United States John Deere replaces striking employees with office workers!

Husky_Khan

The Dog Whistler... I mean Whisperer.
Founder
Sotnik
Most of that corruption though is enabled through the government, although I understand where you are coming from.

Ideally unions should be made to compete with other unions, it's one of the few things Europe got right.

Yeah and Public Sector Unions, at least in the United States, for the most part are just monstrously bad for the country.

Other Unions though, I'm sure there's some interesting discussion to be had on.
 

History Learner

Well-known member
You do not seem to be aware that corrupt unions are responsible for a huge part of the issues that American industry has in this day and age.

Not even a little bit, outside of perhaps the auto sector but even there the blame is shared by the Corporations themselves given their strategic decisions in the 1960s and 1970s. Doubling down on big, gas guzzling vehicles despite an Oil Crisis is a fucking stupid idea the Unions had no part in making.
 
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History Learner

Well-known member
Unions have a universal tendency to capture and hold hostage local industry the moment they're let off the hook. They're the largest unspoken contributor in the Steel Belt's transformation into the Rust Belt and even now a big part of our supply chain crisis is from the Longshoreman's Union controlling all of the ports in the US and refusing to do something as basic as 24 hour operations (the Biden administration has bribed them to do so temporarily, but its a skin deep change will just end up with more overtime for longshoremen and no actual change to the rest of the logistical apparatus). I agree that it would be better if we stopped using universal unions and forced them to compete, but that didn't work out the last time and I don't trust any current government to actually enforce anti-monopoly laws against a union.

Basically I'm sympathetic to labor, but not to Labor.

There is literally zero truth to any of this. What collapsed the Steel Belt was decisions at the corporate level, not by the Unions at all and the fact is this rhetoric comes from exactly the same sources that caused it in the first place. Specifically, the refusal to fund modernization plans:

At the end of World War II, American steel had no real challengers. It produced nearly three quarters of the world’s steel, and the factories of its biggest competition -- Japan and Germany -- lay in ruins. Giants like U.S. Steel looked poised to dominate the world for the foreseeable future. Instead, the industry was lapped by foreign producers -- and unfair trade practices were simply not a factor. Instead, the blame lies with U.S. manufacturers who held onto the so-called “open hearth” method of steel production decades after its expiration date. Europeans, though, had no such attachment to the past, perhaps because many factories had been destroyed in the war. Moreover, they had started experimenting with the idea of turning iron into steel by blasting pure oxygen onto the molten metal. This method, which became known as the basic-oxygen process, first entered trial use in 1948 at a factory in Linz, Austria, owned by the small steel firm VOEST. The company soon built a full-scale commercial facility that went online in 1952.​
Linz became something of an industrial mecca in the succeeding years, as steelmakers the world over visited to see this new process firsthand. Most became immediate converts, and with good reason: The cost of building steel mills using the basic-oxygen furnaces was 40 to 50 percent lower than conventional open-hearth factories; operating costs were 25 percent lower, though some studies suggested even greater cost savings. But it was the productivity gains associated with the new process that should have really raised eyebrows. One factory that made the shift could produce 40 tons of steel per hour using the open-hearth process, but after installing basic-oxygen equipment, it managed to quadruple that figure.​
Unfortunately, Big Steel was too proud to notice Europe gaining ground. In a typical advertisement from the era, U.S. Steel claimed it was a company “where the big idea is innovation.” But this claim -- much like so many of the braggadocios claims of today -- could not hide a more disturbing reality. Indeed, throughout the 1950s, as Europe’s steelmakers built new factories around the basic-oxygen process and simultaneously demolished its remaining open-hearth furnaces, Big Steel made endless excuses. Representatives of the Big Three -- Bethlehem, U.S. Steel, and Republic -- repeatedly claimed that the jury was out on the new method, all evidence to the contrary. By 1957, even Congress realized that something was amiss, and it summoned steel industry executives to testify. In one particularly cringe-worthy performance, a U.S. Steel representative told a committee: “The distinguishing characteristic of the American steel industry is its tremendous productiveness, a quality which other countries have been unable to emulate so far,” later adding that the company had examined the methods popular in Europe but found them wanting.
This was madness. While Big Steel fiddled, basic-oxygen furnaces burned ever brighter around the world. So, too, did yet another method of making steel that was even more revolutionary: the electric-arc method. This technique used electricity to recycle iron scrap, turning it into steel. Unlike conventional steel mills, electric arc mills are small-scale enterprises that are easy to establish and cheap to build, even if they can’t produce anywhere near the scale of a conventional integrated mill. The Europeans began building these, too, en masse. As these two methods continued to take off in Europe, and then in Japan and elsewhere in Asia, American companies continued to add completely inefficient open-hearth furnaces to their shop floors, doubling down on an obsolescent technology. By the 1960s, Big Steel began building basic-oxygen plants, grudgingly. It was too late. The steel industry had squandered its supremacy.​
It could have gone differently: Economists who have run counterfactual scenarios -- where Big Steel made the necessary capital improvements to stay competitive -- suggest that the American companies could have stayed on top, and reaped even greater profits than it did by postponing the inevitable upgrades. But there’s a final twist to this tale that highlights the absurdity of Trump’s strategy. In the 1960s, a man named Ken Iverson took over a conglomerate that acquired a stake in the steel business that became Nucor. Iverson then bet the firm’s future on making steel using the electric arc process, building the first American facility in 1969. It began growing at an exponential rate, competing rather effectively with foreign producers, to say nothing of other American producers.​
 

