AHC: U.S. unions successful in damage-controlling the 1970s?

German style Worker's Councils are expressly banned by FDR's NRLB. He wanted at purely antagonistic system, and got it, rather than getting both sides to work together

For example, IG Metall would never stand up for workers doing shoddy work, absenteeism and being drunk on the job like UAW has. The US Labor/Management is just too toxic, for too long
Problem is that labor-management culture was more "Anglo" in style long before the NRLB. And by the time of the New Deal, the German style system's credibility was damaged with the whole Nazi thing.
 
Holy Shit.

I'm going to assume it's like the bad old days of a Catholic priest sexually abusing someone and the hierarchy assumes some half-measure like sending the priest to counseling is going to be enough. Or, the way we used to handle domestic violence with ineffectual half-measures like the police just talking to the husband.

That is, the person way misjudges the seriousness of the situation, maybe in part because he or she doesn't want to admit that they don't know how to handle it.

And then you have stupid after-the-fact justifications, and that's the real galling part and where institutions really go astray.

Might not even be that complicated.

Unions make it harder to fire employees. That inherently protects the bad along with the good. I can't think of a system that can avoid that. If you lower the bar it's easier to unfairly terminate someone; if you raise it it's harder to get rid of someone who needs to go.
 
If I might propose a somewhat simpler solution -- the US passes Universal Health Care. Can be SP Medicare, Nixoncare, what have you, but so long as it's in place before the worst of the economic dislocations of the 1970's come to pass, unionz will be in a much better position to increase disposable income earnings for American workers, rather than having inflating health care costs eating up money spent on labor and taking up their negotiating power.
Previously, I've read in that a piece of legislation signed by President Nixon was the primary cause for the trend of increasing healthcare costs. Have you ever heard of this theory?
 
Previously, I've read in that a piece of legislation signed by President Nixon was the primary cause for the trend of increasing healthcare costs. Have you ever heard of this theory?
You'd have to be more specific -- Nixon's healthcare legacy is a complex one, so I would be very skeptical of any claim that seemed to rely on negative feelings toward his legacy or person rather than specific policy analysis (eg Michael Moore).
 
Previously, I've read in that a piece of legislation signed by President Nixon was the primary cause for the trend of increasing healthcare costs. Have you ever heard of this theory?

You'd have to be more specific -- Nixon's healthcare legacy is a complex one, so I would be very skeptical of any claim that seemed to rely on negative feelings toward his legacy or person rather than specific policy analysis (eg Michael Moore).

Puffy may be talking about this. Though AFAIK and IIRC certificates of need were necessitated by the fact that hospitals could open up and not take Medicare patients, thus undermining Medicare by being able to charge less for services than institutions that needed to be able to cross-subsidize to make up for the shortfall of Medicare provider payments.
 
During the Nixon years, we also got the law that you can't sue an HMO. Seemingly a technical change to a something which hardly seemed like a major part of the economy. Now it is.

And I don't know whether this was more Nixon or more Congress, or even a particular chair of a committee.
 
During the Nixon years, we also got the law that you can't sue an HMO. Seemingly a technical change to a something which hardly seemed like a major part of the economy. Now it is.

And I don't know whether this was more Nixon or more Congress, or even a particular chair of a committee.

Yep, ERISA. Intended to prevent a plaintiff from looting a company's pension fund. Unintended consequence was that since the HMO is also an employee benefit, it was also immune.
 
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/history_of_labor_unions.html

' . . . the decision concerning Deering Milliken's shutdown in Darlington was an even greater setback. It gave employers the right to go out of business for any reason whatsoever, "even if vindictiveness toward the union was the reason for the liquidation" . . . '
This was a Supreme Court decision in the 1960s. Courts are "conservative," in the sense that they're pro-institution and pro-already-powerful. I think this tends to be the case in a pretty broad range of countries.

The Supreme Court could have easily decided that with the rights of being a corporation also come responsibilities, first and foremost among these being a fiduciary duty to stockholders. But per the above, that was not this decision.
 
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US healthcare: Universal healthcare supporters see their chance: 'There’s never been more support'
The Guardian [UK], Jessica Glenza, 11 April 2017.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/11/us-universal-healthcare-single-payer-rallies

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“I could tell you this – I’ve been on the job for 25 years. When I first started, I paid nothing” for healthcare, said Chris Tague, who works in road construction. He is also a part-time town supervisor in Schoharie County, New York, which voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump.

Tague’s health insurance costs grew to $20 per week, then to $50 per week, then $75, then to more than $200 per week, he said. Middle class Americans, he said, “work their asses off for nothing”.

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One, that rising healthcare costs paid by the employee basically amount to a pay cut. And two, the feeling that you're not getting ahead.
 
He may be speaking of the union actually owning and running the plant. Or at least, employee ownership, with all being union members.
 
. . . employee ownership, . . .
I think what often happened in the U.S. was that unions ended up buying companies which were on the downward slide and in financial distress, like Safeway grocery stores in the early '90s.

Unions should probably almost exclusively invest in broadly diversified mutual funds with low fees. I hate to be boring about it, but that's probably how they should protect their money, maybe with the occasional experiment.

80% of new businesses fail within a year or two, yes, eight out of ten. And this baseline stat should be known very well.
 
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