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jernfrost | 7 years ago

Definitely. That is the best way to deal with stuff like this. Without a union individual employees have a too weak position to complain.

Although I hope the US adopts a more Nordic/German style union system which is less adversarial. I think the US system has sadly given unions a bad reputation.

discuss

Rainymood|7 years ago

> I think the US system has sadly given unions a bad reputation.

You mean big corporations have spent millions of dollars and hours lobbying against unions and crushing any whiff of unionization by immediate termination of employment? All hail to your corporate overlords ...

It's a double-edged sword really, explotation of low cost labor allows you to innovate and be the technologically advanced society you are, but it also hurts those at the bottom who have no other choices/options.

folkrav|7 years ago

Public employees over here in Quebec are unionized to hell and back, and it often ends up with protecting incompetent workers. I had a teacher back in college that was teaching extremely outdated material, didn't know anything about what she was teaching, and the whole department knew about it. A teacher told us that they all wanted her gone for years now, but unless she committed fraud or literally murdered a student, she was basically unfireable because of her union-negociated work contract.

Not saying unions are unjustified in all cases, but to be fair, they visibly _do_ get obtrusive in some instances. It's another problem than our southern neighbors though.

SmellyGeekBoy|7 years ago

Much better to have all of this stuff happen in China where we don't need to think about it.

gok|7 years ago

For better or worse, company-owned unions like those in Europe are strictly illegal under the NLRA. What you're hoping for would require a dramatic rewriting of US labor laws.

CaptainZapp|7 years ago

Where did you get the idea that unions in Europe are company owned? This is ludicrous on its face.

If you're refering to the concept of the German Betriebsrat[1] that has nothing to do with being owned by the company, but with union represenation in the high echelons of big companies.

The entire idea of an union being company owned would pretty much render such an entity useless.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_council