Sure. This is based on US unions, I don't know if they operate differently in other countries. Germany seems to have better unions but I not very familiar with them.
I had some limited business dealings with them that were super shady.
Weird nepotism rules where people get their sons/nephews hired.
Generally pay based on seniority not skill.
Makes it really hard to fire bad actors or people bad at their job. (see teacher's union/police union)
Leads to incredibly weird inefficiencies about who can do what. If unions were in software a dev couldn't update a Jira ticket except under very specific circumstances.
Generally makes it harder to get a job.
If it just increased pay that'd be awesome, but it tends to have a lot of knock on effects. If the U.S. was completely unionized I think we'd all be poorer for it. I think there are better tools in the policy toolkit to make sure people who are struggling in the economy are taken care of.
So the issue is hierarchical structure - solution to that is to have horizontal decision making with delegates (not representatives) and no salary for any union member for the work for the union. Anarchists trade unions usually operate like that.
Yeah, for example: https://www.iclcit.org/introduction-of-the-international-con.... Consider that these are revolutionary unions with aim of overthrowing capitalism, but in theory one could get inspired by their structure to create a reformist union based on horizontality.
Comments
Sure. This is based on US unions, I don't know if they operate differently in other countries. Germany seems to have better unions but I not very familiar with them.
I had some limited business dealings with them that were super shady. Weird nepotism rules where people get their sons/nephews hired. Generally pay based on seniority not skill. Makes it really hard to fire bad actors or people bad at their job. (see teacher's union/police union) Leads to incredibly weird inefficiencies about who can do what. If unions were in software a dev couldn't update a Jira ticket except under very specific circumstances. Generally makes it harder to get a job.
If it just increased pay that'd be awesome, but it tends to have a lot of knock on effects. If the U.S. was completely unionized I think we'd all be poorer for it. I think there are better tools in the policy toolkit to make sure people who are struggling in the economy are taken care of.
So the issue is hierarchical structure - solution to that is to have horizontal decision making with delegates (not representatives) and no salary for any union member for the work for the union. Anarchists trade unions usually operate like that.
Are there examples of current anarchist trade unions?
Yeah, for example: https://www.iclcit.org/introduction-of-the-international-con.... Consider that these are revolutionary unions with aim of overthrowing capitalism, but in theory one could get inspired by their structure to create a reformist union based on horizontality.