What?

One would expect an industrial workers union to have industrial workers in the union. Given they pay a % of their paychecks you'd also expect that industrial workers are to be the centre focus. Except when you go to their website it's countless photos of activist kids protesting things completely unrelated to industrial workers unionisation. I dont think I saw a single photo of anything remotely industrial but many photos of soft handed people holding signs in a central city park.

When I was in a trade union the people running it werent kids out of college. It was wives of trades or retired tradies. The focus wasnt socialism, wasnt leftism, wasnt isreal Palestine. It was certifications, standard pay rates and working conditions.

The whole thing is a scam. Go through their site they have like 5 articles registering the same small book stores and cafes. My local branch is a fucking joke not a single actual thing about unions they just want people to do their communist revolution larp.

IWW is the greatest. I have their sticker in my front door window.

I can point to good studies and government modelling too that find immigration reduces wages, it's a pointless internet battle..

The key difference between all the research is in the subgroups of workers compared and a few issues trying to study it:

• Immigrants choose where to go, often to booming places, which can mask wage effects.

• Natives and firms adjust (people move, capital flows in, jobs get reorganised), which dilutes local comparisons.

• National-level studies avoid that problem but depend on modelling assumptions, such as how substitutable workers are.

This prompts the debate of skilled migrants vs unskilled, which leads to looking at how wages reduce or stagnate for professionals when there are high rates of skilled immigration aaaand we're back at square one

Try to get the scabs to join the union too. If a boss is hiring immigrants as scabs, they’re being super exploitative and really need to be taken down a few notches. It’s also a stupid move because now they are going to catch flak from every direction.
In fact the local union is going to negotiations now to rase wages for the lower pay jobs, many of which are staffed by immigrants.

Your capitalist bait is not very good.

Right, just like everyone kept buying more expensive tools and supplies at Mom & Pop brick and mortar shops when Amazon et al showed up, right?

Oh those evil bosses.

Often times it's your boss' boss' boss.

Your expectation of reality does not align with reality, when half the laborers on jobsites are Indians (specificly Indians, not a lot of other foreigners were around) instead of regular young people (this includes second gen Indians raised here) like it used to be and often take the entry level position, it's clear what happened, it's why a lot of social programs here in Canada are clearing up and why my younger brother and sister were able to finally get job this year. You can cry racism all you want but it's obvious that when you import half a million in labor a year, shits gonna brake.

I cry racism? Sir, I think thee protests too much.

I'm refering more to the general leftists that can't interpret nuance, not you specificly, but yah I guess I didn't really specify that.

True!

Time is a flat circle. History repeats and rhymes because the constant is humanity.

This isn't quite how it works. Generally in medium to large businesses - meaning at least a billion a year in annual revenue - oftentimes how it works is a given business unit (BU) will be given a budget. This is usually based on analysis and projections based on the previous fiscal years as well as projections on growth goals.

The VP of that BU will need to spread that budget across their unit as best they can. This will include everything from promotions to new hires. Keep in mind that it could cost a business $160 an hour to hire one full time employee who only makes $50 an hour, all things depending. In many roles, it can take a year or more to get a new hire up to speed in their new role. At $160 an hour, that's $332,800 against your budget and that first year will not recoup 100% of the potential output of that new hire who will likely not be putting out their fullest until around a year or more, so you're looking at what more or less accounts to over a quarter of a million just to train a new employee for one year so they can start putting out the same level of work as someone of their level should be.

Then consider if you're an international company. The business I work for for example is in 60 different countries. All of those countries have different regulatory practices that require a lot out of the HR business unit(s). Some countries have regulatory requirements that force the business to utilize software that can account for those regulations that cost millions annually and aren't even very good, but there isn't a good alternative, so it's either pay that or fall out of compliance, which is not really a viable strategy.

If you have 100 employees in your unit and you want to give them all a 3% annual raise but you're not given a larger budget unless you grow that side of the business (in other words, you self fund), then where are you getting that revenue stream from?

