General Politics Thread

Wages themselves are a little, but not significantly higher in the Netherlands compared to the US. (What really skews the average is that our mandatory minimum wage is significantly higher than in the US)

But our subsidized healthcare and robust (though threatened) wellfare programmes take the edge of.

The main reason why workers don't notice the reduction in pay, though, is that since it's spread out over all workers, the 'union dues' can be a looooot lower than in the US.

Edited by Robrecht on Sep 13th 2019 at 3:27:39 PM

Again you’re not really describing a solution, just telling us things are good somewhere else. Subsidies for unions and sudden massive safety net reform isn’t really a realistic option in the US, but incentives for memberships is.

Edited by archonspeaks on Sep 13th 2019 at 6:31:16 AM

You do realise that's even worse? If you tell me that your mandatory minimum wage is far greater than in the US then more the reason for people with low wages to not accept a union membership if it chips away at their already low pay.

Yes... Yes I do realize that. Hence why I said the solution to the problems for unions in the US are going to have to come from labour law reform.

Robrecth, what we are trying to say is that you need both short term and long term solutions to bring this problem to an end. Giving incentives to the union members is not meant to be a permanent thing, but a way to strengthen unions so that they can, in time, get legislation done.

I feel at this point that it’s worth noting that we’re not only talking about the US, everything I’ve mentioned is about the UK, this isn’t a purely American problem.

I’ll also point out that the incentives in question don’t have to be SAG-style favoritism and corruption.

Experience shows that it will quickly become a permanent thing once union members are expected to give those incentives up and refuse.

That's what gets me about this. Yes, I know I'm not offering a short term solution. That's because the labour situation in the US is so beyond fucked up that there is no fixing it in the short term.

I'm not arguing against giving incentives to union members because it's a solution that goes against my preferences or because I think it's a bad solution. I'm arguing against it because it's ultimately not a solution at all.

People who join a union because they're bribed into it are not the kind of people you actually want in a union.

It's a clever idea in theory, if you assume that the people who join the union because they just want the incentives rather than being interested in fighting for the cause will still support fighting for the cause and won't overrule the ideological core (huh, guess it is about ideological purity to some extent) of the union when having to choose between general benefits for workers or special benefits for themselves.

In practice, though, any attempt to do this has always led to the most cut-throat of the new union members outnumbering, outvoting and frequently ousting the original idealists and then using the power of the union to get special privileges for themselves while hanging the common worker, union and non-union alike, out to dry.

And may Thatcher rot in hell for that.

Edited by Robrecht on Sep 13th 2019 at 4:23:23 PM

Are you really arguing “well, we can’t let just anyone in”?

Unions are for everyone. That’s the whole point. We can’t restrict membership to the most motivated or most ideologically pure, or that would kind of defeat the exercise.

I’ll also point out that lots of unions have offered benefits like telecom discounts, banking help, and things like that in the US and they haven’t magically collapsed into a vortex of greed yet.

If we’re going for more radical solutions, I think the US might benefit from the European-style sectoral bargaining scheme. Unions in the US are often way too divided to be effective on the national scale.

Edited by archonspeaks on Sep 13th 2019 at 7:35:22 AM

No. What I'm saying is that if your recruitment strategy hinges on enticing workers who wouldn't otherwise join with special benefits, you're going to end up with a disproportionate number of new members who only joined for the special benefits.

Which means that if those benefits, for whatever reason, go away, so do those new members. And that gives unions a vested interest in keeping those benefits around, even if it harms workers in general.

It's funny you mentioned telecom discounts specifically, because did you know that in order to keep its sweet deal with AT&T for the Union Plus package, the AFL-CIO needs to occasionally throw telecommunications workers under the bus? AT&T's already shitty record when it comes to labour rights and unions has become worse since Union Plus signed its discount deal with them.

Similarly for their mortgage deal with Wells Fargo and their credit card deal with Mastercard, the workers at those companies suffer from reduced negotiating power, since AFL-CIO is terrified that those companies will cancel their Union Plus agreements.

And despite all this AFL-CIO affiliated unions in the affected sectors are having a hard time finding new members. Sorry... Let me rephrase that... And because of all this AFL-CIO affiliated unions in the affected sectors are having a hard time finding new members. Telecom workers can usually get an equally appealing deal to the ones unions offers directly from their employers and it won't cost them union dues, while ideologically motivated workers in the telecom are disgusted at the unions for bending the knee on labour issues in their sector to gain benefits for workers outside their sector unrelated to actual labour issues.

Now... Reduced cost or free legal aid in labour disputes is a good benefit for union membership. But that's because that already falls under the purview of union activity. That's not a special benefit, that's simply one of those things that unions do outside of labour negotiations that many people aren't aware of.

