I tend to be disturbed by questions of the form: Why does group X need right Y? Forming unions is a UN recognized, US ratified, universal human right. Shouldn't that be argument enough?
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
edited June 2012
I wasn't arguing that they shouldn't get the right, I just wanted to know what kinds of things they were up against.
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
And I also admitted that my view wasn't the most nuanced and information filled, so thanks for wasting time on trying to shame me into admitting that.
No shaming intended. That's not the tone I'm going for. I'm trying to show that we regard certain rights as important enough to be universal. For example, would you question why creationists need free speech rights?
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
No shaming intended. That's not the tone I'm going for. I'm trying to show that we regard certain rights as important enough to be universal. For example, would you question why creationists need free speech rights?
Rights that protect you from the government are very different than rights that change your relationship with other private parties.
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
Well perhaps I framed the question poorly.
I did not mean to contend that one must earn the right to unionize at all. I simply wanted to know what kinds of struggles professors come across. Up until the last sentence CptKemzik did a pretty good job of answering me.
Yeah apologies for the slightly inflammatory rhetoric in that last sentence. As someone who has been able to see directly the problems faculty in academia are up against, and who reads about the problems that it is rife with in this country, it's an issue that i've become pretty invested in the past couple of years.
Speaking of another example of academia and labor, graduate students and adjunct faculty have been trying to push for collective rights at universities as well. Between the amount of coursework and research grad students have to do by default, and the fact that teaching classes is paid peanuts by the university (for both parties), many of these people are financially caught between a rock and a hard place.
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
Indeed, I can see now how it seems like I was being more anti-professor than I intended so I'll shoot some apologies out, too.
No shaming intended. That's not the tone I'm going for. I'm trying to show that we regard certain rights as important enough to be universal. For example, would you question why creationists need free speech rights?
Rights that protect you from the government are very different than rights that change your relationship with other private parties.
I would argue that union rights are a protection from the government. The reason that certain workers cannot unionize is because the government is restricting their ability to do so. Coming back to the example of private university faculty, if it weren't for the Supreme Court they could unionize to if they wanted to. A union is merely a contract between private individuals.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
No shaming intended. That's not the tone I'm going for. I'm trying to show that we regard certain rights as important enough to be universal. For example, would you question why creationists need free speech rights?
Rights that protect you from the government are very different than rights that change your relationship with other private parties.
I would argue that union rights are a protection from the government. The reason that certain workers cannot unionize is because the government is restricting their ability to do so. Coming back to the example of private university faculty, if it weren't for the Supreme Court they could unionize to if they wanted to. A union is merely a contract between private individuals.
Actually, the government restricts the rights of private parties in the union context. Without government intervention, anyone can call themselves a "union" but employers can ignore them or fire everyone who joins. All that the government does is say "if you follow x procedures, then we will limit the actions your employer may take in relation to your union." I think it is very clear that the rights provided by the government in the union context are protections against certain private actions, not protections against the government.
Yes, the NLRA imposes weak restrictions on what employers can do to organizing workers. But it also restricts the ability of labor to exercise power. For example, closed shops, union shops, and even secondary strikes are illegal in the US.
Unions existed successfully in the US long before the 20th century NLRA. Not that labor history is taught in public schools any more, but the declaration of independence was signed in a union hall.
Yeshiva, along with many other cases, is an example of the government stepping in and restricting the ability of private parties to enter into contracts. The government isn't just saying that they won't protect or support organizing private faculty. It forbids them to do so.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Yes, the NLRA imposes weak restrictions on what employers can do to organizing workers. But it also restricts the ability of labor to exercise power. For example, closed shops, union shops, and even secondary strikes are illegal in the US.
Unions existed successfully in the US long before the 20th century NLRA. Not that labor history is taught in public schools any more, but the declaration of independence was signed in a union hall.
Yeshiva, along with many other cases, is an example of the government stepping in and restricting the ability of private parties to enter into contracts. The government isn't just saying that they won't protect or support organizing private faculty. It forbids them to do so.
Are you saying that if the professors decide to band together, call themselves a union or guild or league or group of awesome professors who deserve more money, and attempt to negotiate a contract on a collective basis that the federal government will tell them they cannot do so? Certainly the employer could say "we won't negotiate with you" and if the group is upset enough, they could refuse to work, but then the employer could just hire other people.
