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Squilliam on 19 November 2012
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HappySqurriel said:
Squilliam said:

How people forget that peoples right to unionise had to be protected. Such as with the 1936 Flint sit down strike.

Now you can say what you like about unions but you also have to admit that corporations can and will do much worse.


For the most part, I'm not convinced unions led to improvements in safety that wouldn't have happened on their own ...

England was (one of) the earliest countries to pass child labour laws and they did so in 1833, which was before Unions (really) started to be formed, and it was primarily a result of people's attitudes changing due to the industrial revolution.

The changes would have happened under similar circumstances to how sexual harassment in the workplace has been (pretty much) eliminated. Likely the victims of dangerous workplaces (or their families) would sue the corporation for accidents/injuries, many of these corporations would spend hundreds of millions of dollars on legal settlements, and companies would increase safety standards to reduce financial risk and keep costs down.

 

 

With that said, I think the primary problem with unions is that they have become far too big (not that they exist) ... If there were no unions that spanned multiple companies it is likely that most companies could find a middle ground with their union so everyone can be successful. With gigantic unions they don't really care if any one company is successful because if a company (like Hostess) goes bankrupt due to a strike it just makes it easier for them to extort other companies.

Couldn't you make the same argument for corporations and by their nature corportations are dictatorships. I don't see how unions can be called bad when every organisation of any scale have similar and worse problems due to their nature? I didn't make any arguments about sexual harrassment or child labour, however the ability to organise is a right given to people in a free democratic republic.



Tease.