Why do so many people hate unions

[mrmikhail]

I didn't say it was acceptable, nor did I justify union contributions to capitalist parties. But I am claiming accounts of corruption are exaggerated for (effective) propaganda purposes.

I'm familiar with Teamsters - they are one of the large union federations I alluded to with executives making six-figure incomes. In the US, there are over 25,000 registered unions and over 14 million union workers (about a million of them are Teamsters). The majority of these unions, over 15,000, are small unions with less than 200 members whose executives receive a tiny stipend to support their activities or nothing at all.

Imperialist propaganda would have everyone believe all unions take dues and squander them in electoral campaigns and executive salaries. But in the majority of cases, that simply isn't true.

The problem is, however, that most US unions are organised into either, the Teamsters organised, CWF or the AFL-CIO, both are known for spending excesses and such on political campaigns, while the smaller unions that make up these organisations might not donate much or anything to political campaigns, they all pay national dues to these federations which do.

This being the case, the smaller unions in the groups get viewed as a whole instead of individual parts allowing such propaganda to be so effective in preventing unionisation from happening, and, causing many union members to become disillusioned and start hating their unions over it, thus leading to the terrible less than 10.9% unionisation rate in the US (rates the US hasn't had since the 30s)

[citizen of industry]

The problem is, however, that most US unions are organised into either, the Teamsters organised, CWF or the AFL-CIO, both are known for spending excesses and such on political campaigns, while the smaller unions that make up these organisations might not donate much or anything to political campaigns, they all pay national dues to these federations which do.

This being the case, the smaller unions in the groups get viewed as a whole instead of individual parts allowing such propaganda to be so effective in preventing unionisation from happening, and, causing many union members to become disillusioned and start hating their unions over it, thus leading to the terrible less than 10.9% unionisation rate in the US (rates the US hasn't had since the 30s)

It occurred to me that unions in Japan don't carry the same stigma about donating to political parties, even though the large federations do. Zenryoko donates to the SDP, Zenroren the JCP, and the reactionary monstrosity Rengo, to the DPJ. I'm sure the top executives of these federations receive large salaries as well, but there is little trace of negative public opinion on those issues that I have seen. Perhaps because of the parliamentary system instead of the two-party system in the States?

There is the same low unionization rates, but I attribute that more to pathetic agreements with corporations that sell out workers, so called "company unions," reliance on the labor commissions and lack of militancy, lack of political focus, etc. that result in lack of effectiveness, rather than negative public perception due to corruption and political contributions.

[mrmikhail]

It occurred to me that unions in Japan don't carry the same stigma about donating to political parties, even though the large federations do. Zenryoko donates to the SDP, Zenroren the JCP, and the reactionary monstrosity Rengo, to the DPJ. I'm sure the top executives of these federations receive large salaries as well, but there is little trace of negative public opinion on those issues that I have seen. Perhaps because of the parliamentary system instead of the two-party system in the States?

I would have to say you'd be correct on this, since the US only has two parties of note, which are nothing but agents pushing corporate agendas funding either party is quite a bad thing to do, but there is a campaign for a party of mass labour in america of which the IMT participates....of course without reforming the unionisation system itself in america to make unionising more reasonable than they currently are...and less corporate bias it will not really have all that much effect, I fear, if it can be created.

[scourge007]

I think people hate unions because they probably think the unions are still run by the mafia.

[NewLeft]

The so called progressive union representing the workers at the supermarket denounced the occupy movement. My mother is part of a union and she hates it furiously because of its ineffectiveness..

[Scrooge]

Chomsky mentions a concerted corporate propaganda campaign to undermine unions. This is illustrated in films like On the Waterfront. Which depicts unions and their bosses as corrupt organizations and leaves it up to the heroic individual (played by Brando) to resist them.

Is anti-unionism so bad in other parts of the world as it is in the U.S.?

[dodger]

Scrooge this piece written for those attending TUC congress might be of interest.

TUC 2011: Dump all diversions!

WORKERS, SEPT 2011 ISSUE

The TUC returns to London, no longer trekking round seaside towns – Blackpool, Bournemouth, Brighton – or the new conference centres – Liverpool, Manchester – but back to Britain’s capital city. The symbolism of the TUC speaking up for Britain’s workers from Britain’s capital will sadly be lost or submerged in some phoney EU internationalism mixed with a diversion about the ‘far right’ threatening to murder us all in our beds at night. The Cameron-Clegg-Miliband threat and circus will be fudged, a far too challenging issue.

