SNP makes its case for Independent Scotland with White Paper

[energiewende]

Both labour and capital are protected by the market. Saying labour is unprotected from capital because of lack of union power makes as much sense as saying the supermarkets are unprotected from consumers because they are not allowed to form a cartel to fix prices.

Aaaand this is where you fail the socioeconomic equivalent of the Turing Test. Darn.

For a minute there, I forgot that you don't believe in market asymmetries, buyer's markets, seller's markets, or any of the other complications that make labor as a commodity quite a bit different from most others. Not entirely different, but different enough to be interesting.

I also forgot that you don't actually value what happens to citizens in a country per se, but rather have this weird robotic "THE MARKET IS TICKING OPTIMALLY FOR GREAT FREEDOM!" concept of what a good country looks like, which is utterly impersonal. And which honestly reminds me of Soviet or Chinese central planning boards' assessment and planning targets, the ones that are totally out of touch with reality and which measure the well-being of the nation purely in terms of how well it's lining up with their ideological preconceptions.

How efficient are labour markets is an empirical question and the evidence is that labour compensation converges very closely to productivity in US, EU, Australia, Canada, etc. If you believe you have evidence that labour markets are inefficient I will consider it. If you consider the inefficiency of labour markets to be a revealed truth (and that is the impression I get from the nature of your response) then I see no purpose continuing this debate further.

[energiewende]

him demanding every penny you have, being refused, and deciding to set you and your wallet on fire out of spite.

Funny that, you describe not the unions, but Thatcher. Since when "my way or I will send military to crush you" is called 'negotiations'?

Yes, UK unions might have behaved irresponsibly, but if Thatcher was anywhere near as competent as German managers, after forcing them to submit she would have restructured the economy to have it perform better. She didn't, she just sold the choicy pieces to her cronies, then destroyed others in her ideological crusade, relying on mining and finance sectors to stay afloat. Too bad it was later tried in countries without these by other ignorant pro-Thatcher crowd - and failed terribly due to lack of that cushion.

The damage had been done decades before Thatcher; she only became electable because of the extent of that damage. If Thatcher had lost Labour would have done the same thing, only a little more slowly.

http://newleftreview.org/static/assets/ ... 2large.jpg

Quick comparison of days lost due to strikes UK vs Germany. The difference is often a full order of magnitude.

Cute picture. Until you realize that their 'averages' are completely pointless (look at UK ones, 8 out of 10 years are below "average"...) and that terribly looking 1130 days lost in practice amount to 1.13 day per worker. That is about 10 hours per year, how these poor companies deal with loss with that magnitude??

What's then the point of unions, since clearly their measures are toothless and they have no power, they must not influence wages or conditions at all. There's no harm to workers in even banning them outright due to their total irrelevance. Do you agree or disagree?

Seriously, take the chart showing UK GDP growth, take these 2 years that drive the average of days lost sky-high, and try to find any big difference to surrounding years. I bet you wouldn't notice them on graph without prior knowledge on that table.

The problems were systemic, not just concentrated in one or two years. If a union shuts down a modernisation plan and then goes quiet because it has what it wants, the company continues to suffer from failure to modernise in subsequent years. In fact, it suffers more!

and it's at best unclear why industry should be preferred to services anyway (unless you want to start a war).

Why? let me tell you why, as it's basic Economy 101 - most services piggyback on two sectors producing real goods, agriculture and industry, either by processing/distributing their output, or by being kept afloat by money spent by these. Did you ever happened to take a look what happens to services when industry takes recession hit? And why it never happens in reverse? You're asking "why we need foundation in a house, all it does is increase costs". Really?

The only services that can be considered industry independent, information services, are these days excluded by most economists from service sector, the tertiary one, and counted as their own, quaternary one. It's secondary and quaternary sectors that produce staying wealth, develop new technologies, and make economy strong regardless of recessions, not services. You can run economy without hairdressers, good luck doing it without both of the above.

Both labour and capital are protected by the market. Saying labour is unprotected from capital because of lack of union power makes as much sense as saying the supermarkets are unprotected from consumers because they are not allowed to form a cartel to fix prices.

You know, there is failing Economy 101, as above, and there is living full on in Wish Fairy land. Market protects labor? The same market that drives payment for every service granted towards minimum price? The same market where capital would have crushingly stronger position than labor without state regulations? And it's not like you can say "we don't know that" - it was tried in Victorian predatory capitalism model, and in US Gilded Age - so it takes special ignorance of history to say that.

