You mean like the exact thing the unions in the story are doing? Colluding amongst other tangibly related unions for the wider benefit? Like that? Is that what you mean? Why don't they do that?
Well, I believe it has more to do with the broader trend of pro-business regulation and de-regulation in the country generally, coupled with the failure of government to stand up for the lower tiers of workers (ie what extarbags is talking about, even if I don't see it as an either/or), and this has gone along with pretty aggressive reframing of unions doing their jobs as counter to the interests of workers in the conservative movement. The economic roles and relative leverage of workers have changed significantly in the last twenty or thirty years, but business and shareholders have basically claimed ground in boom times and then weathered the pushback during crashes. But I'm sure there's a way to have this conversation with more than just beliefs. If someone finds a good study I'm happy to host it on zotero if needed.
I'm also knowledgable enough to know how these negotiations play out in public papers - lots of lying. I assign exactly zero weight to that dude's statement of what their offer is. The rest of your comment is something like....I don't know, unions should forgo wage increases at a certain point because it looks bad? At what point should unions just let the profitable companies keep the money they could have gotten out of them? People say this every time there's a strike; they're wrong every time. You can't get any leverage out of a weapon unless you occasionally use it. Union above-market wages come out of capital's income share. What, the executives should keep it? Needs citation. It hasn't hurt German unions. I blame US political changes almost 100%. I support them because the alternative isn't a magical well-run efficient welfare state of happy balance between capital and labor; it's capital crushing labor. Until someone comes up with another system of organizing the bottom half of the income spectrum for their interests it's all we've got.
As an analogy: should highly paid people who happen to be liberal, but aren't in a union, not ask for wage increases past a certain point where "it looks bad?"
No my point is not about the union negotiating for higher wages. The context here is that this union of 800 guys is SHUTTING DOWN THE PORTS OF LOS ANGELES AND LONG BEACH with their strike, which caused by their rejection of an offer that is actually pretty damn reasonable IMO. By shutting down the two biggest ports on the west coast, which are also the biggest sourge of economic input in LA county, this union is harming a lot of people and also generating extremely bad publicity for the union movement as a whole. I don't believe this strike is a good move politically, strategically, or progressively.
They are NOT "negotiating for higher wages", they are protesting outsourcing and negotiating to stop the practice of sending jobs overseas to save a couple bucks they really can afford to spend. And there's conflicting evidence that that story you linked to is wrong about what was offered in the first place. But regardless: even if they offered them the moon and the stars it doesn't get them even an inch closer to their goal so why should they take it? ..."bad publicity"? Never complain about anything because of "bad publicity". That's a great policy that will get you far in life.
It's great that you think that the offer was reasonable, although we have practically no information about it or why it was rejected, but it's not up to you decide what contract other people should work under. That's silly. Management locked out dockworkers throughout the West Coast for 10 days in 2002; did that make you think less of business as a whole? When management plays hardball with unions, people characterize that as good business and as an inevitable function of markets. When unions play hardball with management, somehow they are terrible selfish organizations.
That about sums it up for me. A lot of people support unions across the board based on that same idea, but it's often not reflective of reality anymore.
Actually I don't consider management hardball which screws workers to be good business or inevitable, and definitely not good policy. Wal-Mart's vicious opposition to unions is IMO deplorable, for example (I may represent them for workers' comp but that doesn't mean as a private citizen I have to condone their business practices, which I do not. I don't even shop there, as a protest of their treatment of workers.) Many of the other hardball business tactics are likewise deplorable. Even worse, the way big business uses money to dominate the political process and use political power to screw workers is downright scumbaggery. Look, criticizing a particular union or a particular union action, does not equate to criticizing the entire labor movement. More importantly, criticizing a union is in no way an endorsement of big business or conservative economic policies. The American economic and political system is far more complex than the simplistic and jingoistic mindset "You're either with us or you're against us!!" of the talk radio right. I have to say, I feel all this blindly pro-union posturing is making me feel like you guys are practicing the same kind of epistemic closure. Here, I'll go a bit further and piss even more people off: The most ridiculously craptastic employer I've ever represented is LAUSD. The management and bureacracy of LAUSD create inefficiencies which have to be seen to be believed. It's worst run organization I've ever encountered. And although most of the blame lies with the truly terrible management, the UTLA (teachers' union) is a part of the problem. LAUSD is an example of a public entity so crappily run that it gives major ammunition to the right's constant attacks on public entities. And UTLA, although only a minor contributor compared to the idiotic management, also provides ammunition to the right. Bottom line: merely criticizing a particular union does not make me a fascist running dog. If the left considers everyone who does not 100% agree with them on every single union issue to be a conservative fellow traveler then they are going to shrink the liberal wing of the party to the point of irrelevance. You have to be willing to accept criticism of your own side when it is merited and not knee jerk jump to the defense of every entity in the Democratic coalition.
