Strikebreaker dilemma
Consider the following situation and context:
Your job involves working at a colliery. The government is about to elaborate a new law reform that the main objective is to reduce pollution and develop an eco-friendly system.
Employment at collieries is at its risk. The leader of the miner's trade union prepares a big strike in your town. Most of the miners pretend to go even though both employment and income are suspended if you participate in such strike. There is a sign in the trade union committee that says: Do not scab! Whenever you speed up or work long hours on the job, you are scabbing on the unemployed.
However, your familiar position is delicate. Your wife is already unemployed and your two kids have some issues too: One of them goes to university and will cause some costs and the other is sick, so he needs medications and health treatment. If you get kicked off from the job, your familiar economy will be devastated because they depend on you.
What can you do? Go to the strike despite the personal consequences or act as a "scab" just to provide your family an income?
I am interested in exchange some opinions or arguments on moral duties. Specifically, duty of commission vs. duty of omission
Your job involves working at a colliery. The government is about to elaborate a new law reform that the main objective is to reduce pollution and develop an eco-friendly system.
Employment at collieries is at its risk. The leader of the miner's trade union prepares a big strike in your town. Most of the miners pretend to go even though both employment and income are suspended if you participate in such strike. There is a sign in the trade union committee that says: Do not scab! Whenever you speed up or work long hours on the job, you are scabbing on the unemployed.
However, your familiar position is delicate. Your wife is already unemployed and your two kids have some issues too: One of them goes to university and will cause some costs and the other is sick, so he needs medications and health treatment. If you get kicked off from the job, your familiar economy will be devastated because they depend on you.
What can you do? Go to the strike despite the personal consequences or act as a "scab" just to provide your family an income?
I am interested in exchange some opinions or arguments on moral duties. Specifically, duty of commission vs. duty of omission
Comments (158)
In this specific case, no. The union is not able to provide incomes. It is a situation on the edge.
Unions are an essential element in a progressive and democratic society, and they are a vital protection for workers -- provided they are strong. That is why the best medium and long-term option for a worker is to support the union and the strike. Only in the short run does it make sense to go back to work and put up with crappy wages and working conditions.
A competent government could organize the development of industries to replace collieries, petroleum refineries, gas plants with sustainable industries and training programs so that workers in the carbon industries will not end up unemployed / unemployable. A competent government would want to replace tax income from closed fossil fuel industries with taxes on sustainable energy production and use.
Reality may not conform to progressive democratic ideals, of course.
In the United States, the competent government has hobbled unions with laws that make union organizing difficult. Competent governors sometimes intervene in strikes by employing the state militia to protect strike breakers (even in liberal states like Minnesota). Competent propagandists have effectively devalued unionism in the collective mind-set of many Americans. Our competent national governments have opted not to do too much about oil and coal consumption.
In the United States, see, the competent government is pretty much on the side of the capitalists.
I prefer anger to fear. But many prefer fear. I don't think it comes down to duties as much as these two emotions -- which one a person lets rule them is how they'll decide to strike or scab. Or, if I were to put it in terms of duties, I'd say there isn't even a choice. But I doubt that's surprising ;).
What's your point? Seems like more thinly veiled anti-union stuff to me.
And it's not difficult to formulate intractable moral issues. They are not as informative as folk might suppose. Usually, the solutions are ruled out by simple fiat, as at , in order to either force the intractability of the problem or to push for one answer over another.
The Quoting BC
is mostly pretence.
Which country did you have in mind as a good example?
As somebody put it, "The labor movement in the United States didn't die of neglect -- it was murdered". Murdered by laws which erected barriers to organization; murdered by very aggressive counter-union measures by capital (some of them illegal); murdered by outright state intervention to defeat strikes. Unions themselves were often enough corrupted by organized crime, which diminished their creditability.
However, organizing workers has usually been hard work, with or without an unfriendly state. The peak percentage of organized labor was 35%. Peak union membership was in 1979 at 21 million.
Quoting Banno
Workers do face difficult decisions in supporting a union drive, becoming active in the union, and in striking, especially when the employer is hostile. The risks are not a pretense. Strikes do not always succeed, and a failed strike can leave the union members broke and out in the cold.
What the union needs to hold out for is a settlement from the company. Tthey've pulled enough profits to pay the guys in the corner offices , so they can afford to pay the guys who bring up the coal. They can also afford to re-employ* the same people in their next venture.
*with a much better health insurance plan!
I agree.
That's why I thought that duty doesn't leave a choice.
You may have a family. But do you think that the other strikers don't? They're already risking exactly what the OP sets up. Some cave to fear, or selfishness, and think of their own family in the moment. It's particularly difficult because a person has these connections, and that's a struggle.
But philosophically speaking the duty is clear: the strikers are risking their families already. You should do the same. Don't blame your fellow workers who are just asking for fairness to be able to take care of their families, blame the boss for not doing what's right!
Which should point out the importance of looking at, even if I'm wrong, fear and anger.
My point was to know if "individual" choices in edge circumstances are or not plausible. I think this is a good example, because the worker is not necessarily against trade unions but his personal situation is even more complex. I already know that in some countries the rights of the workers are covered if the go to strike. If I had put such guarantees in my OP, the dilemma would be senseless.
Pretence means: an attempt to make something that is not the case appear true.
My intention was not to "pretend", and believe it or not, the case I used as a dilemma, is more common in real life than we tend to think.
I do not get why you think the dilemma itself forces you to choose one option instead of the other.
I agree.
Furthermore, your good points BC, my intention in this OP was to highlight the personal/familiar context, which tend to be sensitive. One worker could scab because of he feels at the risk he faces losing both employment and income. But his attitude is not selfish at all, because he does such act in benefit of another group: his family.
I like your point that strikes not always succeed, and that's why I guess there is a dilemma on the worker's context of this OP. What solution is most worthy to him to sacrifice?
True.
But keep in mind that the worker of the example has problems in his family: the wife is already unemployed, one kid is sick and the other goes to college. Maybe the rest of the workers are covered up thanks to the incomes of their respective families...
Has the union made reasonable demands? Is it possible for the company to meet those demands?
My position is that unions and co-workers are owed some loyalty, but not complete loyalty, and workers are under no obligation to go down with sinking ships. Your family, otoh, is owed complete loyalty, except in rare Unabomber-type situations. I couldn't answer this based on the description given.
They're all OK, individual circumstances will guide individuals on which to do.
She can work, but she is unemployed. She was kicked off from her job due to the bankruptcy of the enterprise.
Quoting RogueAI
Excellent question and that happens in real life too. For me, it will not be a problem and I will fully understand if the worker gets a temporary job. Yet, the trade unions would not be happy and would consider him a "scab"
Despite I agree that co-workers have the "duty" of showing compromise and loyalty, I think that individualism should be in the spot depending on the circumstances. Specifically, in this case, the worker has a lot of problems in his home and it seems that the trade union is not covering him put but coercing him to go on strike. At least that's how I see it...
I think what is key in this dilemma is who the worker owes more loyalty: his family or the miner's trade union (another kind of family)
I fully agree with your argument seeing the individualistic point of view. Nonetheless, I think it is important to consider that going to strike is not a guarantee to cover up your rights. As @BC perfectly explained, not all strikes succeed at the end.
So, joining the strike has a lot of uncertainty while the possibility of feeding your family is more granted.
It could also be convictions. My loyalty to my family would trump the union, but I've been a union president and head negotiator, so I would have a real tough time crossing a picket line, even in the situation in the OP.
"The distinction between these two kinds of moral obligation is practically material to the question of liberty and necessity. A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury. The latter case, it is true, requires a much more cautious exercise of compulsion than the former. To make any one answerable for doing evil to others, is the rule; to make him answerable for not preventing evil, is, comparatively speaking, the exception.
https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/utilitarianism/section6/
Therefore, it should be noted that preventing the consequences of not picketing would cause potentially the whole company to collapse because it might result in deterioration as by the attrition of their workers.
Any with a Labour Party. They are the places that developed a full relation between labour and policy. I agree with you that it's crying shame the US never achieved this, not just for the US but more broadly, for progressive politics.
Quoting BC
Sure, that wasn't the pretence to which I was referring - that was rather the notion that moral dilemmas of this sort lead to a clearer picture of such situations, for the sort of reasons I gave. They are intended to be intractable, and the various proponents will go out of their way to reinforce this intractability. A few more examples of this have already emerged in this thread. It would be much better to look at historical cases, the miners and Thatcher, perhaps.
Quoting javi2541997
Yep. The pretence here is that this is an attempt to make an impossibly intractable situation appear realistic.