Free-Stater 101

Freedom Means Freedom!!!
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There is literally zero truth to any of this. What collapsed the Steel Belt was decisions at the corporate level, not by the Unions at all and the fact is this rhetoric comes from exactly the same sources that caused it in the first place. Specifically, the refusal to fund modernization plans:
A big part of this was more circumstance than just a bad business decision, European industry was obliterated in WW2 and because it was so wrecked as well as receiving ample funds from both the Marshall Plan along with heavy subsidy from their own governments it was much easier to make that innovative shift.

Meanwhile in the U.S. changing that process over would require an industry wide overhaul with completely new foundries needing to be built so the already available ones could maintain supply during the shift.

All in all without heavy subsidy and with 'good enough' equipment already it's no shock the steel companies didn't spring for it given the insane cost involved.
 
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LordsFire

Internet Wizard
Not even a little bit, outside of perhaps the auto sector but even there the blame is shared by the Corporations themselves given their strategic decisions in the 1960s and 1970s. Doubling down on big, gas guzzling vehicles despite an Oil Crisis is a fucking stupid idea the Unions had no part in making.

This is an interesting fantasy you live in.

I will bey no means try to argue that corporate malfeasance isn't also a problem, the difference is that there has historically been some check on corporate power, if in no other form than the unions.

The unions, on the other hand, due to a combination of factors, primarily lopsided cultural portrayal and their corrupt relationship with the Democrat party, have almost no check on their power.

Are you familiar with 'Closed Shop' laws and 'Right to Work' laws?

Until about a year ago, I lived in the Copper country in the UP. At one point, it provided over half of the nation's Copper, but in the mid-20th century when the bottom dropped out of the Copper market, things got rough. By ~1969, there was only one mine in the area still running, and it was on a marginal profit.

So you know what the workers did? They went on strike to demand higher wages.

Unsurprisingly, the company just shut the mine down; it'd almost been there as a jobs program by that point, and the hop that it could last until the market recovered, but the union didn't care about that, and it cost them their jobs.

Are you aware that the union workers at Henry Ford's factories, back when he was still running things, went on strike even though he was literally paying them the highest wages in the industry? When he refused to raise them further, the unions pushed the government to force him to use union labor.


One of my friends' wives worked a Summer job between high school and college. Because she knew people/had connections, she was able to get into a union position at a auto factory in Michigan.

She earned 33$ an hour.

As a starting wage.

For unskilled labor.

That is literally insane.


Any form of unchecked power becomes corrupt, and the balance point between unions and the manufacturing business passed decisively in favor of unions almost a hundred years ago. They've become every bit as corrupt as you'd expect from something like that, and the effects have been ruinous for the US economy.

(Don't try to pretend I'm saying big businesses haven't screwed things up too, because they have. But that's already kosher to talk about.)
 

f1onagher

Well-known member
There is literally zero truth to any of this. What collapsed the Steel Belt was decisions at the corporate level, not by the Unions at all and the fact is this rhetoric comes from exactly the same sources that caused it in the first place. Specifically, the refusal to fund modernization plans:
Yeah thanks for bringing up the spoken contributors to the mess. Union capture of politics in industrial sections of the US utterly drove out lower level competitors for any and all industries in the Midwest and elsewhere. We see the tale repeated today where large international corporations support anti-corporate laws since they can tank the hits but any smaller competition can't. Unions captured and then ossified the economies of the Midwest all the while demanding larger and larger bonuses for their members. Without competition on either the corporate or union levels the game just continued until it killed the golden goose and the industries collapsed.

It was also frequently unions that stopped modernization. Kind of like the International Longshoreman's Association which has refused to modernize not just their methods of operation, but have also blocked any attempts to automate US ports. Unions can't blame corporations for all their woes when they block innovation, competition, or solutions.

No one is saying that myopic and short-sighted corporate policy didn't play a role or even the main role in the collapse of US manufacturing, but unions stifled domestic competition, corrupted political solutions, and eventually drove the cost of operations through the roof.
 