Correct. That's what being ruled management under the NLRA does. If they associated anyway and went on strike, it would be an illegal "wild cat" strike and they would go to jail.
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Tiger BurningDig if you will, the pictureRegistered User, SolidSaints Tuberegular
Correct. That's what being ruled management under the NLRA does. If they associated anyway and went on strike, it would be an illegal "wild cat" strike and they would go to jail.
Only if they tried to do a sit-in or some such. A "wild cat" strike generally just means that they could be legally fired.
There's nothing stopping them from forming a union in the informal sense. They were denied NLRB certification as a collective bargaining unit, the only point of which is receiving the benefit of those "weak restrictions" you were talking about (one of which is the ability to strike without being fired).
Let me also say a word on employees who are permitted to unionize being protected. I used the word weak restrictions on purpose. While it is technically illegal to fire organizing workers, this is a largely theoretical restriction. Let me explain how it works:
Once a majority of workers file cards saying they want a union, the NLRB schedules an election. Until then the employer is allowed to, and will, force workers to attend anti-union meetings and presentations, threaten to close the company if workers vote yes, and force workers to meet one on one with managers to be pressured into voting "no."
Workers that speak out are identified and fired prior to the vote. "But that's illegal!" you say. Sure. But if you are fired in such a fashion, you have to take your employer to court and prove the unfair labor practice. And if, if, you win, sanctions are limited to backpay. Not punitive damages, not compensatory damages, not triple backpay, not future pay; backpay is all you get. Unless you're an illegal immigrant. Then you dont even get that, read nothing.
So there's literally no risk to the employer to fire you for organizing. Worst case he has to pay you what he would have paid you anyway. There's a reason Wal-Mart workers aren't organized. And it's not because they don't want to be.
If you've ever wondered why unions push for card check laws, this is why. It would allow workers to organize by signing cards in secret, having to fear retaliation only if the employer finds out before they file.
EDIT: Sorry about the atrocious spelling and grammar. I'm posting from my phone.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Let me also say a word on employees who are permitted to unionize being protected. I used the word weak restrictions on purpose. While it is technically illegal to fire organizing workers, this is a largely theoretical restriction. Let me explain how it works:
Once a majority of workers file cards saying they want a union, the NLRB schedules an election. Until then the employer is allowed to, and will, force workers to attend anti-union meetings and presentations, threaten to close the company if workers vote yes, and force workers to meet one on one with managers to be pressured into voting "no."
Workers that speak out are identified and fire prior to the vote. "But that's illegal!" you say. Sure. But if you are fired in such a fashion, you have to take your employer to court and prove the unfair labor practice. And if, if, you win, sanctions are limited to backpay. Not punitive damages, not compensatory damages, not triple backpay, not future pay; backpay is all you get. Unless youre and illegal immigrant. Then you dont even get that, read nothing.
So there's literally no risk to the employer to fire you for organizing. Worst case he has to pay you what he would have paid you anyway. There's a reason Wal-Mart workers aren't organized. And it's not because they don't want to be.
If you've ever wondered why unions push for card check laws, this is why. It would allow workers to organize by signing cards in secret, having to fear retaliation only if the employer finds out before they file.
No disagreement that the protections are weak. But that is all that being an NLRA union entails. Can you provide a citation supporting your assertion they can be fired? I don't think that is correct (at most, like I and Tiger said) they can all be fired. Unless the government will sanction people for forming a "union" the right to unionize is not a right against the government.
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Tiger BurningDig if you will, the pictureRegistered User, SolidSaints Tuberegular
edited June 2012
All of that supports the original point, though, that in the situation in which the government lets everyone bargain freely, labor loses over and over again. Labor law works by limiting the bargaining positions that employers can take. Weak labor laws provide weak limits, but from labor's standpoint it's better than nothing.
Based on my limited research it looks like I was wrong and Tiger Burning was right: strikers will only be arrested if the strike rises to the level of a sit in. However, such a strike can be be referred to as a wildcat strike.
In hopes of not derailing the discussion further, let me just concede the whole point to SKM. Union rights are different from free speech rights. How's that?
So there's literally no risk to the employer to fire you for organizing. Worst case he has to pay you what he would have paid you anyway. There's a reason Wal-Mart workers aren't organized. And it's not because they don't want to be.