Even sector requiring special skills, the IT sector, is now facing enormous pressure from capital to shift it from well paid specialist market to something resembling badly paid worker assembly line - and that is something where you can't just fire people and hire new ones from the street. Any claim market protects workers in any way is completely laughable. Consumers can't exploit supermarkets, supermarkets can and will exploit their workers.

No, nothing you've said is Economics 101, or anything that would be taught in an economics class. It's in fact based in profound ignorance of some of the most basic ideas of economic science. If you'd like to see just how deep-rooted are the prejudices on which you've based your economic analysis, look up the Physiocrats and Luddites, and you will see exactly the same claims being made about agriculture being the ultimate source of value from which all else derives back when industry was replacing it, together with exactly the same claims that that same industry will put everyone out of work. With mechanised cotton looms and improved horse-drawn plow designs, there'll be no need for most people to work anymore, surely!

For your claims about labour compensation, I refer to the post addressed to Simon Jester.

[PainRack]

Why? let me tell you why, as it's basic Economy 101 - most services piggyback on two sectors producing real goods, agriculture and industry, either by processing/distributing their output, or by being kept afloat by money spent by these. Did you ever happened to take a look what happens to services when industry takes recession hit? And why it never happens in reverse? You're asking "why we need foundation in a house, all it does is increase costs". Really?

The only services that can be considered industry independent, information services, are these days excluded by most economists from service sector, the tertiary one, and counted as their own, quaternary one. It's secondary and quaternary sectors that produce staying wealth, develop new technologies, and make economy strong regardless of recessions, not services. You can run economy without hairdressers, good luck doing it without both of the above.

That's.......... kinda simplistic, isn't it? Especially in our current worldview when industry, even human ones such as construction require less and less labour.

And its not as if its universally true. Just look at what banking and the financial services did to Main Street in 2008, 2001, 1988, or Argentina...... I hesitate to say the Asian financial Crisis only because the initial fault rested in hot money fueling many projects. But the phase 2 of the AFC was so damaging purely because the financial world was crippled.

[PainRack]

How efficient are labour markets is an empirical question and the evidence is that labour compensation converges very closely to productivity in US, EU, Australia, Canada, etc. If you believe you have evidence that labour markets are inefficient I will consider it. If you consider the inefficiency of labour markets to be a revealed truth (and that is the impression I get from the nature of your response) then I see no purpose continuing this debate further.

That's answering a different question altogether......

You're trying to claim that the market 'protects' workers by subjecting them to the same pressures as companies but historically, given the cheap value of labour, this has not been so as labour is too easily replaced. Its only in the 20th century where this changed and even here, the trend is not universal and highly uneven. Its why we now have an 'information economy' afterall.


Furthermore, the examples you raised doesn't actually support your point. We DO know that the initial movement to prop up wages were due to either union or state measures in those countries and in the US, ever growing productivity has not translated into growing wages. Indeed, this is now a perennial question for economists, in answering why productivity gains has not overcome wage stickiness.


And LASTLY, you're confusing correlation with causation. Did productivity increase because workers were paid more or were workers paid more because they were productive?(And back again to minimum wages and other wage props in countries you named)

[Irbis]

Especially in our current worldview when industry, even human ones such as construction require less and less labour.

They require less and less labor because as the industry runs, big money tends to ask their good paid, well respected specialists one thing in particular: "how do we make this thing run well without wastes of profit like you".

In some cases, reduction of workload is good, sign off progress. In some cases, it's illusory, build on the sweat of badly underpaid labor that replaced middle class workers, though this labor tends to be located in third world so we don't see it.

And its not as if its universally true. Just look at what banking and the financial services did to Main Street in 2008, 2001, 1988, or Argentina...... I hesitate to say the Asian financial Crisis only because the initial fault rested in hot money fueling many projects. But the phase 2 of the AFC was so damaging purely because the financial world was crippled.

How does this refute my point? Big money get too big and thank to pair of idiot saints, Reagan and Thatcher, a lot of regulation that would have stopped all this was dismantled or never came to be. This doesn't generate any lasting wealth or jobs - this is purely destructive speculation allowed to run rampant due to money printing from triply packaged finance instruments. How is this good thing?

You're trying to claim that the market 'protects' workers by subjecting them to the same pressures as companies but historically, given the cheap value of labour, this has not been so as labour is too easily replaced. Its only in the 20th century where this changed and even here, the trend is not universal and highly uneven. Its why we now have an 'information economy' afterall.