Lots of unions suck! I just don't understand at all what you think is bad about this union, because written literally it appears to be "they went on strike" and "they get paid too much", which would apparently also apply to every other union.
No, they aren't doing what I suggested. No, not like that. No, that's not what I mean. No, not that. Holler back when you want to discuss what is apparently a fine conceptual line between taking broad social ideals and goals into consideration to unify action across union groups, and simply not crossing a picket line. That is absolutely a larger part of it. But consider when individual unions fail to coordinate general strategies broader than their specific individual challenges compared to competing/unrelated businesses who at least agree on their pursuit of anti-union policy, and how does the working of the latter bust through the fractured defenses of the former in the long term. It is somewhat analogous to the Democrats' inability to accomplish many things in Congress over the last decade because small divisions over their individual concerns are frequently outweighed by the Republicans who set individual things aside to cock-block in lockstep.
"Guys, if we don't strike this week and give up the resulting job protections, and instead coordinate with some other union on......organizing and striking for job protections, we'll be better off!"
I think that's a totally inapt comparison. Striking and lockouts are critical to the function of the collective bargaining system. It's how employers and employees reach agreement on the appropriate wage level. It is how the employer and the union test their respective bargaining position. Collective bargaining depends on strikes and lockouts, or at least the threat of strike or lockout. And hard bargaining is a legitimate part of that system. The anti-union practices used by Walmart et al. are borderline illegal (sometimes outright illegal) and totally different. For those interested, here is an excerpt from a book I like on labour relations, written by Paul Weiler. I have it spoilered because it's kinda long:
Also, my issue here is not "bad publicity" per se but the impact that image of unreasonableness has on election. IMO, actions like this particular strike make the union less appettizing to a big chunk of working and middle class voters. I believe that when things get so extreme, the Dems lose votes. Lots of votes. And thus they lose elections they should not be losing, and thus have less political power and less political effectiveness than they should, which means they are less able to implement the kinds of policies that would actually help the broad majority of the working and middle classes. Liberals need to be realistic about the attitudes of a big chunk of the working and middle classes about unions. Here in CA there is a widespread perception that union health and retirement benefits are unreasonably higher than those of non-union workers, to the point of being "not fair". The pension issue is currently a hot button is being exaggerated by the right but is nonetheless very convincing to a big chunk of the electorate outside the liberal wing of the Dems. I understand the union line that "everyone should have good medical and great pensions" but under current conditions that is not possible. I do want to move the overall economy in that direction over the long haul, but simply backing unions is not going to accomplishement that. The Dems need to win more elections, gain the approval of a bigger share of the electorate, in order to implement wide changes in tax, labor, and economic policy and improve the overall economic outlook for the working and middle class over time. Look, some of the economic criticism of the LA Times article is true. But when you describe the situation to the median Angeleno, they are highly likely to come down heavily against the union. That doesnt mean they are pro-business. But their emotional ire is going to be directed at the union as being greedy. Yeah, I know that means the vastly greater greed of the corporate elite is being overlooked but sadly a big chunk of Americans still have a Calvinistic mindset which makes them ignore the greed of the wealthy. Liberals should work towards long term education of the electorate to change these perceptions, but giving the other side this kind of ammo with this strike is undercutting both the efforts to change the perception of the public, and the political effectivenes of the only party actually working to help the working and middle class.
I'd consider joining in with their strike a form of "collusion" with their "social ideals" seeing as they are striking to stop jobs from going overseas and in sympathy to their jobs going overseas. And their "goal" of keeping jobs in America of course. Perhaps if you gave an example of a "social ideal or goal" the unions should be striking for? Instead of, you know, the goals and social ideals they are colluding for.
We are, almost literally, as far as possible from the next Presidential election and two years from the Senate election. When would be a more opportune time as far as "elections" go?
