Should you choose to accept it, with a POD after Taft-Hartley, your job is to stabilize or expand the percentage of the American workforce belonging to a labor union.
Challenge: Arrest American union decline
- Thread starter Francisco Cojuanco
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Cuāuhtemōc
Banned
Maybe the Chinese government in Beijing is not recognized by the U.S for a longer period of time and it never reforms; becoming a giant North Korea.
Taft Hartley was a big body blow (particularly because it essentially made organizing the South impossible), but it was really the Red Scare/McCarthy Era which killed unions in the U.S. This is because nearly everyone with vaguely socialist leanings was ultimately purged from the labor movement, who just so happened to be the most committed, and often most effective organizers. What was left of labor leadership was pretty quickly co-opted by management into what was called "business unionism," which pretty much worked until 1980 when management realized Labor didn't have the power to wage effective fights any more. This process actually began during WW2, with labor-management cooperation in the war effort, but it only culminated once the left was forced out of the movement.
Besides then, the best chance was probably the 1970s. There actually was a lot of labor activism during that decade, it was just with mainly public-sector groups like teachers, postal workers, and state workers. There was also an abortive attempt under Carter to achieve some measure of labor law reform (the only attempt really between Taft-Hartley and EFCA).
Not quite. There's more than just one reason for US unions decline, and I'll admit, that while businesses (espically under Regan) gained power to avoid them, was that the Unions made several bad bets, not to mention that they also chose paths that lead most prviate workers to avoid them. American workers have figured out by and large, that current union leadership isn't doing their -jobs-, and want things that won't get them hired. (not to mention MY one expereince with an union coming in, getting the shop, requiring dues, _and_ then screwing us over. Loooooooong story there. But, suffice it to say, we went down in pay, down in benfits, down in hours. They didn't even HOLD THE LINE. This after they came in promising us better pay, more hours, better training, good health care. We got none of that.
Union's situation in the us, isn't JUSt that the businesses found an way around them. Isn't JUST that the unions began to NOT work. (The most typical away around unions is to simply do as good as the unions would get anyways, and avoid the unions). It's the simple fact that the US shifted into an service economy, and unions never really worked in that area.
Union's situation in the us, isn't JUSt that the businesses found an way around them. Isn't JUST that the unions began to NOT work. (The most typical away around unions is to simply do as good as the unions would get anyways, and avoid the unions). It's the simple fact that the US shifted into an service economy, and unions never really worked in that area.
So, maybe you need to keep higher levels of manufactoring employment in the US?
No Most Favored Nation Status for China?
And/or more aggressive posture regarding European industry supports? Or respond with similar measures domestically?
I've heard some discussion of "Fair Trade" but am not really familar with it, perhaps something usefull there.
And maybe the unions get behind or even initiate some of these moves, thus gaining massive street cred.
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Taking this by article
That'd help, but even then, an _lot_ of new factories we built (Intel!) managed to avoid unionization, mostly by simply paying as good as they get (Totoya built in the South for an REASON, folks!)
MFN for China... honeslty wouldn't really help. They didn't have it as our industrual output imploded, and while Europe did support their industries, it's not that helpful.
Fair trade is VERY complex.
They acutally HAVE tried some of that, and failed.
Look. I'm not going into every detail, but there are three (well, four)
inputs into the cost of an industrual output that are modifiable.
1: Labour.
2: Captial (cost of the factory, then retooling over time)
3: Regulation (_not_ counting the cost of regulations onto the Labour cost)
4: Material costs (this, acutaly is an minor modification, and by and large, really doesn't make an major difference)
China was able to (and others, it's going to be intresting when China and India see the same thing happening to them!)
have an _even_ WIHT THE OUTPUT DIFFERENCE per labouror (cacluated in dollars) an singificantly cheaper labour force.
2: Same as above.
3: Oh, gods, don't get me started. Will they pay for the lack of regulation? Ayup. But...
4: They had some edges here, but again, most of those are self inflicted.
Europe surpisingly didn't _really_ affect US industry, not singificantly.
(it's not til recently that they've been able to make Airbus COMPETE with Boeing, after all)
Economics isn't an science, as much as you'd love to hear, but there IS some science in it.
In essense, China was able to (even WITHOUT MFN) undercut US prices, and part of that IS on the Labour movement.
*shrugs* There might be no realistic way to _with_ union leaders FORGETTING THEIR JOBS (this happened in BRITIAN, not just the US, folks) and focising on other aspects to halt the slide.
It'd take an signficant change in to many things, inculding having unions realize that hey, they have to acutally deliver.
Before people complain of "business freindly unions" THOSE union leaders UNDERSTOOD, if the business couldn't at LEAST break even, or better yet, make an reasonable profit, their workers WOULD NOT HAVE an job.
