I'm not sure the pro-union crowd are doing themselves any favor by constantly telling people they don't know what they want, insisting things could only be better, inventing straw-man arguments, and so on.
Anyone who doesn't want higher wages or better working conditions isn't defining their self-interest very rationally. And anyone who doesn't believe the union is the best way to get there is probably being persuaded by anti-union propaganda rather than sound arguments.
A lot of the pro-union push is coming from largely the same set of people that are big activists on social issues/politics, and the union push feels in part like a power grab to gain leverage on those issues. I simply don't agree with the activists on some of the issues they are activists about. On the issues I do agree, I still don't feel that union pressure is the right way to go about it.
The responses you got are borderline religious. Pro union people need to acknowledge and be up front about the cons of a union. It’s just another entity with power over a group of people and suffers from the same pros and cons. It’s not a panacea.
Deriding legitimate concerns is not how you convince people, and makes it look like you have an agenda.
I understand the argument: they're trying to draw a line between ordinary union activity and political speech. But a lot of people don't think such a line is possible.
Both sides are trying to present their point of view. Sounds like this firm helps you present your side against this avalanche of union money and people liked what they heard.
What’s wrong with people presenting how they see things and employees getting to decide?
Because it's vague and hearsay. The most frustrating thing about these debates is that the pro-union side are so hostile to anyone who questions anything, as though they assume that anyone who doubts the union must be a business owner. I'm a worker, I would like to be part of a union that worked. But I don't see unions that work, I just see unreasonable and propaganda-like articles like these. When there is a dispute, if I try to look at it dispassionately, I usually find that I disagree with the union. So where does that leave me if I want to improve my rights as a worker?
Because my engagement with unions has only been positive, I am interested in the amazing number of people who seem motivated to say how negatively they feel about unions. I get that in an oppositional sense, if you don't want what a union wants, then they tend to cast into the bad, but for the middle ground who are not VCs, owners, Managers, and are candidates for union membership, I find it really strange how much people cast them into a class of "money grabbers for no benefit"
Do people feel the same about life insurance, car insurance? Its not that you actually intend being harrassed or sacked (fall ill, have a car accident) It's that you don't want to find yourself on the wrong side of an employment dispute (accident claim) without some insurance.
Unions may be taking your hard earned money. They may be doing things which you don't like (do I love my car insurance company?) But, they have a neccessary role in risk management.
We talk about risk management in the ICT sector all the time. Why can't we talk about risk management for labour hire?
Amazon used "dirty tricks" to win this election. I am sure the Union bust some minor rules too, but overall I am reasonably confident that the vote was neither free, nor fair. I also do think there is no latent 100% pro-union vote out there, and that a large number of the polled workers don't want a union, or the cost of the union, or the risk of jobloss from Amazon if they join the union (which is illegal but still has a risk of happening) -So I don't for a minute believe a re-vote will magically reverse the signal with an overwhelming result.
What interests me, is the basis for opposition to the union in the first place. Do people really think the garment workers in New York were backing the wrong horse? Do people think the machineguns which Ford arranged to turn on a union march in Detroit didn't happen?
I think it's entirely reasonable for someone to believe that the net result of a union in a particular place would be a negative for employees. They may be wrong, but holding that view doesn't automatically make them a bad person.
Maybe that does mean "you're with us or against us", but I'm pretty sure that kind of rhetoric only works to persuade people on the middle school playground, not in real life. At best, it will serve to convince weak-minded people who make decisions based on fear of being called names.
If you're going to try to convince me of something by telling me I'm an asshole if I don't agree with you, that's only going to push me away. That's just a fact, and if you want to convince me your opinion is the correct one, you need to focus on finding the argument that will give you the outcome you want, not the argument that lets you vent your frustration, even if "you're either with us or against us" is technically true. Because I don't care; if you're going to present your argument in that way, I'm very much fine being against you, even if I'd otherwise be sympathetic to your cause.
For the record, I'm fairly pro-union, though I do believe they can cause more problems than they solve in some situations. I'm commenting here because I'm really tired of people snatching defeat from the jaws of victory through self-destructive argumentation.
It could also be the case that most people commenting do not have experience with very many unions and have adopted the portions of a goofy pro- vs anti-union argument that has existed in popular US culture since right-wing think tanks began poisoning public political dialogue in the seventies.
I have little expectation that a propaganda campaign could meaningfully shift worker-voter perspectives for this specific vote. They're working off of the old propaganda over the past decades and their perspectives on the ground. The recent ads and such we're seeing are about the greater narrative and trying to set the stage for union-votes 5-10 years from now.
I am very pro-union and very sensitive to union bashing, but this article is not guilty of this particular bias. If anything, it might be guilty of a slight is-ought fallacy[1].
Came here to say the same thing. This “union” sounds more like a splinter branch of a far left political party, not an organization dedicated to the collective bargaining rights of its members.
I expect it to fail simply because the ideological tone will turn off most people.
I'm not sure the pro-union crowd are doing themselves any favor by constantly telling people they don't know what they want, insisting things could only be better, inventing straw-man arguments, and so on.
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