A lot of people seem to be getting very confused between a job, and the social institution which makes all the decisions about your job.
What is wrong with loving computer programming? Or baking cakes? Or whatever?
The social institution (the corporation) is a coercive structure which removes your autonomy, and working on command makes people feel hollow and unfulfilled. In much the same way as you feel when living with a partner who doesn't love you. Kind of because that's what it is. Of course you need to live in the reality where you recognise that you are coerced in to submitting tot his social structure for survival, and it obvious that this is much better for your mental health than deluding yourself into thinking the nature of the social structure is kind and caring and you are just broken and unworthy.
Human connection, shared goals, working together, these are things which don't feel fundamentally coercive, hollow, and exploitative. It seems self-evident that the only way you can make an institution that loves you back is by... (i mean, duh?) making an institution that loves you back (ie. that treats people decently). In our culture, unions are the only chance working people have at creating institutions based on mutual support, solidarity, and providing the opportunity to take back some autonomy over their working lives and create decent working conditions for themselves.
To other posters on the thread, the fact your union sucks is very much like the fact your democracy sucks. You have to ask the question: if we sit here complaining and waiting for it to be fixed, who will come along and fix that for us? Perhaps god will swoop down from the sky, or the BatMan? Or perhaps these institutions simply need your input if they are going to have a chance of functioning in the way you want them to function.
You get treated decently with strong unions because strong unions have power. It’s not a matter of the corporation, which has no feelings because it is not a person, loving you back.
We should recognize the incentives of all the groups at the negotiating table and act accordingly.
> Why would being in a union make your job love you back?
Or tl;dr, if that wasn't their function, then what are you creating them for? If not for that, then its because you don't have that as a goal. So the question seems tautological under the assumption that you are a participant in a union that is democratically organised (and you don't hate yourself haha).
What is wrong with loving computer programming? Or baking cakes? Or whatever?
The social institution (the corporation) is a coercive structure which removes your autonomy, and working on command makes people feel hollow and unfulfilled. In much the same way as you feel when living with a partner who doesn't love you. Kind of because that's what it is. Of course you need to live in the reality where you recognise that you are coerced in to submitting tot his social structure for survival, and it obvious that this is much better for your mental health than deluding yourself into thinking the nature of the social structure is kind and caring and you are just broken and unworthy.
Human connection, shared goals, working together, these are things which don't feel fundamentally coercive, hollow, and exploitative. It seems self-evident that the only way you can make an institution that loves you back is by... (i mean, duh?) making an institution that loves you back (ie. that treats people decently). In our culture, unions are the only chance working people have at creating institutions based on mutual support, solidarity, and providing the opportunity to take back some autonomy over their working lives and create decent working conditions for themselves.
To other posters on the thread, the fact your union sucks is very much like the fact your democracy sucks. You have to ask the question: if we sit here complaining and waiting for it to be fixed, who will come along and fix that for us? Perhaps god will swoop down from the sky, or the BatMan? Or perhaps these institutions simply need your input if they are going to have a chance of functioning in the way you want them to function.