Reduced in number of affiliated members as mergers of unions continue, and with the total membership of those unions affiliated dropping below 6 million, the TUC is still permeated with the idea of ‘big is beautiful’. Reduced is the size of union delegations (long overdue) so as to squeeze into the TUC conference centre, but for the wrong reason: the continuing decline of organised labour.

The TUC now has the smallest number of affiliated members since the early 1940s. Set against a backcloth of civil disturbance across Britain, the questions arising about organised versus non-organised labour – hope and aspiration of a working class as against desperation of the unemployed and supposedly unemployable – should start to focus trade union minds.

Survival

The question before trade unionists at the TUC is the one which has seemed unsolvable since Thatcher in 1979: How can the working class through its organisations, primarily the trade union movement, grow and survive in the face of the most vicious, reactionary, vindictive and brutal capitalist class in our history?

It’s a capitalist class trying on the imported US political labels “neo-liberalism” and the even more extreme “neo-conservatism” to justify the excesses always associated with capitalism and the accumulation or re-accumulation of wealth that is happening in Britain today. A capitalist class which has unceasingly overseen the destruction of Britain’s core industrial identity for over 30 years, irrespective of which parliamentary party has been in government. A capitalist class which continues to dismantle all social progress that the working class has achieved – education, local government, housing, planning, health, social care.

The answer for our class is two-fold: reassert that sense of identity, class identity, which primarily comes from the workplace; and challenge the very root of capitalism as an economic system.

We cannot reassert class identity unless we identify ourselves as workers, in the workplace – however that is defined in the 21st century. We cannot challenge the root of capitalism if we eternally delude ourselves by affiliation to the Labour Party and its worship of capitalism.

Issue politics, internet pressure groups, community organising and do-gooding will not do the job either. When one of the last surveys of the Labour government under Brown asked the question of how people would define their class, 86 per cent saw themselves as working class – irrespective of income, residence or job. How do we motivate the overwhelming majority of workers, nearly 30 million of them now in Britain, to promote their aspirations consciously as a class?

TUC economic analysis compares the early 19th-century growth of capitalism with events that are happening in Britain in the early 21st century. Yes the parallels are there, with instability, short-termism, unemployment, disorganisation, long hours, reduced wages, market-driven chaos and anarchy. But there the parallel ends. This is not reborn capitalism full of dynamic growth: this is capitalism in absolute decline.

In Britain the acquisition of wealth has much criminality involved in it – drug trafficking, people trafficking, sex trade, and financial usury – generating profits faster and easier than manufacturing. Britain has a higher density of these capitalist activities than any other country in Europe. All roads for drug cartels, prostitution, and child slavery now seem to lead to Britain.

Unemployment

The figures in May 2011 for unemployment showed 2.46 million unemployed plus 2.35 million “economically inactive” people of working age (largely hidden unemployment), together making 4.81 million people. These figures have risen over the summer.

The largest factor in the dip below 6 million from 6.5 million trade unionists affiliated to the TUC is unemployment – systematic closure and dispensing with workers. Estimates of youth unemployment affecting 16- to 25-year-olds now range upwards of 20 per cent. This is no accident: debt-burdened students, unemployed school leavers and the mass influx of workers from abroad willing to work for a pittance represent the destruction of the seed corn of Britain’s future.

One aspect of the capitalist destruction of Ireland’s now flayed “tiger economy” is the estimated 1 million people who will leave Ireland to seek work elsewhere. Britain now sees wave after wave of mass migration sponsored by the EU and welcomed by capitalist politicians of every stripe, all of which will ensure a further decline in the quality of work – unskilled, low wage, long hours, no job security, no or limited employment rights, minimalist terms and conditions, no training and no future for young workers. An estimated 25 per cent of British workers are now defined in this manner. Unemployment – war on workers – can lead to deteriorating health, debt and hopelessness.

Real wages are in decline relative to the 1970s, or more aptly in reverse gear. The wealth gap increases, profits rise, bank bonuses run at unprecedented rates. The fall in real incomes is now the sharpest for over 40 years with the largest drop in consumer spending for more than 30 years. Wages are frozen if not cut. Collective bargaining is being abandoned as union density drops in workplaces.

Unite the union has seen staggering membership losses in the last 12 months – over 250,000 – paralleled only by losses in the 1980s and 1990s in mining, steel, textiles, docks, and fishing. Regional and plant bargaining to the detriment of national agreements, localism, individual pay and performance-related pay are all on the march, leading to destruction of terms and conditions. This is the employer agenda that has to be challenged. Workers are going to have to stand together and fight to survive.

