> You can take the same rules about hollywood union rules forcing lighting technicians and camera crew to have roles, even though the big expensive and hot lights they used to safeguard are long since gone.
I don't know. That reasoning sounds a bit like saying you don't need software engineers anymore because your application runs on a microcomputer, not a mainframe. I'm sure there's more to a lighting technician's role than "hold lights because they're hot."
> Last year corridor crew did a video where niko broke down how much money he could save by moving to LED lights and cutting the mandatory crew requirement and run small films at affordable prices.
Bosses don't like unions, and if you take the perspective of a boss, you probably won't like them either. What else is new?
> Everybody thinks they're the actor in the hollywood comparison, and they're not. They're more likely the tech guy holding an outdated lamp under union rules.
It beats getting dumped onto the street and pivoting suddenly into burger flipping. The point of unions is to protect its workers, not minimize employer costs. If a job is becoming truly obsolete, then the union could force the employer to retrain their workers (like what happened in this video: https://vimeo.com/127605643) or buy time for a more gradual transition.
Heck, if workers trusted they weren't going to get screwed by labor saving technology, they might not resist it as much.
It was once a useful role and now is not. Sure people can retrain and reapply for jobs, do we need unions for that?
Saying bosses dont like unions therefore dismissal of discussion is missing the point.
My view is too much of unionizing is underpinned by coveting other people's success and wanting to feel good after being burned.
The pareto principle and distribution of wealth isn't going to change, some unions are going to be paid off for how much discontent is felt. Which has some virtue, and not enough virtue.
> Sure people can retrain and reapply for jobs, do we need unions for that?
Because they could make it easier for those workers. It's not like the business that laid them off is going to do a good job of that, if it's not compelled to, and retraining can be expensive and perhaps unaffordably so for someone who just lost their job.
>>> Last year corridor crew did a video where niko broke down how much money he could save by moving to LED lights and cutting the mandatory crew requirement and run small films at affordable prices.
>> Bosses don't like unions, and if you take the perspective of a boss, you probably won't like them either. What else is new?
> Saying bosses dont like unions therefore dismissal of discussion is missing the point.
No it isn't. I'm sure there prosecutors that have plenty of complaints about defense attorneys. Maybe some guilty people do get off free because of them, but we don't oppose defense attorneys because they make things hard for prosecutors. Unions serve opposing interests to bosses, so bosses' gripes should not be the main focus.
> My view is too much of unionizing is underpinned by coveting other people's success and wanting to feel good after being burned.
My view is that unionization is underpinned by the fundamental imbalance between unorganized workers and organized business.
The point is dismissing anybody/somebody/everybodies' view out of hand or minimizing it down to complaints means you are missing when valid points are being made.
You are not showing a desire to discuss specific, measurable, realistic and timely issues. You and most unionists here have a view of a utopian union that is above criticism and does not need examination.
Which supports my view that this is about feelings and not about the problems people proclaim to want to solve.
What problem of unorganized workers? Healthcare? Retraining? Okay lets campaign for healthcare and lower college fees. Lets pick up the debt jubilee ticket some economists are calling for. Lets make government pay for code bootcamps and have corporations underwrite months of health insurance out of work.
No none of that will work because it does not give totalitarian control of workers to unions. Nor will it allay feelings of jealousy.
> The point is dismissing anybody/somebody/everybodies' view out of hand or minimizing it down to complaints means you are missing when valid points are being made.
I'm not "dismissing anybody/somebody/everybodies' view out of hand," but observing that you can't make everyone happy all the time. Bosses will be unhappy with unions, because oftentimes unions go against their interests and reduce the power differential when they deal with individual employees. However, there's more than just the bosses' interest at play, so it's a mistake to focus on that.
This may not be a win-win situation, and it may be just for shareholders and business owners to lose a little.
> You are not showing a desire to discuss specific, measurable, realistic and timely issues. You and most unionists here have a view of a utopian union that is above criticism and does not need examination.
No, that's not true. I don't have a utopian view of unions, but rather an objection to their out-of-hand rejection based on a couple of cliched complaints about specific instances of the type. That's also a double standard, since if we'd applied a similar standard to corporations, that concept would have been rejected long ago. I think innovation in the area of unionization is possible and welcome, but I don't have all the answers.
At this point, were at the step of merely trying to get the idea of unions put back onto the table. It is not reasonable to insist that an idea (in this case tech worker unions) be fully worked out before the first step toward it is made.
> What problem of unorganized workers?
To be blunt about it: capital is organized. When a worker deals with it, they're almost always dealing with some kind of institution, not an individual, which means they're almost always in a greatly weaker position, with all that implies. Why is it such a problem for workers to have institutions of their own to create some balance?
> No none of that will work because it does not give totalitarian control of workers to unions. Nor will it allay feelings of jealousy.
Attributing desires for worker organization to "jealousy" is a far worse dismissal than anything I did in my comments.
A power imbalance isn't a problem to be solved defacto. We're not stalin-esque egalitarians.
What would you want power for. What problem are you trying to solve. If you say individual vs collective, institute or corp for a third time without introducing an issue to be tackled, there is nothing to talk about.
Attribute the desires to anything other than power and the jealousy tag falls away.
Corporations did not start as they are, they were tiny teams of people off to do one task. How can I say any different about the implications of a new org structure like unions.
I don't know. That reasoning sounds a bit like saying you don't need software engineers anymore because your application runs on a microcomputer, not a mainframe. I'm sure there's more to a lighting technician's role than "hold lights because they're hot."
> Last year corridor crew did a video where niko broke down how much money he could save by moving to LED lights and cutting the mandatory crew requirement and run small films at affordable prices.
Bosses don't like unions, and if you take the perspective of a boss, you probably won't like them either. What else is new?
> Everybody thinks they're the actor in the hollywood comparison, and they're not. They're more likely the tech guy holding an outdated lamp under union rules.
It beats getting dumped onto the street and pivoting suddenly into burger flipping. The point of unions is to protect its workers, not minimize employer costs. If a job is becoming truly obsolete, then the union could force the employer to retrain their workers (like what happened in this video: https://vimeo.com/127605643) or buy time for a more gradual transition.
Heck, if workers trusted they weren't going to get screwed by labor saving technology, they might not resist it as much.