[smnrchrds]

What makes you call them goons? Politicians, activists, all sorts of people go door knocking around the time of elections and referendums. What made this interaction so different that you call them goons sent there to intimidate you, not activists trying to attract your vote?

[chrisseaton]

Union activists in the UK have a reputation of being bullies, and in some cases in the past they've used physical violence to try to get people to do things their way.

At the height of union fever back in the 80s it got so bad at one point that union activists dropped a concrete block on someone's head from a bridge because he was trying to get into work and they thought he should be striking (David Wilkie.)

I would not appreciate union goons showing up at my door and I'd have a similar reaction.

[pydry]

>At the height of union fever back in the 80s it got so bad at one point that union activists

Were subjected to police brutality while largely peacefully picketing. Meanwhile the army was called in to do their jobs...

Apparently there was evidence of "excessive violence by police officers, a false narrative from police exaggerating violence by miners, perjury by officers giving evidence to prosecute the arrested men, and an apparent cover-up of that perjury by senior officers."

According to the independent police complaints commission, anyway.

Note the similarities to current protests in the US and similar attempts to depict police as simply reacting to "violent blacks".

If you want to see the full gamut of vicious state inflicted violence you can either be the wrong race, or you can form a powerful enough union and go on strike.

[chrisseaton]

I don't know of anyone who disputes the killing of Wilkie happened or claims that it was somehow exaggerated.

As a taxi driver he was also not a police officer or an agent of the state. He was not armed or causing violence to anyone.

He was just driving someone who didn't agree with the union to work.

So they killed him.

[celticninja]

And they offenders were arrested, tried and punished. The difference here is the police are never subject to the same justice.

[dantheman]

And why are police never punished, because police unions. Unions in their modern form are granted special privileges by the government and use those privileges to extort society. There is nothing wrong with people joining groups, collective bargaining, etc -- the problem is that they are given special privileges by the state.

[BoiledCabbage]

I don't even understand what you're arguing. Aren't corporations given special privileges by the state? Are you against that well? Can you clarify what you're arguing here?

[terr-dav]

If any group is being given special privileges by the state, it's the police...

Normally, a union is formed to balance the power of capitalists with the laborers they employ. In the case of law enforcement, there is no capital, nor is their labor being used to produce something of value. If anything, law enforcement defends the interests of capitalists, rather than being subject to abuse by capitalists.

[iso1210]

No police union in the UK

[hehebbssjj]

Police unions have no solidarity with workers. They're groups that exist only to protect themselves, and they're happy to suppress strikes when it serves them. It's facile to consider them as part of labour unions.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/news/news-des...

[kiliantics]

So you have a single example of an (accidental) killing by unions. Now look up how many people have been killed by corporations for striking.

[missedthecue]

in the last couple decades?

[tehjoker]

Are you willing to consider the scope of the entire world?

[pydry]

They dropped a concrete block on his car. It wasn't attempted murder it was attempted property damage.

So, yes, they killed him and were rightly imprisoned for manslaughter.

[refurb]

“Mostly peaceful” would be a good description?

[hyko]

I guess we can all agree that it wasn’t an attempted murder.

[stale2002]

Nah. I think I am pretty ok will calling someone who does this a murderer. That is totally fine in my book to call them that.

[iso1210]

The distinction in England+Wales law caused a fair bit of debate in the UK at the time and was tackled in the following case

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Hancock

[kergonath]

Murder requires intent...

[john-shaffer]

How is dropping a concrete block on someone from 27 feet up not expected to kill them? Miners should have more common sense than that.

[caoilte]

Love the way you've got to reach back literally 36 years to find one example of union violence. The reputation that British unions actually have is for getting shat on by bullying employers.

[chrisseaton]

I think it was a pretty watershed moment in union relations in the UK. It's what a lot of people think of when they think of unions in the UK. They're pretty unpopular here. I was explaining why a British person might call them goons.

[calcifer]

> They're pretty unpopular here. I was explaining why a British person might call them goons.