Fragmentation of workplaces by outsourcing, home working, hot desking, architecture that isolates workers, new technology and the exploitation driven by email and electronic management – all of these challenge traditional ways of organising. It means that tradition has to change and getting organised by whatever method around work and the workplace must become the norm. Wages, terms and conditions, safety, skill and stability of employment have to be the renewed battlefields to produce the resurgent trade union movement. Struggle generates collectivity, identity and consciousness. Consciousness then in turn generates more struggle.

Undermining consciousness

The undermining of workplace organisation during the past 30 years, deeply damaging what trade unions can or seem to deliver, has undermined consciousness. These defeats can be reversed if workers decide to take responsibility for themselves, for their workplace, for their union. Not some gigantic edifice of a union machine covering every occupation and every industry but organically grown workplace identities turning division into unity and fragmentation back into strength.

The TUC will debate at length calls for trade union freedom based on a strategy to persuade a future Labour government to abandon British and EU anti-trade union legislation – the new Combination Acts. The Labour government of 1997 to 2010 strengthened this anti-union legislation, the most draconian in Europe; none was ever removed from the statute book.

Workers have resisted anti-worker legislation dating back to its first introduction under the Tudors and throughout every century since. The Master and Servant Acts of the 18th and 19th centuries epitomised how the ruling class saw us and our place. A declining membership base will do nothing more than reassure the employer class that we are defeated and our place is now in the history books.

A different message

A vibrant new unionism transforming the workplace will send a different message. There have been numerous trade union survival strategies and fads since the decline in the 1980s. We have mergers and big is beautiful – one unionism. We’ve had the Australian organising model. We’ve had the US organising model. We’ve had the EU organising model. We now have the mantra that community organising is the key as opposed to workplace. We have managerial trade unionism – if the unions were better managed people will join. We have business trade unionism just to keep certain people employed and we have every fad for whatever the flavour of the moment is.

None of them works. Why would anyone want instruction from the US trade union movement with its 5 to 8 per cent density and elements of gangsterism, or the EU model of corporate integration with the state? Or “community” organising – another US import from a different legal and employer tradition, totally alien to Britain’s trade union movement.

There is only one solution: power in the workplace. The workplace is the bedrock, with workers organising themselves just as we always have done: a class for itself taking responsibility and being responsible. Dump all diversions!

[Thrasymachus]

I know I am bringing back a VERY, VERY, old thread, but, speaking as someone who works at a union, what I have observed is:

1) The more workers are paid, generally the haughtier they tend to become, because they look at their job situation in comparison to other jobs out there and feel comparatively superior. The more they make the more superior and haughty they will feel in general, and the less they will feel a need to be a decent human being, since they are rewarded with so much money, and it takes money to live, not being good.

2) When it is hard to fire people and they know it a certain percentage will take advantage. At the railroad where I work in public transit, we have a term for this, "a load", because lazy workers literally will not do their work, knowing certain of their co-workers will pick up their weight, by working on those same train cars another day.

I am 100% sure unions are totally in line with the thinking and logic of capitalism. If you can extract more benefits and pay under capitalism, there is no reason ever to resist the actual system of capitalism, because you will feel like you are successful and getting "over" comparatively.

[tallguy]

Why do so many people hate unions?

Capitalist propaganda for the most part and, sadly, due to a fair proportion of unions, when push comes to shove, being too ready to accommodate to capitalist demands.

[Left-Wing Nutjob]

I think it goes beyond capitalist propaganda though. I mean, the number of unionized workers has declined dramatically in the United States in the past few decades. A lot of unionized jobs were lost under the neoliberal projects of deindustrialization and restructuring of the capitalist economy. Plus, business/management and their political allies had been-and continue to, as the recent assaults on public sector unions demonstrates-looking for as many ways as possible to undermine and destroy unions throughout the 20th century.

It didn't help, of course, that a lot of unions were politically tied to the Democratic Party...which never misses an opportunity to use the support of organized labor to its own bourgeois political advantage, while doing nothing to stop (or worse, as we have seen, being just as complicit in) the destruction of working-class living standards.

[synthesis]

I know I am bringing back a VERY, VERY, old thread, but, speaking as someone who works at a union, what I have observed is:

1) The more workers are paid, generally the haughtier they tend to become, because they look at their job situation in comparison to other jobs out there and feel comparatively superior. The more they make the more superior and haughty they will feel in general, and the less they will feel a need to be a decent human being, since they are rewarded with so much money, and it takes money to live, not being good.

