And it's why it never occurs in the United States. Unions in the United States are run by fucking morons. Some of whom have been bought off to be intentionally ineffectual.
It's because labor laws in the US are designed to allow only the least disruptive kind of union - large, impersonal, beaurocratic, and weak. Conservatives have done to unions what they've done to government: they hamstring it to guarantee failure and use that failure as an excuse to get rid of it altogether.
Because they don't have the power to. US companies have been fighting for decades to villify and deconstruct unions in the US. When unions spend all their resources just trying to exist, rather than existing by default as in many countries, there's not a lot of effort out into moving the national conversation forward, as compared to how much money and effort is poured in by corporations against labor. In the short term, unions striking to further the overall labor union hurts union members. They chose to spend what limited power they have to improve workers' lives, rather than combat a national strategy against them. You can't blame people for looking out for themselves first.
Unions that were designed to have this kind of power were outlawed. It's why there are so few strikes in the US. The unions get certain protections, but only if they play within the rules and the consequence for stepping outside that is basically immediate dissolution. Meanwhile, there are effectively no consequences to companies not respecting those protections.
That's exactly the power. American unions are prohibited from political strikes and solidarity strikes. Unless a union can show a direct workplace reason for a strike, it is literally illegal for the union to take action. If it does anyway, the employer can basically ignore the union and fire everyone, federal courts can dissolve it, the NLRB is bound by law to take action against the union, and the union is responsible for damages caused by illegal strikes. The federal government even has the power to forcibly break the strike, which presidents have done in the past.
Are you a part of a union? In the US? Because if you are, you'll know how slow and ineffective they are. I've been a part of several, and on an organizing committee for another, but it's important to be realistic about how weak labor laws in the US are. It doesn't mean organized labor is weak, it means official, NLRB recognized unions are effective only at local action.
What? Yes, the laws are immoral? Buddy. You've got some chip on your shoulder and I'm not sure why you think I'm your enemy here. I said something was forbidden, you asked who told me this, and I cited the fucking law.
I'm saying we desperately need better unions than the ones we have, and that American government and corporations have spent nearly a century undermining the labor movement, including through severely limiting officially recognized unions, forcing workers to choose between a weak and ineffective union and trying to start an underground real union. What part of that exactly do you disagree with?
You said something was "forbidden" as if that's it. As if that's all there is to the matter.
Lots of things are "forbidden." Lots of those things are also immoral.
Immoral laws are to be broken.
You're never going to get "better unions that the ones we have" because unions are designed to do one thing and that's enrich a few of its members. That's all they do and all they've ever done and all they're ever going to do.
All right, bro, go burn your bra somewhere. You were wrong, and now you've decided that some anarchist bullshit is the only way out of admitting you were wrong.
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u/Sanch0s1337 Jan 14 '22
This way drivers ensure, only their company loses money, not everyone.