Yeah, no. We must be living in different countries. There are lots of large, powerful, popular British unions in a wide variety of industries.

[chrisseaton]

Union membership in the UK has been going down long-term for four decades. It's halved since 1980 in fact.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/287232/trade-union-densi...

The Labour party have been ineffective for a decade and haven't been less popular since 1935. They're at their least popular when their leadership is more aligned to the unions. They were at the most recent popularity when they were furthest from the unions. They have just one representative now in Scotland, once a key area for unions.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/election-2019-50768605

If you're a fan of unionisation in the UK then I'd say you have cause for concern.

[andybak]

Brit here. Don't listen to this person.

I'm mostly centrist/moderate left. None of this rings true.

Typing on phone so excuse the brevity.

[andybak]

OK. At a keyboard now so I'll flesh this out a bit.

In my experience people have a fairly balanced view of unions. There's pretty broad membership. In most places I've worked people join the union if there is one. Some unions where regarded negatively at some points in time but there's also general sympathy for some industrial action. It varies - blue collar workers tend to be more positive and white collar workers (especially in non-unionized fields) tend to be less.

But this guy seems to be implying that that's wide-ranging hostility to unions in the UK - which I've never been aware of. There's a plurality of views as you would expect. I've known plenty of tory-voting union members so it's not even a strict right/left split.

[missedthecue]

Pro union people reach back 136 years to find their evidence of violence so i don't see the issue

[adamsea]

Yeah but those examples are like, large state-sponsored massacres. And there are lots of them.

In the US, for example:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre

I mean it was actually part of a war (at least it’s called such) between companies / government and organized labor!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_Coalfield_War

[sitkack]

> union fever back in the 80s

I think you meant to say Margaret Thatcher's war on labor? Her boyfriend in America was doing the same thing at the same time.

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/reagan-fires-113...

[hyko]

Nobody gets nastier than the self-proclaimed good guys.

If you’re a righteous person, then by extension everything you do is by definition clothed in righteousness.

[manicdee]

Condemning all unions because some stupid idiots dropped a concrete block one someone? Are you a Pinkerton?

As for the union "goons" well it's safe to assume that the people doorknocking are going to be the ones who haven't been driven away by random verbal and physical attacks.

[andybak]

This is a fairly slanted take on things.

[dcolkitt]

Also at the time that the leader of the NUM, the striking union, was a self-avowed Stalinist.[1]

It's hard to overstate the extreme militancy of trade union leadership in the UK during the late 1970s. While Thatcher gets the blame for the disintegration of the labor movement, just as big an issue was that the union leadership no longer represented the opinions of its rank-and-file members.

The 1984 miners strike largely failed, because most of the local unions decided not to join. Scargill never put the strike to a membership wide ballot, because he knew it probably wouldn't have passed. Union leadership became more focused on pushing communist ideology than it was on representing its members.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Scargill#Socialist_Labo...

[kmlx]

don't know why you're getting downvoted.

this is part of history and one of the many reasons unions have failed in the UK. and they're still failing having lower number of members every single year.

[winphone1974]

Probably because of the same sentiment towards rewriting history that's going around now. Rather then learn and move forward lots of people seem to prefer going back in time and judging history through today's lens.

[edent]

"The number of employees in the UK who were trade union members rose by 91,000 on the year to 6.44 million in 2019." https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/trade-union-statist...

[dylan604]

I used quotes because I was quoting my flatmate. She said their demeanor was not welcoming at all, and it felt very aggressive. I kind of wish I was there just so I could have told them what I thought, but spilled milk and what not.

[RobertoG]

Not saying this is the case, but it occurs to me... that would be a good way to sabotage the start of an union. Just send some aggressive people posing like members of the union.

[_jal]

It is, and there's evidence that has happened in the US.

The Pinkertons have been busting unions for over a century - they have pretty much explored the full range of options for worker suppression available to capital.

False flags can be a powerful tool (but becoming less so, as surveillance makes deniability harder).

[refurb]

Ahh... of course. Employers use dirty tactics and if unions do, it’s because it’s employers trying to sabotage them.