See
Quoting javi2541997
Thump. Any posited solution is immediately cut down by stipulation.
This is actually a problem with modal moral quandaries generally: you can always make them impossible to solve. Same goes for the misnamed "trolly" problem. That's why they make for long and often tedious threads.
Quoting javi2541997
You are not going to get there, because you can always add something that renders the individual choice void.
I understand your point, but I disagree with the fact of only caring about the devastated consequences on the enterprise and not the family. You explained that, in the long term, it will be worse if the colliery closes because they all can lose their employment.
Nonetheless, this is not plausible. You are considering that the strike has 100 % chances of succeeding, which it isn't. But, on the other hand, feeding your family is more granted if you "scab"
I do not understand why you don't see this as realistic. I can share your arguments on the fact that we can always add something to that renders the individual choice void. This only makes the dilemma endless or difficult to solve, but not "unrealistic"
Because "we can always add something". So whatever solution is added can be dismissed by mere fiat. As in, no, the union does not provide income support; no, your wife cannot have a job; and so on, for any proffered answer. So it makes it appear that there can be no solution, but this is just an artefact of the way the problem is set up.
Understood.
But my aim of publishing this post was not finding a solution, but to see what people think towards individualism. To be honest, in the specific case of the example, I'd choose to scab and provide my family an income despite that my co-workers would see me a very selfish person.
Although, there could be many alternatives and "additions" in these dilemmas, I think it is worthy to debate on how the individual decides to not follow up the group (duty of omission) because of personal circumstances.
Families are rarely in a state of perpetual comfort. There's always something to take care of. This is the common mantra of the scab: "I understand what you're doing, but I have to take care of my family" -- which is fear. The scab believes the boss is going to win, so the scab chooses the boss's side. This is to the detriment of the strikers, whose families are similarly unstable, have needs, and so forth. It's not a neutral act of duty, it's a person actively sabotaging the efforts of strikers in the name of their family: Family over Union.
A common act of social grace is to say something along the lines of "The spouse wouldn't allow it" or "My kid is at home sick", and I understand them to be bowing out of whatever it is we're doing. But they're usually speaking for themself, and sometimes the kid is at school and the parent just needs some time to themself and the only excuse people accept is some duty or other.
But when you're talking union the "my family" excuse is out the door -- buddy, we all have families. That's what we're doing this for.
I agree here. Historical cases demonstrate how people have overcome various problems, or failed at overcoming various problems. What they lack in conceptual clarity they gain in fidelity to the vagaries of political action.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_sewing_machinists_strike_of_1968 is a good example because it also has a movie you can watch which I found satisfying. I like that it depicts strikes as scary things, because they are scary. You don't know the outcome of your actions, and you have the real possibility of losing.
But progress has only come from normal people being willing to do scary things.
This remains unclear. What is the objective of the strike? What are the employer's options?
If the strike succeeds, what does the worker gain? If it fails, what does the worker lose?
The worker's choice is purported to be between loyalties to union and family, but that is not the case in real life. The choice is between desired outcomes. What does this particular worker want?
Avoid the closure of the colliery. Thus, they would keep their jobs.
Quoting Vera Mont
I do not consider it as "option" but a duty. The worker of this example is already represented by their secretary of miner's trade union. This is who proposes the strike, expecting that every miner will go because it is their moral duty.
Quoting Vera Mont
He keeps his job at the colliery, but...
Quoting Vera Mont
Here is the main problem and the uncertainty of the worker. What will happen if the strike doesn't succeed? Most important: who covers up the situation of his family during the strike? Because this issue can take months...
Quoting Vera Mont
It is interesting that you all say this is not a realistic scenario. :lol:
To be honest, I still do not understand why you see it that way...
Quoting Vera Mont
If you were the worker, what would you want?
Good point, Molliere and thanks for providing your arguments. I am seeing the dilemma in a different perspective now. Despite I didn't consider the familiar context of the rest of the workers, I wanted to use as an example a miner who is in a more "delicate" position than the others. I mean, there is always one specific person who, for whatever reason, is in a worse position than the rest.
Or isn't it legal to strike? Yet @Benkei's question is really important here.
Quoting javi2541997
Fucking weasels in that trade union I say, that cannot then give assistance to member workers when they go on strike! Where the hell have gone the money that you have paid the trade union just for these kind of situations? Jesus, that's the 1.0 thing for a trade union to do.
I say just fuck them, it's all lost anyway. Start looking for another job IMMEDIATELY because once that the coal mine closes, you'll be competing with all the hard working guys for those open positions in the area. Yeah, don't bother about those that will just bitch about everything, drink beer and have fights with their wives. Either you will be one of them or then MOVE ON. Those who don't move on, hoping for the collier to be opened by some miracle or some populist Trump idiot that will descend from heaven and "turn things around" will only make the environment be gloomy. It was just a workplace and a job, that can and do disappear. It was just a service you provided for which you got money. Nothing else. Get over it.
And if you have a sick child, heck, the choice is a no brainer: your family, those that really depend on you, should come first. You don't owe the trade union and especially the company that you have worked for anything. Once you move on to another job, they really won't be crying after you. Yet for your children you are one of the most important persons in their lives.
And if your wife cannot find a job, then you should look somewhere else. If you give more importance to your present job or especially to those incompetent assholes who cannot run a trade union, then obviously you have your problems in putting important matters in your life first.
And look for work somewhere else with your wife. You are a team and it's your children. Would the two of you get jobs somewhere else? Then move out and don't be too sentimental about it. There's enough of people that simply will stay in a dead end place that offers no job positions and it's not going to be pretty sight. The bleakness will just create apathy and you will feel like a failure. And that's the reason why the unemployed don't start revolutions: it's a personal stigma in this society. You'll have the memories of the past, but you cannot live in them and they will not put food on the table.
How does a strike accomplish that. The demand "Keep us digging coal or we'll stop digging coal!" is nonsense. The strike must have been called in direct response to some action the company was intent on taking in order to keep the mine open. How could a strike prevent the employer going out of business? Nor does keeping a mine open guarantee that all employees continue in their jobs.
Quoting javi2541997
The employers have no duty to anyone, other paying whatever taxes they can't evade.
They do need to respond a situation. As I see it, their options are:
1. To invest in cleaner upgrades and continue operations.
2. Reduce the scope of the operation and lay off part of the workforce.
3. Invest in automation and dispense with miners entirely.
4. Close the mine and move to a state/country with fewer restrictions.
5. Stop mining coal and turn the mine into some other business.
Quoting javi2541997
An honest job with decent pay, working conditions and benefits package. The man in the example doesn't have health insurance or savings, so he must have been in a precarious position before the new legislation came into effect. So, the outcome he is in a position to want - and therefore support - depends on 1. what the union's demands are and 2. whether the company is able and likely to grant them.
Quoting javi2541997
Because of the way you set it up, with no regard to the government's role, the employer's side of it, or the union's rationale for calling a strike.
But there's no choice in the abstract. If you're a worker then, like it or not, scabbing will hurt strikers. Even if the worker really wants to scab that will occur, and that's not really defensible on ethical, deontic grounds. It falls pretty easily to the first formulation of the categorical imperative because not everyone can scab -- if they did then there'd be no strike and they'd all be back at work.
One of the things missing from the abstract problem is that unions are democratic organizations. So there's already social responsibility in the mix which isn't represented by the problem.
Thank you, ssu. I think you are the only who actually understood what I proposed on this dilemma. Maybe, it is a matter of culture and circumstances. Most of the users of TPF are citizens from Anglo-Saxon countries which their economy goes on forward and they tend to have a lot of job opportunities. So, they give for granted that if a strike fails, well just go to another job or whatever.
One of the things that surprised me the most is that some members don't get why the worker's wife is unemployed. Welcome to the reality of other countries. How lucky they are for not living in Spain, when it is common for women to stay at home and raising the kids and the family depends on the husband's income, which tends to be low. Usually, those women perceive a compensation from the state, but it is low too.
On the other hand, I will be honest. I see trade unions as political lobbies. Simple as that, and sometimes they do not care enough about their workers. It is a utopia because the worker is attached to both the enterprise and the trade union. Is there a possibility for the worker to make decisions individually? This is why I started this OP.
I didn't know a dilemma needed to be that realistic... I guess that if you put a lot of information, the debate we are currently having can decay. That's why I decided to start this OP, to read different opinions.
Quoting Vera Mont
Of course they have and a lot. Starting with the entrepreneur who pays their income and ending up with the state when taxes are paid.
