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Why are unions frowned upon?

T

TaterTots

Banned
When I was younger I worked somewhere that was unionized for 10 years. I thought it was fantastic. I had job security, I would see raises when they negotiated contracts, etc. Now, we're at a point where you are threatened to be fired if you mention an union. Everyone is scared to talk about it. Look at Wal-Mart for example.

After digging around, I've discovered unions aren't as frowned upon outside of the U.S. In fact, when I search unions, mostly articles trying to explain how they're terrible pop up. In those articles it's mostly management complaining. Can someone try to educate me as to why unions are so "terrible" in the U.S.? Also, if you currently work at a unionized place can you share your experience? Do you love it or hate it?
 
M

Magwik

Banned
companies don't want their workers to band together for basic or decent rights/pay.
Betsy DeVos (our new secretary of education) and her family have spent the better part of the past decade funding Right To Work bills and groups in the Midwest which has been destroying unions and people's lives since they began.
 
N

norm9

Member
Because people who aren't in unions don't realize the perks they get are in part thanks to years of work from unions, but they don't wanna pay dues, because they're indivuduals and don't care about the dude working beside them.
 
S

Syriel

Member
Honestly, it's because many unions have gone from "protecting the worker" to "protecting their own profits/interests."

My SO works as a nurse and her union has done an exceedingly crap job in negotiations because it only looks out for the older workers at the expense of the younger workers.

When unions have gotten so big that they can't effectively represent their constituents as a whole, and end up picking-and-choosing winners-and-losers, you're naturally going to see some resentment.

In these cases the union feels a lot more like a mafia protection racket than an organization that's looking out for a worker's best interests.

And that's not even touching the topic of public sector unions, like Police Unions.

I honestly believe that unions would be a lot more beneficial to workers (and better accepted in the US) if they were smaller and better represented the worker groups, as opposed to these national, mega-unions that are just in it for the $$$.
 
T

the210

Member
They have been systematically demonized over the years. It has worked brilliantly as people know longer associate their work place rights with the unions that got them.
 
E

Ever

Banned
worker's rights LUL

only rights that matter are those of the shareholders

now get the fuck out of my office before I call in some mexicans
 
C

ClosingADoor

Member
Unions can sometimes cause trouble when cuts are necessary for a company to survive, or for government to not get into debt too much. But most of the talk around issues is more that employers just don't want to deal with them, because it gives workers a stronger position. If you run your company right, an union should not be a problem. But well, shareholders want their profit.
 
D

danm999

Member
The capital likes the labour divided and easily manageable.

Easier to negotiate more favourable terms with them than when they group together.

In America the demonisation is particularly effective because of the strong emphasis on individuality and bootstraps. Why join a union, that’s for communists. Just work hard and everything will be fine!
 
J

Junior Mint

Member
Some unions are good and some are bad. I was part of a union when I worked for the Canadian government and all I saw was that it protected lazy ass workers and got them raises for simply not being bad enough to be fired - not that they could be fired without going through what seemed like years worth of processes anyways.
 
A

Acorn

Member
A mixture of historical abuse of power (like pre 80s) and attacking workers rights. Often using the historical abuse and acting like unions have power to fucking abuse anymore to mask the attack.

Edit also unions are hated by most media here too. UK as you can guess.
 
DiscoJer

DiscoJer

Member
Historically? Partially because of the red scare, and partially because of the ties to organized crime (see Jimmy Hoffa who is probably the only union leader people know by name and for the wrong reasons).

The former was mostly hysteria, but unfortunately, there was a lot of corruption in unions (at least the higher profile ones) which discredited them. Which is a shame, since they are a vital aspect of balancing corporations versus workers rights. Walmart is a great example, they treat employees as badly as they can get away with. Only the threat of unionization makes them treat their employees somewhat better

Also the collapse of the US auto industry didn't help. The UAW was very high profile and when an industry collapses and sees a lot of jobs moving out of country or to states where there are no-unions it makes the union look complicit in the collapse. Though again, the threat o the UAW existing no doubt helps car makers treat their non-union employees somewhat better..
 
N

NYCmetsfan

Banned
TaterTots said:
When I was younger I worked somewhere that was unionized for 10 years. I thought it was fantastic. I had job security, I would see raises when they negotiated contracts, etc. Now, we're at a point where you are threatened to be fired if you mention an union. Everyone is scared to talk about it. Look at Wal-Mart for example.

After digging around, I've discovered unions aren't as frowned upon outside of the U.S. In fact, when I search unions, mostly articles trying to explain how they're terrible pop up. In those articles it's mostly management complaining. Can someone try to educate me as to why unions are so "terrible" in the U.S.? Also, if you currently work at a unionized place can you share your experience? Do you love it or hate it?
Click to expand...