The period of the 50's to the early 80's was more of an joint agreement between unions and businesses, that "Look, we can't fight each other or we'll be BOTH screwed" so it was much more gentlemantly.
Edit addtion: Not to mention that the unions have always been stronger when there's long term corps (aka Big Business), than small businesses. However, most of the explosion of new 'compaines' came FROM small businesses, and kept that mindset, and tended to view unions very distastefully. This, comibined with major high level corps waiting til it was too late to retool, and in cases getting stopped by the unions, and the corps going "Okay, fine, we'll move ELSEWHERE..."
A
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Basically you need the left to be more powerful politically. There are several ways to do this, but the best is probably to avoid the Cold War, or at least a Cold War against a communist state. If there was no external leftist threat to point to, demonizing the left would be much more difficult.
If a strong left-wing union-centered political movement can survive in the US, even without taking power directly, it can pull the Democrats left and force them to support pro-labor legislation.
Another idea would be to have single-payer healthcare and exclusively government-managed pensions to take those issues off of business' backs. Without those long-term labor costs unions wouldn't hurt their business' competitiveness as much.
Or yet another idea is to have unions buy out the businesses themselves. I'm not sure what industry was being referred to, but I remember hearing that at one point, large unions had enough resources to buy controlling shares of their companys. If this happened large scale, not only would we be looking at a radically different economic and political system, but unions would be bigger and more important than they ever were.
If a strong left-wing union-centered political movement can survive in the US, even without taking power directly, it can pull the Democrats left and force them to support pro-labor legislation.
Another idea would be to have single-payer healthcare and exclusively government-managed pensions to take those issues off of business' backs. Without those long-term labor costs unions wouldn't hurt their business' competitiveness as much.
Or yet another idea is to have unions buy out the businesses themselves. I'm not sure what industry was being referred to, but I remember hearing that at one point, large unions had enough resources to buy controlling shares of their companys. If this happened large scale, not only would we be looking at a radically different economic and political system, but unions would be bigger and more important than they ever were.
One possiblity would be to have the FBI tackle mafia infiltration of unions rather than seeing reds under every bed
NothingNow
Banned
Don't let them become complacent. Maybe have some idiot try to break a picket line using rent-a-cops or something, and getting a few Union members get injured, and or one or two of them get serious concussions or something. All on Camera of course. It'll get the Unions needed Sympathy and Support that they need to win strikes.
Thats the sort of thing that'd do wonders for everyone, especially since you'd be able to get the benefits of Unionised workers without the massive costs. Seriously, for the service industry, Well motivated and Compensated Unionised workers are actually cheaper than the Pissants who get paid minimum wage, since they actually care about their jobs, and don't fuck up so much.
So, stuff like Worker cooperatives and Industrial/Workplace democracy takes off? It'd look something like Germany or Scandinavia when it came to businesses. Worker Productivity would be insane in those shops though, since American Union workers already are really productive, and with the levels of Motivation you'd get out of that, it'd be simply absurd. Of course, those Shops tend to select the Best applicants, and pay them well.
That wouldn't help. It'd actively Hurt the Unions.
Yeah, Alongside the Pro-Labor line, they'd need to Hold a Conservative Economic stance, while pointing out that the "Conservatives" on the otherside are trying to use Religion to distract the workers while they rob them and their children blind. If they crib their lines from Latin American Populist-Progressive types they should do fairly well.
Thats the sort of thing that'd do wonders for everyone, especially since you'd be able to get the benefits of Unionised workers without the massive costs. Seriously, for the service industry, Well motivated and Compensated Unionised workers are actually cheaper than the Pissants who get paid minimum wage, since they actually care about their jobs, and don't fuck up so much.
So, stuff like Worker cooperatives and Industrial/Workplace democracy takes off? It'd look something like Germany or Scandinavia when it came to businesses. Worker Productivity would be insane in those shops though, since American Union workers already are really productive, and with the levels of Motivation you'd get out of that, it'd be simply absurd. Of course, those Shops tend to select the Best applicants, and pay them well.
The big problem for industrial unions in the US is the industrialization of the Third World. Once you get better pay etc. the company builds a plant in the Third World or buys from there. Either one of two things have to happen 1) High tarrifs or 2)Prevent the industrialization of the Third World. As long as companies are able to hire workers abroad for peanuts they will do so. The Unions have no excuse in most of the service industry as that can't be shipped abroad. You can't have a worker in Mexico sell you groceries or cleaning supplies, that has to be done locally. The retail sector is where unions have the big advantage.
That wouldn't help. It'd actively Hurt the Unions.
One of the problems of was that under Hoover the FBI ignored thje mafia and went for supposed reds under the bed confusing possibily deliberately people who were militant over conditions of employees with wreckers
One of the problems of was that under Hoover the FBI ignored thje mafia and went for supposed reds under the bed confusing possibily deliberately people who were militant over conditions of employees with wreckers
National Healthcare would actually help, too. And/or US health costs being in line with the rest of the industrialized world's.