2) When it is hard to fire people and they know it a certain percentage will take advantage. At the railroad where I work in public transit, we have a term for this, "a load", because lazy workers literally will not do their work, knowing certain of their co-workers will pick up their weight, by working on those same train cars another day.

I am 100% sure unions are totally in line with the thinking and logic of capitalism. If you can extract more benefits and pay under capitalism, there is no reason ever to resist the actual system of capitalism, because you will feel like you are successful and getting "over" comparatively.

You work at a union doing what? Because here it seems like you're attacking unions for doing what they're supposed to do, rather than for not doing what they're supposed to do, which is the communist criticism.

Paying workers well makes them bad people? Job security makes workers lazy? Are you sure you're on the right forum?

[blake 3:17]

I want to believe that the mass majority of persons have a left-wing criticism of union structure and functionality, but there is a strong anti-union current perpetuated by the anti-democratic right( not proletarian democratic but bourgeois liberal(in the enlightened connotation) as being antithetical to Republicanism(again in its actual meaning not american)

No most people don't have a left critique of unions. Most working people are anti-union because they don't believe in collective action and are hostile to bullshit bureaucracy.

The right wing plays up unions as part of the bureaucratic bullshit.

[Ahab Strange]

Unions to me demonstrate what happens when worker militancy becomes uncoupled from any revolutionary intentions. They no longer are part of wider movement on a trajectory towards the overthrow of capitalism.

Here in post Thatcher UK, there is unconscious public opinion among many that unions are an anachronism. I don't feel I am betraying any Leftist principles when I think that Unions have become bloated and self-serving. They have a top down hierarchical structure and can are hardly an example of workplace democracy.

Unions have won valuable concessions from capital in the past, but now, many of the class-unconscious people that we would want to win over are irritated by the actions of unions, (strikes, pensions funded by the taxpayer etc.) furthering their misconceptions about what it means to be a Socialist or Anti-capitalist.

One the two jobs I have is extremely unionized. Ironically, the slurs aimed at it are the same that are often leveled at the left in general : "trotskyite", "communist", "Socialist". Words that have become so loaded as to mean completely different things to the general public than to us.

[tallguy]

Unions to me demonstrate what happens when worker militancy becomes uncoupled from any revolutionary intentions. They no longer are part of wider movement on a trajectory towards the overthrow of capitalism.

Here in post Thatcher UK, there is unconscious public opinion among many that unions are an anachronism. I don't feel I am betraying any Leftist principles when I think that Unions have become bloated and self-serving. They have a top down hierarchical structure and can are hardly an example of workplace democracy.

Unions have won valuable concessions from capital in the past, but now, many of the class-unconscious people that we would want to win over are irritated by the actions of unions, (strikes, pensions funded by the taxpayer etc.) furthering their misconceptions about what it means to be a Socialist or Anti-capitalist.

One the two jobs I have is extremely unionized. Ironically, the slurs aimed at it are the same that are often leveled at the left in general : "trotskyite", "communist", "Socialist". Words that have become so loaded as to mean completely different things to the general public than to us.

Bollocks

Workers think that unions are an anachronism due to endless and, sadly, largely successful propaganda from the boss class. In turn, this success has led many unions to become timid and to try and accommodate the bosses. But, this has been counter-productive and has led workers to think that unions are not only anachronistic, they are also pretty fucking useless.

It's time for the unions to grow a spine again. That's all. This, though, requires people to step up to the plate in terms of agitating for the above and seeking positions of leadership in the unions. People like you and me.

[Thirsty Crow]

As leftists do we support all unions in principle, critique their bureaucratic structure etc?

Only if we misunderstand the role and function of unions in capitalist society.

In short, it is not that the bureaucratic form is the problem, far from it. The root problem is much deeper so to speak.

I'll rely on the article The Bounds of Proletarian Emancipation here. I think it does a magnificent job of outlining the communist criticism of the union.

To start with the usual leftist view:

A critique of the bureaucratisation of unions and of their structural separation from the working class is not categorically wrong, but it is a simplification that is often morally charged...
In left-wing milieus such a critique amounts to no more than moral indignation about unions supposedly being corrupt and decoupled from the interests of workers.

However, and contrary to the received leftist wisdom of focusing on "revolutionary leadership in unions", the issue is rather different. It concerns the function of unions which cannot be reduced to the politics and moral fortitude of its official apparatus.

