It's going to take a lot of work to convince the American working class that collective bargaining is a plus, not a minus.

Americans are busting their asses every day for practically nothing.

Just enough money to go slowly into debt.

Unions aren't entirely blameless either though. At one time they were responsible for the minimum wage, 40 hour work week, and other things that helped all of us but over time they forgot that stuff to a large extent. I had a long talk with a union rep a while back where I explained it and she granted the point after a while.

Problem is when the truckers strike as they did several times a couple of decades back or when other things of the sort happen it's not their employers who are hurt the first and the worst but the cashiers, stock clerks, and assembly line workers. Mostly people who had less than the truckers did to start with. I worked construction and in some towns you can't even get work if you aren't a part of the club and it's not always an easy club to join.

The conversation started with her defending the idea that they look after their own and ended with me pointing out that if it really is about serving their own there's no reason after a time for the non-union public not to feel exactly the same way about them. It was the wrong message to send.

If they expect public support, and I do think we'd be better off with some stronger worker protections, then they have to be worth something to non members as well and they forgot that for a while there. Fixing it is going to have to involve reminding the public why we have unions in the first place, offer them a stake in it too.

^ I think your heart's in the right place, but I think you're missing the forest for the trees.

How Unions accomplished what they did was through strikes, and negotiations leveraged by that stick. The unions both then and now understand that they have to care about the economic welfare of their host company, it's common sense.

What's changed, is that it used to be possible for all workers to be part of a union, and really have power over their company to drive deals. There wasn't enough international trade to allow companies to get around them by simply offshoring their manufacturing.

Times have changed, and companies have been willing to go anywhere, primarily countries like China, that don't even have the protections that the unions built in the 40's and 50's here, so they can try to undo all the progress unions made in this country.

That's not the union's fault at all, it's management explicitly trying to kill off the unions and their protections, with the hope that people will support them when they say "we're just trying to be competitive." Unfortunately, it seems lots of people are lapping that up.

The answer isn't to tighten the screws on unions and make them be more sweatshop-like so they're "more competitive," working longer hours for less pay, less benefits, and less safety equipment. The answer is to retool our trade agreements with other countries so that they can't sell in our country unless they "compete" with our union's good working conditions.

Let's get this whole market-driven economy thing working for regular folks again, instead of just for the CEO's.

>> ^NetRunner:
^ I think your heart's in the right place, but I think you're missing the forest for the trees.

Oh I don't know, the view is fine from here. Sure they aren't in your way though?

The strikes weren't my objection, the fact that at one point they raised everyone and later all they could do was point out what they did for our grandparents was. It started there and it ended there, the rest was just filler to point out that if they inflict a cost on non-members (and they do) then they have to offer some value back to make up for it if they want their support and they forgot that part for a while there.

It's possible that I could have made that more clear but I'm not sure how without writing a book on it.