Depends on which workers you are talking about. Walmart has the largest private truck fleet in the nation, and I guarantee the majority of them have no love for the union. Non-union truckers tend to dislike the Teamsters, partly because they are lobbying like hell to cut non-union pay through unneeded and unwanted hours of service revisions, but mostly because while their shops technically aren't closed, for all intents and purposes their fleet positions are. I couldn't for instance, go and apply to drive for UPS, even with my experience; UPS isn't allowed to hire outside drivers. Instead, when a driving position opens at a facility, they have to train up a senior member of the warehouse staff (who, by sheer coincidence, will have been a union member for 6-8 years).
On the other hand, Walmart requires 3 years experience over the road, and offers better pay and benefits than the major OTR carriers. So you end up with a fleet that has little desire to organize, and for the most part has a deep distrust and dislike of the primary union in the industry. I am sure some people want to organize, and I imagine they are not dealt with gently (check into why Walmart uses pre-packaged meat if you feel a need to hate them more). I have also heard from Fedex drivers that you know when someone has been talking union, by their sudden and inexplicable transfer out to Blythe or somewhere equally remote and desolate (though Fedex remains one of the only LTL shippers that is not union primarly by operating as if they were).
Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion.
Right-to-work and standard NRLA law do inhibit completely free association, although I suspect complete free association is somewhat unrealistic on a pure political economy basis.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Right-to-work and standard NRLA law do inhibit completely free association, although I suspect complete free association is somewhat unrealistic on a pure political economy basis.
There is no question in my mind that complete free association would result in labor losing in almost all cases. I am not generally a fan of unions, but I will not deny their effectiveness. If you took away the NLRA, I have little doubt that the post-repeal unions would suffer serious reprisals from employers, and long term, they would vanish, or only continue to exist in the type of management/labor collaborative companies which don't really need them anyway.
Right-to-work and standard NRLA law do inhibit completely free association, although I suspect complete free association is somewhat unrealistic on a pure political economy basis.
There is no question in my mind that complete free association would result in labor losing in almost all cases. I am not generally a fan of unions, but I will not deny their effectiveness. If you took away the NLRA, I have little doubt that the post-repeal unions would suffer serious reprisals from employers, and long term, they would vanish, or only continue to exist in the type of management/labor collaborative companies which don't really need them anyway.
Unions and strikes existed even when employers were legally able to summon the police and the army to quell them by force, so I doubt this.
The reason why the Chamber of Commerce cheered for the passage of the NRLA despite its, shall we say, bitter relationship with the CIO was because neither it nor the state had any real ability to control increasingly radicalized and destructive labour activity. To paraphrase, if you make it illegal to strike, then only criminals will strike - and secretive militancy has a tendency to bleed into more generalized violence and political activity. There was a time when communists positively cheered whenever police broke up yet another illegal protest on company property.
States don't have endless political will to defend the sacrosanct contract, regrettably. Take the world of free association. So say employers bind employees into not participating in any form of collective bargaining, as was common then. Yet in the course of events business goes through a rocky period, the employer attempts to cut pay, and employees collectively strike anyway and they strike on employer-owned company property.
So what are you going to do? Send in the army? The police? At every time there's a recession and the leftists are all busy yelling that the final crisis of capitalism has come at last, when the cries of worker oppression resonate the most? And now you want to create images of police breaking the bones of peaceful demonstrators - peacefully demonstrating in a way that completely disrupts economic operation, but peaceful nonetheless?
Recognize that any practical recognition of the right to organized civil disobedience is tantamount to recognizing the right to collectively strike, and the rest is just formalizing the procedure in a minimally disruptive way.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Right-to-work and standard NRLA law do inhibit completely free association, although I suspect complete free association is somewhat unrealistic on a pure political economy basis.
There is no question in my mind that complete free association would result in labor losing in almost all cases. I am not generally a fan of unions, but I will not deny their effectiveness. If you took away the NLRA, I have little doubt that the post-repeal unions would suffer serious reprisals from employers, and long term, they would vanish, or only continue to exist in the type of management/labor collaborative companies which don't really need them anyway.
Unions and strikes existed even when employers were legally able to summon the police and the army to quell them by force, so I doubt this.