In this sense, the union is an enterprise selling a service; the union officials' relationship to the means of production is a peculiar one - their livelihood and position is intimately tied to their relationship to variable capital, i.e. the labor force. This relationship is one of representation, which is based on the union apparatus acting as mediators in conflicts (the famed social dialogue, or social partnership is a three way talk: the state-the employer-the union) and as negotiators of the sale of labor power.

It should be clear that the union apparatus is completely dependent on capital for maintaining their job and social position which enables them to enjoy a certain standard of living. But it should also be very clear that preserving this function of representation also puts the union in a position of complete dependence on capital.

This relates to the issue of the cycles of accumulation ("prosperity" - crisis).
In times of the latter, it's obvious that if a union is to keep going on and selling their service it needs to accept the newly developed situation and constraints on what is reasonably possible in case of demands (both in relation to wage demands proper, working time and workplace related issues; but also in relation to broader issues of social reproduction, like policies aiming at the unemployed etc.).

But union struggles were not and are not a form in which the working class struggles as a whole. Three things catch the eye when one regards unions from this point of view.

Firstly, with their organisation they intensify the fragmentation of the working class between companies and individual sectors.

Secondly, unions grew into their role as a “social partner” within the framework of the nation and depend on this framework. They can be integrated in a supranational framework – like the EU – but as a social partner they cannot step beyond this framework in which they function and are accepted. So “international unions” in reality only have the function of a moral admonisher pointing out violations of applicable law and things like that. But that normally happens in a context of international competition. Thus, the division of the class into nations is also mirrored by unions.

Thirdly, and finally, it is apparent that unions – because they have to remain within the framework of capitalism – are forced to bring their strategy in line with the possibilities permitted by the economic cycle...

...unions, as enterprises, need compromises: they need compromises between the interests of workers and the interests of capitalists, and they need struggles to take place under controlled conditions. Furthermore, the police function of unions asserts itself. This is already visible in their regulative behaviour and stifling of labour struggles. But unions show their repressive side fully, in direct opposition to the interests of the working class, any time the working class starts to fight against capitalism and against its existence as variable capital.

But, on the other hand, it is undoubtedly true that the union isn't a clever ploy of the ruling class; they do have to actually do something for workers if they want to keep selling them the service.

In this sense, the union is also a defensive form of organization of the working class; probably the minimum defensive form which doesn't do the work at any time at all.

The history of unions' origins is the history of proletarians fighting against the impositions of capital. Unions fulfilled an important function in struggles for workers' collective interests within capitalism. In and with the unions, workers struggled in strikes for higher wages, more free time, more participation. So the collective interests of workers in different sectors and enterprises became apparent and in struggles workers demonstrated their power and their abilities.

It's true that in one way, union organizing does represent a "school of class struggle"; but it does way more than that, as they also play a completely opposite role, that of integrating wage labor into the capitalist social order.

As previously mentioned, unions historically formed as negotiators to enforce workers' demands for higher wages or shorter working hours. But a negotiator loses his right to exist when he abolishes the basis of his demands. The basis of wages and working hours is capitalism. Representing workers within the system and not against the system is part of the inner logic of unions.

Due to this fact, unions become managers of workers as variable capital – labour as a commodity. They are an organisational manifestation of the constant struggle surrounding the distribution of socially produced wealth, a struggle for a decrease in the rate of exploitation. In this function they are co-organisers of the accumulation of capital – they play their part in keeping the capitalist game going. By securing reproduction, that is the continued existence of the working class, unions, much like the state, represent the interests of capital as a whole, which can only exist as long as there is a working class to be exploited. Concretely, this means that they resist the interests of individual capitals, of individual companies trying to keep the costs of variable capital as low as possible, and the working time as long as possible. For the actual worker this reproduction of the variable part of capital is the same as his or her own reproduction.

So this is not mere wretchedness or betrayal by unions, but it expresses the inner contradictions of this institution: on the one hand, the manager of labour as variable capital, on the other representing the material interests of workers within capitalism. In practice, unions always have to resolve this conflict by keeping labour in the state of variable capital, following the logic of the accumulation of capital, and not against this logic. As organisations within capitalism, unions depend on the form of variable capital.

http://kosmoprolet.org/node/97

So to answer the question posed by OP, no - I don't support unions in principle; what I do support unequivocally, in principle and in practical actions, is unionized workers fighting against capitalists. This cannot be reduced to a simplistic idea of supporting the unions in principle (or any other way).