I don't really understand this thread. There's a structural issue with compensation being wrong (too low for average workers), followed by a complaint that people trying to fix it via collective bargaining (this Union) aren't fixing it for EVERYONE, thus .. don't fix it for anyone? You understand this is the whole crab bucket problem, right? Fuck you for succeeding where other groups have failed? The solution is ideally to fix the structural issues, but the short term solution isn't "dissolve unions, their members force themselves into better compensation" Comparing them to the median wage in their region seems more to display that the median wage in their area is below federal poverty level, so the problem isn't the Union's wages, it's that everyone in that area is woefully underpaid. Yeah, it's hard to sell "we'd like to make a bit more money" at that level. But that's entirely why it's in the papers: because it's a hard sell to the public at large who are by and large making far less than that. It's a negotiating tactic to put this sort of shit out, same with why they used the wages + benefits numbers, which will compare oddly with the wages numbers people usually use to refer to a job. Seriously, who says "I make X" while including the company paid benefits values? Nobody, so it's a bit silly to try and lie with numbers to imply that they're making 165k take home and hope nobody notices you're actually talking about a number nobody besides accountants use. But I guess I just take the opposite approach: right now employee wages are crazy low compared to the increases in productivity and income across the board. I have no complaints about employees collectively banding together to fix that wherever they can. Lord knows the C* level all band together and collectively bargain out their payment. The difference is we call them Management, not The Management Union.
Yes, that's more or less exactly the kind of broad strategic coordination that I'm thinking about and which has apparently been leading to such successful initiatives over the last 30 years. Well done! Canned anger is cheap. Just because someone thinks there might be a better way doesn't mean they disagree with your underlying point of view. Don't be a tea partier. Now: I don't claim to be a labor/union strategist, so I don't have a short-list of ideas ready to spit out whenever an internet expert argues so convincingly that the onus is on me to do so. But history shows that when American unions banded together on broad social issues ranging from child labor to minimum wage to overtime pay to legalizing government employee unions to equal pay for women. There's probably something in that. However, some of the ideas that do come to mind include massively overhauling pension-retirement plans, advancing re-education of current workers into emerging fields of trade, proposing strategies on globalization besides iron walls of protectionism and tariffs that harm Americans, and promoting business reform away from shareholder theories of value to stakeholder theories of value. Yes, these are all my own currently held beliefs on broad economic topics that promote the social justice which unions were originally created to represent. As opposed to shutting down multiple American trade ports because some clerical workers feel that their total comp of $165K per year isn't really a sound wage (annual salary of $115K assuming the 30% number that was bandied about). Look, I live in SF so I have a pretty good idea about high cost of living but I'd love to hear the reasoning that making $115K per year salary ($46/hr according to the 30% number guy) isn't very good for a clerical office worker. Even if you use the more general industry standard estimator of 50%, these are clerical workers currently making over $80K per year now s They are currently working together only as a last resort, aka the workers not crossing another union's picket line. But even as recently as with Hostess the Teamsters didn't honor the picket line of the Bakers union. So why don't you wax eloquent on how well that collusion worked out for them or how that's indicative of some generally aligned strategies for labor.
The article says it is over outsourcing and job security. I don't assume to know the details but since the counter-offer was summarized as "no we aren't and by the way here's an 18% raise" well I'm running with that. We can both agree that no one here knows the intricacies of the matter. I'd say two-thirds of the argument here is among people who generally agree that unions are legitimate entities, but who disagree on what they should be doing to meet their general mandate in representing labor interests. Some apparently think the status quo of striking and reacting and linking arms every couple years is the winner and others (I include myself here) think that unions need to join up at higher levels to have a real introspection on where they want to go and how to get there before they become permanently marginalized.
Well, Sharpe definitely picked the right subforum for gaseous false equivalences and nonsensical concern trolling. Because hey I live in <a city> therefore I get what people in labor negotiations really need to do, and besides I also can't tell the difference between reasonable inferences for disputes where I lack particular evidence, given historical patterns, and ridiculous bullshit practically cribbed from Paul Ryan's bedtime stories.
Huh. So I guess this was a silly thing for you to say: I'm just not getting why you think they should do something other than what they're doing but you don't know what they should be doing but they totally should be doing that instead. So...they should be striking to stop child labor? I'll get them on the phone so you can explain that to them. I'm sure they haven't thought of that before. Fucking clerical workers! Think they're people or something. And, for the third time in this thread alone, second on this page: It's not about compensation. Why aren't you getting that? Spending too much time coming up with rad to the max insults instead of, you know, reading relevant articles. Such as the OP link for example. "Only as a last resort" quantify that in ANY way. Go ahead. Explain what that means.
