
Americans Don’t Miss Manufacturing – They Miss Unions - marricks
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-dont-miss-manufacturing-they-miss-unions/
======
mdorazio
Bad conclusion (and title). It says right in the article what American workers
actually miss - "a source of stable, well-paying jobs, especially for people
without a college degree". At the same time, Americans overwhelmingly want
cheap goods, which usually means goods not produced with American
manufacturing labor. The failure of the economy isn't that unions are
disappearing, it's that legitimately good jobs simply aren't taking the place
of lost jobs for a large portion of American workers.

~~~
marricks
This is what I don't get, people who say lower priced goods are more important
than paying workers more.

We have a bunch of new jobs coming in warehouse work, retail, information &
technology and what group ensures they get good pay and benefits? To a certain
extent we can rely on competition, but with companies growing after larger and
more powerful, and willing to collude[0], those jobs will likely get worse
with time or start out crappy.

This is pretty evident with the economic problems starting in the 70's then
the rise of neoliberalism in the 80's and stripping unions of powers.[1]
What's even more perplexing now is in the last decade we have a growing
economy but it's limited to the upper class. I think there is definitely space
for us to have unions and fight for more of that growth to benefit the working
class.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation)

[1]
[http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/01/25/upshot/shrinki...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/01/25/upshot/shrinking-
middle-class.html)

~~~
lordxenu
I always see comments like this, that states some data about unions and
decreasing wages and rights, etc.

While I agree, I almost never see anyone going one step further and saying
what can be done about it. "Call your representatives!" says many, but this is
a mainly passive action that depends too much on faith in the incorruptibility
of our representatives. We can continue to do this, but we need a more
powerful and active direction.

With the tech bubble collapsing and people losing their jobs (especially with
what's currently happening in Silicon Valley), I think maybe it is time for a
dedicated union for both engineers (us) and other employees. That is, some
kind of active effort designed to spearhead these principles. How can this
happen? HN readers are smart; we can organize ourselves, can't we?

~~~
marricks
Since half the states have a "right to work" law that says no employee has to
support a union financially[1] it's much harder to start a union, especially
for a multistate endeavor. With social media one would think it'd be easier to
form up, but that same media can be used to slander unions and quash them
before they even form. There's a lot of well financed and experienced Anti
Union advisers that can inform as to how best stop a union from forming and
somehow an anti union mindset has seeped into popular opinion like seen above.

Honestly seems like it'd take another great recession with the focus put on
employee rights for major changes to happen. Luckily with Obama leaving he is
finally lending some helping hand to Unions by making companies disclose when
the get advice from anti-union advisers [2]

[1] [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/23/right-to-work-
laws_...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/23/right-to-work-
laws_n_6737130.html)

[2] [http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-03-24/business-
back...](http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-03-24/business-backlash-
against-obama-administrations-new-union-friendly-rule)

~~~
lordxenu
What's to stop Trump or Hilary from revoking these "union-friendly" when they
come into office? They'll have 4 or 8 years to dismantle it again. I guess at
that point maybe people will be really angry, but right now we have thousands
of engineers and other startup employees that just got screwed over big time.
What can be done to help them at this moment?

If targeting "right to work" is the first step, then perhaps we can organize
something around abolishing that. If abolishing is too difficult, then perhaps
modifying it so that "right to work" only applies to companies that have less
than $1 million but have safeguards in place to ensure fair layoff packages,
but companies with more than $1 million must allow unions. That way, small
companies don't have to worry about unions and when they're big enough,
they'll have the money and the lawyers to deal with it.

Waiting is a loser's game. With another recession, the government will do just
enough to keep people content, but not go that extra length to solidify those
protections. With changing seats of power over time (re-elections), there's no
guarantee that the next set of people in power won't dismantle protections...
causing the cycle to repeat... causing us to wait for another recession... and
so forth.

------
ancap
>U.S. manufacturing jobs, I argued a few weeks ago, are never coming back.

Horse and buggy jobs aren't coming back either. That's not a bad thing. U.S.
manufacturing is outputting almost 50% more than it did 20 years ago(1). US
manufacturing is more productive and provides a higher standard of living
generally. Having said all of that, there are still manufacturing jobs,
despite all of the rhetoric to the contrary.

1\. [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/upshot/the-economy-is-
rigg...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/upshot/the-economy-is-rigged-and-
other-presidential-campaign-myths.html?smid=pl-share&_r=0)

As for the title, I don't miss unions.

