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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31989 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022

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Anyone have any examples of an employee union that improves business for both employees and employer?

The most salient feature of unions that I know about is that they prevent the employer from firing bad employees, or promoting good employees over ones with seniority. This makes sense to me because unions get their power/support from employees that need the union more than the employer needs them i.e. bad ones. A prototypical example of the leftist high-low alliance.

But there's no reason it has to be this way. It's technically possible for a union to say "fire bad employees, promote some faster than others, but pay us more". Is there any examples of this sort of thing working well?

First of all, unions don't prevent employers from firing bad employees or making promotion decisions based on seniority; rather, contracts do that, and only some contracts do so. Moreover, the general rule is the US is that workers can be fired at any time without cause -- i.e., at the whim of the employer. Union contracts, in contrast, permit firing only for cause. What constitutes "cause" varies, but still, here is one benefit: Those contracts not only make it more difficult to fire bad employees; they also makes it more difficult to fire a good employee who happens to get on the wrong side of a bad supervisor, or who doesn't "get with the program," even when the program is a poor one.

Let me explain in more detail.

First, it is well established that managers of companies do not always act in the best interests of the companies themselves. For that reason, giving employees the power to push back against managers can often be in the best interests of the company. See, eg, Dilbert.

Second, let's analogize with tenure in K-12 schools (which, contrary to popular belief, means only that teachers can be fired only with cause, as opposed to, as CA courts put it re teachers before they get tenure, being fired "for any reason, or for no reason.") When I taught high school, I had tenure, and hence I (and other teachers) were able to push back on all sorts of proposals by administrators which were unlikely to inure to the benefit of students (newsflash: teachers know more about their students than administrators do). Sometimes that was about budgeting -- federal law requires decisions about spending money to be made by a committee composed of administrators, teachers, and parents. Teacher representation would be pointless if teachers on the committee have to fear getting on the wrong side of the principal). Sometimes it was about the administration pushing teachers to teach how to game multiple choice tests rather than teaching real curriculum. The list goes on and on.

Now, this is not to say that teachers always act in the best interests of their students, nor that administrators never do. Ditto re the analogous positions in private companies. Nevertheless, a system in which those in supervisory roles have unfettered power is unlikely to yield anything close to optimal results.

a system in which those in supervisory roles have unfettered power is unlikely to yield anything close to optimal results

Disagree, for counterexamples see every military and small business ever

Does the military get optimal results? Given how many non-officers complain about the incompetence of their superiors this seems highly unlikely. Does the US military perform well due to unfettered power from officers? or does it perform well in spite of it?

"The military" as in the current ones, disputable. It is also arguable that it is run as a true hierarchy, or answerable to e.g. a king.

Every single military historically was run this way though, and yes they got results because they won. If an alternative organizational structure produced better results, we would know about it and every military would instead have been run that way.

Every single military historically was run this way though, and yes they got results because they won. If an alternative organizational structure produced better results, we would know about it and every military would instead have been run that way.

I think you need some evidence on this. Otherwise every organization (including unions!) should follow the same logic. If there was a better organization for them we would know about it and every union would instead have been run this way. This is setting aside that many militaries do in fact lose.

For example militaries may be more efficient when divorced from civilian control. But it might not happen regardless due to other factors. We are not optimization machines. We often create and perpetuate inefficient organizations.

As an organization grows, it becomes more challenging and then impossible for a single person to keep track of what's happening. Eventually they need to receive information and give orders without a way to verify whether the information is true or the orders were carried out. Add a few more layers of this, and this is why "all organizations that are not explicitly right-wing will over time become left-wing."

Left-wing of course is an organizational structure where low performers pledge their loyalty to managers in exchange for loot, which the managers extract from the productive parts of the organization using said loyalty. Every organization therefore experiences the same cycle: inception -> growth -> leftist takeover -> collapse.

Religion, nationalism, or any sort of ethos that unites people in service of some higher mission is social technology that prevents these last two parts.

Left-wing of course is an organizational structure where low performers pledge their loyalty to managers in exchange for loot, which the managers extract from the productive parts of the organization using said loyalty. Every organization therefore experiences the same cycle: inception -> growth -> leftist takeover -> collapse.

This is pure "boo outgroup" without even a pretense at providing evidence for your claim.

Seriously, people, actually read the rules in the sidebar. They have not changed significantly since we moved.

Is boo outgroup allowed if it's true?

For example: the behaviour of the "experts", media, government during COVID re: vaccine/lockdown skeptics, lab leak theorists was fully insane. It's now being walked back completely. A sober assessment of all of these events is extremely "boo outgroup". Are we allowed to say this stuff anyway, as long as it's in a somewhat civil way?

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I’ll join in the calls for Citation Needed. Passing information does not make something left-wing. Arguably, your example suggests a more reactionary, feudal structure in which the benighted peasants contract with a sovereign. It’s not a good example, given that you don’t explain how the productive end up loyal, but what should I expect from a cheap drive-by?

Also: paging that guy who wanted to prove wokeness was a religion.

Left-wing of course is an organizational structure where low performers pledge their loyalty to managers in exchange for loot, which the managers extract from the productive parts of the organization using said loyalty. Every organization therefore experiences the same cycle: inception -> growth -> leftist takeover -> collapse.

I think you will need to provide some evidence for your contention. That certainly isn't how I would define a left-wing organization, let alone "of course". There are many different organizational structures on the left from anarcho-communism through to hierarchal authoritarian communism to left-libertarianism through to neo-liberal progressive capitalism.

Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy.

Opposition to hierarchy is in the definition as per wikipedia. The force that drives these politics is a broker/manager class who profess the politics, supported by those who gain something from opposition to hierarchy i.e. those in the lower portion. Said alliance is easy to pick out in every leftist regime in history as well as on a smaller scale in organizations.

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Left-wing of course is an organizational structure where low performers pledge their loyalty to managers in exchange for loot

What makes any of that "left-wing"?

A lot, sadly. They spent over a century developing a whole ideology around it, no one else can compete

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