I know right? It's almost like no one should have an opinion or discuss their impressions unless they are certified experts in the field. They did, actually. It was one of their successes. When you get them on the phone, ask them to reflect on why efforts by labor to make broad meaningful change were successful for decades and have declined in the last 20 years. Did business have no influence over legislators before 1980? They're smart people with legitimate beneficial goals; they'll think of something. Dare to question that $110K+ is a reasonable salary for a Los Angeles office worker and get this kind of response. Might as well go back to QT3. I already replied to that. And read the OP. And so on. Rad. To. The. Max. I meant it in the normal sense of the term: waiting until the last stages in a series of events to perform an action.
You're still the only one talking about salary here. Yes, good, bravo, now explain how their joining the strike was "the last resort".
I don't understand what you guys think is a "reasonable wage" in a vacuum. There is no objectively correct wage. Wages are set by agreement between the employer and the union. Clerical workers are entitled to whatever wage they can obtain from their employer. If they are a strong enough union to make over $100,000 per year, more power to them. shift6, in most places a union would not be legally permitted to strike as a protest against child labour. Strikes are only allowed in very specific circumstances for very specific reasons. They are only permitted as part of the negotiation over the collective bargain. While unions can politically organize and advocate against child labour, they cannot strike on that basis. I think there are two arguments going on here. One is that clerical workers somehow objectively don't deserve over $100,000 a year. That just seems like a strange argument to me, as I mentioned above. Second is that labour unrest shouldn't shut down all shipping. I actually agree with that to an extent. It is better than an industrial dispute be contained as much as possible, so that it can truly be a dispute between the employer and the union without negatively impacting on other businesses and workplaces. The solution isn't to blame the union though - they are working within the current regulatory framework. If this is really an area where a strike can cripple the economy, I think the better solution to haranguing the union would be to make the sector an essential service and impose binding arbitration. Arbitration is not likely to result in lower wages though, so if your objection is that these clerical workers make too much money, arbitration is not the answer. There really isn't such a mandate. North American unions were specifically designed to represent only the interests of their bargaining unit, which is typically a single workplace. Arguably the North American regulatory approach to unions was designed specifically to limit the ability of unions to use their economic leverage to make political changes.
Bold face this entire thing. That's a pretty gross distortion of what I said or intended to say, and you know it. If by "only one" you mean excepting the repeated references by others here to compensation and by its mention and discussion in the OP's article, then yes I'm the only one. If you read the article (haw haw) you would see that the offer by the ports to the unions was: no we aren't outsourcing, your jobs are secure, here take an additional 18% to your compensation. It appears you're the only one repeatedly trying to get everyone to ignore salary. (sigh) Yes I know unions don't and can't strike over child labor. I never said they could or should strike over child labor. I never said they ever did strike for child labor. I said they should recall that topic (among a list of a half-dozen others) as a past success and reflect on why they held such legislative and mind-share sway for so long compared to the last couple decades. I don't think anyone is saying this is an objective truth; at least I'm not. But since offshoring work is based almost entirely on wages and since wages are significantly smaller not only offshore but for other clerical workers onshore in the LA area and since the package offered by the ports to the workers included an 18% premium; it's probably topical to ask if that's reasonable, if it represents the interests of all parties, and if not then is there a better way. Said differently: what is the savings due to compensation that ports look for in evaluating outsourcing; if these office workers made more or less the same as comparable jobs in LA, would the ports be looking to outsource? Should unions representing very small groups like this be able to hold sway over hundreds of thousands of others in a "get mine" theory of value that so closely resembles exactly the shareholder theory of business, or should they champion a better approach to protecting all involved stakeholders? Now, I believe we can ask these questions without already knowing the answers. I also believe unions have a sound ground for doing what they know in the short term. But my earnest hope is that they are willing to think outside the box in general longer-term strategic thinking even while businesses don't. Analogy: I don't want democrats to start acting like fuckholes and justify it "but Republicans do it!!!!!!111!"
Getting 'whatever you can from your employer' is a large part of what lead to the airlines and the auto industry having such troubles when the industries had a downturn. Not sure why that is a good thing to repeat over and over
Ha haw! Yeah. If only I read the article Nono, TOTALLY about salary over here! Why would any-oh I supplied a link to? And I quoted it? Well, I'm certain it was about salary too so no need to Haw. Haw.
