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by danielmarkbruce 405 days ago
Compensation packages are just that - a package. Complaining about one individual component in isolation is disingenuous.

Unions sent a couple of the big car makers into bankruptcy. They've sent all kinds of companies into bankruptcy - the idea that anything they are suggesting is good by nature is about the same as suggesting communism is good by nature. Sounds pleasant, doesn't work.
2 comments
mullingitover 405 days ago
> Unions sent a couple of the big car makers into bankruptcy.

It goes both ways, unfortunately. Industry in general couldn't exist without laborers, and it has a long history of brutal abuse and horrific, dangerous working conditions that killed and maimed many.

I think it's a cultural problem. We aren't far removed from a time when the general business model was to coercively work people to death to extract every penny of value from them, and that mindset hasn't completely been lost. Workers are callously discarded, not at the doorstep of bankruptcy, but at the first hint that profits might not grow as fast as they could.

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danielmarkbruce 405 days ago
Yup, it goes both ways. It's not a given that what a company is proposing is good or bad, and it's not a given that what a union is proposing is good or bad. And they negotiate and it is what it is.
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hhghkj 405 days ago
Businesses that can't stay afloat without underpaying workers have a failing business model. Blaming unions for their eventual demise is foolish.

Communism and Capitalism are actually quite similar in a sense. Neither of them works well in their purest form, both lead to formation of an oligarchy (party elite,billionaires). Most livable countries in the world mix them in form of free market social democracy.

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FirmwareBurner 405 days ago
>Businesses that can't stay afloat without underpaying workers have a failing business model.

Yet companies have flourished under that model for decades/centuries. Employers and governments have plenty of levers to make sure workers have no choice but to work while being underpaid.

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danielmarkbruce 405 days ago
Sure, but you say that as though the union is only representing underpaid workers. In many cases they represent overpaid workers.
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