People aren’t opposed to unions because they think unions aren’t powerful, they’re opposed to unions because they’re powerful.
this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2026
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HMMMM, I wonder why police unions were allowed to exist, but all the others were decimated and neutered?
Wow. That's insane.
People parroting this are falling for the capitalist propaganda. Unions work so well that the ruling class has employed a mass campaign against unions. That isn't weakness.
We the working class keep our society running, we can shut our society down, and this scares the shit out of the ruling classes who while wealthy in assets, are weak in number.
Especially the police unions in Massachusetts, where they have a stranglehold on public works. Need to dig up a sidewalk to repair a water main? That’ll require a 2 person police detail for a minimum of 6 hours, and it’s all overtime pay.
Bet you can’t find civilian flagged anywhere in the state.
The only issue with Unions is a corporate system that has spent decades on a campaign of misinformation and vilification.
Never forget that its unions that gave you a five day work week, 8 hour days, and child labour laws.
Nothing is given by a corporation out of the kindness of their heart. And nothing makes them more gleeful than listening to people repeat their anti-union screed.
Unions aren't possible at my company.
1/3 speaks Spanish, 1/3 speaks some African dialect only they understand, and the other 1/3 speak english, and the entire culture aims eachother's hate at eachother.
This is America.
Ashley Furniture btw. Full on bodyslam under the bus.
This is how immigration is used to divide the workers.
Wish you the best.
As for Ashley furniture.... garbage and overpriced furniture. Never again.
Aren't they the new wayfair?
Wayfair is based in my city and notorious for treating their employees like absolute crap.
The countries I know of where employers have decent vacation etc and don't hate the employers, all have strong unions.
If unions doesn't work, then maybe you are doing it wrong.
AFAICT not really true for Austria (where I live), we get 5 weeks of vacation, yet I don't hear very much about unions and am not myself a member of one
These things are subject to cycles. Things are shit, people unionize, things become a bit less shitty, people stop unionizing, things start getting shitty again, rinse and repeat. Most of Europe is ending the part of the cycle where people thought they didn't a union anymore.
Unions are for states (Nations) which are run for pure profit growth governments that focus on corporate health over humans.
Countries which have this baked in at the Government level typically don't need Unions because the government is the union.
That is not, and never has been the case in the US.
And they only got there by striking and work actions because the nature of their positions gave them the leverage needed to be effective. The NYPD can't ship the factory to another country or bring in immigrant labour to do policing. If they aren't policing, property rights won't be enforced for businesses. Leverage. The police are the mechanism that break labour strikes and protests on behalf of capital. There is no such mechanism to break a police strike or protest, except the feds or the military which won't be used.
Most labour jobs do not have this kind of leverage because technology shrank the world and business has negotiated trade deal that give them the freedom to undermine worker leverage. Workers have no leverage to force capitulation. Labour has long lost any control they had to influence business practices and fight for themselves. Labour actions would have to be across the entire company to effectively force capitulation and that is next to impossible because labour ain't a community anymore thanks to anti-commie fear mongering. Every union is isolated, every location is separated, every company the corporate owns is independent from each other. Labour is too divided to stand united and united is the only way it effectively works. A group can't fight individual power with individual power, it must fight with collective power and for that, it needs to be united first.
Unions work depending on how 'in it together' you feel.
If you resent the people standing around doing nothing they start to fail. If you resent the people who do worse work than you for the same pay they start to fail. note that on an assembly line the above isn't possible in the first place - which is why they work great there. (Bus drivers and police are also not really measureable like that)
To me, this is an area where some unions could really make up some ground with conservatives and liberals. The instinct to rally around members can be detrimental to the overall goal of the union when that member has been proven to be a bad employee. I’ve never been in a union, so I’m guessing the stereotype of lazy union workers is probably overblown; but I’m sure there are examples that reinforce it.
I suspect that some of the 'lazy union worker' stereotype is workers following their contract and refusing to do non-contracted work, which is, of course, essential to maintaining the value of that contract. Pride in your own work/trade doesn't mean cleaning up after the other trades; professionalism in your own work doesn't mean unpaid overtime to fix someone else's fuckup.
In a capitalist world unions will always exist because there will never be any laws to protect the producer of capital (the worker). Imagine how much union dues could go back into the worker's pocket if they were protected by their government?
In a capitalist world unions will always exist because there will never be any laws to protect the producer of capital
so we're living in the real world here
BINGO!
Union doesn't work because there is so much competition in my country that anybody going out of line will be replaced
This is exactly what unions are meant to prevent, hire and fire.
That's exactly why a union will work.
I guess if you work at a company where they could replace 100% of the staff without losing money, then yeah, a union wouldn't work.
This is true, though police unions typically leverage the "fuck you all" nature of being a union, that Dems won't touch, and being police, that the GOP won't touch. So no one stops policies that give wacky amounts of leave.
That should be the attitude of all unions
Are you going to argue that police unions are a net good? They are the reason we have impenetrable qualifed immunity for even ridiculously egregious misconduct and any time a cop is shown to actually go over the absurdly strict line of what they can be held legally accountable for, the unions protect them at all costs. The reason criminal cops can just get hired at any other PD and their past is covered up/ignored is the police unions. I’m not saying they don’t do good things, but the bad they do is way too much to overlook.
With the legal authority police have, they need to be held to higher standards than the average person, instead the unions voraciously fight to ensure there are virtually zero standards for police conduct.
There's very clearly no indication that they are implying police unions are good, they're implying they are effective. Which is inarguable.
All unions should carry guns and exercise lethal force on a daily basis.
There is no need for violence, government fears organized populace. That is enough.