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by b1daly 5228 days ago
People are making comments here about how unions diminish competiveness. What about incompetent CEOs who make big decisions that wreck a company and still get paid millions. Why is it always the lowest paid workers who are expected to take a pay cut to make the company viable? I'm thinking of high profile CEOs who brought havoc and failure to theieto company: Stephen Elop, Leo Apotheker, Carol Bartz,Carly Fiorina... But really, the insistence that the peons take the hits, I don't get it.
1 comments
3pt14159 5228 days ago
Because unions have government protection, CEOs don't, and it is up to the shareholders to maximize value.
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dalke 5228 days ago
That's a meaningless blanket statement. Yes, unions have government protection. So do CEOs, since a corporate entity exists to protect CEOs and others in the company from personal liability.

Unions in the US also have government restrictions on what they can do. As one example, the Taft–Hartley Act prohibits a number of union actions, restricts First Amendment rights (eg, union offers must sign non-communist affidavits), and expressly allows a company to fire supervisors which support union rights.

The title of this essay uses "Wage Slave." The point is that "maximizing value" is not necessarily aligned with human rights. Is it your view that those two principles never be out of alignment, and if not, what happens in that case?

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3pt14159 5226 days ago
It isn't a meaningless statement. Unions, at least where I am from, are legally allowed to force individuals to join the union. Corporations are not legally allowed to fire everyone from the union, or demand non-unionship from their employees.

Corporations are the way that contracts can exist between parties without relying on the location or livelihood of individuals. Corporations are the reason you can sue, 40 years after the fact, the organization that polluted the river that brought about your colon cancer.

The Taft-Hartley Act was fucking retarded, but that isn't anymore reason to create further law against corporations (besides banks, since the fractional reserve system is moronic and introduces huge risks into the system.

I wasn't directing my comment at the article I was answer the person's question: Why are there negative sentiments against unions. The reason is that many of us have dealt with them at one point or another and they artificially aided by government law. All of them.

Most CEOs are not.

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