Co-op life- and disability insurances are another good benefit that is well within the purview of what unions do.

'Banking help' is rather a broad term, since it includes the above examples of unions selling for-profit mortgages and loans, which is 'ugh no', but when it means assisting union members with sorting out their finances and applying for appropriate grants and subsidies, that's another good union member benefit.

And now I know you might be tempted to say 'Aha! So there are benefits specific to union membership you support! You were just being obstinate and putting ideological purity over realism!'

To which I would respond: Mutual assistance (in labour related issues) is the core of what unions are. I oppose benefits of the 'join now and get this free toaster!' kind, introduced for the purpose of enticing new members and paid for, inevitably, with a loss of bargaining power. I do not oppose benefits of union membership that are inherent benefits of union membership.

wait so is your problem the free toaster stuff (which doesn’t inherently reduce bargaining power, not every union touches on every aspect of society, a will writing service for truckers doesn’t reduce their power) or any kind of gatekept benefits beyond voting rights?

I’m not a massive fan of the free toaster stuff on much more practical grounds, people aren’t going to pay monthly dues for a free toaster, they’ll pay monthly dues for a practical workplace benefit, but that needs to be something other than the free toaster.

I actually need to bring this up internally within my union, we’re both failing to gatekeep and focusing to heavily on free toasters, I suspect that it’s harming our numbers.

Those mental gymnastics are pretty impressive.

You don’t get to decide what’s a benefit and what’s not. You’ve moved the goalposts to say that you’re actually okay with “good” benefits, but they’re still benefits. That’s what we’ve been talking about the whole time. Free toasters for members aren’t practical, but there aren’t lots of incentives you can offer people that are compatible with the mission of a union, and there are plenty of benefits that don’t make a difference either way. For example, my union has a daycare for members.

I also find the whole argument that people who join a union for any reason other than a moral one weaken the union as a whole to be pretty gross. There are all kinds of reasons to join a union, you’re not weakening it by joining out of self interest.

Edited by archonspeaks on Sep 14th 2019 at 6:31:07 AM

As Silasw said, if you only allowed people who are selfless to join the union, you're gonna struggle to fill a small meeting room. Which doesn't help the union achieve objectives, since the key part of a union's power is strength in numbers.

Edited by M84 on Sep 14th 2019 at 9:39:47 PM

We must think borrowing military strategy.

If given the choice between Quantity and Quality, you prefer to have the former than the latter. Why? Because Quality can be worked in time; whereas Quantity is much more critical when you work with small numbers.

Increases it, in fact. Which is why stuff like that's a longstanding part of the mutual assistance umbrella that unions are a part of.

Yes, and a daycare is very much labour related.

I won't do the whole 'oh, but my definition is...' bullshit, because I loathe that myself, but I will point out that I feel I've done enough to make it clear that I've been talking about special benefits that fall outside of the normal benefits inherent in union membership (like having a direct voice in votes and negotiations and the multitude of mutual assistance projects that unions are built around that people who think of unions as just a 'getting me better wages' machine don't realize are part of it) from the start.

Then I'm glad that I didn't make that argument at all.

Edited by Robrecht on Sep 14th 2019 at 5:22:23 PM

I mean, at this point you’re just quibbling over what exactly a “benefit” is. Your argument started out as “no benefits, people should join the union because it’s the right thing to do” and now we’ve gotten to “childcare and notary services aren’t actually benefits so those are fine”.

I think we’re essentially in agreement here as far as unions offering additional services and incentives to members to encourage people to sign up.

And I’ll just point out that through this entire conversation you’ve been repeatedly implying that the only good reason to join a union is a moral one.

Edited by archonspeaks on Sep 14th 2019 at 8:33:51 AM

I don't really know if that's true, because my whole point is that mutual assistance is not an additional service. It's not something unions do to attract more members, it's something they do because they're unions and it's part of what they're supposed to. That doing the things that a union is supposed to do besides negotiating for better wages and working conditions attracts more members is a plus, not a goal.

I still think providing additional services and incentives that do not fall under the union's banner of labour advocacy and worker mutual assistance to encourage people to sign up is bad.

If you say so. For my part I feel that I've repeatedly explicitly avoided saying anything about morality and only talking about the practical effect of attracting new members, who wouldn't otherwise join a union, through non-union goodies, which is that you get an influx of new members who don't care about the union, only about the goodies.

Edited by Robrecht on Sep 14th 2019 at 6:10:03 PM

See, you’re moving the goalposts again. Now all “mutual assistance” is a good benefit and not a bad one, which basically covers 95% of the services a union might offer to try and attract new members.

Fundamentally you’re not in disagreement with me at all, you just have a different characterization of unions. I’m assuming this stems from the fact that unions are in a very different place where you live than where I do.