[tallguy]

You are merely talking there about how many unions have become corrupted, bureaucratic and excessively accommodative of the capitalists. Well, no shit, who'd have thought. However, you then seem to go on to assert that this is what unions' inherent function is, namely to accommodate capitalism. There's nothing inherent about it at all. You do remember why mass unions first formed in the early days of the industrial revolution, right? It wasn't to accommodate the boss class. It was to stop them fucking over workers even more than they had hitherto and, where ever possible, to roll back the gains of the bosses.

A good man once said that if one man pisses in the wind, nothing happens. If thousands piss at the same time, we get to drown the bastards. That's what union's inherent function is.

[Ahab Strange]

You do remember why mass unions first formed in the early days of the industrial revolution, right? It wasn't to accommodate the boss class. It was to stop them fucking over workers even more than they had hitherto and, where ever possible, to roll back the gains of the bosses.

A good man once said that if one man pisses in the wind, nothing happens. If thousands piss at the same time, we get to drown the bastards. That's what union's inherent function is.

No one is arguing against this. That doesn't mean that the unions should be immune from analysis as to whether they are still effective, or if they could be improved. The concept of the union shouldn't be unswervingly supported as an article of faith.

It's time for the unions to grow a spine again. That's all. This, though, requires people to step up to the plate in terms of agitating for the above and seeking positions of leadership in the unions. People like you and me.

Quite right, but unions today on the whole exists to protect the interests of their members, in their industry. We are not in Anarchist Catalonia where the unions were part of something much larger than themselves, something that had a clear vision.

For example, when I question even the most committed union members in my job about their wider worldview, there is virtually never any mention of establishing a more socialist society or overthrowing capitalism. Quite the opposite in fact, many very militant unionists still consider it just being a case of "standing up to government/big business". Commendable of course, but the idea the unions could be a tool to help establish a new socialist order doesn't even factor into their consciousness. THIS is the problem, and the same could be said also of co-operatives and social enterprises.

[tallguy]

No one is arguing against this. That doesn't mean that the unions should be immune from analysis as to whether they are still effective, or if they could be improved. The concept of the union shouldn't be unswervingly supported as an article of faith.

Quite right, but unions today on the whole exists to protect the interests of their members, in their industry. We are not in Anarchist Catalonia where the unions were part of something much larger than themselves, something that had a clear vision.

For example, when I question even the most committed union members in my job about their wider worldview, there is virtually never any mention of establishing a more socialist society or overthrowing capitalism. Quite the opposite in fact, many very militant unionists still consider it just being a case of "standing up to government/big business". Commendable of course, but the idea the unions could be a tool to help establish a new socialist order doesn't even factor into their consciousness. THIS is the problem, and the same could be said also of co-operatives and social enterprises.

so, I take it from the above you intend to stand for a position in the union in order to do something about it, yes? I should add, I'm not in any position of authority in my union and I am ashamed if it and intend to do something about it. But, what I am not doing is attempting to construct an argument that makes them out to be inherently useless tools of the capitalist class. They are as good as their members. That's me and you. Or, aren't you even a member of a union?

[Thirsty Crow]

You are merely talking there about how many unions have become corrupted, bureaucratic and excessively accommodative of the capitalists.

No, I'm not.

As you say, I claim this is an inherent function of the union form.

There's nothing inherent about it at all.

Well, I might as well take your word for it now, right?

You do remember why mass unions first formed in the early days of the industrial revolution, right?

How about this stunning revelation: the days of the industrial revolution are long gone.

No one is arguing against this.

Yes, I am.

[Thrasymachus]

Paying workers well makes them bad people? Job security makes workers lazy? Are you sure you're on the right forum?

Apparently you clearly don't work at an actual union unlike me. I work for the Transportation Communications International Union(TCU). Hence you can give off the impression of some starry eyed kid reading vintage 19th Century works on the wonders of unions.

Yes, under capitalism workers compare their pay, benefits and lot in life to other workers. So from what I have observed from co-workers, they feel haughty and prideful and act like they are "winning in life" so to speak unlike other people not in unions who they feel like are comparative losers in the game of monetary accumulation and social jockeying. The more you pay someone, in general the worse a person they will be, after they reach the bare minimum needed to survive. Yes, in actual unions, like the one I work at, people actually often make comments about co-workers like, "He wouldn't last in the real world behaving like he does." I have had to pick up alot of slack at times for the "loads" on the railroad who want other workers to carry their weight.

Unions do nothing to break with the logic of capitalism.