The reason why the Chamber of Commerce cheered for the passage of the NRLA despite its, shall we say, bitter relationship with the CIO was because neither it nor the state had any real ability to control increasingly radicalized and destructive labour activity. To paraphrase, if you make it illegal to strike, then only criminals will strike - and secretive militancy has a tendency to bleed into more generalized violence and political activity. There was a time when communists positively cheered whenever police broke up yet another illegal protest on company property.
States don't have endless political will to defend the sacrosanct contract, regrettably. Take the world of free association. So say employers bind employees into not participating in any form of collective bargaining, as was common then. Yet in the course of events business goes through a rocky period, the employer attempts to cut pay, and employees collectively strike anyway and they strike on employer-owned company property.
So what are you going to do? Send in the army? The police? At every time there's a recession and the leftists are all busy yelling that the final crisis of capitalism has come at last, when the cries of worker oppression resonate the most? And now you want to create images of police breaking the bones of peaceful demonstrators - peacefully demonstrating in a way that completely disrupts economic operation, but peaceful nonetheless?
Recognize that any practical recognition of the right to organized civil disobedience is tantamount to recognizing the right to collectively strike, and the rest is just formalizing the procedure in a minimally disruptive way.
I think the modern landscape is very different from the world of 50 years ago, with labor dominated industries in decline. Labor used to hold more power on a relative basis than it does now, and I think a lot of the reason for that is that we are moving to a world where unskilled labor simply is not that important. Even in fields like construction, there is an increasing push towards nonunion labor, and they don't seem to be clamoring for unions. I suspect that if you got rid of the NLRA tomorrow, you would see an immediate drop off in dues and participation in strikes, and once the dyed in the wool guys benefitting from seniority are gone, I think unions would basically be a thing of the past.
I wouldn't count the value of NLRB or Unions out as a safety valve. The fact that they exists prevents a lot of management shenanigans. After all talking about joining a union may not be the threat it used to be, but its still a threat that carries weight. Private sector unions may only have 7% membership, but they have a outsize effect on the labor market.
A lot of CEOs, their worst nightmare having to explain why a large segment of his workforce his trying to unionize to a hostile board.
Take that away and you lose a lot of restraint on both sides.
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
I suspect your society has merely become more straightforwardly democratic and so key parts of collective bargaining take place via legislatures directly:
Revenge of the craft guilds, I guess.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
I suspect your society has merely become more straightforwardly democratic and so key parts of collective bargaining take place via legislatures directly:
Revenge of the craft guilds, I guess.
Interesting. As you may recall from the Arizona public union thread, shifting the focus of labor rights from union negotiations to the legislature is exactly the direction that I think we should be going in, and trade guilds are one step closer to that model, at least. That said, I would want to know who counts as liscensed. If the boom in lawyers, accountants, etc. over this period is being counted, the par of the trend on the chart could be due to the shrinking blue collar sector and the increase in university enrollment.
The problem is with legislature, they can change their mind and back the fuck out if they don't like your demands and make it illegal. I guess they could technically do that with a union, but probably not nearly as well since it's federal and most of that stuff takes place at the state level.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
The problem is with legislature, they can change their mind and back the fuck out if they don't like your demands and make it illegal. I guess they could technically do that with a union, but probably not nearly as well since it's federal and most of that stuff takes place at the state level.
To be clear, I want greatly expanded federal worker protections. As part of my work, I develop strategies for transitioning (yes, this is a euphamism for figuring out how to fire some of them) work forces after a company is bought/sold, and my clients are MUCH less likely to terminate employees in other countries because of statutory severance and notice requirements. Basically, we treat foreign employees as on par with or even harder to fire than US union employees. This is why I think we would be better off having mandatory benefits, severance, notice prior to termination, pension and layoff laws at the federal level (probably as part of the FLSA, which is the one employment law people take seriously). Right now, if you are in a union you might have some or all of these protections (but we might recommend getting rid of the union workforce anyway because of catastrophic pension liabilities, which often stem back to the days of organized crime involvement in the unions, or higher costs from seniority and work rules) but if you aren't, you are left defenseless, unless you have a severance policy, and even then, rank and file employees can expect a maximum of 6 months pay and benefit continuation in most cases. A system where some people have a lot of protections (some of which can drive a company into bankruptcy multiple times) and he vast majority of people have no protections is pretty awful in my book, not to mention how badly it distorts the m&a market, since union companies are less desirable, and normally less profitable, based on the unions alone.
