Police Power and Racial Tensions in Ferguson, Missouri

[LogGrad98]

I am happy to concede that AA may be tweaked to update and improve it. I've not once said or implied it's perfect as it presently exists.

I would also say that I find your assertion that unions are no longer necessary to be highly suspect bordering on laughable. Protective laws are not the same thing as collective bargaining and counter-vailing power, particularly in an environment where corporations are considered people and corporate money can ever more so influence public policies. Human nature has not changed, and given opportunity to behave badly and in poor faith, corporations will do so. They are amoral soulless, self-interested entities that care only for the bottom line (and enriching the plutocrats who run them). And I say this as an ardent believer in and defender of capitalism. Capitalism is the single best arrangement for maximizing wealth of society, but it has dark impulses that must be managed and directed or the wealth it creates will be distributed in grossly inequitable ways, the apogee of which might be the Gilded Age, but which is once again occurring in line with public policies that favor corporations and the decline of the countervailing power of collective bargaining.

You guys totally miss the reason why unions are on the decline.

 

[QuinSnydersHair]

I am happy to concede that AA may be tweaked to update and improve it. I've not once said or implied it's perfect as it presently exists.

I would also say that I find your assertion that unions are no longer necessary to be highly suspect bordering on laughable. Protective laws are not the same thing as collective bargaining and counter-vailing power, particularly in an environment where corporations are considered people and corporate money can ever more so influence public policies. Human nature has not changed, and given opportunity to behave badly and in poor faith, corporations will do so. They are amoral soulless, self-interested entities that care only for the bottom line (and enriching the plutocrats who run them). And I say this as an ardent believer in and defender of capitalism. Capitalism is the single best arrangement for maximizing wealth of society, but it has dark impulses that must be managed and directed or the wealth hit creates will be distributed in grossly inequitable ways, the apogee of which might be the Gilded Age, but which is once again occurring in line with public policies that favor corporations and the decline of the countervailing power of collective bargaining.

I love this post. Love.

 

[LogGrad98]

Please re-read my post. I nevet said unions are no longer necessary. I was stating that we have federal laws for safety, etc., (thanks to unions no less). But now that many of those laws are in placr, that component of Unions is much less necessary.

I think unions make the most sense for limited commodity employees (prof. athletes, etc.), and less necessary for gov't employees and gray in between.

The fact is, attorneys (and top union reps) are the ones that benefit from unions. Workers to a much lesser extent.

It isn't entirely driven by laws. If you trace it back the decline of the union began at the time that Toyota kicked off the lean revolution requiring that manufacturers start getting dramatically better just to compete. The realization dawned that doing the right thing by the workers gets you far better productivity than treating them like throw aways. The gains in productivity would never be possible without the buy in of the work force. And unions are frankly a hindrance to that. As evidence the recent near collapse of the auto industry, which is about the only private sphere heavily unionize organizations left.

 

[fishonjazz]

Just want to say that I'm in a union at my workplace and I think it's great

 

[framer]

It isn't entirely driven by laws. If you trace it back the decline of the union began at the time that Toyota kicked off the lean revolution requiring that manufacturers start getting dramatically better just to compete. The realization dawned that doing the right thing by the workers gets you far better productivity than treating them like throw aways. The gains in productivity would never be possible without the buy in of the work force. And unions are frankly a hindrance to that. As evidence the recent near collapse of the auto industry, which is about the only private sphere heavily unionize organizations left.

Part of the issue is that jobs where you show up from 9 to 5 and work in the same place for 30+ years are completely going away. It is worrisome because there is a large percentage of otherwise employable citizens that are never going to be able to adjust to this reality. Increasing Union membership won't change this, and will only bring the few remaining jobs that fit this mold into automation faster. The only place where this employment area is expanding is government, the only place where unionism is still flourishing and growing. That probably isn't sustainable.

 

[LogGrad98]

Part of the issue is that jobs where you show up from 9 to 5 and work in the same place for 30+ years are completely going away. It is worrisome because there is a large percentage of otherwise employable citizens that are never going to be able to adjust to this reality. Increasing Union membership won't change this, and will only bring the few remaining jobs that fit this mold into automation faster. The only place where this employment area is expanding is government, the only place where unionism is still flourishing and growing. That probably isn't sustainable.

I agree. There is a reason those kinds of jobs have gone away, they largely were not sustainable. It has been asked before how we can have unlimited economic growth with limited resources. This kind of thing fits well into that conversation. But there are 2 sides to that coin. Not only is that type of retention not a focus of companies, we also see a large number of "job hoppers" any more. In my dad's day you wouldn't go shopping for a better job, even if yours was not paying the bills or unsatisfying or whatever. You just didn't do that sort of thing. But today it is very commonplace. The landscape has changed, and unions just don't really have a place anymore in industry except in niche markets, so to speak.

 

[♪alt13]

It isn't entirely driven by laws. If you trace it back the decline of the union began at the time that Toyota kicked off the lean revolution requiring that manufacturers start getting dramatically better just to compete. The realization dawned that doing the right thing by the workers gets you far better productivity than treating them like throw aways. The gains in productivity would never be possible without the buy in of the work force. And unions are frankly a hindrance to that. As evidence the recent near collapse of the auto industry, which is about the only private sphere heavily unionize organizations left.

Dude US auto was making an inferior product end of conversation. The Unions can't be blamed for inferior engineering and the failure to make fuel efficient cars. Gas prices went up and GM was left with a bunch of these monstrosities that all of the sudden nobody wanted.

 

[♪alt13]

I had an 01 Pontiac that was a pos. Traded it in for a Toyota in 07 and wondered why I hadn't earlier. America made **** cars in the 00s.

 

[One Brow]

Between you and me, I agree with this to some degree. However, the law is what the law is, and we have to trust the system to do its thing, even if we don't like the outcome sometimes.

I agree that, even whne we think the system did not work properly, it's still better than people taking the law into their own hands.

 

[LogGrad98]

I had an 01 Pontiac that was a pos. Traded it in for a Toyota in 07 and wondered why I hadn't earlier. America made **** cars in the 00s.

So a good friend of mine was an engineer with GM during the crash (and for 10 years before). His role was to implement Lean in his facility (he worked at the Corvette facility in Bowling Green and one other facility). To implement improvements, either to the process or the work environment for the workers to be more productive they were required to provide the union with a "worker impact" assessment, in short, how many jobs will be lost due to this "improvement" or how many hours will be cut. If it was anything the union wouldn't agree on, which was basically anything that implies they might need fewer people to make the car, then they refused to buy off on it and it got nixed. So yes, union involvement can have a very real effect on quality output. Even when they showed that the jobs would not be lost but rather relocated to a different production line or something like that it was often still killed, as all they wanted was the status quo and anything except increasing jobs or wages was viewed as a threat to the union, so they said no way. So any improvements he tried to make, or any efforts to eliminate errors in the process met stiff resistance from the unions in the interest of worker benefits, and at the ultimate cost of nearly destroying an industry.

edit:

In the interest of full disclosure, no the unions were not solely and entirely to blame. Those big companies were horribly managed through and through. But we cannot pretend that the union influence had nothing to do with it, in some cases very directly, as I mentioned above.

 

[One Brow]

What better way to eff the "oppressors of your race"? Seems like this would be pretty strong motivation to lie.

Because the one thing you want to do is piss off the police force in your neighborhood? There's a very strong motivation to stay silent.

 

[Stoked]

Because the one thing you want to do is piss off the police force in your neighborhood? There's a very strong motivation to stay silent.

One could argue that this case (among others) is proof that your theory is incorrect.