You've done all this research and you've not figured out and seen numerous articles about this?

This thread doesn't seem set up to want to answer any questions but "lol stupid US"
 
D

Dazzler

Member
I'm in a pretty strong union and the benefits of it are incredible. I get a flex day off every three weeks, and it's extremely frowned upon to do anymore than your alloted 37.5 hours per week

I'd be lost without the union
 
N

NYCmetsfan

Banned
DiscoJer said:
Historically? Partially because of the red scare, and partially because of the ties to organized crime (see Jimmy Hoffa who is probably the only union leader people know by name and for the wrong reasons).

The former was mostly hysteria, but unfortunately, there was a lot of corruption in unions (at least the higher profile ones) which discredited them. Which is a shame, since they are a vital aspect of balancing corporations versus workers rights. Walmart is a great example, they treat employees as badly as they can get away with. Only the threat of unionization makes them treat their employees somewhat better

Also the collapse of the US auto industry didn't help. The UAW was very high profile and when an industry collapses and sees a lot of jobs moving out of country or to states where there are no-unions it makes the union look complicit in the collapse. Though again, the threat o the UAW existing no doubt helps car makers treat their non-union employees somewhat better..
Click to expand...
Unions power grew through the red scare,

Reagan, the democrats abandoning them and racial resentment are all largely to blame, plus the rise of right to work and corporations in the 70s coordinating on anti-union strategies.
 
S

shintoki

sparkle this bitch
Imagine a police union or teacher union for everything. Kill a man on camera or have underage sex and they still can't get rid of your ass. Who wouldn't want that sort of protection for a job? On the downside, which sort of company would ever want that sort of union.
 
M

Mimosa97

Member
Junior Mint said:
Some unions are good and some are bad. I was part of a union when I worked for the Canadian government and all I saw was that it protected lazy ass workers and got them raises for simply not being bad enough to be fired - not that they could be fired without going through what seemed like years worth of processes anyways.
Click to expand...

It's even worse in France but things are about to change.

I'll take counter-productive unions over no unions and at-will employment like they have in the US. Unions are pretty much a thing everywhere in the developped world except for the land of the free.
 
Z

ZombiePlatypus

Member
It's ridiculous. Should be flat out criminal for companies to punish unions and unionization of workers.

Mimosa97 said:
It's even worse in France but things are about to change.

I'll take counter-productive unions over no unions and at-will employment like they have in the US. Unions are pretty much a thing everywhere in the developped world except for the land of the free.
Click to expand...

Land where big business decides what laws are. :/
 
M

Maridia

Member
From a consumer standpoint, there's a perception that they drive up prices and protect shitty employees.

Also, the most visible union in the US for the past few years has been the police union, and the view hasn't been flattering.
 
A

Angelus Errare

Banned
Corporations and conservatives have convinced idiots that they're a burden and aren't needed because corporations will do the right thing by workers and that the wealth will trickle down.

Too many Americans see corporations as benevolent gods that as long as you give them your all and don't upset them, you'll be rewarded.
 
L

Laekon

Member
Like everything there are good and bad sides. The good side of security and better benefits are easy to see. The inflexibility is the most unseen bad side. Some unions do not allow for the rewarding of people that achieve anything and that’s not just in money but things like lunch or randomized prices. I recently did a clinical at a hospital that had no power in getting just a handful of nurses to switch from 8 to 12 hr shifts. The majority wanted 12 hr shifts but even with the majority of the union voting for it the union wouldn’t allow the 8hr people to be moved to 12’s or to a different floor where they are qualified to work.
 
P

prophetvx

Member
Because there are advantages to unions and disadvantages. They are great at increasing minimum wage but they tend to create a system where individuals are not rewarded. Collective bargaining helps ensure you are paid fairly for your work at the cost of performance based remuneration.

I have worked under unions and I'd never want to work under one again. They certainly have their place in some industries though.
 
K

Kill3r7

Member
Good question. It is a discussion I have had with many people and most think that unions in the private sector do little to help workers and preserve their jobs. Also, meritocracy has become the buzzword in most industries.
 
C

Chjemah

Neo Member
I was part of Union when I worked in retail. I was just a bagger so I didn't really give a shit about anything, I was just there to pay for junior college. Benefits were not great, but it's hard to complain as just a part time worker, people who are there to make a living probably had a much different experience. All I heard from my coworkers though was how our Union was shit and didn't give a fuck about us and every time they negotiated with the company they gave up more and more of our benefits while still taking huge chunks of our paycheck in dues.

