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WolfpackN64 on 30 August 2016
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DonFerrari said:
WolfpackN64 said:

But I like to hold it here. The UK's union membership has been beaten over and over again by the former Thatcher administration and 2 rightist Labour governments didn't help. The social movement is gaining steam again in the UK.

Brazil is an entirely different story. Unions might have nodded in approval at Rousseff's social-democartic'ish policies, but an economic crisis due to overreliance on export and a political coup by a wealthy elite in lightning quick succession might have taken them by surprise. But don't be surprised that, if Temer stays in power, the unions become more militant.

In Belgium, we need the unions. We have a government that continuously tries to ram austerity down our throats while handing ever greater tax cuts to companies. Thanks to the unions, we managed to slow down their policies. Alone, we could not have tried to halt this policy direction.

And if it was not for unions historically, we'd all be working 50 hour weeks at least.

As far as I know UK had several left wing government since the 80's so you can't put the weakness, lack of representative and people seeing what the union leaders truly are on the right wing.

Nope. Unions have nodded to Rousseff's money going to their pocket. When she was still president, CUT and other unions done a lot of parades (were paid to) where they paid for participants to go with food and 50 R$ and transportation costs. Few months later, with government funding cut from the unions for this type of activity there was almost no one and the unions said they didn't have money to go support Rousseff.

The crises have very little to do with export and political coup (she was indeed breaking the law, and sometimes she say she have and say it was for the party, and other times she say others acted by her back). Same with former president that were very deep on corruption but pretend to know nothing.

The unions can be as militant as they want, people are slowly noticing how crooked they are.

You can tax companies more and more if you want, the only thing that will happen is that cost will be added to the price of the product you pay (causing inflation and or diminish demand and job cuts) or you move the company from the country. You have just so many studies showing how innefective are the laws to tax more the rich, that is why the right way is for government to be smaller and more efficient not taxes to be higher to pay for their incompetent asses.

I don't mind working 50h a week as long as I'm being paid accordingly, and I preffer to negotiate directly.

SpokenTruth said:

In the US, it's backwards.  We have practically no unions in the southern states and thousands in the northeastern states.  Higher wages are up north.  Median household income in Mississipi (southern state) is $36,919 per year.  Median household income in New Jersey (a northeastern state) is $69,825 per year.  That's double and within the same country.

BUT...there are pros and cons to unions and they work well in some places and poorly in others.  Depends on the laws that regulate them and other conditions.

The higher wage in the north are more due to what is produced and living costs than the presence or not of unions. As far as I know Silicon Valley is still south and with a lot higher pay average than several regions on the north.

Brazil have 50k unions, and yet we also have very big differences in income between south/southeast and north/northeast, guess what, it is also related to the value of what is produced and living costs than to having more unions in one or another place.

Each employee must pay one day wage for the unions even if he isn't unionized in here. It's just a way to enrich the leaders.

Any place you give special threatment and power to some individuals and monopolize actions through him you are in a way for those abuses that the union leaders are well know for.

Taxes have been down for corporations in the past few decades, so that's a myth. Taxes on the rich have historically been very sucessful, but the wealth tax is now historically low, while the workers class is more and more taxed.

Direct negotiation is an ancap dream. it doesn't work in reality.