Decline of Labor Unions in the West

Were union workers overpaid or loaded with dosh in any way? They WERE consumers.

>You assume every business is large. Most are not.
Most small businesses don't face problems with unions.
>You assume large businesses can attract investment without high profits. Generally they can't.
If a business can prove it will make steady, rising profits - even if they aren't high - they will attract investment. Investors want to make more money off their shares than they spent, that's it.

I know right? Some people are really egoist.

Capitalists won

And then the economy shifted away from mindless labor and fewer workers needed unions to secure good wages.

Commies lost. Unions are commies.

You got a point there I guess. I still think it was a bad idea to kill our industries for cheap Chinese shit.

classic Veeky Forums

Kek

>unions suck the lifeblood (profits) out of an entity that has literally one job (make profit)
>well, i really just dont see how you can blame the unions

I'm not saying unionizing should be illegal, but fuck me lad, you're a dumb cunt

Which is Oedipus and which is the Sphinx?

Even tapeworms are smart enough to let a little food go by them, to keep the host alive.

Is amazon not making massive profits?

>If we only made 250% profit this quarter instead of 255%, we have failed as a corporation

>businesses have to make profit
everyone gets their salary, including the CEO, no profits needed

Do you think the CEO gets paid in profit? lmao

You assume that parasites care about the survival of their hosts, even when there aren't others available it is almost impossible for people to exercise the restraint needed to say no to extra money in exchange for sustainability.

It didn't earn decent money until a couple of years ago.

The people in trade unions were mostly people who worked in the secondary sector but this sector has been gradually outscourced into Asia.

Strawman, look up the actual profit margins in any industry and you will see they are nowhere near 250%, unless it is a field where the government gives certain companies a monopoly to prevent competition.
If a business can't turn a profit it closes doors, period. Unless the government subsidizes them, which I oppose as well. I don't see what salaries have to do with this discussion, and I'm not even against unions either, I'm just pointing out some facts.

Porky as fuck

Holy shit

Yes, simple worms are smart enough to keep their hosts alive.

Hostess union workers? Not so much.

Salaries are part of a business' expenses. If it makes as much money as it costs to keep it running then it stays afloat.

Economics 101

>tfw we're living in a world where workers who actually do all the work in a corporation are the parasites and the profit taking shareholders are the essential part of the company everyone should make a sacrifice for
nuclear hellfire can't come quick enough

Union workers wish nuclear hellfire on the rest of us. Typical.

Yea no kidding. So the whole 1 business that breaks perfectly even year after year has now completely dismantled my argument.

Reagan made unions into an enemy. That was also the time when wage stopped growing for people.

>i see a nuanced discussion going on
>quick! Let me turn it into a big gov. Republican vs. Big gov. Democrat debate!!!!!!!!

KEEP YOUR HEADS DOWN PEOPLE, REMEMBER VOTING IS YOUR DUTY. DONT FIGURE THINGS OUT FOR YOURSELF, TRUST THE POLITICIANS AND QUIT THINKING ABOUT IT SO MUCH

That's right, work harder goy, you should be glad that you have a job at all. What? You don't make enough to feed your family? I'm sorry, I don't care about your personal life, in my eyes, you are an object, I pay you, and you work for me. Oh, and you say that you have Lung Disease? Am sorry, but you're fired. A man must replace the broken parts to keep his machine running after all, the only way to remain competitive is a capitalistic market is to exploit the workers.

I agree with your post in spirit but ignoring Reagan's actions against unions is a big part of the discussion you can't really ignore it

Returns to college education gave always been increasing. Its just that declines to mindless labor has offset the increases I'm wages.

Second I really have to ask, do you want a job where you tighten down a bolt for 40 hours a day? Because that's what Chinese factory workers do. Its not glamorous or desirable.

I'm a professional who can find a job within a week if I get sacked because employers need my skills.

My point is that you don't need huge profits to make a succesful company. You get diminishing returns at a certain point and you become a cunt. You become a multinational tax-evading fucker who invades politics through lobbying.

As the middle class grew, it made less sense to be apart of a union.

