Ok I know that society is growing increasingly anti-union and even the government is.
But... the issue with anti-union is...
What better way is there to ensure worker rights than unions? Sure some jobs specifically cannot have unions and cannot strike, but those often come with a system specifically in place to mediate between the workers and employer and can supersede the employer's desires if the worker's demands are fair.
But absolutely NO business would ever allow something like that to fall into place.
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So... is it that people just kind of forgot what things were like before unions? or don't know what crud holes some jobs without unions or that are anti-union are like?
Yeah Corrupt Unions and ones that power trip are terrible... but I am not sure if I consider them worse than not being able to enforce your rights as a employee.
There are many reasons. Some folks buy into the horror stories of "untouchable" workers that do not contribute to (or actively harm) the company they are working at. Others just see the higher wages and benefits and denounce them as extortion, believing that anybody worth such wages should be able to demand them on their own rather than "ganging up". Still others honestly think that the unions are still closely affiliated with organized crime (this was once quite true, as there was a symbiotic flow of muscle, cash, and influence between the two groups back when the labor fight bordered on open warfare) and dismiss union actions as legalized extortion. Simply put, they underestimate the power differential between employer and employee.
For the most part, people
don't comprehend just how bad it was before unions, while a great many of those that do believe that modern publicity, or the rise of regulative bodies such as OSHA (there is significant overlap between the anti-union and anti-regulation crowd, but the two are not perfectly aligned), will keep such things in check. There are a great many people who laud what unions did in the past, but believe that they are now dinosaurs that no longer serve a useful purpose.
It should also be kept in mind that a lot of anti-union folk haven't worked in a blue-collar job in many years, having had the drive, ambition, or social savvy to become foremen and supervisors fairly early on. A significant percentage
never did the grunt work, and used connections to start at the bottom of the management track. The first group sees their early work through sepia-toned nostalgia, while the latter has no experiential frame of reference.
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Topic: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O (Read 14978941 times)