Remember: Workers make the machinery. Then, workers use the machinery to make more things. It may be different workers at different stages, but workers are the only means of production. Everything is produced by someone working to do so.
Join a union.
Keep in mind most of that machinery nowadays is made by workers elsewhere in the world, primarily in China, where the union membership rate is something like 45%.
If workers rights in China improve capital may simply move on to idk Mexico, India, lots of places with cheaply exploitable labor and pliable governments.
The majority of those unionized employees in China belong to government-controlled unions. The Chinese government has the last word on all this, and the employees’ “rights” are ultimately subject to the CCPs whims. Basically both the company and the union are ultimately controlled by the same entity.
It’s absurd, as it defeats the whole point of a union.
This is what eventually seems to happen under every attempt at communism that we’ve seen so far.
There is no universe in which Chinese labor unions are even remotely the same thing as labor unions in the western-style industrialized democracies. China is an authoritarian top-down quasi-capitalistic system which means that there is no management for workers to negotiate with apart from a single massive structure that’s ultimately controlled by Xi’s government.
Contrast that to western-style industrialized democracies wherein unions are meant to use organized labor as a ballast against the power of privately owned industrial management.
It’s just not the same thing at all.
Furthermore, while virtually all modern machinery contains Chinese-made parts, it’s just a fact that in the western-style industrialized democracies, tradesmen vastly prefer power-tools made in places like the US or Germany or Japan because they tend to be much better in terms of quality and reliability and lifespan then are their Chinese-made counterparts.
Go to any big construction site in the US and you’ll immediately see that the workers prefer brands like Milwaukee, DeWalt, Makita, Hilti, Husqvarna and Bosch over the cheaper Chinese-made alternatives, for example.
It started with Ronald Reagan going after PATCO, the air traffic controllers’ union. They had supported him in the 1980 election, one of the few Unions to do so. When they went on strike, he fired them all, and refused to rehire. The FAA was left scrambling for controllers.
Whenever you look at the death of the American dream, you see Ronnie Reagan.
Reagan signed a contract so bad that even arch-conservative Bob Hope called it a ‘give away.’ He made it possible for talent agencies to become producers, so the guy negotiating your contract was also your employer. On top of that he spied on his members for the FBI.
Interesting comparison, but I don’t think the correlation is enough here. There’s every likelihood that the reduction in union membership and the reduction in pay are both the result of some other factor.
Saying that though, unions are a good thing.
IDK let’s see.
Other countries finally starting to pull out of the rubble of ww2.
The massive influx of the baby boomers into the workforce devaluing labor. Couple this with boomer women demanding jobs instead of being house wives, further adding to supply of available labor.
Come 1980 we add in trickle down economics which encourages the hoarding of wealth.
Then there’s computerization, automation and globalization that have been rapidly bringing up per capital productivity. Weirdly this devalues labor, because you need fewer people.
That’s just off the top of my head.
Unions are important and can be a force for good, but the data doesn’t fully support the claim.
Simple solutions to complex problems are usually being sold as a way to manipulate people… Don’t buy in to simple solutions.
It was around the 70s that the key shift likely happened. This is where productivity (I think measured in money) continued to grow while wages stagnated. So showing some time before this would be beneficial.
The chart also only plots union membership from 1973. Given the US’ history of unions, I think it would be far more interesting to go back to 1900, in particular to track membership numbers across events like the Battle of Blair Mountain 1921.
In general this graph seems to show a nice correlation but really doesn’t dig in enough to say anything meaningful.
Looks like turnaround was in the 1950s, start of the cold war and the rise of anticommunism as organizing principle domestically as well as abroad, combined with free trade policies that let us exploit foreign workers- by suppressing their own unions with tactics that to put it mildly wouldn’t fly in the United States (aka imperialism)
https://www.epi.org/publication/unions-decline-inequality-rises/
Especially given that union memberships mirrors but lags a few years behind the fall in income share.
Was going to note that too. I suspect workers are not willing to participate in unions because unions are less able to deliver higher pay (which is a big disincentive for participation). This could be a result of changing labour laws which reduce the fundamental efficacy of unions but regardless the outcome is lower willingness to participate.
What the actual F? How is such a small % in a union? In my country 94% of employed 25-54 year olds are in a union.
I have literally never met anyone (aside from self-employed people) who told me or indicated to me that they weren’t in a union.
the people I work just very strongly believe union are bad. The union fees cost to much, strikes only hurt other people, we con’t unionize because people need us to do our job, you can’t unionize unskilled labor, My husband/wife works for and they hate it, What do they do for us nothing.
I don’t know how to change people minds all I know is show them facts and they don’t believe them.
There’s so many idiots that are in unions and bitch about them, but for some reason refuse to leave the union.
People are really really dumb
The union fees part is hilariously silly. Better salary from collective bargaining more than makes up for a membership fee.
What op should do it take a country like yours and put it on the same graph. If average wage goes down for your country too then it’s highly likely not to be a union factor and instead something else.
https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
It’s more likely WW2 effects, immigration and increasing competitiveness of the world.
This is why I slack the fuck off at work.