I agree, we should have worker protections similar to European countries. Good luck getting that through a partisan congress where half would rather this be the wild fucking west.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
I agree, we should have worker protections similar to European countries. Good luck getting that through a partisan congress where half would rather this be the wild fucking west.
I don't want to retread well worn ground from the Arizona public union thread, but this is why I proposed getting rid of the NLRA and Taft-Hartley in exchange for a greatly expanded FLSA. I think there is a workable solution somewhere that would work for everyone based on the fact that the right seems to vastly overestimate how important unions are.
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
I agree, we should have worker protections similar to European countries. Good luck getting that through a partisan congress where half would rather this be the wild fucking west.
I don't want to retread well worn ground from the Arizona public union thread, but this is why I proposed getting rid of the NLRA and Taft-Hartley in exchange for a greatly expanded FLSA. I think there is a workable solution somewhere that would work for everyone based on the fact that the right seems to vastly overestimate how important unions are.
I mean, it's good that you're suggesting that. But the Republicans aren't, so it's sort of an unworkable solution.
And I'm not convinced we should be taking care of companies over workers. Unions and the progressive movement are what created the middle class in this country (and being the only industrialized capitalist country that wasn't wrecked by the war, that helped too), the idea that we should get rid of them to placate big business makes me uncomfortable.
I agree, we should have worker protections similar to European countries. Good luck getting that through a partisan congress where half would rather this be the wild fucking west.
I don't want to retread well worn ground from the Arizona public union thread, but this is why I proposed getting rid of the NLRA and Taft-Hartley in exchange for a greatly expanded FLSA. I think there is a workable solution somewhere that would work for everyone based on the fact that the right seems to vastly overestimate how important unions are.
Or we could expand the FLSA and not get rid of the NLRA. Radical idea, I know.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
I agree, we should have worker protections similar to European countries. Good luck getting that through a partisan congress where half would rather this be the wild fucking west.
I don't want to retread well worn ground from the Arizona public union thread, but this is why I proposed getting rid of the NLRA and Taft-Hartley in exchange for a greatly expanded FLSA. I think there is a workable solution somewhere that would work for everyone based on the fact that the right seems to vastly overestimate how important unions are.
I mean, it's good that you're suggesting that. But the Republicans aren't, so it's sort of an unworkable solution.
And I'm not convinced we should be taking care of companies over workers. Unions and the progressive movement are what created the middle class in this country (and being the only industrialized capitalist country that wasn't wrecked by the war, that helped too), the idea that we should get rid of them to placate big business makes me uncomfortable.
And I'm not even that big a union guy.
It's not to placate big business though. Its to provide worker protections to the entire workforce. Unions could even continue to exist in that world, they would just be bargaining over less important issues.
I agree, we should have worker protections similar to European countries. Good luck getting that through a partisan congress where half would rather this be the wild fucking west.
I don't want to retread well worn ground from the Arizona public union thread, but this is why I proposed getting rid of the NLRA and Taft-Hartley in exchange for a greatly expanded FLSA. I think there is a workable solution somewhere that would work for everyone based on the fact that the right seems to vastly overestimate how important unions are.
Or we could expand the FLSA and not get rid of the NLRA. Radical idea, I know.
I proposed getting rid of the NLRA as the political chip that labor has to offer to actually get an expanded FLSA. If we put political realities aside, I would have no problem with reimagined unions that focus on issues like pay and hours, against a backdrop of good mandatory benefits. My problem with them right now is that they are the only source of these benefits, meaning only a small portion of the population gets to enjoy them, and they increase costs enormously because of it. That said, I would hope that things like work rules, seniority, etc. could move out of the union sphere and also be handled through the expanded FLSA (something that I do not think is difficult to do).
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
Well like I said, this is all interesting but something tells me that the Republicans aren't going to offer to expand the FLSA and the Democrats aren't going to offer to get rid of the NLRA.
I would love to see the government protecting worker's rights to the extent that we don't really need unions anymore, but then I'd also like to see the Palestinians and Israelis take a breath and realize they have more to gain by working together rather than apart.