Yup.
But here's where history can serve as a better guide to understanding the problems and decisions a worker faces. Union drives have succeeded and failed, unions have been successful in one generation and fade away with future generations, or experience resurgences. That's the ebb and flow of historical reality. (One might be tempted to call it dialectical ;) )
For instance, unions cross the anglosphere -- they are organized all across the world, across different ethnicities and language-groups. Some of the most inspiring stories of strikes come from overcoming differences in language, culture, and expectations. Unions thrived prior to women becoming more prominent within the workforce as well, to speak to another point you brought up.
And sometimes trade unions aren't even as effective as a political lobby. Sometimes they're a money laundering operation for the mafia, and the contracts they service won't protect anything, nor are they actually run on democratic principles.
All these possibilities are explored in the history of labor.
If you want someone to make a choice, you need to be clear what they're choosing between.
You haven't even said who or what the employer is.
Quoting javi2541997
What's that to do with the worker or the strike?
Quoting Moliere
Exactly! The individual needs a pretty solid basis on which to make so practical a decision. Real life is not a deontological exercise.
That's an assumption not always borne out by results. The strikers are not necessarily represented by the union leadership; they may be incorrect in their assessment of the situation; this particular worker may be aware that the strike is futile.
If he makes his decision on nothing more than loyalty to the union, it's just another case of blind obedience, not a moral or ethical one.
When does scabbing not hurt strikers?
"The strike is futile" is fear, as I said. So that worker is picking on the basis of their fear, because they believe the boss will win so they're hedging their bets and helping the boss break the strike. It's not "nothing but loyalty", but an awareness of how the world works -- if you help the boss break the strike then you're putting your family ahead of the other families that are also risking themselves. That's the choice being made.
The real choice... eh, we're not in a union drive here so it's a bit idle to talk about "the real choice", unless we're going to use historical examples.
Either way I don't think you can make the case that scabbing is following a duty, which is what the original scenario is speaking in terms of, unless the only duty you have is to yourself and your family. (which, in truth, is where a lot of people reside in terms of willfully chosen duties -- duty to union, outside of union families, is often seen as a naive position. But it's not. It's the only reason workers have what they have today, and it's the reason why they're losing more of it too)
There isnt. Unions often have the power to discipline their members, whether by fine or the denial of union benefits. So crossing the picket-line may come at extra cost to you and your family. Its an extra layer of collectivist bureaucracy, meaning the decisions are made by a faction of the membership in tandem with the forces of union administration, whether you agree with it or not.
I agree, and your post explains very clearly what I - somehow - tried to tell in the OP. Although I do not pretend to delegitimize the role of trade unions has had during the development of the working-class, I think these groups have some shadows in the structures too. And, of course, they are and will always be the main interlocutor between the workers and the enterprises/government.
This is why I wanted to know if there is a possibility for a worker to disengage from this structure. When I read papers and news related to this issue, I figured out that a "scab" is badly seen among workers and most of them end up disowned. Yet, I was curious to understand the purposes of a scab and then some delicate situations like my OP could exist. Even, the trade unions can act aggressively towards the workers and threaten them. Acting like a gang, as you explained.
It may hurt their feelings - assuming they all trust the leadership as much as you do - but there are occasions when it makes no material difference. They're already hurting themselves.
Quoting Moliere
That's the question I asked, at least twice. Exactly what choice is being made - what are they striking for?
They cannot keep a mine open in despite of both the owners' interest and the government regulation. If the mine is going to be closed, none of the miners gain anything at all, except the few who kept working long enough to get a final paycheque.
In the given example, the strike makes no sense; the workers are only preventing an orderly, arbitrated dissolution to the enterprise and jeopardizing or forfeiting their severance pay or compensation settlement. If the leadership called a strike without taking the workers' interest into full consideration, no worker owes them loyalty and any worker who can see it would be a fool to obey without question.
Quoting Moliere
That, too, was one of my questions: Duty to the union, or obedience to the leadership? I have been a staunch trade unionist - even to refusing to cross a picket line as a client, when I had not been informed of the issue in contention. In fact, I voted for the miner in the OP to join the strike....
....until I began to wonder how this strike was supposed to benefit the workers.
I'm also aware that the leadership can be corrupt or short-sighted. I consider myself socialist, but not a blind idealist. As presented in the example, the call to strike seems irrational, and the lack of union support for the strikers is suspect.
Exactly, NOS.
There are a lot of evidences which prove that trade unions act as a mafia group. Paradoxically, they can be even more oppressive than the entrepreneur himself. I like how you highlight that the taken decisions by the leaders are accepted whether the workers like it or not, or affects or not their income or rights. If you want to make an individualistic move, they quickly will call you scab.
Hi!
Nice topic!
I have answered "scabbing", taking of course into consideration the reason for scabbing you have mentioned.
I believe this is the most rational thing to do, and any rational person who is honestly answering to this poll should do the same. Because the question is not about "idealism" and it is easy to answer in favor of striking if you are young and/or immature and/or don't think of how such the situation would be in real life if you actually were to decide for yourself in such a situation and you were facing the conditions mentioned in the description of the topic.
There is also a very important other reason: Your group is not your colleagues or the syndicate alone, which you have to support by going to strike. Your group is the whole company you are working in, and mainly the owner and the management. Because it is them that are paying you so that you can support yourself and your family. So, you owe them more than you owe to your colleagues and the syndicate.
When I said "mafia laundering" I wasn't making a metaphor. I mean there exist legal entities in the United States which are registered as unions but are operated by the actual mafia as a money laundering operation. They don't really service their contracts very well, and they don't even bother to fight for a better one. They'll just re-up the contract for as long as they can so they can keep the structure, and for the most part the contracts are hardly enforced anyways.
The funny thing here is that the solution is still the same. It's not disengagement, but engagement: you organize. Else you just let the mafia run the show. Same goes for if you disagree with leadership: you organize.
Participation is what keeps a democratic organization alive. A worker can disengage with the structure, sure, but I think you'd have a hard time making the case that it's a duty to do so unless a worker's duty is only to themself and their family. (which others have basically said so far -- so if you take that extra step then you can even be secure in yourself and know you've done your duty)
Now insofar that democratic structures are gang-like then a union can act like a gang. But this is more of a reaction to having to deal with social structures and a desire to be independent than it is engaging with the reality of trade unionism: The next job, contra @ssu, will have similar structures in place. The cowboys of the world, as I call them, are entirely selfish as I set it out: they're there for themselves and their family, and that's that.
But the union movement benefits them even if they decide to hamper it. That's why it'd be hard to make the case that it's a duty -- if you're a worker then you're already indebted to a long history of struggle. There are the cowboys who want to be individuals, but by that they're making the choice I said: they're choosing their own family over the families of others.
And that's true even if human nature is basically bad, and so unions, too, are of course corruptable. But that's not what they are, and that's kind of the vibe that your scenario presents: it would be naive to believe that every union is a shining beacon of goodness, or something along those lines. I don't even think "goodness" enters the picture -- it's about power, simple as. But it's similarly foolish to judge unions on the basis of the single scariest thing that a worker might have to do. That's not even most of what a union does. Most unions try to avoid strikes.
That's because it's meant to ;).
At least so I'm maintaining, while maintaining that it's not possible to make the argument from duties to scab.
But it is just an example, a hypothetical.
The example I used the strike was for equal pay for women. They didn't win in the first strike, but they got some victories, and then some odd 15 years later the original demand was met with a longer strike.
Please share. I'm aware of some infiltration of some unions by organized crime (also by law-enforcement agencies and political agitators) but not of a union leadership itself initiating criminal activity. I'm also aware of some pretty underhanded moves by conservative governments to undermine trade unions.
Quoting javi2541997
The only individualistic move that's called scabbing is continuing to work during a strike. Sometimes scabs are bussed in - hired from outside the union - to break a strike. Sometimes police or mercenaries are employed to break a strike.
But there is no point in forcing workers back into a closed mine.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
Managements rarely see it that way; rarely show reciprocal loyalty to the employees. It usually is very much an adversarial situation. Bosses like to portray themselves as "job creators", while, in fact, they give the least remuneration they possible can in return for the most profit they can squeeze out of the workers and very often put workers at unnecessary risk to cut corners.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
You owe them a fair day's work for a fair day's pay - nothing more.
That's a rational cause, worth persevering in. I've been in unions at various points in their life-cycle, including an attempt to form a brand new one. That was defeated, and two years later, the same workers opted to join one of big, powerful unions, in which they would be an insignificant cog. Not a great outcome, but a rational choice that resulted in better pay for my ex-colleagues. By then, I was working elsewhere as a member of one of the big, powerful unions - which served us very well, as it happens, and deserved our support.
