• Walt J. Rimmer@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Sadly, with recent events, all I can think about with this is how Linus Sebastion would go on the WAN Show and say things like, “You don’t need a union unless you have bad management, and I never want my employees to need a union.”

    • master5o1@lemmy.nz
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      1 year ago

      The counter statement is that a union is insurance for when good management goes bad.

      • Walt J. Rimmer@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I mean, a union is simply a way for workers to organize independently from management. While it’s useful for countering bad management and things like that, that’s not its only purpose. And anyone saying that it is either doesn’t know as much about unions as they think or is anti-union while trying not to say as much directly.

        • master5o1@lemmy.nz
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          1 year ago

          Yes of course. I was meaning in terms as a direct response to that pretty dumb statement from Linus.

      • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It also gives a voice to everyone and establishes a single bargain. If you have 50 employees and you’re negotiating with each of them separately how sure are you that you’re really being fair to all of them and not having any biases impacting your treatments? How sure are you that they agree? If you agree with the union about compensation and conditions of that compensation you know it’s fairer. If every management action has a steward as a witness you know that someone else who knows the rules you agreed to will speak up if you break them. You know that you aren’t about to get hit with an accusation of misconduct behind closed doors unless the steward agrees you misbehaved.

        And as you say there’s security against management changing. You get someone with a union job with a pension and it’s hard for them to willingly leave. It’s a level of security that you know you aren’t getting elsewhere even if you’d be promoted.

    • TeckFire@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I do actually agree with his initial statement, which was “if my workers need a union to stay safe, I will consider it a personal failure.”

      …absolutely agreed. His conclusion of that his workers shouldn’t need one though, is the problem. They should have one. However, if the union needs to step in because he’s being a dick, then he has failed indeed. Guess it was a good thing they had a union though, right? Oh wait…

      • crashoverride@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        We need an FOIA for employees. For example, if one employee thinks they’re getting paid less for their job than they should be, they should be able to request what somebody else is making and then be able to know she negotiate past that.

        • TeckFire@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          That sounds like the best idea that will never happen because it only benefits the working class…

          Maybe someday, though

          • crashoverride@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            And if they don’t want to give an employee something that another is getting, they have to be able to explain exactly whym

    • Franzia@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 year ago

      My favorite counter is that unions aren’t only used as protection against management. Unions democratize the workplace!

    • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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      1 year ago

      He has a point.

      The problem is that because of Capitalism, there is no such thing as good management.

    • ddkman@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I always found that funny. And then he was like, IF YOU THINK THE UNION IS A BLACK AND WHITE QUESTION YOU ARE AN IDIOT. :D :D.

    • pivot_root@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Blasphemy! Unions are just algebraic data types without any guardrails. If the programmer misuses them, that’s their own fault for b$:, 9^\⊂ƒ~>[→ZzF™×#
      Segmentation fault (core dumped)

      • Rednax@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        My C++ teacher taught me to be against unions. He made everything class based instead.

        • pivot_root@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          How reckless, encouraging inheritance like that. My personal demon college tutor instructed me on the ways of Malbolge. In the end, life is just a list of self-modifying instructions.

  • Kerred@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    When I worked at Best Buy I attended two full paid meetings about the horrors of unions when the Obama administration made it easier to create a union.

    They even cancelled all our in home jobs one day for an anti union meeting

    Holy crap I don’t know who at Best Buy wrote all those presentations but the language they used was a master class in brainwashing. I probably would be a flat earther of they spent enough time crafting their wording 😄