Correction - it did not change. Information industry enjoys age old issue - there are not enough people yet with right skills so you can fire them at will, or tools good enough to reduce need for these skills, but we're getting there. The mechanism is so old it was already analysed by Marks - and as then, capital today is trying to create surplus of skill to stomp its wages into the ground. Nothing new.

The damage had been done decades before Thatcher; she only became electable because of the extent of that damage.

Yes, it's not like 70s saw the fastest growth UK had in that century:

http://pearsonblog.campaignserver.co.uk ... growth.jpg

In fact, since you need to be educated on basic facts, see that huge, wide dip comparable to 2008 one? That's Thatcher. Her "performance" caused multiple riots and made her lowest rated prime minister in UK history, which she only turned around by nationalist saber rattling in Falklands. Is there country history of which you're not ignorant of?

What's then the point of unions, since clearly their measures are toothless and they have no power, they must not influence wages or conditions at all. There's no harm to workers in even banning them outright due to their total irrelevance. Do you agree or disagree?

No you imbecile, that was not the point. The point is, these terrible unions you said were 'crippling' UK cost a company about 10 hours per worker. This is so insignificant sum it's comparable with people being simply late or catching a cold every 5 years.

The problems were systemic, not just concentrated in one or two years.

If what you quoted was crippling UK, then surely by worst years of that "crippling" would show it on UK GDP growth chart. Did they?

No, the only dip on that chart is when Thatcher started kicking any and all disobedience sign, banning the practice. Why this plug in the terrible bleeding resulted in huge recession, not in GDP speeding up, care to say?

It's in fact based in profound ignorance of some of the most basic ideas of economic science.

The only one ignorant in economy is an someone convinced his ideas and theories concerning massless, perfectly knowledgeable and moveable workers with no emotions or morale whatsoever have anything in common with real life. And even if they did, which they have not, he is doubly wrong by equally idiotic assumption that economy is only about increasing the number before GDP label, thinking increasing it means better economy, without a iota of thought how the overall picture looks like. Even the 'trickledown effect' idiots didn't offered anything as simplistic and baseless as this.

If you'd like to see just how deep-rooted are the prejudices on which you've based your economic analysis, look up the Physiocrats and Luddites

These, you ignorant imbecile, were results of your sick theories - no unions, perfectly mobile capital, free exploitation of workers, full market efficiency. Destruction of machines were the only means people had to find any work at all after market efficiently reduced them - and this civilized the job market, bit by bit.

And by 'bit' I mean first factory act, which limited to workday of children to 12 hours. In some industries, not all of them. Gee, I wonder where your brain dead invented market jobs protection was then - unless you think 10 year old kid working 14 hours to survive is something to be lauded in the name of MARKET EFFICIENCY!

you will see exactly the same claims being made about agriculture being the ultimate source of value from which all else derives back when industry was replacing it

And yet, for all your getting on a high horse, somehow agriculture today is more important than ever. Same with industry - it takes special kind of idiot to talk through computer without single though entering his head just how much technologies creating it needed, and that the factories producing them will turn the labor of its workers into something far more valuable than most services can even dream of achieving. For one, because agriculture and industry can't be deprecated by googling who in service market is the most desperate today and who we can rob blindly.

With mechanised cotton looms and improved horse-drawn plow designs, there'll be no need for most people to work anymore, surely!

The issue, you cretin, was not that mechanization made people change jobs, but lose jobs. Permanently. In some cases, this might be good thing, but in some, where the loss exists only to pad the pocket of big money without thinking of whole social order, it's bad. This is why we have today all the state regulation taming the worst excesses of the market. This is why you, personally, still have your job, whatever this highly secret thing is, as in the gilded age it would be reduced to most base, humiliating level of payment possible or outsourced to Bangladesh. Did that thought ever enter your head?

And it seems you're ignorant even of what the devices you cite did - for example, cotton producing machinery gave "jobs" to faltering Southern US slave industry, prolonging practive by 50 years and directly causing Civil War - because now you could produce cotton in huge, profitable quantities using least skilled labor possible, replacing any skill needed by machinery. Seriously, do you have even any basic history education? Your own examples illustrate why blind touting progress and paper numbers as target in itself without considering what it does can lead to - "growing" GDP of economy full of slaves and a handful of overlords pocketing all the rising profits.