The OP example was questionable, so I questioned it. Is that not why we're here?
I started as an organizer on my own shop floor and then eventually became a staffer for a different union in another life. But not so much union activity now that I'm doing the sciences -- scientists, among other professionals, have a hard time seeing themselves as "workers". The images of the factory are still strong, even though there's no need for a factory to have a union that works -- all you need is solidarity. Also I've had my fill of fighting. Being an organizer is a stressful, thankless job where everyone blames you for everything and most of what you do is run around putting out fires for less than the members you service make ;).
There are definitely flaws in unions which are worth noting and learning from. They're human organizations. And from a Marxist perspective it's generally viewed that unions can't be strong enough to compete with capital, so there are even political reasons to criticize unions from the left.
I guess I just don't see the scenario as presenting the flaws and how to learn from them as much as giving us a very common image that the boss uses: the image of the poor, benighted worker who has two bosses, the union boss and the company boss, and he's just trying to feed his family.
Quoting Vera Mont
It is. But I thought @Banno had a good point. There's a very rich history, and I thought the scenario was kind of highlighting the worst aspects of a union without really getting at how people have actually overcome (or failed to) these sorts of things. So I suppose I'm just questioning the question. The annoying philosophy thing.
No sh...er... kidding!
Anyway, I voted "correctly" before questioning.
Further questioning: I know something about the history of trade union movements and labour parties. The present is pretty dim, especially in the US, but other countries, too, where a succession of governments have been systematically kneecapping unions.
But what of their future? Given the state of automation and collar-bleaching... I wonder. Teachers, librarians, nurses, yes. Who else is, or can be organized into, a progressive political force?
I believe this is quite a biased view, and not a very reasonable one either, Vera Mont. Management works for the interests of their company. As with the blue-collar workers --I can't differentiate them as "employees", because managment personnel is among them too :smile:-- and it is the company that pays them too, so it's only logical that they are loyal to it. They have no obligation to be loyal to the blue-collars, but only to be fair, have good relations with them, and all that. Besides, the same applies to the blue-collars.
Anyway, as a freelancer in most of my life, I have a little only experience in working for a company, I had some disagreements with management, but never a feeling that they were adversial to me. The same thing also applied to my colleagues, as I could see and undestand. I have neither heard complaints --maybe one or two, from what I can remember-- from my friends and relatives against the companies that were and are working in,
Quoting Vera Mont
Right.
As it also happens, one big company contracted a friend of mine some years ago. Two months later, his agent reported that they still had not received $#1. My friend packed up and left; the agency was eventually able to beat his fee and their percentage out of the company. It sometimes happens that they never pay up.
Hello Alkis!
As it is, and I totally back up your argument. I didn't think of that, but you are right. The co-workers are just colleagues in an industrial activity and we only share time and space. While our family is more personal. A wife and the children are those who (in most of the cases) will accompany you in all the moments in the life.
Furthermore, those personal and sensitive arguments, I think there is a rational one: What kind of person am I if I can't help my home? Why can't I act individually and stay away from the stubborn behaviour of trade unions? I think it is crazy to postpone trade union's interests to my family's.
Two important examples:
Strike of October 1972 (Chile)
Jimmy Hoffa
Well, it is interesting to see that mafia trade unions share the same industry/commerce: trucks and transportation. To understand how poisonous can a trade union be, we have to look at Jimmy Hoffa's story. Hoffa became involved with organized crime from the early years of his Teamsters work, a connection that continued until his disappearance in 1975. He was convicted of jury tampering, attempted bribery, conspiracy, and mail and wire fraud in 1964 in two separate trials. He was imprisoned in 1967 and sentenced to 13 years. In mid-1971.
Oh they're a lot more than that! They're fellow rowers in the same galley; all of your fates are linked by united action or wrecked by division and infighting. If the wife had had a decent union, she might now have a severance package that could see the family through an illness and a strike. The union can revive a failing business, except sometimes by buying out the incompetent owners, but it can force a profitable one to treat its workers more fairly.
I'm out of the game, and I broke my crystal ball awhile ago, but my sympathy for the future of labor has always been the service sector. But as long as there's a money-flow within a firm and a group of people who depend upon a wage from the firm then there's lies the possibility to unionize: call centers, food chains, delivery drivers, uber/lyft drivers, amazon, wal-mart, target, alphabet workers, public sector workers, migrant farmers, transit workers, baristas, catering companies, hotels, non-profits...
When people talk about the dimness of labor I note how the golden age of labor was something of a fluke, and it only came about due to fights under arguably worse circumstances (sometimes the same, in the most extreme cases -- migrant farmers come to mind here particularly). What worked then is what would work now, if people decided to stop living in their little family-bubble.
And that's why I think the scenario, as posited, is basically reactionary: it's the scabs prayer.
I was looking for something more up-to-date. But, yes, I knew about those. Hardly enough to justify a blanket statement regarding the present:
Quoting javi2541997
I was talking about the dimness of outlook for labour. Even the supposedly leftist political parties have gone all middle-class - the entire working class has been disappeared in the fog of rhetoric. But increasing and accelerating automation does pretty much forecast the physical disappearance of the blue collar jobs, as well as many pink, grey, green and white ones, not to mention all those pajamas at their telephones and computers.
Someday we'll find it, https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/the-fir
I don't think the working class has disappeared, though it's not a topic for USian political parties. Like you say, it's all middle-class based talking points.
But it's not like the house of commons during Marx's time was the most progressive force, either. It took organizing then, and it took organizing during the 1900's to maintain those victories which brought about a kind of golden age of labor, and that's what it would take today. And really it'll depend upon the workers. Not my little opinions on the matter.
It might have to get worse before people want to make it better, though. Most workers are not fighters. They just want the best for them and their family, and fear is an effective motivator.
So is hope - I hope! From 1800 to 1980, it was a rocky, stop-and-start, blood-spattered upward path. Since 1980, it has quite reversed incline, at least on the western slope. But was never going to be a rematch or a repossession of lost ground: it's an all new challenge, every decade.
I think it's time to ditch all the old forms. Think not in terms of bosses and lackeys, but independence. Automation could give us that, if we used it well.
:D
A saying after my heart. But I've mellowed out. Union structures work to give some semblance of power to working people. The old forms stick around because they still work better than nothing, and also because the old form of capital is still around. It hasn't changed that much, except to grow larger and become better at divide and conquer.
But I'm afraid I have to say one should think in terms of bosses and workers, when looking at political economy. Or at least the bourgeoisie, if not the lieutenants of capital. As a socialist surely you agree here? Automation can give us good things if used well, but to be used well the workers need to have a say in political economy?
They become ones when they have lots of political power, yes. But so I guess happens to any group that has a say in public matters.
However let's get something straight: it is extremely idiotic not to have trade unions.
It's simply logical and rational to unionize. It has nothing to do with a leftist ideology and that's what many Americans don't understand. Trade unions aren't equivalent to socialism or socialist ideas. For example, 98% of all active military officers in the Finnish Armed Forces are members of their trade union, the Officer's Union. 98% participation level in a trade union you seldom find anywhere. And it's hard to find a group that isn't leftist and is traditionally conservative (although by law when active cannot take part in politics or be a member of a political party). In fact, the trade union itself was established in 1918 right after the Whites had won the Civil War and beaten the Reds, so I guess these guys forming their union weren't singing the International as they had just killed or put into camps those chaps had sang the song, had waved the red flags and wanted to be a part of the socialist experiment.
Yet when you have trade union membership being very low or nonexistent, then the employers can nearly do whatever they want. Especially if your country has low social cohesion and strict class lines, it's only worse. Then the answer of "get another job" is quite hollow as the job market simply sucks.
Quoting javi2541997Well, the US is like the Western Europe except everybody speaks English and have nearly the same customs, culture and preferences. That's then an easy solution to move around. But going to a different country, learning a new language and getting accustomed there is a totally different and a harder thing. Hence if your country is just the size of Minnesota and only there they speak the language you know, then when that country's economy goes down the drain, people cannot just move somewhere else.
Quoting javi2541997
Well, as an individual the worker naturally makes those choices individually. And of course, sometimes going on strike can get you a lot of improvements, especially when you (or the union) has (figuratively speaking) the balls of the employers in their hands. Or if the workers are crucial to the economy. Hence if the odds are that you and the union can be successful, then why not go on strike to try to either improve things or at least fight against "deregulation", attempts of getting rid off everything the unions have achieved earlier. Again, your "collective" decision to be with the union doesn't overrule that the welfare of you and your family is what it's about to you.
