Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by jlawson 2515 days ago
Nothing you said argues against me point at all. You're shouting pre-written talking points which are complete non sequiturs. Please engage in the actual discussion.
1 comments

I'm not shouting anything, and my "talking points" aren't pre-written. I'm sharing with you examples where organized labor lead to clear improvements in working conditions. The world before organized labor was truly awful and pretending otherwise isn't going to help advance your cause. You get to look backwards from the world of "weekends" and "unlocked doors" and assume they were always there, but the fact is they weren't, and organized labor is why. I'm not saying I support all the positions espoused by unions unequivocally however I do respect the role they play in pushing back against capital. In the end you've got organized labor on one side, capital on the other, and when the dust settles, a happy middle ground.
I'm saying the root cause is not organized labor. It is technology.

For thousands of years those bad conditions reigned. For thousands of years, 'organized labor' changed nothing. Then technology changed, and suddenly 'organized labor' became able to offer all these wonderful things. Does it sounds like 'organized labor' can take credit for all that? That they just happened to succeed in the decades after industrial technology took off?

The timeline clearly indicates technology, which increased productivity across the board, as the root cause.