Edited by archonspeaks on Sep 14th 2019 at 9:18:11 AM

My union pays for the will writing service, we don’t get it for free from another union, we buy it from a private company. So it there isn’t mutual assistance, that would be thing like the energy supplier collective bargaining thing (where union members signup to switch energy supplier as a group, thus meaning they can get a discounted rate because the supplier wants to get some many people signing up with it).

Also tangible workplace things could be gatekept, my workplace has arrangements in place to enable flexible working, would it be right if the union asked for members to get a better flexible working deal than non-members? I don’t even know about the legal rules around this.

I'd argue that the will writing service falls under mutual assistance more than the energy thing does. Mutual assistance, in union sense, means that workers get together through the union to arrange for stuff that reduces the (financial) burdens of their fellow workers and their families. A properly written will protects the family of a worker from getting dicked over by the company, the landlords and the state.

Pretty important for peace of mind in a job where someone could potentially die in an accident a million (metaphorical) miles from home.

Since you asked whether it would be right, I will give a purely moral judgement this time.

In my opinion: No. Holding workplace conditions hostage to union membership goes against the spirit of solidarity. Also from a practical standpoint it makes it way too easy for the bosses to sidle up to non-union workers, point at you and say 'See, they're only in it for their own gain, they don't care about you. You should never join a union.'

Legally, though? In the US and the UK (and any other country using the Anglo-Saxon system) it's totally allowed and that's no accident. Anti-union politicians have long ago discovered that few things destroy the credibility of a union faster in the eyes of a non-union worker than seeing them look out only for union members.

Indeed, I imagine that's why there's newfound support for sectorial bargaining. So unions can provide industrywide benefits and undercut the anti-union propaganda that is used to depict them as corrupt organizations that only benefit their members.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Sep 14th 2019 at 11:33:23 AM

See the vibe I’m getting from people in my workplace (at least the ones my age) isn’t that they think the union is only looking out for union members (plenty of people at open about looking out only for themselves and scabbing off the union), it’s that they think the union doesn’t have the power to look out for anyone, members or non-members.

If you think the union is incapable of actually doing anything why spend money supporting it? Younger people need to be sold on the concept of a union being able to actually do anything in the workplace.

Well, in the US at least, the main reason anyone joined the union was for increased pay. Maybe it's a cultural difference between the US and the Netherlands, but the benefits to cost ratio has been a primary recruiting pitch for American unions from the very beginning. Over here, at least, if you can't offer additional material benefits from union membership, American workers won't be interested.

That said, reform does have to begin with Federal labor law, because currently that is so stacked in favor of the employers that unions have an uphill battle restoring their membership. US labor law presumes that the primary form of labor organizing is based on the individual workplace. Some sort of organizing mechanism that can operate across workplaces would provide unions with a great deal of additional leverage. In Europe, such mechanisms take the form of wage boards, works councils, codetermination (electing members to corporate boards), and other appraoches. The common thread is providing individual workers the opportunity and an incentive to join a union even if their workplace isn't "organized", as currently defined by US law. You join the union like you might join a professional association, and recieve benefits like unemployment insurance. That's where sectarian bargaining comes in—unions negotiate not for the employees of a particular employer, but on behalf of all employees in an economic sector. This can happen at more than one level: In Sweden, negotiating goes on at a national level on certain matters that affect all employers, at the sector level, and by individual employer. Most wages are set by negotiations at all three levels. Not only do the unions gain more leverage this way, but employers have less incentive to resist union recruitment among their employees, since they will have to abide by the contract regardless. Thus, more people end up in the union.

Here in the US, it would be very challenging to pass such reforms at the national level, because of resistance from conservatives. But individual states could pull it off, starting presumably with a more libeal state like California.

Ok so... Not only is this (given that it's in the past tense) historically inaccurate, it's also not accurate to current events.

For instance in the video game industry right now, the main reason why people are organizing and unionising isn't wages (which aren't great, but also aren't main problem right now), but the terrible working conditions and the rampant culture of casual and not-so-casual sexism and homophobia at many studios.

The shitty situation vis-a-vis labour and unions in the US right now is to no small extent the result of a long process through which workers in the US have been convinced that many of the things that are, in part, matters for the unions to help solve, should instead be handled almost solely by legislation, while at the same time convincing them that the one thing that should see a lot more involvement from the legislature (labour reform) is instead solely the purview of the unions and the bosses.

(I'm not going in depth on who is to blame for that in my opinion, because that would muddy the waters if I didn't give it a ton of context that I don't have time for right now.)

No, its accurate, at least historically, but I would agree with you that this may be in large part due to public confusion regarding what unions are good at and can provide their members.