Ok. Again, your scenario allows for removal of all group supports until the individual eventually decides not to follow the group. You want, perhaps, to conclude that ultimately we are individualistic, but all you would be entitled to conclude is that folk will turn there back on an overly demanding and unsupportive group.
The one I was thinking of was learned of in passing, and I rather like my legs.
It takes a lot of bravery to organize on a shop floor, or youthful anger (as others have already pointed out). It takes even more bravery to try to organize the honest way if the mafia is involved. Some organizers have done that, but not me. But because some organizers have done that this is how I know they still exist (and that the answer is always organizing).
But it's a rare case. I mentioned it as an obvious example of when unions can go bad. I don't think anyone should just blindly believe that because there's a union it's a good thing. It could be a bad union. There are examples of that.
The thing is: you can either leave your job, or organize. Sometimes the fight is too much for some people, and I understand that. Human beings are frail and weak. Duty is something that's a bit out of reach for most of us, though it can be inspiring.
I just don't think you can frame scabbing, in particular, as a dutiful action. It really is as selfish as I described: you're picking your own family over the families of your coworkers. A lot of people have sympathy for that position, but think on the categorical imperative: if everyone scabs then there's no strike to scab and everyone is back at work. I understand that duty need not follow the CI, but it's a pretty well worked out example of a philosophical theory of duty at least. So I have my doubts.
It will. The whole metaphorical cardboard structure is coming down. Quoting Moliere
Yeees... only... Well, let's say both the political and economic landscape of the future are as yet unmapped. But I think that speculation belongs elsewhere.
Quoting Vera Mont
Heh, yes.
Like jillionnaires with political hacks spilling out of every pocket?
Quoting ssu
Have you actually been in the US? Or watched American movies? Or listened to NBC?
And that's how a coercive mobster works, folks!
By the way, I think @Vera Mont is a leader of a Canadian writers trade union, and that's why she is defending this collective so hardly. :razz:
There are a lot of sectors in business world --besides companies-- where such an inequality --and even worse-- is happening, unfortunately. See what's happening in the world of sports, for instance: top tennis players, NBA players, top football/soccer teams, etc. They are 10 to 100 times the money their fellow players of the next category, who also try hard and play their guts out in every match. Totally unfair. In fact, a shame IMO.
There are also those cases in the areas ofcompetition, where some companies are using uses illicit practices --just reaching the limits of illegal practices-- that have made a lot of owners, like Bill Gates (classic case), billionaires and thousands other millionaires.
Quoting Vera Mont
Interesting.
Quoting Vera Mont
All this is quite sad, indeed.
Greece, I believe, is one of the worst countries in tax administration. As I said, I was a freelancer, and in Greece they hate this genre because half of them use to hide their real income. So, what they did and still do is to hit them with all sort of indirect taxes, discontinuing tax exemptions, etc. They don't care about the other half of them, who are honest and state their full income. On the other hand, although they tout every now and about hunting the big tax evaders (dodgers), who only become richer and better in dodging.
And I feel myself quite lucky that I have a pension, however small it is and which has not been upgraded since I first received it, about 6 years ago, during which time the cost of life has risen about 30%!
I fully agree. :up:
Those too, especially if their jillion dollars are made thanks to those contacts to politicians and influence over political decision making.
Quoting Vera Mont
Yes, Yes, Yes.
Speaking fluently Spanish and then have to speak fluently Finnish is here in Europe is the problem. You see, in the US many speak Spanish, but you usually CAN BE, let's say working in customer service, if you speak English. Even with a dialect.
Now wheres my union strike check? :wink:
But I understand the position and choice of those who cross the picket line.
Hehe :snicker:
Quoting 0 thru 9
Yes, exactly. That was the main point of this thread, trying to understand why some workers decide to go to work, or at least have some empathy instead of calling them "scabs!"
I don't think we, as philosophers, should give the scabs anything more than the truth. The truth is they are choosing themselves over the other families to the point that they are willing to sacrifice the other families who are benefiting workers for their own family.
That, even if you don't call them such, is a scab. And once the strike is over the scab will get picked off by the boss, eventually, because they already did what the boss wanted, and the new recruits won't remember all the conflict from before.
It's your claim to duty that I'm challenging. I empathize with people lesser because I'm lesser. But I don't claim that I'm good for that reason.
According to your argument, you consider scabs as selfish people. And I think it depends on the context, that's why I put a sensitive example in the dilemma. It is not the same crossing the picket line just because you are afraid of being sacked than having other kind of duties.
To be honest, I think that judging a scab is pretty easy because he is the "bad apple". Yet, I wanted to (at least) give a try and reasoning, and see why some workers scab instead of acting collectively.
On the other hand, I feel bad for the scab, because when the strike ends the rest of the works would ghosting them. Even though that he acted in good faith in every moment, and I do not consider them vicious.
It is fascinating because the act of acting individually in modern society is punished by the group, whether you have reasons to do so. My conclusion is that we have to cooperate, because others would see us as "selfish", "traitor", "a black sheep", etc.
Heh. That's an interesting conclusion, at least for myself, because I would push against it while maintaining that we have to cooperate. pointed out how the owners of firms are already incorporated, and the workers are only kinda-sorta incorporated.
If I were the King of Rules, or some such nonsense, I'd say that every firm must be a closed shop.
Or: we have to cooperate because we're human beings.
Quoting javi2541997
I think your first example is a bit of a fiction. It's not the same, but anyone in that situation isn't crossing the picket line because they're afraid of being sacked. I'll bring it back to my opening response: it's because their anger dried out and they've come back to their fear. The scabs believe the boss will win, which sometimes the boss does win, and so they go back over to the boss's side.
But sometimes the workers win too.
(EDIT: And either way, I'm still maintaining that duty can't justify choosing the path of the scab. It's not a duty. It's a selfish action, which we all do all the time. It's merely not dutiful)
Where have you heard that from?
Unions are paid by their members; they don't pay their members!
There are cons and prons with labor unions ...
Pros
1. Unions provide worker protections.
2. Unions promote higher wages and better benefits.
3. Unions are economic trend setters.
4. Unions make political organizing is easier.
Cons
1. Unions require dues and fees that some workers do not want to pay.
2. Labor unions discourage individuality
3. Unions make it harder to promote and terminate workers.
4. Unions can drive up costs. (This works against worker salaries.)
(Source:https://www.hrexchangenetwork.com/hr-compensation-benefits/articles/pros-and-cons-of-labor-unions)
Employees in non-union workplaces can approach a manager or business owner directly and negotiate an individual wage increase, benefits package or contract. The option to negotiate directly can yield significant advantages for highly productive employees.
(Source: https://smallbusiness.chron.com/advantages-nonunionized-workplace-18433.html)
I believe these two are incompatible with each other as to the direction and recipient of the effect (fear and anger).
Fear works against the employees. Anger --as I can assume from how you put it-- works against the company. So I can't see how you can select between the two ...
You don't know about the unionization in Greece! :grin:
In fact, only social democratic countries --real ones, not those governed by leftish (allegedly "socialist") parties, in alternation with rightist ones-- that is, European Nordic countries (Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and then Norway) are good examples.
John Stuart Mill, in the quote you brought in, speaks from an idealistic viewpoint. He talks about "liberty" and "necessity". Here we have a specific, real-life, actual case, in which the notion of "liberty" is not even involved. As for "necessity", well, if supporting one's family is not a necessity, what is?
I can hardly believe this. Have you any reference in which a Dutch union pays its members in the case of strikes? But even if this were true, it will be an exception. So, I save you the trouble of searching for such a reference! :smile:
#1 under 'cons' is that some workers may dislike paying dues, when dues are what makes #1, 2, and 3 in the 'pros' list possible. # 2 under 'cons' is mostly not true. #3 involves the inconvenience to the company of following contractual process, particularly in firing, #4 is true only from a company point of view -- the costs that unions raise are the wages that workers are paid.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
True, but the individual worker has little leverage by himself. Unionism is designed to give leverage to all workers (in the union).
Wages and working conditions are better when workers are organized.
I fully agree with you!
Quoting BC
In Spain, as well as in Greece, the trade unions do not pay their members whether they want to strike or not. It is the opposite, the workers are the ones who pay fees to the trade union that are part in, but the unions are not a guarantee for the worker's incomes if they go on strike.