>Second I really have to ask, do you want a job where you tighten down a bolt for 40 hours a day?
>oy vey goyim, what do you mean you don't want a factory job that pays a living wage? what you really want to do is go $100k into debt to get a women's studies degree then end up working at Starbucks for $6 an hour yesss that's what you want remember unions are bad for you and factory work is beneath you and boring heheh

>you don't need huge profits

Then wave goodbye to any incentive the leadership has to running a business. You have no business sense.

>this is considered a valid rhetoric technique on /pol/

Cicero would be ashamed.

>if you provide too much service you're greedy and mean :(

So if I have a business that helps people in exchange for money I should stop providing my service at a certain point because making too much money is for cunts? Solid ad hom bro, let's smoke a doob together.

Personally I wouldn't want a job where im stripped of all choice and autonomy. I'm a human being, not a machine.

My point is that there's nothing wrong with accordingly raising wages as your business grows.

Billion dollar companies really don't need to do all the tax evading and exporting jobs overseas they do.

Unions in the USA aren't breaking as many legs or sending as many people who threaten the union on indefinite fishing trips like they used to.

It's refreshing to see posters on the left using this type of rhetoric. Considering Austrian economics is full of Jews that are more stereotypically Jewish than the Marxist ones.

>every civic organization has declined since the 1970s
>religious groups, parent-teacher associations, boy scouts, red cross, fraternities, hunting clubs, the freemasonry
>heck, even right-wing mass organizations like the John Birch Society, the Ku Klux Klan and the Citizens' Councils have largely disappeared (so much for capitalist masterplans)

Labour unions are some of the few mass institutions that survived the age of individualism.

And yet they've declined significantly in power and influence just like every other organization you mentioned. More so than some others.

Lots of reasons

Because of globalization and the advance of technology.

What happened to manufacturing is going to hit taxi and trucking unions as autonomous vehicles replace them.

>Union workers earn more money at the expense of their employers
Correct.
>and all of consumers of the products that they produce.
Empirically wrong

>Most business owners earn about as much as their employees and work twice as hard

Witnessed.

Many problems in the world can't be solved through government programs or the free market. Without civic organizations, the US is in permanent decay, as its problems will escalate without being resolved. Comparatively, if you looked at the arc of human history, most major projects in mankind were done not-for-profit. From ancient Romans who built public works to gain political power, to Medieval Europeans who organized Monasteries to provide for healthcare, to 20th century Americans who accomplished many things such as libraries, pioneering surgery, or providing for a social network.

That being said, there's nothing that can be done to reverse the decline until it hits a terminal phase. What that will look like, I don't know. But even Harvard Business School has admitted the US cannot invest in the Commons anymore, which is what's causing a massive decline in the American system.

The age of individualism may be coming to an end, because the money is likely to run out soon and people will be forced back to their original norms.

God damn. Witnessed..

>no capitalist explaining the disconnect between productivity and wages

Isn't the promise that wage growth = productivity growth?

>working conditions have improved across the board
>copious laws protecting workers and working conditions
they're not obsolete but they're not as necessary as they once were

Productivity gains have stagnated, along with wages.

Policy makers have used all their tools yet barely anything has changed.

The age of low growth has started for the West. With declining birth rates, an aging population, and little economic growth, the welfare state is not sustainable.

In 15 years the West will be where Japan is right now, just with more nationalist and populist fuckery.

Interesting times ahead

>implying that corporations aren't chomping at the bit to get rid of said regulations and would if they could

As long as corporations act like corporations, unions will be necessary to defend worker's rights, whether they seem secure or not.

What happiness when most of the world is like that?

It's amazing in the last election that a few senators actually campaigned on the platform of removing the federal minimum wage and weren't thrown out of the room

Also it's champing at the bit

>(and other western countries)

The hell are you talking about?

These unions are alive and well in many western Europe places, UK and France in particular, where they can paralyze parts of the county's systems by going on strike every now and again.

If the only way they could survive is to cut corners then why are director/VP/CEO salaries and bonuses 20x higher now than in the 90s?

This is the stupidest post I've seen all day.

Interesting post.
Bowling Alone, anyone?

This is the source text that describes how people, including the Founders, approached problems in their society. Without this book I'd have no frame-of-reference historically. The Americans described by Tocqueville, however, are long gone.

