Everyone needs a union. Engineers, software developers, secretaries, even supervisors and managers. All of us get fucked over by the executives.
Yeah I don’t have much time for the “are professional workers working class debate,” I just extend to whether you have to work for a living. Obviously there’s PMC class privilege in certain ways and I think it’s good to discuss that but I’m not in to the exclusionary side of that. Petite-bourgeois is more about the values they borrow from the bourgeois on account of having more access to conspicuous consumption so that’s where I’m a PMC class traitor.
Managers usually work on behalf of executives so that line has to be carefully determined. In my union supervisors are union and managers aren’t.
guitar shredding
There is literally no downside to this.
Is it good to have 1 union?
(Unions in general are definitely good and obviously it makes more impact with more workers at once. I just had the thought of ’monopolies == bad’ and wondered how/if that applies to unions)
I think the more pro-capitalist view of unions would say that “one big union” is definitely a bad idea. The socialist or anarcho-syndicalist would likely see the one big union as a way to collectively fight the bosses, specifically in the context of class struggle. The communist or Marxist-Leninist would maybe say the union is a barrier to revolution by sustaining the class structure.
The biggest “one big union” org was/is the IWW or “wobblies” as they were known and it was their primary mission to unionize all workers under the IWW banner.
I can chime in as an anarcho-syndicalist! Personally, vanguard unions seem like a bad idea to me for the same reason as a vanguard party. I think unions should stick to their industry, and coordinate production between industries, i.e. the union representing a factory making zippers coordinates with the union representing a factory making pants to make sure all pants have zippers.
I’m not strictly opposed to a vanguard union because I don’t think it would have the same potential for harm, however. Hell, I’m a member of the IWW. I just generally feel like production would be far less wasteful if the workers can project their voice through their union without meeting internal resistance from members outside their industry.
That makes a lot of sense I always found it interesting how anarcho-syndicalists supported the idea of one entity although it makes a damn good slogan and is a strong ideological point. They’ve also gone against the idea of competing unions in one industry which is always good.
What sort of things is the IWW up to now? I believe they sponsor union drives and offer resources, I’d almost consider joining as a way to donate to that since I’m already in a union its just that the AFL-CIO seems to legislatively own unions now. Bought some stuff from the IWW web store though which is amazingly well stocked. Utah Phillips and some of that music was in my house a lot growing up, definitely Seeger as well since my mother was a Christian Socialist.
Unions are a form of government. Their leadership is voted in by its members. It’d be weird to say governments are monopolies. Yes there’s only one government, but the representatives are democratically elected. Individuals still have a voice.
You do have a good point there and I agree with you
Workers should have the choice of what union they want to join and not he forced into the choice of join this one union in the automotive industry or not being in a union
There needs to be one unified union or else their bargaining power is greatly reduced. The cooperations will only hire from the union that benefits them most. Remember a union is not a private corporation. A union is a representative negotiating body. Every member of a union votes on and has a say in how the union acts.
Nah, union involvement in certain if not all sectors should absolutely not be discretionary, particularly in safety-sensitive industries although this really shouldn’t be limited to individual industries.
Otherwise you get idiots bitching its “safe enuff for muh” and get others or themselves hurt. Nope, sorry, they can be fishermen or forage in the woods if they want thuh freedom
I sure hope they aren’t too late to the party. With glut of overpriced trucks sitting on the domestic lots in the past few weeks as it seems they have caught up with demand and/or people are having a harder time getting financing from banks for $100,000+ trucks and EV product is not moving where they will put their production labour into next? This is even starting to happen with Tacos at Toyota.
Putting higher share of profits into workers’ bank accounts strengthens aggregate demand. In other words more money for truck loans.
Henry Ford was great at this early on but these days I’m not sure automotive employees can support themselves with self funded purchases. It’s going to more buyers than just the employees.
I’m concerned the auto industry have already taken the money at the trough with the crazy mark ups and tight supply of the past couple of years and now are going to say sorry our pockets are empty now…
The old story of capitalism for private profits and then socialism for the cycle of losses. It feels like the next loss cycle is ahead for the automotive industry and workers despite having good increases with their recent contracts are going to be bearing the brunt of the slowdowns again.
I really hope I’m wrong on this as it’s not a great outcome and it hasn’t been in the past either. I’m not sure the public is going to stomach another round of taxpayer buyouts again.
EVs are not moving on purpose.
https://jalopnik.com/car-dealers-are-stopping-customers-from-buying-evs-1851017999
I like how that article assumes that they’re simply ignorant about EVs, rather than being malicious.
But then I think of how much less maintenance EVs need, and how much of many dealers’ business is from service, and I suspect that the general anti-EV tone at dealerships is being pushed down from the top.
I can see the malicious angle. They would pressure me a bunch to convince me to service my work vehicles at the dealer.
I only did early on as the salesman would give my ex-wife his car for the day when she would bring it in when needed. They were fantastic senior sales guys. Real gentlemen. I think they were at war with the service department though.
Usually their service department couldn’t handle more than a oil change. One time my ex asked them to change out a hard to reach headlight bulb when I was out of town on a business trip.
The service department said it would cost $700 to replace the whole headlight assembly on our new car bought at their dealership as it had aftermarket remaned headlights. They said the car must of been in a accident and we were sold a repo.
When I got home from my trip it took me 2 minutes to change the bulb myself and I tore a strip off the Service Manager for not only for their gall to claim a brand new car with 5 kms they sold me was not new and their Bullshit scam preying on women.
They didn’t seem to care. I never bought another car from them again. I had bought 3 in a row from them at that stage for work. God damn crooks and I feel bad for those that don’t know any better. My ex-wife ended up driving around with 1 headlight in winter for a few days as a dealership was trying to scam her. They *must get some people on this BS to even be so bold.