[Simon_Jester]

Quick comparison of days lost due to strikes UK vs Germany. The difference is often a full order of magnitude.

Cute picture. Until you realize that their 'averages' are completely pointless (look at UK ones, 8 out of 10 years are below "average"...) and that terribly looking 1130 days lost in practice amount to 1.13 day per worker. That is about 10 hours per year, how these poor companies deal with loss with that magnitude??

Seriously, take the chart showing UK GDP growth, take these 2 years that drive the average of days lost sky-high, and try to find any big difference to surrounding years. I bet you wouldn't notice them on graph without prior knowledge on that table.

To be fair, this kind of misses energie's point, which has nothing to do with how companies can function with a given level of strikes, and everything to do with how the likelihood of a strike impacts industrial planning and the willingness to change the organization of a plant that you just got done negotiating with the unions about.

Moreover, the impact of a strike is greatly exaggerated in an economy where having one craft union representing 5% of the workforce at your plant go on strike can paralyze the whole plant, or at least force it to operate at reduced efficiency.

How efficient are labour markets is an empirical question and the evidence is that labour compensation converges very closely to productivity in US, EU, Australia, Canada, etc. If you believe you have evidence that labour markets are inefficient I will consider it. If you consider the inefficiency of labour markets to be a revealed truth (and that is the impression I get from the nature of your response) then I see no purpose continuing this debate further.

Could you explain, then, why productivity increases do not correlate to constant-dollar wage increases in modern economies? Is productivity serving only to fuel inflation?

How efficient are labour markets is an empirical question and the evidence is that labour compensation converges very closely to productivity in US, EU, Australia, Canada, etc. If you believe you have evidence that labour markets are inefficient I will consider it. If you consider the inefficiency of labour markets to be a revealed truth (and that is the impression I get from the nature of your response) then I see no purpose continuing this debate further.

That's answering a different question altogether......

You're trying to claim that the market 'protects' workers by subjecting them to the same pressures as companies but historically, given the cheap value of labour, this has not been so as labour is too easily replaced. Its only in the 20th century where this changed and even here, the trend is not universal and highly uneven. Its why we now have an 'information economy' afterall.

Come to think of it, corporations have a very short life expectancy on average (~10-20 years). Workers would hopefully want to last longer than that in the labor market.

Corporations can be utterly dissolved, taken over or even gone bankrupt, and the people associated with them can still go elsewhere and have life go on more or less as before. A worker cannot be dissolved or go bankrupt and have life go on more or less as before; they can't even switch labor-purchasers without serious consequences.

Incidentally, this is the main reason I (and others) keep asserting that there's an asymmetry in the labor market: it is much harder for a seller of labor to find a new buyer, than it is for a buyer to find a new seller.

[The Grim Squeaker]

Both labour and capital are protected by the market. Saying labour is unprotected from capital because of lack of union power makes as much sense as saying the supermarkets are unprotected from consumers because they are not allowed to form a cartel to fix prices.

You know, there is failing Economy 101, as above, and there is living full on in Wish Fairy land. Market protects labor? The same market that drives payment for every service granted towards minimum price? The same market where capital would have crushingly stronger position than labor without state regulations? And it's not like you can say "we don't know that" - it was tried in Victorian predatory capitalism model, and in US Gilded Age - so it takes special ignorance of history to say that.

Even sector requiring special skills, the IT sector, is now facing enormous pressure from capital to shift it from well paid specialist market to something resembling badly paid worker assembly line - and that is something where you can't just fire people and hire new ones from the street. Any claim market protects workers in any way is completely laughable. Consumers can't exploit supermarkets, supermarkets can and will exploit their workers.

No, nothing you've said is Economics 101, or anything that would be taught in an economics class. It's in fact based in profound ignorance of some of the most basic ideas of economic science. If you'd like to see just how deep-rooted are the prejudices on which you've based your economic analysis, look up the Physiocrats and Luddites, and you will see exactly the same claims being made about agriculture being the ultimate source of value from which all else derives back when industry was replacing it, together with exactly the same claims that that same industry will put everyone out of work. With mechanised cotton looms and improved horse-drawn plow designs, there'll be no need for most people to work anymore, surely!

For your claims about labour compensation, I refer to the post addressed to Simon Jester.[/quote]

There's actually a rather interesting field of thought on the fact that recessions caused in the financial/service sector, have far worse repurcussions, and long lasting effects than those that come from other sectors. (A prime example being Japan's lost decade, the US great depression maybe, and as some argue, the current financial crisis in the states).
I wish I could find a public source about it to show you energiewende..