GM was spending about as much on healthcare and other benefits/per worker as it was spending in salaries. Toyota, etc., spent about as much on salaries/worker, but didn't have the added, hidden costs.
Another thing, especially with the car companies, would be to trim management. GM, again from memory, had like 1 manager for every worker on the shop floor. Toyota had like 1 manager per ?10? workers.
Unions may (MAY) have a huge upswing in a decade or so. Corporations have gotten used to treating their workers like garbage over the last while, and as long as unemployment stays high, they can get away with it. Once all the boomers retire, and companies have to fight for a share of a much smaller labour pool, you may see a resurgence of unions to fight for workers' rights which are currently being trampled on.
GM was spending about as much on healthcare and other benefits/per worker as it was spending in salaries. Toyota, etc., spent about as much on salaries/worker, but didn't have the added, hidden costs.
Another thing, especially with the car companies, would be to trim management. GM, again from memory, had like 1 manager for every worker on the shop floor. Toyota had like 1 manager per ?10? workers.
Unions may (MAY) have a huge upswing in a decade or so. Corporations have gotten used to treating their workers like garbage over the last while, and as long as unemployment stays high, they can get away with it. Once all the boomers retire, and companies have to fight for a share of a much smaller labour pool, you may see a resurgence of unions to fight for workers' rights which are currently being trampled on.
my thought on union decline and improvement
[FONT="]US Unions declined in membership and power for a variety of reasons from the 1950’s to the 1980’s and never recovered significantly. Taft-Hartley didn’t help. The mafia replacing the socialists as leadership and organizers of the unions after the FBI arrested or hounded the socialists out made it clear that any honest, effective leadership for the unions was next to impossible until the 1970’s. Up north, the unions realized that the mafia was their only hope of institutional leverage. By that point, several external factors happened.[/FONT]
[FONT="]First, businesses started moving operations out of union-friendly shops up north down to the South and West where union participation was actively discouraged among workers. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Second, complacency among the management and union negotiators that the steady-state model of full employment at good wages was sustainable forever, that viable foreign competition wouldn’t arise, that consumer tastes and preferences wouldn’t change after the 1973 oil shock, etc;[/FONT] [FONT="]all those assumptions screwed the largest bloc of union members in the auto industry, steel industry, etc.[/FONT]
Third, the politics of confrontation fatally split the Democrats between the college-educated "progressives" (who viewed the hardhats as a bunch of conservative troglodytes unhip to the brave new social world of ERA, abortion, and busing that blue-collar voters absolutely hated) and "machine" politicians that got swept up in corruption probes in the 1980's fatally weakened the unions' political allies when Reagan started pushing the snake-oil of "trickle-down" economics.
[FONT="] Four[/FONT][FONT="]th, Raygun Ronnie’s emphasis on blaming Democratic politicians and policies for the malaise of the 1970’s was key in a lot of blue-collar Democratic voters switching to the GOP to keep “America strong”.[/FONT]
[FONT="]They figured that the entitlement structure was inviolate, and we’d make and buy enough guns to keep the factories churning out tanks, planes, and warships and keep everyone employed. Not so much.[/FONT]
[FONT="] Things changed in production and engineering to produce small numbers of sophisticated, boutique systems that required ever-less amounts of skilled labor to make, and more input by “professional” types (engineers, computer programmers, and so forth) to produce the wonder weapons and other products we see today. White-collar workers see unions as a blue-collar thing, which has crippled efforts to organize white-collar workers and keep unions relevant to the working public.
Fifth, unions have to organize small-businesses too by offering themselves as providers of low-cost health insurance and business support services a la Manpower. Employ our people and we take care of a lot of back-end overhead. Just sign here if you agree to our work rules and so forth as part of the contract. A lot of the regulatory and safety issues could be handled by union reps, and they'd offer compliance-support loans and other incentives for small and medium-size businesses to compete.
