truth.

[Totem Polar]

Unions are simple. If they are fighting the man (eg. adjuncts unionizing in universities, et al.) then they’re a help.

If they are the man (eg. requiring that every cart, bag camera, ladder, etc. be carried in by union labor—I’ve played concerts in halls where I was told not to plug in and set up my own gear—F that...) then they are a hinderance.

Simple really. Blocks against overreach, or they are the overreach. Judge on a case-by-case.

JMO.