Example. When 21st century Americans think of private organizations, they immediately think of businesses. The problem, however, is that 20th, 19th, and 18th century Americans thought of private organization as something more than a means of just making money. Usually, they would think of a Church first before they would private enterprise.

American life as we know it is highly dependent on financial prosperity. Without such financial prosperity, such as an elaborate state-welfare system, people literally die off and withdraw from society. Which is happening both at the same time. Again, I lament the loss of what we were because it was just so much stronger. People made a fraction of what we earn today, and still managed to repopulate the world through abundant Social Capital.

Then again, this dynamism may come back if economic growth collapses and the state has to reduce its obligations to the people. If it does, however, the transition will be very rough. Neither Republicans nor Democrats will survive this Brave New World, for very different reasons respectively.

Bump

Not if that productivity is a result of automation and outsourcing. It's a bigger pie, but it's distributed more evenly. There's nothing wrong with that as long as people have access to education and capital, and as long as there's some measure of wealth redistribution.

American Unions are really shitty, essentailly just being mini corporations within a corporation. I don't dislike the idea of unions, but in practice they are utter shit tier and most need to be gutted from the ground up.

>Why did Unions in America (and other western countries) decline so rapidly after the 1970s (and earlier)?

LBJ's "Great Society.

The Democrats sold out their unionized worker base to support every fringe kook element of the Left instead; feminists, Blacks, gays, academia, illegals, etc.

Explain, autismo.

Tell that to the guy who runs the gas station on the corner who works 100 hour weeks.

All this blaming of Unions is really interesting considering it's not a secret that one of the biggest reasons for adopting free trade deals was shipping labor jobs overseas.

It's called alienation

It does wonders

so a good question to ask is why did the left betray the very people, both in terms of the majority population generaly and in terms of class, that they were technicaly supposed to fight for?

the way i see it its that, once won trough some rather hard and protracted struggles, done mostly by the working people themselves, less by any given party, the welfare state systems negated the basic points that were suposed to be fought for, the size and power of the politico/economic system made it increasingly hard to actualy fight for anithing that matters, anithing that counts or changes things, let alone go into revolutionary mode, and so as the radical elements of the left sort of withered away after 68, the surviving parties metastased into harmless liberal centre parliamentary organisations, that actualy have no interest in fighting for anyone or anything, and so they are reduced to the ''controversial'' issues like minority rights and 3 wave feminism/gender bullshit, since that crap changes fundamentaly nothing and so the capitalist system dont even mind it

but that does not explain things in america, there it was probably social engineering and systematic dismantlement of the left during the cold war, remember reading somewhere about the statistics in places like kanzas, where working class and rural areas that were once hardcore leftist unionists got transformed in whichever way into biblehumping fundie land, but americans dont realy have a left, but then again neither does most of europe nowdays

the people do feel this, they feel betrayed, the right promises this in a way, its implicit every time a rightwing party goes to elections in west and central eu that somehow they will basicaly be a surrogate left, but thats bullshit of course

>kanzas

Kansas, my non-American friend.

But otherwise mostly good post, both the left and the right use issues like race, gender, and religion to divide the working and middle classes and distract them from the fact that both sides come together to pass laws that limit Constitutional freedoms, immigration policies that undermine unionization and low-skilled wages, and bullshit trade deals that hurt American workers for the benefit of the political and financial elites.

>reading somewhere about the statistics in places like kanzas, where working class and rural areas that were once hardcore leftist unionists got transformed in whichever way into biblehumping fundie land

The post-WWII American working class had lost interest in the Left’s radical platform; (which was being manipulated by the U.S.S.R.) they had high paying, secure jobs with excellent benefits and pensions and didn’t really mind that Wall Street was also making a profit.

Thus the Left had to shift more and more of their support to the fringe kook element (feminists, Blacks, etc.) and simply expected the working class to continue following their lead. Except the working class is traditionally socially conservative and the more the Democrats promoted far Left policies, (school bussing, revolving-door-prisons, gay pride parades, etc.) the more the working class was driven into the arms of the Republicans.