[/FONT] [FONT="]Unions are pretty strong in the defense industry, because it’s a bilateral monopoly—the defense industry is the only buyer, the unions provide skilled labor that can pass the security clearance checks. [/FONT]
[FONT="]In the civilian economy, there’s no assurances of multi-year contracts, no need to intensively screen employees, and so forth. Things are a lot more fluid.[/FONT]
[FONT="] For American unions to be more relevant, they need to be more flexible about membership and advancement (their insistence on the guild system in trade crafts has doomed them in the construction industry), be the route to management and the executive suite as in Germany, (vertically-integrating the workforce does a lot to improve feedback about priorities between the boardroom and shop floor), and be a decisive factor in multilateral trade agreements- (unions need to be able organize and lobby throughout all trade bloc members, not just represent national interests. [/FONT]
[FONT="] Politically, unions got blamed for being obstructionist and irrelevant (with a significant lack of accountability protecting habitual screw-ups) in the 1980’s and never recovered. You’d need a really strong PR campaign to counter that, so that the media portrays union workers as skilled, dedicated workers building a better America or more simply[/FONT][FONT="], union workers ≠ losers.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Sure, government did institute child-labor laws, overtime pay, OSHA, and so forth we take for granted due to political pressure from unions. Making that point effectively, and painting those in industry lobbying to destroy or weaken those safeguards just to make a quick buck as worse than Communists, gangsters, or whatever would do a lot to defuse that.
[/FONT]
[FONT="]
[/FONT]
[FONT="]US Unions declined in membership and power for a variety of reasons from the 1950’s to the 1980’s and never recovered significantly. Taft-Hartley didn’t help. The mafia replacing the socialists as leadership and organizers of the unions after the FBI arrested or hounded the socialists out made it clear that any honest, effective leadership for the unions was next to impossible until the 1970’s. Up north, the unions realized that the mafia was their only hope of institutional leverage. By that point, several external factors happened.[/FONT]
[FONT="]First, businesses started moving operations out of union-friendly shops up north down to the South and West where union participation was actively discouraged among workers. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Second, complacency among the management and union negotiators that the steady-state model of full employment at good wages was sustainable forever, that viable foreign competition wouldn’t arise, that consumer tastes and preferences wouldn’t change after the 1973 oil shock, etc;[/FONT] [FONT="]all those assumptions screwed the largest bloc of union members in the auto industry, steel industry, etc.[/FONT]
Third, the politics of confrontation fatally split the Democrats between the college-educated "progressives" (who viewed the hardhats as a bunch of conservative troglodytes unhip to the brave new social world of ERA, abortion, and busing that blue-collar voters absolutely hated) and "machine" politicians that got swept up in corruption probes in the 1980's fatally weakened the unions' political allies when Reagan started pushing the snake-oil of "trickle-down" economics.
[FONT="] Four[/FONT][FONT="]th, Raygun Ronnie’s emphasis on blaming Democratic politicians and policies for the malaise of the 1970’s was key in a lot of blue-collar Democratic voters switching to the GOP to keep “America strong”.[/FONT]
[FONT="]They figured that the entitlement structure was inviolate, and we’d make and buy enough guns to keep the factories churning out tanks, planes, and warships and keep everyone employed. Not so much.[/FONT]
[FONT="] Things changed in production and engineering to produce small numbers of sophisticated, boutique systems that required ever-less amounts of skilled labor to make, and more input by “professional” types (engineers, computer programmers, and so forth) to produce the wonder weapons and other products we see today. White-collar workers see unions as a blue-collar thing, which has crippled efforts to organize white-collar workers and keep unions relevant to the working public.
Fifth, unions have to organize small-businesses too by offering themselves as providers of low-cost health insurance and business support services a la Manpower. Employ our people and we take care of a lot of back-end overhead. Just sign here if you agree to our work rules and so forth as part of the contract. A lot of the regulatory and safety issues could be handled by union reps, and they'd offer compliance-support loans and other incentives for small and medium-size businesses to compete.
[/FONT] [FONT="]Unions are pretty strong in the defense industry, because it’s a bilateral monopoly—the defense industry is the only buyer, the unions provide skilled labor that can pass the security clearance checks. [/FONT]
[FONT="]In the civilian economy, there’s no assurances of multi-year contracts, no need to intensively screen employees, and so forth. Things are a lot more fluid.[/FONT]
[FONT="] For American unions to be more relevant, they need to be more flexible about membership and advancement (their insistence on the guild system in trade crafts has doomed them in the construction industry), be the route to management and the executive suite as in Germany, (vertically-integrating the workforce does a lot to improve feedback about priorities between the boardroom and shop floor), and be a decisive factor in multilateral trade agreements- (unions need to be able organize and lobby throughout all trade bloc members, not just represent national interests. [/FONT]
[FONT="] Politically, unions got blamed for being obstructionist and irrelevant (with a significant lack of accountability protecting habitual screw-ups) in the 1980’s and never recovered. You’d need a really strong PR campaign to counter that, so that the media portrays union workers as skilled, dedicated workers building a better America or more simply[/FONT][FONT="], union workers ≠ losers.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Sure, government did institute child-labor laws, overtime pay, OSHA, and so forth we take for granted due to political pressure from unions. Making that point effectively, and painting those in industry lobbying to destroy or weaken those safeguards just to make a quick buck as worse than Communists, gangsters, or whatever would do a lot to defuse that.
[/FONT]
[FONT="]
[/FONT]
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