I thought this as granted, but I learnt in this thread that it is obvious some unions are more effective than others. I started this OP in my own national perspective and maybe that's why some of you see it as unrealistic, because in your country the scab is covered by the trade union. Well, that's not the reality of each nation...
Now, I can understand why some of you folks consider the scab a selfish relatively.
[aside: American religious organizations operated many of the health care institutions 'back then' and were prepared to provide 'charity' care to people in straitened economic circumstances. That helped a lot, and they offered pretty good care, on average. That all began to unravel in in the 1960s into the '70s when religious organizations started losing congregants (and $$$), and Catholic orders shrank drastically. Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians... all withdrew from healthcare or their facilities became "non-profit" organizations which turned out to be... quite profitable.]
In the 1960s Medicaid was introduced which was paid for health care for indigent people -- people on welfare, the working poor, etc. A big leap forward. About the same time, Medicare was created to provide health care to the elderly--another big leap forward.
There were no new initiatives that made it into law until Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act - ACA) was passed with Republicans kicking and screaming. The ACA doesn't pay for health care; it established a market for affordable health insurance--a helpful, but not huge, leap forward. It also trimmed the sails of commercial insurance companies abilities to deny coverage for "preexisting conditions", for children who turned 21, and so forth.
Quite a few democrats (from liberal northern states) like the idea of single-payer insurance where the government acts as the single sole health insurer. It gives Americans to the right of Karl Marx cardiac arrest just thinking about "socialized medicine" so it's not likely to happen in the near or medium future. As Keynes said, "in the long run we're all dead."
BTW, it was unions that established the principle of the employer paying for health insurance.
That's what members pay union dues for. Just as employees pay into a pension plan, unemployment and health insurance plans.
That's what all societies expect. Obey the law - yes, even the petty traffic rules. Serve in the armed forces if there is war. Send your children to school. Pay your taxes. Pay your debts.
It's what every collective expects. If you join a golf club, you pay your fees, wear the right shoes, keep honest score, stay on the cart track, keep quite when others are hitting.
No collective can function without so-operation and giving up some individual freedom. If you want to be a loner, go it alone, but if you want the benefits of a society, pay your dues and mind the rules. When you take a job in a union shop and accept the wages and benefits that union has previously won through collective action, you commit to collective action.
That's interesting - an act of desperation? The result is a health system that is overly expensive.
Australians receive free health care at public hospitals. Other types of health care are covered by a combination of private and government payments. The scheme is an unstable compromise between the ideologies of the two main parties, one of which is a Labor party funded in the main by unions. We also have a seperate scheme to support folk with disabilities, another Labor initiative.
Publicly funded benefits have always been grudgingly provided, against the wishes of the ruling class--even against the wishes of the conservative American Medical Association. Those with money, even those in the professional class who are often not close to being rich, tend to think like self-made Republican bankers. They don't want to see the poor or working class people "getting something for nothing" -- forgetting that many of them got quite a lot of something for nothing during their first 25 years of life. They also don't see "something for nothing" in the many tax breaks the wealthy get.
All that is why the US has dragged behind other industrialized countries in providing public services, health services, and so on. In the three major actions to create Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, and the ACA--from the 1930s onward, hard-core conservatives have been willing to contest the legitimacy of the benefits in court.
A collective that excludes the needs and wants of its own members is not a collective, least of all any sort of community. At best it is an aggregate of factions, each concerned with their own advantage. Whoever makes the rules and to whom we pay our dues is the only collective that matters in any of your analogies. As you mentioned the rest are expected to pay up and fall in line. In my mind it sounds more anti-social than social, anti-society than society.
Which collective? Which of its members? Every nation-state excludes of the needs and wants of some citizens - often, the majority of its citizens - and yet demands their absolute loyalty and ultimate sacrifice.
Quoting NOS4A2
Yes. The miners are expected to be loyal to the owner, who is free to fire them at any time. They have to pay their taxes, while the owner can write off his private jet as a business expense. The miners are far more likely to die in work accidents than the owners who cut costs by reducing the number of pillars. The workers are supposed to understand that their livelihood depends on the owner, but the owner can forget that he's nothing without the workers.
In a union, at least no pigs are born more equal than any horses.
The official name of the Democratic Party in my state (Minnesota) is the Democratic Farmer Labor party. The Democrats merged with the larger leftist Farmer Labor party in 1944.
Hubert H. Humphrey was a key player in the fusion. Humphrey was mostly on the solidly liberal side of politics. When he was elected mayor of Minneapolis in '47, he led the attack on entrenched antisemitism in Minneapolis. Unfortunately, the progressivism faded. 40 years later, DFL governor Rudy Perpich sent the national guard into Austin, MN to help break the union strike against Hormel, pork and beef processor and maker of Spam.
Odd times.
Which are those "benefits"?
It occurs in any collective where the people are bound by no more than some inkling of an idea. It could be a nation, a race, the greater good, the common weal, a union, and so onnot any actual entity or anything that can be pointed to, let alone be social with, but an epitaph on a fleeting sensation of ones own brain. Its easier to afford rights to this idea than it is to do so for flesh-and-blood human beings because in the end its easier to afford rights to oneself.
It seems to me that if a fellow worker has fallen on hard times the others ought to rally around him and help him rather than to penalize him, ostracize him, and abandon him to the whims of some union administration. But that would be the social thing to do.
I Google-translated the first para of the article. It seems that there is a kind of compensation from union funds for the workers for ther loss of income during strikes. But under certain conditions. Anyway, it's interesting.
Thanks for the ref.
Maybe so. I have not weighed them on a scale. :smile:
I just mentioned that there are pros and cons, to show that unions are not always or necessarily the best solution.
Maybe in some cases and countries. But this is not a regular pay. It's a kind of compensation.
Anyway, my reaction to the payment of the members by the union was maybe wrong. I meant regular payment. But a compensation is a payment too. So you are right.
I just came upon the following from https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/finance/how-to-survive-a-strike:
"Unions typically set up a strike fund to help members cope with the loss of income during a strike. Union member dues support the strike fund, and each union has rules about how much members can draw from it."
I guess that works as a kind of insurance premiums. Interesting.
Benkei, my reaction to the payment of the members by the union was too absolute and so in part wrong. I referred to regular payment, income, as you said. I was also referring esp. to Greece. But as I learned on the road, in some cases and countries, there's a kind of compentation by the unions to the workers for their loss of income during strikes. And a compensation is a payment too.
Sorry about that, anyway.
Yes, this is the central idea, I think.
Quoting javi2541997
Right. I learned about that too in the way! :smile:
OK. I understand that you have valid reasons for saying all that and that you have personally benefited from being a union member ...
You'd still be working six days a week, starting at 8 AM until past midnight (90+ work week, hooray), no holidays, no paid leave for family deaths or health issues. They ended indentured labour. Women would still not be voting because mass protests wouldn't be accepted and women's suffrage movement would never have been possible. And they did all that in the face of corporate and government backed violence. When unions were most powerful, income inequality was lowest.
Do not underestimate the good we enjoy now that we only have thanks to unions. Those early unionists were some of the bravest and morally upright persons, who not only fought for their own good but that of all labourers, even those who weren't brave enough to stand up for themselves.
Oh, then you should tell so --that you are an insider-- from the beginning ... I would have been more careful in the way I expressed my comment! :grin:
Yet, you have to do justice to me regarding the "income" part, which refers to a regular pay, whereas a compensation is just a special and occasional payment.
Besides, I don't know if even such compensation exists in most countries. Certainly, not in Greece. Where, BTW syndicalism is considered by many as a permanent ode to the evils of the Greek economy and development. Working for the state and knowning that it is very difficult to get fired, makes for lazy and incometent employees and workers. That is why Greece is so much behind in infrastructures, public services and facilities, etc. than other members of the EU.
There's no one way to arrange this and I suspect you have much more information and "insider" knowledge to know everything that's wrong with the Greek system. The Dutch system looks horrible a lot of the time as well but pretty good when compared to UK or USA, for instance.
I think we could relax employee protections provided we create a good safety net. That should include options to learn new trades at no cost and substantial efforts in combatting discrimination (age, sex, ethnicity, etc.) would go a long way as well.
The other side of the coin of employee protections is also that employees feel safe to speak out against corruption or to challenge management views. And diversity of views makes for more profitable companies as well. It's very hard to get fired in the Netherlands as well, probably not much easier than in Greece (if at all, I haven't compared the two). The problem is often that those advocating for relaxing employee protections do it for the wrong reasons (the ephermal market) and would double-down by also cutting unemployment benefits or otherwise make life harder for the unemployed as a perverse incentive to force them to work as soon as possible. Whereas we're probably better off (morally as well as economically) with people doing what they want to do instead of what they have to do to avoid starving.