The Dems insured Reagan’s victory and created the Conservative Rightwing element within the Rep party.

This.

no joke the collapse of the Soviet Union. My grandmother tells me stories about how as soon as the Berlin wall came down her Union grew more and more powerless and the company she worked for started cutting benefits and hours.

I kind of doubt that his workers are union

>Second I really have to ask, do you want a job where you tighten down a bolt for 40 hours a day?

Absolutely. I worked as a block piler in a mill (you take blocks from the chain, move them over to the various sawyers and splitters, utterly mindless work) and it was just the best. You spend all day focused on a task in such a fashion that you zone out and wind up alone with your thoughts. It's great, you should try it some time.

>Because that's what Chinese factory workers do. Its not glamorous or desirable.

It doesn't need to be glamorous and I disagree on the desirable part. It just needs to be reliable and pay a living wage.

the republicans also went for the southern working class vote hard post 1960 too, playing up the social conservatism to get their votes - hardly just the dems turning them away

i dont know about the us so much but i imagine its a similar story in a lot of places: weakening employees rights, making organising more difficult and giving more rights to non-unionised labor and allowing companies to discriminate against unionised labor

plus the general perception that people dont 'need' unions because theyre not working in potentially life-threatening jobs anymore

The Reps could play-up social conservatism BECAUSE the Dems had left working class Americans swinging in the wind and were forcing school bussing, cradle-to-grave welfare and other extreme Left policies onto the generally conservative citizenry, policies that were being encouraged by Soviet agents within the American Left to destabilize the U.S. during the Cold War.

>They survive by cutting corners
Which corners?
How do you compare the salary of a Chinese factory worker, to that of an American factory worker? Let alone compare either to the salary of an American CEO.
I'd say it has a lot to do with anti communist sentiment, and perpetuating the "american dream" fantasy.

Capitalists are the risk takers. They put their money on the line by starting the business, risking their life savings, hiring workers and doing everything to keep the company afloat.

Workers take 0 (zero) risks, so why should they expect more than their paycheck?

Ironically the American Dream was achieved by a larger proportion of the population during the 1950s and 1960s BECAUSE of the prevalence of unions.

Daily reminder that unions are an inferior substitute for the real solution, which is wholesale redistribution of wealth.

If you want to live in the kind of society which redistributes wealth why do you go to North Korea?

>their money on the line by starting the business,
but that's mostly bullshit. they start companies that shield them from all liabilities of risk. most of the time if the company goes under they walk away unscathed. further more starting a business is not really a risk when you have access to millions requird to start it in the first place. Warren buffet isnt taking any real risk if he dumps $10 million into a startup.

Exactly. People say the American dream is now dead, but the income of the middle class adjusted for inflation has barely increased while the income for the upper class has skyrocketed since 1970.

Because private enterprise is more efficient.

Private enterprise is the engine that powers a proper welfare state.

They want 70% by 2020 nation wide

In my area it's about 60%

I know a couple towns over is like 80%

And another town over from them is 30%

Yea I disagree with tax evasion, but what does that have to do with unions? You're trying to paint out corporations as these giant mega-evil entities, which, doubtless some of them are, but if someone owns a business they aren't obligated to pay their employees more just because the company is earning more. Although managerial, sales, and recruitment positions are compensated mostly in bonuses, it is because their pay is tied directly to performance. But not a lot of people take these jobs, because that kind of accountability is stressful, and a guaranteed income is preferable to not knowing how much you will take in. Hence, why not everyone becomes a business owner, but when the risk pays off, it can pay off big.

Oh God you're hilarious.

You want to find the most efficient way for you to take other people's money. You're like a civilised street pick pocket.

Ever heard of reinvesting profits back into the business?

If you just give workers a higher wage, who benefits? Just those workers. If you invest more into the business, you'll be able to grow and hire MORE workers. A much higher net benefit to society than GIBS ME DAT workers.

>other people's money
>implying they could have gotten that money without government making their business possible
>implying taxation isn't the cost of doing business in a given society

For real though, there are certain investments that the government can make profitably, and private enterprise can't.

If you don't make those investments, society as a whole will suffer.

>inb4 he fell for the anti-poverty doesn't work meme