[Irbis]

To be fair, this kind of misses energie's point, which has nothing to do with how companies can function with a given level of strikes, and everything to do with how the likelihood of a strike impacts industrial planning and the willingness to change the organization of a plant that you just got done negotiating with the unions about.

Moreover, the impact of a strike is greatly exaggerated in an economy where having one craft union representing 5% of the workforce at your plant go on strike can paralyze the whole plant, or at least force it to operate at reduced efficiency.

Oh, if he wanted to demonstrate strikes can destroy economy, he could have pulled a few far more relevant examples - as there were a few economies where strikes and protests were really crippling and nearly caused economy to crash. Sadly, I don't think he is even aware of these.

And anyway, his point was how trade unions can destroy companies and his lauded market efficiency... And the worst example he could provide was worker missing one day. In by far worst year. That sort of undermines his point.

Incidentally, this is the main reason I (and others) keep asserting that there's an asymmetry in the labor market: it is much harder for a seller of labor to find a new buyer, than it is for a buyer to find a new seller.

Yes. And this is why we have trade unions, regulations, and all the other stuff he ridicules - because main purpose of the economy isn't to pad anyone's pocket, or watch paper numbers grow, but to provide decent existence of every willing participant. This is the point all the worshippers of worst excesses of market seem to miss - that economy is for humans, not humans for economy.

My point is simply that West Germany was forced to do so, whether it wanted to or not, and there were at least some resources available to do so. This is not to diminish how much the West Germans gained by good governance, or for that matter how much the British lost by bad governance and poor relations between labor and capital.

Were they forced? They could have bought cheap, old machinery from UK to speed up reconstruction. Nah, I think even rebuilding well requires good governance. I can only judge by end results as I am not familiar of in depth choices taken then, but Anglo-sphere model of trade union seems to be antagonistic, as already mentioned, probably set up by unions trying to fight pure libertarian market with job conditions worse than what we have today in China.

removing all the other variables and asking "all else being equal, which is going to result in more efficient, smoother labor relations, one big unified union or dozens of tiny insecure ones each of which must be appeased to stop the whole plant from being shut down?"

However, I'm not sure what you mean by competing unions. Dozens of small craft unions don't compete with each other directly, because people in each trade are represented separately, so I'm not sure that's desirable either.

Do you mean the idea of, say, having two or three unions that all seek to organize the same body of workers, but compete with each other for membership?

I was thinking of workers having a choice where they want to go. Something that doesn't let the union rest on its laurels in complacency.

In 90s, when we had one "cradle" union (that was created to fight for worker right during communist years) it was really only choice workers had, in whole country, which led to companies simply bribing the union representative in factory, disabling the ability to strike, companies oppressing part of workforce by ensuring part big enough to stop strike was treated decently (or threatened to join the oppressed if they did so), the union protesting for the sake of protesting if local one was handled by idiot. I can cite numerous abuses where workers had zero protection or hand in events and nowhere to go if they disagreed with what was happening because of the bloat and monopolization. It got so bad the union lost its connection with reality and tried its hand in politics by creating political party, which proved to be so unpopular the whole system crashed. Today, the union that used to have 2 mln members has about 400.000, as other options appeared, and the system become a lot more pluralized. I don't think getting too big and lack of impulse to improve is good in any organization.

There's actually a rather interesting field of thought on the fact that recessions caused in the financial/service sector, have far worse repurcussions, and long lasting effects than those that come from other sectors. (A prime example being Japan's lost decade, the US great depression maybe, and as some argue, the current financial crisis in the states).

Oh, they do, because fundamentally, they are different from other crisises. While liquidity on markets is good, excessive "free" printed money leads to rampant speculation and destruction of whatever it targets in the name of profits, or just by collateral damage.

Even communist countries had finance crisises - when party tried to quiet the population by raising the wages artificially, excessive money (not handled by financiers, but the whole of population) led to waste and people overbuying stuff they didn't needed just to use the money somehow. At least in Poland, famous queues in shops were only partially caused by shortages, in part they were caused by demand outstripping the supply, and, as industry wasn't allowed to raise prices, we had rampant waste of both resources and time which only got worse as people started striking (the irony) because they couldn't buy more due to economy not keeping up...

All in all, IMHO finance sector is one field that REALLY should be ran by someone independent of both profits or political concerns, like central banks today are ran.

