Unions: classic or dud, cobra and destro

I'm a proud member of the UC clerical union, CUE (Coalition of University Employees) and would strike without hesitation if it came down to it. The union has beaten down the university to provide some long overdue salary increases and standardization of benefits systemwide, and is keeping the pressure up even right now for further improvement. That said, our local branch here at UCI is riven with plenty of unfortunate internal politics that have made me hesitate to get directly involved in its organization. The overall goals are clear, though, and they're at least being carried out as well as can be.

I especially like the concept of the strike, in that it is the ultimate tool of capitalism. After all, in a "free market" the employer-employee relationship is supposed to be a mutually beneficial one.

Oh yeah ... SOLIDARNOSC!

(Imagine that last bit being spoken in a really think NYC-type Italian accent. Like Big Pussy.)

But, like I said, they sign my paychecks, so I do my job and tow the line (albeit not with my words, obviously). If you have a problem with that, then let me refer you to my associate, who will be glad to assist you in alleviating your fears and qualms. If you need any more assistance, please do not hesitate to contact me. Good day.

In the U.S., the red scare in which all militant leadership was driven from the ranks. Then workers finding themselves vs. leftists in Vietnam, then upsurge in detroit and postal service in 70s + miners strike [where other factor for decline revealed, which is bullshit "reform" platforms like Miller's Miners For Democracy] but anyway labor upsurge cut short by stagflation and blows to american industry in late 70s leading to catistropic Chrystler bailout [where labor/management partnership & business unionism showed ugly underbelly] then Reagan smashed PATCO then defeatdefeatdefeat thru mid 90s.

Also, note from 50s on concerted failure to even attempt to try to organize the south [which = key question].

Thing that tends to make unions worse that other NGOs: the average NGO is built around coherent principles focused on specific topics. Unions are devoted almost solely to improving the lot of their members, regardless of the larger principles; they're pretty much for anything that's likely to improve their wages, benefits, safety, etc., and that's just about that. The past couple years haven't necessarily seen that fact change, but the rhetoric of unions has certainly become more coherent and stable in terms of broad principles, as backed up in part by the sudden embrace of foreign labor organizations and U.S. immigrant labor.

But yeah, given the past couple months, I'm not expecting any sort of positive action on immigration during the next 5-10 years -- and I half-expect quite a few family members here never to make it to permanent residency. It was hard enough before.

I know there are good reasons for unions, half my relatives seem to be in an electrical workers one, but any of my personal experiences with them have been far worse than the crappy employers I had to endure.

(http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/us.html)

Man Bites Dog: Mega-Corporation Says It’s OK With Its Workers Unionizing

Parting company with almost every other U.S. big business, Microsoft says it won’t oppose employee unionization.

Amazon is calling the cops to arrest union organizers. Starbucks is firing them. But the other globally famous Washington state–based corporation, Microsoft, is breaking ranks not just with Amazon and Starbucks, but with virtually the entirety of American business, both big and small.

If its employees want to unionize, Microsoft says, that’s fine.

In a June 2nd blog post, Microsoft President Brad Smith wrote that the company would not discourage or delay its workers from forming or joining unions. Then, on Monday of this week, the company made a joint announcement with the Communications Workers of America (CWA) that if a majority of employees at Activision Blizzard, which Microsoft is in the process of purchasing for $70 billion, signed union affiliation cards, it would recognize that union. It would not oppose that effort; it would not subject workers to anti-union arguments; it would not insist on a follow-up election (a redundancy that every other U.S. company in a similar position would certainly insist upon).

The CWA has long been one of the nation’s most militant and effective unions. Unlike virtually every other union, it never abandoned the strike, and in recent decades won quite a number of them, while other unions shunned them for fear they’d lose. In that sense, the accord between Microsoft and CWA might be viewed as the agreement of two unicorns.

But there was more to Monday’s declaration than simple harmonic convergence. In March, the CWA sent a letter to federal regulators saying that the proposed acquisition raised a host of antitrust considerations. With this week’s announcement, however, the union withdrew its complaint.

This is exactly how unions should play the game.

As to Microsoft’s motivations, the company surely must have concluded that Biden administration regulators looking at the Activision purchase were a good deal less likely to rule against that purchase if it meant that Activision workers were to increase, not decrease, their income and power.

But there appears to be more to Microsoft’s calculations than derailing obstacles to its current acquisition, important though that may have been. Smith’s statement of June 2nd made clear its stance on unionization applied to all of Microsoft’s 181,000 employees who were eligible for union membership (as company executives, for instance, are not). What else could Microsoft have been thinking?

My theory (and it’s just a theory) is that Microsoft believes giving its workforce the right to unionize actually gives the company a competitive advantage over its peers—most immediately, its peers in the tech sector, which have universally greeted the prospect of a unionized workforce with horror and rage. Microsoft, by contrast, seems to have realized that the young techies it wishes to hire (and, once hired, keep) belong to the most pro-union generation in American history. In the most recent Gallup poll on the matter, fully 77 percent of Americans under 30 said they viewed unions favorably. One reason why Starbucks’s overwhelmingly youthful army of baristas is going union is that the pro-union sentiment of the young is both a rational calculation and a statement of values; it’s almost a cultural norm.

In his June 2nd blog post, Smith said as much. "Recent unionization campaigns across the country," he wrote, "including in the tech sector have led us to conclude that inevitably these issues will touch on more businesses, potentially including our own." What Smith did not say—what he did not need to say—was that those issues would also touch on Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and Google, and when young techies compared those companies’ hostility to worker power to Microsoft’s more welcoming perspective, they might well opt for the House of Gates rather than the Fortresses of Zuckerberg and Bezos.

Among its corporate peers, Microsoft is clearly a heretic. But if the company’s wager is right—if unionization is actually a competitive advantage in attracting and keeping young, talented workers—this heresy may yet spread.

seems relevant that it is not rly “young techies” full of “talent” amazon and starbucks are so willing to call the cops on, but rather the “overwhelmingly youthful army” of min-wage manual and service laborers their businesses revolve around slicing layers of value from. having once attended the opening of a microsoft store for the sake of the free weezer concert, i know they do have a retail arm; also that software development is its own kind of salt mine, that labor is labor, capital capital, and unions good; nevertheless you’d think this would be at least mentioned.