There is a threat creeping through the new generation of big businesses. A threat that people thought was either dying or already dead.
Unions.
Amazon and Starbucks are suddenly discovering that their employees are voting for unionization. So far, it’s a warehouse here and a coffee store there, but the fact that they now have to deal with unions for these places not only forces them to change how they deal with their employees, but they also run the risk of having other locations vote for unionization later on.
Longtime readers of my column know my thoughts on unions. I’m not really a fan of them, but I also know why they exist and why they have a certain appeal to workers.
As I pointed out back in 2010, a union is nothing but a poor substitute for good management.
Unions came about during a time of both rampant industrialization and revolution. Between the so-called “Gilded Age” of the Industrial Society and political struggles for freedom, including our own Civil War, you had workers treated more like indentured servants and employers treating their operations like fiefdoms. Children and adults alike worked long hours sometimes in hazardous conditions, while their employers reaped the riches. And it’s not like they had the option of finding something else in the area.
Yes, this was also the period when the idea of communism came about. It was a theory of social evolution that really had no basis in what many unions wanted. Union workers didn’t want to be equal to their wealthy owners. They wanted to get paid better, get treated better, and have some time off. In other words, they wanted good management. That’s not communist as defined in the theories of the time. The word “union” got bantered about in communist and socialist circles in the same way that “socialist” and “socialism” became bantered about in European political circles even among fascist and nationalist groups. It was a convenient but empty word to use.
To be clear, I’m no more a fan of communism than I am of unions. If you ever read the theory posited by Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels – and I have – then you’d know it is nothing more than speculative fiction of how they saw things would happen in the future. No different than, say, the speculative future of Gene Roddenberry’s “Star Trek” genre or Frank Herbert’s “Dune” or Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale”.
But going back to the whole push for unions, let’s get brutally honest here... the hard truth is that there really would not be a call for unions if businesses treated their employees well.
If you’re working a good job and get paid well with benefits and opportunity for better things, then you have no reason to want to be in a union. However, if you’re pushing employees to work long hours for low pay and no benefits and you’re treating them like replaceable mules while the executives are reporting record profits, they are going to look at some way to get treated better. It doesn’t matter if they’re truck drivers, flight attendants, firefighters, screenwriters, police officers, working in a coal mine, a coffee shop, or a big box store, they deserve to be treated better.
In his life, my father worked on both sides of the union line. He was a union leader and he was also a company executive. He worked with other union leaders and he also worked to set up businesses without a union. He saw some of the businesses that he previously set up that were virulently anti-union eventually get unionized, even in communities that claimed they would chase away union representatives on sight.
He had this piece of advice that sticks with me to this day: “Any business that started out without a union that ended up with a union earned that union.”
Amazon and Starbucks just discovered that my father’s advice applies to them as well. They earned the unions that they now have to deal with. The question is what they will do to keep those places contained, or if their continued treatment of their employees will result in more unions shops opening up under their brand names.
No comments:
Post a Comment