No way a union could ever use dirty tricks too. But of course they might because they were forced to by their employers?

[kergonath]

How many documented instances of unionised militants trying to bully workers into joining?

History is full of private interests using the full might of the state and any trick they can think of to prevent unions.

So yeah, one is more likely than the other.

[MrStonedOne]

corpitized unions (anything union organisation bigger then 1 location of 1 employer) are goons.

[AlexandrB]

So what does that make corporations with more than 1 location?

[a1369209993]

I believe "cartel" would be the closest technical term.

[MrStonedOne]

Each location should have its own union, grouping them all up allows the needs of the few to get drowned out by the wants of the many, and elevates union leadership to a position of power over the workers as union reps have easier access to spread their messaging to employees across locations while normal employees can only organize within their location.

[scarmig]

It also significantly decreases negotiating power. The point of unions is that someone small (an individual) has a hard time fairly negotiating with an organization (a company). Multiple small single-site unions would be just as ineffective negotiating with one large multi-site company.

[smnrchrds]

Especially since large companies are known for closing down locations as soon as they unionize.

[ardy42]

>>> corpitized unions (anything union organisation bigger then 1 location of 1 employer) are goons.

> Each location should have its own union

You might as well go all the way, and condemn any union with more than one member.

The whole point of a union is to have an organization representing the workers that has enough power to negotiate with the employer as a relative equal. Your "single site" unions would be pointless in many cases. They'd have no power, because the employer's power to close and transfer work between sites would completely undermine the union with little disruption to the employer. Just look at how Walmart handled it's only successful unionization effort:

https://apnews.com/3d709955866a71cc82d641b848714fd0

> The United Food and Commercial Workers is seeking an injunction against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to prevent the giant retailer from eliminating meat cutting departments at 180 stores with prepackaged meat....

> The decision to eliminate the meat cutters came just weeks after the butchers at the Jacksonville, Texas, Wal-Mart voted 7-3 to join the UFCW, the first successful union vote in the country at a Wal-Mart, a company well known for its opposition to organized labor.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/union-walmart-shut-5-stores-ove...:

> The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union has filed a claim with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that Walmart's (WMT) recent closing of five stores was done in retaliation for a history of labor activism at one of the locations, rather than because of the plumbing problems the retailer cited, The New York Times reports. The union is asking the government agency for an injunction that would require Walmart to rehire the 2,200 workers who were temporarily laid off or affected by the closings.

Your "single site" unions would be anything less than a sham to neuter unions was that if businesses were also forbidden from expanding beyond a single site, so each location would have to be a totally independent business. So instead of the Walmart corporation, you'd have 11,496 independent retail businesses with no common ownership or management structure.

[kergonath]

That specific poster would probably not see ineffective and powerless unions as a bad thing.

[rumanator]

> (...) and elevates union leadership to a position of power over the workers as union reps

I don't understand your point. Do you believe that this so called risk of an elected representative getting more power than the people that elected him is overall worse than the people having absolutely no power or representation?

I mean, can you explain why in your view leaving an employee SOL is more desirable than ensuring he has some say?

[MrStonedOne]

My view is that laws must keep unions from acting in bad faith before forced unions can be allowed to exist.

The primary positive effect of a union is its appeals process that keep employers from firing you on a whim.

Nothing about that positive effect requires the union be forced upon you, and if unions had to earn their dues they wouldn't act in bad faith as often.

[rumanator]

> My view is that laws must keep unions from acting in bad faith before forced unions can be allowed to exist.

Who said anything about forced unions? We're talking about allowing unions to exist so that workers are free to join them if that happens to be their wish.

I mean, we're having a discussion on how corporations use their coercive power and influence over workers lives to degrade their lives to serve the interests of a few, and somehow you're expecting to shift the conversation to how bad unions are if we don't get a say whether we join one or not?

[kergonath]

In which actual country is forced unionisation a thing? It sounds more like stupid local laws than a flaw in the concept of trade unions.