Who knows how much the company would have taken had it not been for the Union though, like I said I never paid attention to any of that just kept my head down and bagged groceries. Just my personal experience.
 
P

Phased

Member
Syriel said:
Honestly, it's because many unions have gone from "protecting the worker" to "protecting their own profits/interests."

My SO works as a nurse and her union has done an exceedingly crap job in negotiations because it only looks out for the older workers at the expense of the younger workers.

When unions have gotten so big that they can't effectively represent their constituents as a whole, and end up picking-and-choosing winners-and-losers, you're naturally going to see some resentment.

In these cases the union feels a lot more like a mafia protection racket than an organization that's looking out for a worker's best interests.

And that's not even touching the topic of public sector unions, like Police Unions.

I honestly believe that unions would be a lot more beneficial to workers (and better accepted in the US) if they were smaller and better represented the worker groups, as opposed to these national, mega-unions that are just in it for the $$$.
Click to expand...

While this isn't all Unions, it's definitely some of them. Workers rights are important and Unions are important because of that however it's disingenuous to say Unions always do the right thing for the right reasons.

Unfortunately the mega large Unions are companies and organizations all to themselves and they sometimes appear to be chiefly concerned with their own preservation and seniority over the individual worker.
 
P

Podge293

Member
Because sometimes they're just bloody unreasonable. The company I work for wants to close their DB pension scheme cuz it's performing so shit they won't be able to fund any additional members and have offered quite a reasonable DC scheme to join.

Union throwing a hissy fit instead and now the company union members are about to take a 9th strike day.
 
P

PillarEN

Member
DiscoJer said:
Historically? Partially because of the red scare, and partially because of the ties to organized crime (see Jimmy Hoffa who is probably the only union leader people know by name and for the wrong reasons).

The former was mostly hysteria, but unfortunately, there was a lot of corruption in unions (at least the higher profile ones) which discredited them. Which is a shame, since they are a vital aspect of balancing corporations versus workers rights. Walmart is a great example, they treat employees as badly as they can get away with. Only the threat of unionization makes them treat their employees somewhat better

Also the collapse of the US auto industry didn't help. The UAW was very high profile and when an industry collapses and sees a lot of jobs moving out of country or to states where there are no-unions it makes the union look complicit in the collapse. Though again, the threat o the UAW existing no doubt helps car makers treat their non-union employees somewhat better..
Click to expand...

First bold: I only knew him originally because of this.

second bold: Living in the Detroit area I most definitely remember this a lot. You got bad examples like the police union too.

Unions aren't all good or bad to answer the OP. But the knee jerk kind of immediate resentment of unions before seeing how they act or their history is one of those thoughtless examples of being influenced a little too much by those who aren't always in it for workers rights. That stance is a silly one. Ought have a look at each respective union before making a call really.
 
L

Lonewulfeus

Member
Junior Mint said:
Some unions are good and some are bad. I was part of a union when I worked for the Canadian government and all I saw was that it protected lazy ass workers and got them raises for simply not being bad enough to be fired - not that they could be fired without going through what seemed like years worth of processes anyways.
Click to expand...

There will always be people who take advantage of the system, but the good it does for everyone else vastly makes up for some bad actors.
 
X

XBP

Member
They can be good and bad. Good because they can negotiate for you better bad because they protect shitty employees who should have been fired ages ago. I work for a retail company that has a very strong union. I'm part of the union as well but in a supervisory role. what makes it tough and makes my job ten times harder is terrible employees who the union protects. If these people were fired I honestly would like my job but I have to babysit around 10 people because they don't so their fair share of work and slack of at the first chance while the remaining people work their ass off and have to cover most of the work. Its terrible and extremely demoralizing. Sometimes I wish we didn't have a union, just so that we won't be stressed out as much.
 
D

daveo42

Banned
There are rules when it comes to Unions. They get a bad rap from management usually due to stories of individuals getting away with doing nothing all day and making $30/hr, with unlimited 2.5x overtime. I heard alot of as a kid as my dad was a supervisor in a GE union shop. Any issues had to go though a Union steward and it was next to impossible to have anyone removed for being a bad egg.

Not saying unions are bad at all. I wish more places had them, but a few bad eggs ruin the bunch and enough of these kind of stories were told to add leverage to companies to take measures to keep workers from unionizing.
 
S

Saganator

Member
A lot of people's only experience with unions is paying the dues and dealing with shitty coworkers that should be fired. They don't know people actually died fighting for the 40 hour work week, decent wages, and health benefits being the norm for any decent job.
 
E

Empty

Member
- people get irate about strikes. when you can't get to work because of striking train drivers, you tend to resent them. when your holiday flight is canceled as the french air traffic control workers are on strike, you tend to resent them. "why should they inconvenience you to earn more for themselves. how selfish"

now many would say it's better to have collective solidarity long-term is a fair debate, that you should try to raise everyone's wages, but people think in the short term.

