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I live in Australia where this framing is unambiguously true. They were directly involved in getting this turned into law, and the big businesses/firms you talk about here were fighting them every step of the way. This isn't really a topic for debate so much as a settled question in my home country, but I feel like pointing out that those firms fought against these changes every step of the way even when it turned out to be against their own self interest.
How is any of this less socially destructive than the mass immigration and outsourcing that big business and capital has wrought using their outsized influence? American unions, from what I can see, have behaved pretty badly in the past - but you don't get to pin the blame for this on unions specifically when the other side of the ledger has done far worse. It wasn't unions who sold your country's industrial base to the third world, and that was a far more destructive change to society than demanding higher wages for workers and safe working environment laws (as in no mandatory carcinogen exposure or dangerous equipment with no safety precautions).
It wasn't unions that blew up Nordstream and cut off Europe from cheap energy, and it wasn't unions demanding vast floods of foreign labour and immigrants to help devalue their bargaining ability compared to capital. To claim that unions are responsible for the EU's current ills I think you would need to bring a lot more evidence to bear - it seems transparently obvious that the PMC is in charge of the EU. Can you honestly look at EU policies and say they were implemented to help out workers and labour movements as opposed to capital or existing elites?
Singtel's majority owner is Temasek Holdings, which requires the direct approval of the President of Singapore to do anything which could involve drawing down on cash reserves, and the entire board can be fired or replaced at the President's whim as well. The current chairperson is a former trade unionist and politician, and his incoming replacement is also a former politician. If the government having the ability to fire or appoint members of the board and decide whether or not cash reserves can be used doesn't count as "real impact" I have trouble imagining what would.
Incorrect - welfare to someone who is unemployed is very different to welfare provided because people work terrible jobs that cannot support their own existence. I personally think that any corporation whose employees are on welfare and receiving government benefits should receive an additional tax burden equal to 1.5x the cost of paying for their employees. Otherwise you're essentially just paying for Jeff Bezos' workforce to help him make private profits.
Large corporations are far more successful at avoiding and minimising tax obligations than workers are. Shifting the balance of power such that workers get less and large corporations get more means that you're going to get less in tax because you're going after more sophisticated and powerful targets.
I actually like some of Mamdani's ideas (haven't done too much research on him) and think that they're pretty good. Why is there an expensive licensing scheme for food carts that essentially doubles the price of street food in exchange for letting a few people make large profits selling licenses and adding no value? Cutting out expensive middlemen who produce nothing is actually a pretty good idea in my opinion. As for economists, I don't think I've ever seen them be correct on anything in my entire life, so proving them wrong isn't a particularly high bar.
They were in many places proximal causes of course. I don't dispute what legislation was passed on behalf of which lobbies. My point is in the counterfactual world without unions we don't know that things wouldn't have shaken out the same or even better. It's not obvious to me that the stickiness of 40 hours a week being imposed by some laws is a good thing. I really don't think that if there were never unions we'd be working 11 hours a day 7 days a week right now.
I really don't think you can lay this down at the feet of capital like there wasn't, often left wing, ideological justification. The economic class lens can be useful and I don't totally reject it but you're just blind if you think this is primarily a capital vs labor interest thing.
Unions didn't have a choice outside of autarkic fantasies where we're all much poorer but at least we're wallowing in American made poverty. The advantage of being the only power not demolished by ww2 was always going to wear off.
It doesn't seem like it's worked out well for the capital involved either. But you're dodging here, EU members are undeniably more unionized and populist left influenced. Where is the prosperity for the european? Why are their nation arguably handling mass immigration even worse? This was voted for, was it false conciousness?
This is both not true and irrelevant. Any income tax paid by an employee is indistinguishable from a tax on the company for its labor costs. Most employers even withhold the taxes making it even more obvious what's going on.
Funny you would ask. restaurant and supermarket unions (e.g., UNITE HERE, UFCW, RWDSU) lobbied to keep the cap tight, arguing unregulated street vendors steal sales from unionized workers with benefits, pensions, and higher wages. In 2021 comments on expanding permits, union reps explicitly opposed increases, claiming it would "hurt workers" by shifting business to non-union carts. No evidence they directly set fees, but their influence helped maintain the scarcity driving those costs. Recent reforms (e.g., 2021 law adding 4,000 permits over 10 years) faced pushback from them.
They've been right repeatedly on rent control
Huh? The only mass immigration that can be described as "voted for" was the intra-EU one. Everything else was fait accompli, and parties who did want to oppose and reverse it are being suppressed by various means.
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Actual question, I genuinely have no idea: how much of the demand for foreign labor in Europe is driven by how hard it is to hire/fire natives, and how many benefits they get?
If I have the choice between a French guy who expects 6 weeks of vacation, 30 hour weeks plus lunch, brunch and coffee breaks, and who is basically impossible to fire if he's a problem on the one hand, or a Syrian indentured serf on the other...
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