There's a specific reason that the NLRA is semi getting in the way of enacting better worker rights but it escapes me at the moment. But, like I said earlier, if an expanded FLSA lets us smash down on places like wal-mart and target, fuck yeah I could get behind it.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
I proposed getting rid of the NLRA as the political chip that labor has to offer to actually get an expanded FLSA.
Here's the thing, though: Republicans aren't willing to compromise. At all. If you bring up repealing the NLRA, they'll insist that happen, and then refuse to do anything in exchange.
I proposed getting rid of the NLRA as the political chip that labor has to offer to actually get an expanded FLSA.
Here's the thing, though: Republicans aren't willing to compromise. At all. If you bring up repealing the NLRA, they'll insist that happen, and then refuse to do anything in exchange.
Indeed. It's rather like how their alternative healthcare plan to the ACA is 1. Repeal ACA 2. Party 3. Ignore healthcare reform for another thirty years
I suspect your society has merely become more straightforwardly democratic and so key parts of collective bargaining take place via legislatures directly:
Revenge of the craft guilds, I guess.
What kind of licenses are those? I really doubt we've seen a huge increase in licensed plumbers, etc. Is it all Microsoft A+ certifications and ISO 9000 nonsense?
I suspect your society has merely become more straightforwardly democratic and so key parts of collective bargaining take place via legislatures directly:
Revenge of the craft guilds, I guess.
What kind of licenses are those? I really doubt we've seen a huge increase in licensed plumbers, etc. Is it all Microsoft A+ certifications and ISO 9000 nonsense?
A lot of states require licensure for professions as varied as barbers, tattooists, morticians and nurses. It means dick in terms of arbitrating wages, as licensure is just the pass to practice the profession.
The key test for this is the daycare industry. Daycare workers require licensing in many states. They still make minimum wage or slightly above, with the license.
Posts
Rights that protect you from the government are very different than rights that change your relationship with other private parties.
I did not mean to contend that one must earn the right to unionize at all. I simply wanted to know what kinds of struggles professors come across. Up until the last sentence CptKemzik did a pretty good job of answering me.
Speaking of another example of academia and labor, graduate students and adjunct faculty have been trying to push for collective rights at universities as well. Between the amount of coursework and research grad students have to do by default, and the fact that teaching classes is paid peanuts by the university (for both parties), many of these people are financially caught between a rock and a hard place.
I would argue that union rights are a protection from the government. The reason that certain workers cannot unionize is because the government is restricting their ability to do so. Coming back to the example of private university faculty, if it weren't for the Supreme Court they could unionize to if they wanted to. A union is merely a contract between private individuals.
Actually, the government restricts the rights of private parties in the union context. Without government intervention, anyone can call themselves a "union" but employers can ignore them or fire everyone who joins. All that the government does is say "if you follow x procedures, then we will limit the actions your employer may take in relation to your union." I think it is very clear that the rights provided by the government in the union context are protections against certain private actions, not protections against the government.
Unions existed successfully in the US long before the 20th century NLRA. Not that labor history is taught in public schools any more, but the declaration of independence was signed in a union hall.
Yeshiva, along with many other cases, is an example of the government stepping in and restricting the ability of private parties to enter into contracts. The government isn't just saying that they won't protect or support organizing private faculty. It forbids them to do so.
Are you saying that if the professors decide to band together, call themselves a union or guild or league or group of awesome professors who deserve more money, and attempt to negotiate a contract on a collective basis that the federal government will tell them they cannot do so? Certainly the employer could say "we won't negotiate with you" and if the group is upset enough, they could refuse to work, but then the employer could just hire other people.
Only if they tried to do a sit-in or some such. A "wild cat" strike generally just means that they could be legally fired.
There's nothing stopping them from forming a union in the informal sense. They were denied NLRB certification as a collective bargaining unit, the only point of which is receiving the benefit of those "weak restrictions" you were talking about (one of which is the ability to strike without being fired).
Once a majority of workers file cards saying they want a union, the NLRB schedules an election. Until then the employer is allowed to, and will, force workers to attend anti-union meetings and presentations, threaten to close the company if workers vote yes, and force workers to meet one on one with managers to be pressured into voting "no."