[PainRack]

They require less and less labor because as the industry runs, big money tends to ask their good paid, well respected specialists one thing in particular: "how do we make this thing run well without wastes of profit like you".

In some cases, reduction of workload is good, sign off progress. In some cases, it's illusory, build on the sweat of badly underpaid labor that replaced middle class workers, though this labor tends to be located in third world so we don't see it.

And? Without that workforce, the whole point of industry generating wealth for the entire population and etc is disappearing. It still has value, but look at most of the high value companies now. Apple, Microsoft and etc all rely significantly on the 'service' aspect to prop up their main sales, from iTunes to the fact that their software pin together entire service industries.......

Unless I missing the point, in which case I wish you elaborate.

How does this refute my point? Big money get too big and thank to pair of idiot saints, Reagan and Thatcher, a lot of regulation that would have stopped all this was dismantled or never came to be. This doesn't generate any lasting wealth or jobs - this is purely destructive speculation allowed to run rampant due to money printing from triply packaged finance instruments. How is this good thing?

You tried to claim that service industry recession has never impacted industry. That's blatently false. Banking DOES. And we can even subdivide this if we talk about how how the telecommunications oversupply had its impact on the industrial aspect.

AS for regulation that would have stopped all this, look at the Asian Finanicial Crisis for proof otherwise. You COULD argue that their banking industries weren't mature enough to handle the cash inflow and outflow but that's not the same as regulation.

[PainRack]

Yes. And this is why we have trade unions, regulations, and all the other stuff he ridicules - because main purpose of the economy isn't to pad anyone's pocket, or watch paper numbers grow, but to provide decent existence of every willing participant. This is the point all the worshippers of worst excesses of market seem to miss - that economy is for humans, not humans for economy.

The main purpose of the economy is to produce and distribute goods to the benefit of the players.

To provide a decent existence is the duty of society, of which our most powerful tool is governments, or failing that, a civic association of some sort.

[Simon_Jester]

Oh, if he wanted to demonstrate strikes can destroy economy, he could have pulled a few far more relevant examples - as there were a few economies where strikes and protests were really crippling and nearly caused economy to crash. Sadly, I don't think he is even aware of these.

And anyway, his point was how trade unions can destroy companies and his lauded market efficiency... And the worst example he could provide was worker missing one day. In by far worst year. That sort of undermines his point.

His point was about how the fear of strikes could deter companies from changing their operations in ways a union might disapprove of, and strike in response to. This can happen without there actually being very many strikes in a given period of time.

My point is simply that West Germany was forced to do so, whether it wanted to or not, and there were at least some resources available to do so. This is not to diminish how much the West Germans gained by good governance, or for that matter how much the British lost by bad governance and poor relations between labor and capital.

Were they forced? They could have bought cheap, old machinery from UK to speed up reconstruction. Nah, I think even rebuilding well requires good governance. I can only judge by end results as I am not familiar of in depth choices taken then, but Anglo-sphere model of trade union seems to be antagonistic, as already mentioned, probably set up by unions trying to fight pure libertarian market with job conditions worse than what we have today in China.

What I mean is simply that West Germany had to rebuild somehow, in some way. Quality of governance impacted how well they rebuilt, but they didn't really have the option of ignoring the problem of reconstructing their industrial base given the war damage.

The UK had that option, because sticking to whatever industrial arrangements were in place in 1938 would work... sort of... for the UK. They had the luxury of denial; West Germany did not.

I was thinking of workers having a choice where they want to go. Something that doesn't let the union rest on its laurels in complacency.

In 90s, when we had one "cradle" union (that was created to fight for worker right during communist years) it was really only choice workers had, in whole country, which led to companies simply bribing the union representative in factory, disabling the ability to strike, companies oppressing part of workforce by ensuring part big enough to stop strike was treated decently (or threatened to join the oppressed if they did so), the union protesting for the sake of protesting if local one was handled by idiot. I can cite numerous abuses where workers had zero protection or hand in events and nowhere to go if they disagreed with what was happening because of the bloat and monopolization. It got so bad the union lost its connection with reality and tried its hand in politics by creating political party, which proved to be so unpopular the whole system crashed. Today, the union that used to have 2 mln members has about 400.000, as other options appeared, and the system become a lot more pluralized. I don't think getting too big and lack of impulse to improve is good in any organization.

I am agreeable to all that you have said here.