What's so horrible about unions?

[StarryNightshade]

They don't seem like horrible entities (good benefits and salaries for their workers), so why are they often demonized?

 

[Father Heathen]

One of the criticisms is that they help to retain dead weight within the workforce.

 

[StarryNightshade]

One of the criticisms is that they help to retain dead weight within the workforce.

How so?

 

[Mr Spinkles]

I have a friend who works part-time at Kroger stocking shelves. Kroger won't allow him to work full-time. But Kroger and the union require all workers to pay union dues out of their paychecks. Furthermore, get this: because he only works part-time, he is not entitled to any union benefits. So he can't work full-time, he has to pay union dues, and he doesn't get union benefits.

Sounds like a pretty corrupt system to me.

 

[StarryNightshade]

I have a friend who works part-time at Kroger stocking shelves. Kroger won't allow him to work full-time. But Kroger and the union require all workers to pay union dues out of their paychecks. Furthermore, get this: because he only works part-time, he is not entitled to any union benefits. So he can't work full-time, he has to pay union dues, and he doesn't get union benefits.

Sounds like a pretty corrupt system to me.

That does sound corrupt and awful. However, is that commonplace?

 

[Mr Spinkles]

That does sound corrupt and awful. However, is that commonplace?

I don't know.

 

[Valjean]

Union wages cut into a company's profit and flexibility. Unionized workers are less tolerant of exploitation. It's harder to cow them into accepting unsafe working conditions, mandatory or unpaid overtime or summary discharge. Often unions will demand benefits like healthcare, sick leave or vacation days. They may even want pensions -- and to a corporation a pension fund is like a steak in front of a starving dog.

Unions create a middle class. This is not just a company problem, its a national one. Like the workers on the factory floor, a middle class resists exploitation, makes demands for expensive government services, and sticks its nose into political issues that should be left behind closed doors.
Unions represent an existential threat to the Second Estate.

 

[Twilight Hue]

Hostess comes to mind. Now no one has jobs.

Aside from private union issues, its public unions that are imo much more damaging as their funding is from taxpayers to boot the bill for whatever extravagant perk or benefit comes across the table.

 

[Riverwolf]

I don't think unions as a whole are a problem; in fact, I think their existence is an amazing benefit to prevent the terrible working conditions we saw at the onset of the industrial revolution.

On the other hand, certain union groups are just as corrupt as any other money-handling group, either taking things too far to the point where the company is hurt, or just wearing the union badge while being extremely exploitative themselves.

Granted, I'm not educated on the subject very well, but based on what little I know of the situation, I think unions are in need of a reboot.

 

[Sunstone]

They don't seem like horrible entities (good benefits and salaries for their workers), so why are they often demonized?

Demonizing unions is a way for corporations to gain the upper hand over them. It is true that many unions are corrupt and that even uncorrupted unions have made mistakes. But no one else is going to so effectively represent the interests of the middle class in this society. To abolish unions is to decimate the middle class.

 

[Magic Man]

Hostess comes to mind. Now no one has jobs.

Except that wasn't the union's fault. Of course they were blamed, because it's all part of the demonization mentioned in the OP, but it was the fault of those running the company.

Aside from private union issues, its public unions that are imo much more damaging as their funding is from taxpayers to boot the bill for whatever extravagant perk or benefit comes across the table.

Only if you assume there are extravagant perks or benefits that come across the table, which is usually not the case.

As has been said, unions aren't perfect; some are probably more bad than good, but overall they're very important for a strong middle class. They're being reduced in power and number all the time, though, thanks to misinformation that leads to assumptions like those made in Nowhere Man's post here.

 

[Flankerl]

US trade unions seem to be rather weird and corrupt. On top of that USamericans seem to love corporations and actually tend to trust them.


In germany its different. But then again they work different here. Trade unions in Germany - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Secret Chief]

They don't seem like horrible entities (good benefits and salaries for their workers), so why are they often demonized?

Because it is a type of war. The demonisation is by right wing media.

 

[Dirty Penguin]

Much of the rights we benefit from today in the "Right To Work" states come from what was set forth by unions. There are some pros abd cons to unions and being in a union.....but I find RTW states worse.

 

[Alceste]

I was in a union once. I hated having benefits for seasonal work, making twenty bucks an hour, being paid time and a half for overtime, getting a free breakfast and lunch, and dinner if we worked more than 16 hours, and a pension, and a powerful organization ready to back me up if an employer tried too stiff me.

Just kidding. That part was awesome. There were things that sucked, though. The organization I belonged to was dominated by a couple of families who didn't want to share, and seniority was king, which made it hard for me to advance. Also, they secretly conspired behind closed doors to blacklist me because I don't have a penis or a subordinate demeanour - an unacceptable combination of traits, apparently.

In short, my union job was awesome, but my union brothers were entitled, misogynistic pieces of ****. If I had been the same person then as I am now, I would have taken the union over and fixed that. At that time, I underestimated my own competence and ambition.

 

[dust1n]

Unions are susceptible to corruption like states, organizations, companies, small businesses, churches, non-profits and individuals?

 

[Alceste]

Unions are susceptible to corruption like states, organizations, companies, small businesses, churches, non-profits and individuals?

Exactly. In my case, corruption was definitely the problem, not the union. I've worked on non-union shows and know for a fact the union shows are a better deal for workers.

 

[Vouthon]

They don't seem like horrible entities (good benefits and salaries for their workers), so why are they often demonized?

Take a course in 1970s British history and you'll see why.

There were literally unburied bodies left lying on the street because of radical trade union activism. So many businesses were ruined and closed down due to strikes that people could not even bury their loved ones.

Trade Unions are important vehicles through which workers can demand fairer wages, better working conditions and have a voice in society.

Authoritarian regimes, in particular, hate the independence of unions. When Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, through the popular vote, one of the first steps he took to abolish dissent in this parliamentary democracy and move it towards the terrifying totalitarian, police state it was fated to become, was to abolish the trade unions and the May Day holiday.

He created in its place a government-controlled German Labour Front. It did do something to improve working standards and through the Kraft Durch Freude programme the Nazi Party gave all working Germans free holidays, subsidised by the state to places such as the Canary islands. However this was merely a "front" (no pun intended) veiling the fact that by making trade unions illegal, Hitler had taken away the rights, freedoms and voice of working Germans; subordinating everything to the state and ultimately to himself as Fuhrer of the German Reich.

Nevertheless trade unionism, when taken to the extreme as in the 1970s in the UK, can become hijacked by anarchists and troublemakers with agitation for revolutionary unrest. This can have a catastrophic impact upon business and public stability.

So it is a two-edged sword. When given too much power trade unions can be very divisive forces. When given no power or visibility at all, the ordinary peoples' voice is taken away.

The Polish trade union Solidarity effectively brought down communist rule in Poland in the 1980s, leading to the first free election (kind of) in 1989. It was the first non–communist part controlled trade union in any Warsaw Pact country. By late 1981 it had 9.5 million members. This was the first domino that led to the collapse of the entire Soviet dictatorship in Eastern Europe and Russia. From this example, we can easily see why Hitler feared trade unions and why they serve an important role in society.

 

[dust1n]

Exactly. In my case, corruption was definitely the problem, not the union. I've worked on non-union shows and know for a fact the union shows are a better deal for workers.

Indeed. There is a big difference between the idea and myriad of ways it's implemented.

 

[Dirty Penguin]

Is there any correlation between right to work states and income inequality vs. Unions and income inequality?