Workers that speak out are identified and fired prior to the vote. "But that's illegal!" you say. Sure. But if you are fired in such a fashion, you have to take your employer to court and prove the unfair labor practice. And if, if, you win, sanctions are limited to backpay. Not punitive damages, not compensatory damages, not triple backpay, not future pay; backpay is all you get. Unless you're an illegal immigrant. Then you dont even get that, read nothing.
So there's literally no risk to the employer to fire you for organizing. Worst case he has to pay you what he would have paid you anyway. There's a reason Wal-Mart workers aren't organized. And it's not because they don't want to be.
If you've ever wondered why unions push for card check laws, this is why. It would allow workers to organize by signing cards in secret, having to fear retaliation only if the employer finds out before they file.
EDIT: Sorry about the atrocious spelling and grammar. I'm posting from my phone.
No disagreement that the protections are weak. But that is all that being an NLRA union entails. Can you provide a citation supporting your assertion they can be fired? I don't think that is correct (at most, like I and Tiger said) they can all be fired. Unless the government will sanction people for forming a "union" the right to unionize is not a right against the government.
In hopes of not derailing the discussion further, let me just concede the whole point to SKM. Union rights are different from free speech rights. How's that?
Depends on which workers you are talking about. Walmart has the largest private truck fleet in the nation, and I guarantee the majority of them have no love for the union. Non-union truckers tend to dislike the Teamsters, partly because they are lobbying like hell to cut non-union pay through unneeded and unwanted hours of service revisions, but mostly because while their shops technically aren't closed, for all intents and purposes their fleet positions are. I couldn't for instance, go and apply to drive for UPS, even with my experience; UPS isn't allowed to hire outside drivers. Instead, when a driving position opens at a facility, they have to train up a senior member of the warehouse staff (who, by sheer coincidence, will have been a union member for 6-8 years).
On the other hand, Walmart requires 3 years experience over the road, and offers better pay and benefits than the major OTR carriers. So you end up with a fleet that has little desire to organize, and for the most part has a deep distrust and dislike of the primary union in the industry. I am sure some people want to organize, and I imagine they are not dealt with gently (check into why Walmart uses pre-packaged meat if you feel a need to hate them more). I have also heard from Fedex drivers that you know when someone has been talking union, by their sudden and inexplicable transfer out to Blythe or somewhere equally remote and desolate (though Fedex remains one of the only LTL shippers that is not union primarly by operating as if they were).
- John Stuart Mill
There is no question in my mind that complete free association would result in labor losing in almost all cases. I am not generally a fan of unions, but I will not deny their effectiveness. If you took away the NLRA, I have little doubt that the post-repeal unions would suffer serious reprisals from employers, and long term, they would vanish, or only continue to exist in the type of management/labor collaborative companies which don't really need them anyway.
Unions and strikes existed even when employers were legally able to summon the police and the army to quell them by force, so I doubt this.
The reason why the Chamber of Commerce cheered for the passage of the NRLA despite its, shall we say, bitter relationship with the CIO was because neither it nor the state had any real ability to control increasingly radicalized and destructive labour activity. To paraphrase, if you make it illegal to strike, then only criminals will strike - and secretive militancy has a tendency to bleed into more generalized violence and political activity. There was a time when communists positively cheered whenever police broke up yet another illegal protest on company property.
States don't have endless political will to defend the sacrosanct contract, regrettably. Take the world of free association. So say employers bind employees into not participating in any form of collective bargaining, as was common then. Yet in the course of events business goes through a rocky period, the employer attempts to cut pay, and employees collectively strike anyway and they strike on employer-owned company property.
So what are you going to do? Send in the army? The police? At every time there's a recession and the leftists are all busy yelling that the final crisis of capitalism has come at last, when the cries of worker oppression resonate the most? And now you want to create images of police breaking the bones of peaceful demonstrators - peacefully demonstrating in a way that completely disrupts economic operation, but peaceful nonetheless?
Recognize that any practical recognition of the right to organized civil disobedience is tantamount to recognizing the right to collectively strike, and the rest is just formalizing the procedure in a minimally disruptive way.
