Sadly, with recent events, all I can think about with this is how Linus Sebastion would go on the WAN Show and say things like, "You don't need a union unless you have bad management, and I never want my employees to need a union."
this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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The counter statement is that a union is insurance for when good management goes bad.
I mean, a union is simply a way for workers to organize independently from management. While it's useful for countering bad management and things like that, that's not its only purpose. And anyone saying that it is either doesn't know as much about unions as they think or is anti-union while trying not to say as much directly.
Yes of course. I was meaning in terms as a direct response to that pretty dumb statement from Linus.
It also gives a voice to everyone and establishes a single bargain. If you have 50 employees and you’re negotiating with each of them separately how sure are you that you’re really being fair to all of them and not having any biases impacting your treatments? How sure are you that they agree? If you agree with the union about compensation and conditions of that compensation you know it’s fairer. If every management action has a steward as a witness you know that someone else who knows the rules you agreed to will speak up if you break them. You know that you aren’t about to get hit with an accusation of misconduct behind closed doors unless the steward agrees you misbehaved.
And as you say there’s security against management changing. You get someone with a union job with a pension and it’s hard for them to willingly leave. It’s a level of security that you know you aren’t getting elsewhere even if you’d be promoted.
I do actually agree with his initial statement, which was “if my workers need a union to stay safe, I will consider it a personal failure.”
…absolutely agreed. His conclusion of that his workers shouldn’t need one though, is the problem. They should have one. However, if the union needs to step in because he’s being a dick, then he has failed indeed. Guess it was a good thing they had a union though, right? Oh wait…
Honestly it's seeming like he might have failed then.
We should have realized when he started dropping hard "R"s.....
My favorite counter is that unions aren't only used as protection against management. Unions democratize the workplace!
Surely shouldn't he not be afraid of his employees unionizing if he treats them well?
Hell if he treats them well and compensates them fairly a union might prove beneficial to him
If a "good boss" is being an actual good boss, the worst they should have to expect from the union is having the occasional friendly meeting with them to discuss any minor workplace concerns and contract negotiations.
The fact many "good bosses" immediately start sprewing hell and brimstone at the mention of a union hints maybe they ain't as good and benevolent as they claim to be.
I completely agree. A good boss would likely appreciate a union, because the kinds of minor concerns that might be raised at a meeting are the kinds of things that individuals wouldn't mention because it's not worth the stress to flag it - even under a good boss who you trust would take even minor concerns seriously, it still costs time and brain energy to raise a thing, and the union being the middle man between the boss and the worker can be a boon in terms of collating concerns.
Not least of all because one of the concerns may be about a thing that is genuinely too trivial to make a thing of, if it's only affecting one person. A union has the ability to go "hey, so this is only a small thing but a few people have mentioned it to us and we went around asking and it does seem quite widespread"
That's like saying "You don't need democracy unless you have a bad king, and I never want my subjects to need democracy."
I always found that funny. And then he was like, IF YOU THINK THE UNION IS A BLACK AND WHITE QUESTION YOU ARE AN IDIOT. :D :D.
See how stale that comment has become with the recent news?
He has a point.
The problem is that because of Capitalism, there is no such thing as good management.
Yes, all the stories coming out about LMG should have the workers thinking about unionizing, as a minimum.
This is terrible programming advice.
Blasphemy! Unions are just algebraic data types without any guardrails. If the programmer misuses them, that's their own fault for b$:, 9^\⊂ƒ~>[→ZzF™×#
Segmentation fault (core dumped)
I never knew my Set Theory professor was so against workers' rights!
My C++ teacher taught me to be against unions. He made everything class based instead.
How reckless, encouraging inheritance like that. My ~~personal demon~~ college tutor instructed me on the ways of Malbolge. In the end, life is just a list of self-modifying instructions.
I laughed at that, thank you!
When I worked at Best Buy I attended two full paid meetings about the horrors of unions when the Obama administration made it easier to create a union.
They even cancelled all our in home jobs one day for an anti union meeting
Holy crap I don't know who at Best Buy wrote all those presentations but the language they used was a master class in brainwashing. I probably would be a flat earther of they spent enough time crafting their wording 😄
I lot of companies have anti-union information when you do training.
Home Depot is another.
Yeah Union Busting, it's a major practice in most publicly traded companies
And don't let your company fuck you without one
I read "Onions" at first and, while I didn't disagree with the sentiment, I was somewhat confused
I read unicorns.
I did the same thing, also can't disagree
hhhaaaa, Onions are good but not that good.
They might be annoying and less fun than just freewheeling without one, but when the consequences come down the line, you're going to wish you'd taken the minimal steps to be in one