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fixxer | 8 years ago

Looking through the comments, I see a combination of anecdotal evidence about Unions being bad/good and a few (very logical) statements about how collective bargaining leads to higher wages & benefits.

Here are my two pennies:

Private sector unions are great for collective bargaining, though I prefer they abstain from broad political platforms (immigration, for example), as these are so far removed the intent of the union. I tend to view these Unions as being political vehicles first, collective bargaining agents second. That isn't a compliment.

Public sector unions are awkward in that tax payer is not represented at the bargaining table. They should be restructured to make bargaining comparable to the private sector case (or reverse Aboud).

My personal experiences with Unions are very negative.

In the first experience, in SoCal in the early 90s, I saw first hand when the Teamsters moved to unionize drywall framers. My dad was a small scale developer in the San Gabriel Valley and during a protest, a Teamsters boss on a megaphone encouraged a mob of picketers to run through the project with hammers and destroy recently hung drywall. My dad also received death threats and we had a rock thrown through a window.

My second experience was doing campaign targeting for AFSCME. The people I met from that org were in the extreme far left part of the political spectrum (as in "Stalin had some good ideas"). Take from that what you will.

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chimeracoder|8 years ago

> Private sector unions are great for collective bargaining, though I prefer they abstain from broad political platforms (immigration, for example), as these are so far removed the intent of the union. I tend to view these Unions as being political vehicles first, collective bargaining agents second. That isn't a compliment.

The feature you're describing is not an accident. Lobbying for restrictive immigration laws (not just political platforms in general, but that specific platform and issue) is the exact reason that unions like the AFL originally gained the size and political power that they have today.