I think the modern landscape is very different from the world of 50 years ago, with labor dominated industries in decline. Labor used to hold more power on a relative basis than it does now, and I think a lot of the reason for that is that we are moving to a world where unskilled labor simply is not that important. Even in fields like construction, there is an increasing push towards nonunion labor, and they don't seem to be clamoring for unions. I suspect that if you got rid of the NLRA tomorrow, you would see an immediate drop off in dues and participation in strikes, and once the dyed in the wool guys benefitting from seniority are gone, I think unions would basically be a thing of the past.
A lot of CEOs, their worst nightmare having to explain why a large segment of his workforce his trying to unionize to a hostile board.
Take that away and you lose a lot of restraint on both sides.
Revenge of the craft guilds, I guess.
Interesting. As you may recall from the Arizona public union thread, shifting the focus of labor rights from union negotiations to the legislature is exactly the direction that I think we should be going in, and trade guilds are one step closer to that model, at least. That said, I would want to know who counts as liscensed. If the boom in lawyers, accountants, etc. over this period is being counted, the par of the trend on the chart could be due to the shrinking blue collar sector and the increase in university enrollment.
To be clear, I want greatly expanded federal worker protections. As part of my work, I develop strategies for transitioning (yes, this is a euphamism for figuring out how to fire some of them) work forces after a company is bought/sold, and my clients are MUCH less likely to terminate employees in other countries because of statutory severance and notice requirements. Basically, we treat foreign employees as on par with or even harder to fire than US union employees. This is why I think we would be better off having mandatory benefits, severance, notice prior to termination, pension and layoff laws at the federal level (probably as part of the FLSA, which is the one employment law people take seriously). Right now, if you are in a union you might have some or all of these protections (but we might recommend getting rid of the union workforce anyway because of catastrophic pension liabilities, which often stem back to the days of organized crime involvement in the unions, or higher costs from seniority and work rules) but if you aren't, you are left defenseless, unless you have a severance policy, and even then, rank and file employees can expect a maximum of 6 months pay and benefit continuation in most cases. A system where some people have a lot of protections (some of which can drive a company into bankruptcy multiple times) and he vast majority of people have no protections is pretty awful in my book, not to mention how badly it distorts the m&a market, since union companies are less desirable, and normally less profitable, based on the unions alone.
I don't want to retread well worn ground from the Arizona public union thread, but this is why I proposed getting rid of the NLRA and Taft-Hartley in exchange for a greatly expanded FLSA. I think there is a workable solution somewhere that would work for everyone based on the fact that the right seems to vastly overestimate how important unions are.
I mean, it's good that you're suggesting that. But the Republicans aren't, so it's sort of an unworkable solution.
And I'm not convinced we should be taking care of companies over workers. Unions and the progressive movement are what created the middle class in this country (and being the only industrialized capitalist country that wasn't wrecked by the war, that helped too), the idea that we should get rid of them to placate big business makes me uncomfortable.
And I'm not even that big a union guy.
Or we could expand the FLSA and not get rid of the NLRA. Radical idea, I know.
It's not to placate big business though. Its to provide worker protections to the entire workforce. Unions could even continue to exist in that world, they would just be bargaining over less important issues.
I proposed getting rid of the NLRA as the political chip that labor has to offer to actually get an expanded FLSA. If we put political realities aside, I would have no problem with reimagined unions that focus on issues like pay and hours, against a backdrop of good mandatory benefits. My problem with them right now is that they are the only source of these benefits, meaning only a small portion of the population gets to enjoy them, and they increase costs enormously because of it. That said, I would hope that things like work rules, seniority, etc. could move out of the union sphere and also be handled through the expanded FLSA (something that I do not think is difficult to do).
I would love to see the government protecting worker's rights to the extent that we don't really need unions anymore, but then I'd also like to see the Palestinians and Israelis take a breath and realize they have more to gain by working together rather than apart.
Indeed. It's rather like how their alternative healthcare plan to the ACA is 1. Repeal ACA 2. Party 3. Ignore healthcare reform for another thirty years
What kind of licenses are those? I really doubt we've seen a huge increase in licensed plumbers, etc. Is it all Microsoft A+ certifications and ISO 9000 nonsense?
A lot of states require licensure for professions as varied as barbers, tattooists, morticians and nurses. It means dick in terms of arbitrating wages, as licensure is just the pass to practice the profession.
The key test for this is the daycare industry. Daycare workers require licensing in many states. They still make minimum wage or slightly above, with the license.