- cross-posted to:
- mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world
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When I worked at Walmart, they have an orientation that last about 4 hours, it's mostly paperwork, but they made us watch an hour 'documentary' about how bad unions are for our country
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If they don’t want you to form an union, you definitely should.
No guarantees on pay, benefits, or work rules
wat
Sounds like Amazon describing themselves.
Projection is a very popular far-right propaganda tactic.
Well yeah, without unions you are guaranteed to be paid less, less benefits and more restrictive rules.
With unions there's a negotiation.
No guarantees, just overwhelming historic precedent, and common sense conjecture.
No guarantees though, because unions are too weak and pathetic to provide the same unequivocal guarantees that we expect in every other aspect of our lives.
In the same way that your lease doesn't "guarantee" that your landlord will fix the leaking kitchen sink, this is technically true. Which is how they get away with spreading this nonsense.
Nevermind that having that legal contract gives you the only leverage you could possibly hope to have when you take the landlord to court. Same leverage that a union contract gives you over the corporation you work for.
Here in Sweden we have a tenants union. If your landlord is being obstinate, submitting a form with the tenants union's logo on it as well as a case number will generally get the landlord's arse in gear. Should that fail, the union will provide legal counsel and even representation, free of charge.
I pay $7USD a month to be part of the tenant union, and $20USD a month for my workers union.
My previous landlord was scum, and I made ample use of the tenant union in that period. At one point my landlord reimbursed me $950, in addition to finally getting around and fixing various issues they had to fix. I definitely feel like I've gotten my money's worth from it.
Swedes are lucky to have such effective systems for protecting the population.
Now, if you really became organized, then landlords would no longer exist.
Gods I wish.
I don't mind the public landlords that much, since they're publicly owned and funded, the goal is to provide housing, not profits. However, in the past few decades a lot of it has been privatised. To get a contract with a public landlord can take literal decades of queuing. The up-side of public housing though is that the rent tends to be lower than private contracts. In my last area my contract cost 10500 a month, whereas the public housing of same quality in the same area went in the ballpark of 7000-7800 a month.
Thus you end up in scenarios like mine; I make enough to be able to afford a mortgage, but since I still need someplace to live I have to rent from a private landlord, meaning I get inflated rents, meaning I have less money left over for the by law required down payment for a mortgage.
That law, as far as I know, wasn't a thing before the bubble popped back in the mid/late 00s, and now the bar for owning a home is much higher so the younger generations can't reach it as easily. Having a supporting family helps of course, but those of us that lack that privilege are shit out of luck. If you want to buy an apartment or a house you'll also be competing against flippers and wannabe hotels that buy it for AirBNB. It's all honestly just a load of bullshit.
We could use another million programme. Boggles the mind to think that the boomers got money handed to them from the government, just so they could build houses. Yet we're the spoiled ones.
I have understood that much of the public in Sweden is unaware of how deeply its own country has been affected by austerity and other erosion of policies that support workers. Whereas in other countries, such the US, UK, and Germany, elites have propagated the narrative that austerity is benevolent or necessary, in countries such as Sweden, they have simply denied it has been occurring.
The populations of Nordic states are extremely proud of their systems, but seem unaware of how fragile they remain, as long as power is concentrated toward the interests of the few.
I can’t speak for the nation as a whole, but I don’t agree on a personal level. The erosion of systems is felt rather keenly. It’s also not attributable to any single political coalition, rather both coalitions are guilty of it. They hamstring systems, point to them as flawed, and when time comes, they’re replaced or supplemented with private alternatives.
Then they start over on square one again.
What this serves to do is slowly funnel money out of the public system into private pockets. It’s working great too. We have private schools that are publicly funded. Private clinics that are publicly funded. Private elderly care that’s publicly funded.
It’s all rubbish.
I am certain the effects are felt in lived experience, but I was giving a view that much of the population is not consciously aware that the systems are being degraded in favor of elite interests.
I like how the figures look like they're desperately trying to come up with some reason why unions are bad.
Hmm… That is the idea of a union to have guarantees on benefits, work and rules. That is called a contract.
In my job a union would make zero sense but for many jobs they make perfect sense for that reason alone. The contract.
My company can change any of the benefits at will. Normally they change them for the better but they can change them at any time with no input from me.
A contract prevents that.
The main purpose of a union is not simply to hold the company to terms it had agreed.
Unions are the vehicle for workers to negotiate.
Having a contract is not a meaningful reason not to be organized.
Hmm… That is the idea of a union to have guarantees on benefits, work and rules. That is called a contract.
That's a very simplistic view on what a union does.
If I were to lose my job tomorrow, I'd only get a portion of my income after taxes covered by public income insurance. The union covers up to the rest, meaning I won't have any noticeable loss of income for I believe six months, at which point it goes down to 80% of my income prior to my unemployment.
I also don't have to bother negotiating my salary with my employer, unless I personally chose to do so. And should my employer for whatever reason decide to sacrifice me to cover up for some blunder, then the union will deal support me through it, offer legal advice, and even representation.
That's still not everything a union does.
There are no jobs where unions make zero sense.
It's not just about the contract, but also the ability to better negotiate a contract through collective bargaining. Not to mention the general benefit of a community that you know has your back.
It would make zero sense.
I’m paid a base salary which based on a formula is the same as everyone else’s. I also get commissions. There is zero reason to unionize as I wouldn’t get anything better from the deal.
If I worked in a non-sales job. I’d see a benefit. If I worked as a developer, or support, etc.
Sales is treated extremely well as long as you prform
Whatever you are paid is less than the value you create for the company, and the more privileges you have relative to other workers, the more likely the company is to take them away when it wants to reduce costs.
All of the reasons you have given are not sensible as reasons not to be organized with your coworkers.
Your company does not care about you, but you and other workers can care about each other.
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I have the argument I am paid less than the value I create.
All businesses exist for the purpose of generating profit for their owners.
Without workers providing labor to a business, the business could not operate. All value generated from the operation of a company is generated by the labor of workers.
Profit is the value generated by the labor of workers minus the wages paid to them.
If the wages paid to workers were not less than the value generated by their labor, then the business could not generate a profit.
The reasoning is so simple that a child could understand it, and you could understand it too, if you were not so pigheadedly anchored to your narrative about "idiotic communist BS" and "everyone had nothing".
I have friends and family who care about me. work is about producing an income to do the things I want to do in life.
Unless your friends and family would be willing to pay you as much as your income from your job, you profoundly misapprehended the meaning of my comments.
The very instant conditions change such that your labor is no longer profitable for a company, you lose.
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A business owner takes a risk. They supply the capital to run the company.
the owner loses his whole investment and possibly his home.
Business owners don't "supply" capital. Business owners own capital.
Anyone who has access to capital is far less vulnerable generally than workers, who have no capital.
Workers live under continuous precarity.
What is the net worth of the owner of your company? What is the motive for being a business owner? Do you really think you are less likely to become homeless than him or her?
The whole the "business owners take all risk" is just some tired neoliberal apologia that is intended to mislead.
lol one of my product reps was doing just as well as you, and he got the ax is some restructuring with the minimum notice allowed.
He's amazing, and went to work for a competitor basically instantly, but the interruption in cash flow made half a year extremely stressful.
You represent the top 0.5%, but you still aren't immune to life changing events. A union would still benefit you, by increasing the stability of your income.
The interruption of cash flow is a pain but that is why we save. If they laid me off and I couldn't find work. I have enough savings to last me at least 60 years. I don't see myself living to 110.
My thoughts exactly! A good contract has all of those things in writing. Shitty contracts do exist however so perhaps that's their angle there.
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