I know what you feel because it happens the same here. Trade unions are considered as a socialist lobby. But this is not a complot from the media, it is literally a leftist thing and they do not operate objectively against companies. Although I understand that syndicalism comes from Marxism, I think that they are scavengers of resources nowadays.
On the other hand, trade unions tend to parasite in some working areas. For example: trucks, trains, and everything related to transportation. Most of the members of these lobbies have been there for decades and just face the system or government for personal and selfish aims.
Spain is behind in all of those resources as well. I think this is due to how our representatives act. Instead of looking for a real collective goal, most of them act selfishly and make traps during the process. They are not Alternative Dispute Resolution. They are the ones who create the dispute!
All that is very interesting, Benkei. Thank you for sharing. :up:
Ha! I read this after I responding in the Inbox. So you can get a slight idea how it is with Greece. And I me, with Spain. :smile:
I believe that your country has feeble, underfunded and possibly criminal trade unions. Corruption can happen anywhere. But I imagine you still have police and fire departments, roads, bridges, harbours, traffic lights, schools, hospitals, old age pensions, media and communication network, electricity, public transit and sanitation, running water and sewer systems... those benefits.
Quoting NOS4A2
He hasn't been ostracized and abandoned. He's still deciding whether to betray and abandon his fellow workers. Even though he has been enjoying whatever benefits the union previously won by putting their own livelihoods on the line.
Meanwhile, the company that offered him no health insurance will abandon him when they close the mine, pull out all their money and set up again in some other country where people are even cheaper.
"working against the company" is a bit of a stretch, I'd say. "the company" is primarily comprised of employees, after all. But the union is for the employees, so it doesn't make sense to say "against the company" from that standpoint. (against management, now...)
Anger works against fear that management uses in its negotiations. Once you're at the point of a strike that's pretty much the emotional spark which will drive a person to select one side or the other -- or the professionals will stand back and wish people could just get along without acknowledging that there are simply differences in desire due to social position.
For a lot of professionals or independent contractors they have a hard time understanding this stuff because they're simply treated differently than workers who are viewed as replaceable or as not really worth being paid enough to live or just enough to live. They've had roughly fair dealings with employers and opportunities they can move onto if something goes south at their current place of employment. The social position of the workers just isn't something that clicks for a lot of people until they have felt it.
The other thing that's missing from the scenario is the build-up to the strike. By the time you get to a strike you've already exhausted pretty much every other option. What a union really does is negotiate -- striking is just a tactic in that process of negotiation, and it's basically the last resort.
But most negotiations are not conducted on such strong lines that warrant a strike. But by the time you get to a strike... I mean, avoid it at all costs, but my answer remains the same because I prefer to have power in a negotiation rather than not.
Quoting Lonely_traffic_light
Viva la Unión!
Exactly! It's a huge gamble for the members: the strike pay is much less than they have been accustomed to live on, and lower-level jobs don't pay enough to accumulate savings; if the company has pension and health plans, they cease when the job does. The management, on the other hand, has huge salaries, lots of assets and a very comfortable severance package in case the company is dissolved. The workers have nothing to fall back on.
And that's one way conservative governments break unions: issue a legal back-to-work order and mandatory arbitration, or what they do in the US: declare union membership 'optional'
... or just, like in the good old days, send in the cops.
The CNT was a key actor in the development of workers' rights in the 20th Spain. My grandparents were members, like most of the families, because back in the day only the bourgeois were able to run a company or even the country. So, I understand the context of the necessity of being part of such collectivism.
Although, CNT considers itself anarchist, it had a big participation of the Second Republic and lefties brigades against Franco, which in the same period time emerged another trade union of the regime: J.O.N.S. a syndicate of the working class but with conservative and far-right vibes.
After Franco's death, both trade unions disappeared. It is true that CNT remains "active" but it is no longer important because in 1977 were born the two main syndicates of Spain: UGT (Unión General de Trabajadores) and CC.OO (Comisiones Obreras). These two are Marxist, and they refuse to recognise other classes of trade unions, such as UFPOL (a police syndicate, that it is fascist, supposedly)
Conclusion: Despite CNT had a good start defending the rights of the Spanish middle-class, their "children" ended up fighting each other because they became in political lobbies.
End of this class of History.
Not quite clear to me, esp. the last statement, but it's OK.
Events like the CNT strike in Spain, the Russian Revolution, and various other events, fueled the 1919-1920 "Red Scare" in the United States--the vicious campaign by conservative companies and organizations as well as government agencies to suppress labor organizing and black civil rights. That wasn't the first anti-labor or anti-black suppression, of course. In the Ludlow Massacre in 1914, Colorado National Guard and anti-labor militia fired on a camp of striking miners, killing 25, including 11 children. (Rockefeller owned the mine.) In 1921 a white mob burned down Tulsa, Oklahoma's black community, killing about 300 of the residents. Tulsa wasn't the only such event.
The forces of repression correctly intuited that letting underlings get too far ahead anywhere leads to more undesirable social agitation and change-- like the advancement of labor, civil rights, progressive movements, and the abomination of higher taxes on the wealthy.
Employers exploit the worker's financial insecurity to keep them from complaining about conditions and pay: they're afraid of losing their jobs. This fear is used by employers all of the time; if it's not enough, they use more direct intimidation, and sometimes police.
If the workers are angry enough and united in their anger, they overcome their fear and move against the employer in spite of the dangers.
Those are public services which are covered up by taxes. I do not know why it should be related to trade unions.
Quoting javi2541997
[police and fire departments, roads, bridges, harbours, traffic lights, schools, hospitals, old age pensions, media and communication network, electricity, public transit and sanitation, running water and sewer systems.]
Quoting javi2541997
Yes. In a society. With dues and rules.
A club, a union, a country, a fraternity, a professional organization - they are all societies that have constitutions, laws, obligations and membership fees.
You make it sound like a simple phsychological game. I'm afraid there's much more to it than just that. One does not risk his job, his income and the support of his family because he gets angry.
(Except if he's a total idiot, of course.)
BTW, have you taken on Moliere's defense? :grin:
Quoting Alkis Piskas
There are always more details, and often times they're important to a particular circumstance. I presented a simplification which was meant to highlight how emotion, rather than duty, would be the reason a person decides one way or another. The simplification fits with the scenario of a strike.
The "more" would be the lead-up to the strike, what other tactics had been tried, the sorts of demands the workers are making, how long the contract has been in place, what relationships there are between union members, union leadership, and management, what the wider circumstances are in which the conflict is taking place....
In short, the sorts of things that a historical account would take care of better than a hypothetical.
You have evidently not seen collective rage at a long-suffered injustice. That's the stuff revolutions are made of.
OK
OK
So much for that workers solidarity!
Are these the largest trade unions and are they really Marxist?
Yes, they are the largest trade unions and represent the most workers of different areas in the country. They also act as a mediator when they have to negotiate with employers and Ministry of Labour.
On the other hand, they are recognised Marxists absolutely! But I am not the one who says so, it is written in their bylaws with subtle words.
Comisiones Obreras: CCOO claims the principles of justice, freedom, equality and solidarity. It defends the demands of working men and women; It is oriented towards the suppression of capitalism and the construction of a democratic socialist society.
UGT (Unión General de Trabajadores) UGT: The Unión General de Trabajadoras y Trabajadores is a progressive, committed, vindicating, democratic and independent organization with presence in all sectors of activity and throughout Spain. A society in which fundamental social rights have priority over economic freedoms and in which the benefits derived from digital or technological development revert to society as a whole. To reach this stage, the role of social dialogue and greater worker participation in company's decisions will be essential.
Yep, they seem to be pretty Marxist to me...
Percentage of workers that are trade union members (2018):
Iceland: 90,4%
Sweden: 66,1%
Finland: 64,6 %
Spain: 13,9%
Membership in Spain is below OECD average (16,1%)
I think there's been a concerted effort to undermine unions.
There's a lot of images of unions, like the mob (but so, so many others), which are popular because they make a splash and feed into people's preconceptions. There are even law firms dedicated to busting union drives. There's also been a long-term concerted effort to defund unions through what are called "right to work" laws such that people who benefit from a given contract can opt in or out of whether they'll pay union dues, which -- due to human nature -- most people prefer free things to not-free things and it takes about one generation before a union is unable to hire enough staffers to appropriately service the contract and it becomes something of a limping organization that, with appropriate activism, can be strong -- but everyone at this point is used to the more bureaucratic form of labor unions and they really do just want a fee-for-service model (without paying for the fee-for-service model).