So you can see: ALL about salary. Which is why they rejected an offer of a higher salary. And why other unions joined their selfish strike. Because salary.
The invisible hand of the market compels me to make as much money as possible. My time and work is not charity.
Yes, you did: I agree that unions have played a role in advocating for workers rights and benefits, and that they should continue doing so in the future. I don't see any contradiction between that and a union bargaining for wages. A union can get the best deal for its own workers and also work to benefit other workers. The people in the best place to determine whether or not this is reasonable are the employer and the union. Again, we assume that people who make a contract do so out of their own best interests in a utility maximizing way. One of the key purposes of Wagner Act style relations is that the public is not setting wages. The parties set wages between them. We really don't want the government or the public to decide how much clerical workers should make. That should be up to the employer and the employees. To the extent that other people are affected by the strike, that is a valid concern. But it's not the unions job, nor is it in a very good position, to become the representative of the public. The interest of the public ought to be built into the regulatory framework; we shouldn't expect either the employer or the union to represent the public interest, because they aren't designed to represent the public interest, they are not statutorily enabled to represent the public interest, and they are in a poor position to gauge the public interest. I think it's fair to ask whether or not an employer or a union should be able to hold an economy hostage. I think there are a lot of solutions to that problem: arbitration, banning collective bargain provisions that allow other unions to refuse to cross picket lines, and so on. But expecting the union to give up its role as bargaining agent for the workers is totally contrary to the whole system of collective bargaining. I'm sure that clerical workers onshore make less money. They probably aren't unionized, nor are they as well positioned to leverage to their economic power. I don't see how their economic position can be used to determine what a unionized worker in a critical economic workplace should make. You say that these clerical workers make more than onshore workers, but of course that's the whole point of collective bargaining. Workers in a union are better able to advocate for their interests than workers outside a union. My response would be to try and unionize the other clerical workers, rather than criticize the unionized workers.
They seem to do both, though. Unions are huge backers of labor laws and politicians who support them, and seem to link up at the higher level to coordinate such activities. The question I have is, why can't they both argue for structural change at the government level, AND occasionally flex their muscle to get more immediate local change for their membership? I don't think striking is a winning long term solution, but failing to do anything on the near term will cause membership to plummet, since why be a member if it gains you nothing but a warm feeling that in thirty years something might change? They are absolutely losing this war, but I don't know that they can solve this by a sudden change in methodology on the ground, as much as they need to find a way to chip at this view of Unions: Terrible Evil That Keeps Everyone From Working without just rolling over and becoming extinct by inaction.
Yeah definitely not about salary. The issue is offshoring! And they do that because, well not salary. No no, it's because, like, people are just people man. Honestly I don't understand how you can beat this drum except because admitting an error online is tantamount to chopping off your own balls. Offshoring is done primarily due to costs, the (by far) largest one of which is salary. Period. Whether the word "wage" appears or not is irrelevant. The discussion is about what employees are being paid and employers who are asking what is the minimum wage in China, India, Vietnam. When you go further that in addition to fucking the offshoring-but-totally-not-related-to-salary chicken the counter offer to the workers included an 18% jump in salary, well things start falling into place. But not on the internet. Never give in. Never back down. The article never even mentioned salary. So I presented a multi-point set of thoughts on the whole which included salary but this is what you read? Well I guess straw men are the easiest to knock down. Ah, well. I guess since someone else slipped it in in one small part of an extensive ongoing discussion and I responded, I did say it "by implication" even though I was following a train of thought that didn't include that one word. Here I admit this grave error. Agreed. In fact that's been the thrust of nearly every post I've made in this thread. Except the ones where I'm shaking my head because hey, Santorum lololololol. And although I didn't quote the rest of what you wrote for brevity, I agree with it almost entirely. We probably only differ on some subtleties that are by this time probably well plastered over in this thread. For instance I think unionizing other workers and criticizing currently unionized workers are both equally legitimate approaches to asking the questions that both you and I have proposed. Exactly.
Yes, though I may be wrong in my flippancy. Perhaps you'd like to propose an alternate explanation on an employer's key motivator behind offshoring clerical work?
I'm coming into this one a little late. Sharpe is unhappy because dockworkers are being paid more than dockworkers are "supposed to" be paid?
