45 celebrates Labor Day by attacking the head of Union!

[sekker]

max wrote:
[quote=sekker]
Can unions be corrupt and dysfunction? Absolutely. The union in my town that 'supports' teachers is a joke. But that's because of lack of leadership, not due to structural issues. .

Sure, "corrupt and dysfunctional", more excuses for their real function they perform today.
As inconvenient as you may find it, there is a real reason large internationals have union in place to control their labor.
As inconvenient as you may find it, today's industrial unions are just businesses, businesses providing wide set of labor control services. The leadership is there, doing exactly what they are set up to do, to maximize their profits....
Max, I do not understand the alternative to giving workers collective bargaining rights. Without unions, most workers are totally outclassed in negotiating with employers. Even in academia, where unions are considered terrible, they definitely increase wages.

[max]

There are several quite different aspects to unions today, this is not where we were at the turn of the 19th century and the unions were a critical counterweight to the unlimited power of the robber baron industrialists exploiting toiling working class. But that is the scenario most of you are painting.
In the industrial world, today, the goals of those industrial unions have been largely institutionalized and the balance has swung way over into another side of the scale, as the unions are driving the industries that spawn them in the first place, out of the economic existence in this country. Sure there are few exceptions, mostly due to the transformative adaptations where while still voicing their slogans from the past, these organizations have become business vehicles for the few at the pinnacle of these organizations.
The big money in the labor union business today, besides the small potatoes in labor management, are the billions of dollars they control and skim off the pension funds under their control.
Your academic unions are a different animal and as you admitted yourself, quite a mixed bag. In fact a different type of an organization could secure your professional interest as well, without being associated with the corrupt derelicts hulking from the ruins of the past.....