And with fewer numbers comes less influence within the political realm, which in turn means that politicians are more likely to ignore the demands of labor even while unions contribute to the democratic political party. It's a feedback loop.
Which is why I say the capitalists have become better at divide and conquer -- that's basically what's happened over the course of the last half of the 20th century as a concerted political effort to undermine the democratic base in favor of capital.
Any social democrat, eg. centrist and anything to the left of that has similar ideas. It's not really marxist.
I would think so too, to be marxist would be way off, but they surely are ideologically on the left. I think the bitter civil war and the Franco's regime still has made the divide in Spain a painful issue. Unlike Finland, Spain didn't have it's "Winter War" that would have united the people to fight a common enemy and thus create social cohesion between the left and the right. Hence I wouldn't underestimate here the impact of Spanish history.
Some large unions in Finland are indeed close to the Social Democrats, but for example the AKAVA (Confederation of Unions for Professional and Managerial Staff in Finland) where for example teachers, professors, and the military officers that I gave as an example aren't leftist.
I think that if the trade unions are apolitical would be better as then their members understand that the union is simply for there for their salaries and working conditions (a thing tha Marx himself feared).
I agree :up:
We are so divided that it is impossible for us to agree on the lyrics of the national anthem. But the division goes further in all possible areas. I am not an expert in the history of my country, but I bet that if we had never developed as well as the rest of EU countries it is for the next reasons:
1. Catholic culture instead of protestant. Having wannabe Vatican lovers have always been a pain in the ass.
2. The Bourbon dynasty won over Habsburg in the succession war. Some of us believe that our culture would be totally different if our kingdom had centre-European roots.
3. Not allowing Catalonia and Basque country decide their own destiny. Believe it or not, (probably) the polls would result on NO to independence. But the block from the state to celebrate a referendum only leads us to regional conflicts and having citizens who hate Spain because their father did so, and grandparents, and so on...
Quoting ssu
I agree too, and I wish trade unions simply act in such a way.
They can't do that in North America. The moneyed interests have political power through campaign financing and lobbying. That's why they're able to control governments and defeat trade unions - as well as working people and poor people; that's why they are able to take more and more and more.
Should working people not have political representation to defend themselves?
Not to be Spain basher here, we must also remember that Spain is the example of how a fascist state then can transform itself to a democracy. Hence if Spain (and Portugal) could transform themselves, why couldn't Russia? Spain was an empire too! Spain had to endure many wars and humiliations in losing it's empire and becoming the Spain we know now.
Quoting javi2541997
I always loved Max Weber, his "Protestant ethic" argument is important.
Quoting javi2541997
Interesting, a bit off the topic, but I would love to hear just why some think so.
I count that the House of Bourbon has been deposed three times from the Spanish throne in history. Yet wasn't this "Whack-a-mole" family, that has every time bounced back, actually important in the transformation after Franco's death?
Anybody who doesn't believe this should see for example the movie American Factory.
Quoting Vera Mont
The first thing when talking about trade unions in the US, people usually think about Jimmy Hoffa and the mobsters. Not encouraging, actually. And people believe the mantra: "If the job sucks, then just get a new job!".
...which sucks in all the same ways, since the owners are sleeping together - with the senator at the foot of their bed.
What? Why would I think that?
First of all, the monarchy always bounces back because Spain is not mature enough to be a Republic. All republicans dream that Spain would be like France and Germany if we get rid of the king. Well, this has zero basis and our left (where republicans are allocated the most) tend to copy the behaviour of socialist Latin American countries rather than Western Europeans. I agree, in short, that, thanks to our monarchy, there won't be a Coup de Etat because the military structure is loyal to him.
Quoting ssu
The Habsburg family represents the Golden era of Spain worldwide. Unification of the country, moors are kicked off from the peninsula, empire, resources from colonies, literature and art flowing around and a big presence in both European and Vatican power relationships. A pure nostalgic would feel nostalgic of this royal family. Since Charles II (the witched) dead without descents, the fall of Spain started on. His successors inherited an empire that remained largely intact, but Philip of Anjou had little sense of Spanish interests and needs. When a conflict came up between the interests of Spain and France, he usually favored France. Ferdinand VII was the worst of them: Spain lost nearly all of its American possessions. Incompetent, despotic, and short-sighted.
But again, Spain is not ready to be responsible for a republican state.
Unlikely you don't think that way, but those that think that changing your job is the cure if your salary / working conditions suck and think it's all about the individual, do usually think so.
It's not maturity. Spaniards that I've met are just as mature as we Finns are. It's more perhaps about poverty, weak institutions, not so great economy, class division, lack of social cohesion and a lot of political polarization. And a violent, difficult history. Also that burden of having been an Empire earlier.
The Nordic monarchies and the UK (after it's Civil War, that is) are good examples how actually modern constitutional monarchies have worked through the problems of industrialization and modernization without violence or revolutions with the monarchy surviving and adapting to a much smaller part. For example Sweden has been run for a very long time by the Social Democrats, and they are all but happy with having a king.
Spain, I think, tells another story. There is just this history of violence and vitriol. Yes, we too had a Civil War (which happened very much because of being part of Imperial Russia and since they had their socialist revolution, I guess we had to have ours too...). Yet even if many were killed in Finland in 1918, there wasn't such cruelty and loathing that you could see in the Spanish Civil War. Also, the Social Democrats, who had started the uprising in 1918, came back into power in Finland in the 1930's having been adapted to multiparty democracy (with the right accepting them). The militant Social Democrats had fled to Soviet Union and formed their Communist Party in Moscow. They were banned until the end of WW2. In Spain the whole totalitarian nature of Franco's dictatorship was there to prevent the socialists from re-emerging.
If during the Civil War Republican fighters posed with dug up skeletons of nuns or thousands of children were taken from "leftist" family to be re-educated until the 1950's, you can say there is deep division and polarization in the country. Without some unifying event, this all will still linger on even if new generations have been born with having no recollection of even Franco's time.
A time that some very old Spaniards still remember:
Quoting javi2541997
Ah! Nostalgia.
Well, the Habsburgs of Central Europe didn't have that kind of a great run in the 20th Century, although it's interesting to speculate if the dual monarchy had survived and would (or could) be a truly multiethnic empire. Let's just remember that the UK has still prevailed in one piece. And, uh, Spain too, even if both countries (UK and Spain) have had their experiences of attempted secessions in the not so distant past.
Yet it's telling that the last Habsburg, the crown prince of the last Austrian Emperor (and Hungarian king) was a staunch activist for European integration and a MEP in the EU. In his funeral, the nostalgia for the dual monarchy in Austria was very evident:
Except I don't think that, either. On the contrary: without union protection, every employer is equally empowered to exploit the workers. Many state governments, and the current supreme court support employers' rights at the expense of workers' rights.
Not really. The minority of rich and their politicians make the laws, make the rules of employments, make the system in which workers have no choice but try to make a living. The same minority also control the broadcast media and convey the information (propaganda) that favours them and turns workers against one another, convinces workers to vote and think against their own interests.
The United Auto Workers union launched simultaneous strikes at three factories owned by General Motors, Ford and Chrysler parent Stellantis early on Friday, kicking off the most ambitious U.S. industrial labor action in decades.
[tweet]https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/UAW/status/1702550440347349330%3Fref_src%3Dtwsrc%255Egoogle%257Ctwcamp%255Eserp%257Ctwgr%255Etweet&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwi4oJSZ7auBAxWQTKQEHbTUBOEQglR6BAgNEAQ&usg=AOvVaw2DsndUzCQ1WxuZ2vQbfVTw[/tweet]
And some folks said that U.S. was not a good example of syndicalism, hehe.
So trade unions are banned or what? I don't think so.
Quoting Vera Mont
Well, if you're workers vote and think against their own interests... either they are genuinely idiots or you are just condescending towards your fellow citizens.
or what. A sneaky piece of legislation in 27 states that does the opposite of what it says.
Quoting ssu
Maybe both and some other stuff as well, like they're brainwashed relentlessly from the cradle onward.
Then factor in the egregious voter suppression and poll manipulation in state elections, and you only ever have a minority - a carefully selected minority - actually represented.
I think this is totally sensible that being a member of trade union is voluntary, the whole idea and participation has to come from the workers themselves, not by some goddam law! Places like China membership might be mandatory, but that makes it far more worse.
What does actually a "unionized workplace" mean? Is it that in the workplace there exists an union?