Abhishekm

Well-known member
A big part of this was more circumstance than just a bad business decision, European industry was obliterated in WW2 and because it was so wrecked as well as receiving ample funds from both the Marshall Plan along with heavy subsidy from their own governments it was much easier to make that innovative shift.

Meanwhile in the U.S. changing that process over would require an industry wide overhaul with completely new foundries needing to be built so the already available ones could maintain supply during the shift.

All in all without heavy subsidy and with 'good enough' equipment already it's no shock the steel companies didn't spring for it given the insane cost involved.
Equipment and method overhauls also mean employee changes or heavy retraining. What were the Union stances on that exactly? Kinda have a feeling the answer would be a 'Them fancy shmancy arc smelters took ere jerbs!'.
 

bintananth

behind a desk
Equipment and method overhauls also mean employee changes or heavy retraining. What were the Union stances on that exactly? Kinda have a feeling the answer would be a 'Them fancy shmancy arc smelters took ere jerbs!'.
Economists have a term for that: "creative destruction".

Equipment wears out, better ways of doing things are found, &c. If you keep doing things the way you've always done things you're not going to last long unless your shtick is "doing it the old-fashioned way."
 

Abhishekm

Well-known member
Economists have a term for that: "creative destruction".

Equipment wears out, better ways of doing things are found, &c. If you keep doing things the way you've always done things you're not going to last long unless your shtick is "doing it the old-fashioned way."
Which is kinda antithetical to the clock in cash out mentality of the stereotypical union clique.

Change? Modernization? Automation!? What are these words and why do they threaten the grift? I am Shook!

That said screw John Deere AND the Unions. Let them eat each other.
 

The Whispering Monk

Well-known member
Osaul
Unions in America are THE biggest reason that US production doesn't compete well (on a cost basis) with overseas producers.

HELL, they're one of the biggest reasons Government Motors (GM) had to get bailed out by the Feds (while the Feds DESTROYED contract law doing it).

Not just production, but we've mentioned elsewhere how the Longshoremen's union has destroyed port efficiency in the US.

No union should be international.
No union should actually exist beyond a single company who's workers it represents. I'd be ok with a bunch of small companies building a co-op style union in a specific area/community.
No union should exist in government employ.
No union should be able to FORCE membership.
No union should be able to donate to politics. (Course, I'm of the opinion that only individuals should be able to donate with NO PACs existant.)
 

The Original Sixth

Well-known member
Founder
Unions in America are THE biggest reason that US production doesn't compete well (on a cost basis) with overseas producers.

Oh, that is bullshit. The reason why we get fucked by oversea producers is because the Europeans have trade barriers for our goods, the Asian countries have a much lower operating cost (ie, lower wages), and the US has had, until recently--almost no trade barriers. There is simply no way you are not going to lose industries to foreign competitors when you don't protect your own workers and then expose them to a literal swarm of workers willing to do their job for 1/10th the cost.

HELL, they're one of the biggest reasons Government Motors (GM) had to get bailed out by the Feds (while the Feds DESTROYED contract law doing it).

Not just production, but we've mentioned elsewhere how the Longshoremen's union has destroyed port efficiency in the US.

Port efficiency was destroyed by COVID 19 restrictions and an enormous demand of goods by American consumers.

No union should be international.

Agreed.

No union should actually exist beyond a single company who's workers it represents. I'd be ok with a bunch of small companies building a co-op style union in a specific area/community.

No, I don't agree. Otherwise they'd be vulnerable to massive companies that can simply drown them in cash. Not to mention, I don't know how you'd expect that to pass constitutional muster.

No union should exist in government employ.

Do you mean a union should not be employed by a government agency--or that union members cannot be employed?

No union should be able to FORCE membership.

Absolutely agree.

No union should be able to donate to politics. (Course, I'm of the opinion that only individuals should be able to donate with NO PACs existant.)

They'll just encourage their members to donate.
 

The Original Sixth

Well-known member
Founder
Let them, they have wasted their time and money trying to win over support for the dems for years and it does little as their base isn't stupid.

I don't mean to suggest that Unions have their own reckoning. You know shit is fucked up when Americans are by far, one of the hardest working countries out there and we're still getting fucked over by our unions, the government, and half the mega-corps we work for. Working hard for a good day's pay so you and your family can live well is one thing--you and your family working 8+ hour days for chump change at Walmart is another.

That's something else we don't really touch on. Part of the reason wages are going up is that people are not returning to retail/food industry work. Grifters are part of that equation, but about four million people left the work force this past summer. Working age Americans. Surprise, surprise--when you spend 25 years treating blue collar workers like shit and talking about blue collar workers like they're failures, no one wants to drive a fucking eighteen wheeler from California to New York, so some spoiled shitlicker on Comedy Central can piss all over them.

You reap what you sow.
 

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