Strikes
One cost of capitalism
In Canada the Teamsters are in a fight with the railway companies.
My grandfather was an engineer running steam locomotives. He detested CPR - a railway company. My friend's dad was a mechanic for the CPR. He detested CPR too.
I don't know the details from that time but I have an impression that CPR was a pretty abusive employer.
Both were in unions that protected them. As a left thinking person I've always been theoretically on the side of unions. I think our society is more benign for everyone because of the presence of unions. Somebody has to resist the unbridled drives of capitalism.
On the other hand, all my personal experiences of unions were negative. Dad was a personnel manager for major construction projects and he hated unions - in particular the pipefitters. Not surprising since he was an adversary.
My Mom was in a union for decades and paid into a pension fund. The fund went broke so she got no benefits. She no longer had to pay into the fund. But the union raised the dues so she was paying the same as before but getting no benefits.
When I graduated from commercial printing school I went to the union to apply as an apprentice. The literally laughed when I told them I had no relatives in the union. I was less than impressed.
The current rail dispute is mostly about working conditions. A railway is a very complex thing to run and the companies want the freedom to deploy their workers as seems most efficient for the operation. What could possibly go wrong?
The workers know that that means the companies will jerk them around without respect for family or safety and the companies involved have a long history of doing just that.
And the union involved is the Teamsters! They are renowned for corruption in my memory.
So they have their fight and threaten supply chains that we all depend on and make it hard for thousands of commuters to even get to work.
Long ago the National Lampoon ran a cover that showed a dog looking askance at the gun pointed at his head and the headline was Buy This Magazine or We'll Shoot This Dog.
Strikes are a bit like that with society being the dog and the people having the dispute are like the person holding the gun.
Of course the government has imposed binding arbitration and forced the whole system back to work. This raises the hairy question - why didn't they do that in the first place? If it's possible to come to a rational solution then why do the disruption of a strike?
Capitalists say that imposed settlements short-circuit the market process and therefore always do more harm than good because the market is always right.
One can only say; REALLY?????!
One of the great advantages of a negotiated settlement is that both parties eventually agree to a set of rules and conditions that govern a workplace. Both sides might have wished for a better outcome but they shook on it and they can live with the settlement made and carry on.
An imposed settlement leaves unsettled tensions all around.
But hey - we are always going to have problems when capitalists and unions run railways ?
What do you think?
I present regular philosophy discussions in a virtual reality called Second Life.
I set a topic and people come as avatars and sit around a virtual table to discuss it.
Each week I write a short essay to set the topic.
I show a selection of them here.