- unions are often associated with rewarding mediocrity. there's a great old this american life episode about the "rubber rooms" in new york state that terrible teachers go to sit in all day and do nothing on full pay for year after year as the union deals mean they can't be fired till incredibly long bureaucratic processes and it's easier to let them sit there. this is indicative of loads of stories about this.

people can discuss whether these cases are just part of overall avoiding being picked off as individual workers but people often feel a sense of injustice at blatantly unmeritocratic systems "why should he be paid for nothing when i worked my ass off all day"

- politically there is a popular narrative about the last forty years or so that puts unions as the enemies of progress. i.e industrial western economies flourished post ww2 until the 70s where the weight of over-powerful unions, over-sized government programs, huge tax bills and burdensome regulations sent them into crisis, which was saved by leaders across the western world in the eighties who reduced government, unions and tax to liberalize the economy and restored growth by allowing globalised business and markets to thrive. then even social-democratic leaders in the 90s like blair and clinton accepted this new paradigm and worked around the edges as it was so successful at driving growth.

this is obviously a hugely contested narrative in every way but it's believed by many and in it is the idea that associates unions with economic stagnation and lost jobs.
 
S

SolarPowered

Member
Why should someone else have good things that I don't have even if it might open doors for me down the road?
Click to expand...
This is the mememe society where many people can't look past their own individual wants and needs. It doesn't help that they don't know how people put their lives and the lives of their families on the line for these working rights and benefits when Capitalism was at the height of it's control and abuse and men/women/children were nothing more than disposable cogs.
 
C

Corran Horn

May the Schwartz be with you
Love my union but damn we are so weak now. Had no contact for like 16 months then bent over and took a shitty deal from the company.

Makes we wish for the days when they fought better for their employees.
 
N

norm9

Member
prophetvx said:
They are great at increasing minimum wage but they tend to create a system where individuals are not rewarded. Collective bargaining helps ensure you are paid fairly for your work at the cost of performance based remuneration.
Click to expand...

This is a-ok with me and my coworkers. We work in "customer service" and we put in our eight, and we're out. We mind our own business, no body trying to undermine anyone else, because we're all safe at our jobs.

Lack of unions is where you get people "bragging" that they've never called out sick and demonizing those that do.
 
K

Kor of Memory

Member
Because a union job comes with both a maximum and a minimum of what is expected of an employee.

Both the max and min are bad for employers. You can't expect a worker to do more than their pay grade, and at the same time, you can't expect your employees to give you 100% all day every day. In fact, you pretty much have to settle for average (and that should be okay).

I work in a union, in the IT field specifically. My job is to fix PCs. A co worker who was hired the same day as me was twice my age, and had no idea what Google was. Is he qualified for the job? Yes, actually! Because the job doesn't actually require any technical skill, only the ability to follow existing documentation on how to resolve very specific issues that are written up and tested by people paid more than we are.
 
N

NervousXtian

Thought Emoji Movie was good. Take that as you will.
Syriel said:
Honestly, it's because many unions have gone from "protecting the worker" to "protecting their own profits/interests."

My SO works as a nurse and her union has done an exceedingly crap job in negotiations because it only looks out for the older workers at the expense of the younger workers.

When unions have gotten so big that they can't effectively represent their constituents as a whole, and end up picking-and-choosing winners-and-losers, you're naturally going to see some resentment.

In these cases the union feels a lot more like a mafia protection racket than an organization that's looking out for a worker's best interests.

And that's not even touching the topic of public sector unions, like Police Unions.

I honestly believe that unions would be a lot more beneficial to workers (and better accepted in the US) if they were smaller and better represented the worker groups, as opposed to these national, mega-unions that are just in it for the $$$.
Click to expand...


Police unions get a lot of shit because of protecting some of the bad seeds.. but they also protect the good cops when they need it.

Unions protect workers until an investigation can be done.. otherwise you'd see people fired whenever an accusation is lobbed. That isn't fair.

I think a lot of it is that people hear about the bad stuff, not the good stuff.. because the good stuff is just normal people working and having a job that pays well, is safe and set's them up for retirement.
 
D

darscot

Member
I think it's really a personal preference. There is good and bad in them. Unions are just as capitalist as the corporations on the other side of the table. I also think there usefulness declines in modern society. Many of the protections they offer are covered by the government. In places like China with crazy abusive labour practices they would be very beneficial. Up here in Canada they are starting to tip the scales towards another racket that takes money away from workers. The security they offer is not for me but I understand why many people like them.
 
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