In many cases you have to set up projects yourself from the top-down, such as requesting from your directors that they begin brainstorming ways to generate revenue. This could be through efficiencies, for example. If you were a director in HR for example, maybe you want to take a look at your team's processes and see what could be automated. That project alone requires expertise, and those kinds of analysts aren't cheap. Then you need engineers to perform the automation, which are also not cheap, and you need a surefire return on investment there because the end goal might be to free up 25% of your team's labor through automation of their current processes, but you may not see a return on investment for 2 years, then by the third year the return isn't even enough to hire an additional 3 people, let alone give an entire team of 100 a 3% raise.

So you might argue then, "well why can't the business just give that BU a larger budget?" And there are a few answers. I won't list them all here, but some examples would be is there something your team could be doing to increase their value to warrant taking budget from elsewhere to funnel into your team? Or every year is it just expected that 3% of the budget go into the employees without an ounce of those employees providing any additional value? To seriously simplify, if the business makes $100 and they pay $50 to their employees and $30 to their shareholders and $20 is reinvested in the company, why should the business pay the employees 60%? HOW do they pay them 60%? They have to take it from the shareholders or the reinvestment, and take too much from the reinvestment and your competition will put you out of business, and take too much from the shareholders and they will invest with your competitors - see the problem?

Many employees don't understand that they have to increase their perceived value to warrant more, and few do.

This is the logic of fascism. It happened in colonialist empires everywhere.

There are examples in the US, South Africa, and Rhodesia where white workers unions organized to prevent black slave labor from taking their jobs.

This is also where a lot of the anti-Chinese racism came from because Chinese immigrants were replacing higher paying white rail-worker jobs. It was a point of conflict between the American white working class and the American bourgeoisie who would rather employ Chinese worker they could pay inhumanely low wages to (although the reason why they were so exploitable was because of racism).

It's revisionist to say that this was entirely imposed upon workers from above. White workers were given the easier choice to improve conditions somewhat for themselves without risking much by punching down on colonized workers. In every scenario where this has happened in history, the majority of the racially privileged working class have always sided with colonialism against the colonized working class (it is a statistical law) because it was the safest and easiest way to guarantee some economic security.

Yes, and Mom & Pop are also exploiting their own children for unpaid child labor.

The constant is imperialism and class. We have technically been without both for most of the time modern homo sapiens have been around.

Bruh, it's never the scabs who are the real problem.

A nation that enslaves another forges its own chains.

The reason why Americans don't do anything. The United States is the modern English empire.

I have worked as an exec in a division of a multi billion dollar business, and in many a startup.

Often times it's your boss' boss' boss.

The answer is propaganda, which is seen in your first sentence. It is very persuasive and it even worked on you. Everything else you said is spot on.

You can point out a couple of flawed studies against a mountain of contrary evidence.

https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/116727/documents/HHRG-118-JU01-20240111-SD013.pdf

Intro

Today, the United States is home to the largest immigrant population in the world. Even though immigrants
assimilate faster in the United States compared to developed European nations, immigration policy has become a highly contentious issue in America. While much of the debate centers on cultural issues, the economic effects of immigration are clear: Economic analysis finds little support for the view that inflows of foreign labor have reduced jobs or Americans’ wages. Economic theory predictions and the bulk of academic research confirms that wages are unaffected by immigration over the long-term and that the economic effects of immigration are mostly positive for
natives and for the overall economy.

Key points

While some policymakers have blamed immigration for slowing U.S. wage growth since the 1970s, most
academic research finds little long run effect on Americans’ wages.

The available evidence suggests that immigration leads to more innovation, a better educated workforce,
greater occupational specialization, better matching of skills with jobs, and higher overall economic
productivity.

Immigration also has a net positive effect on combined federal, state, and local budgets. But not all taxpayers
benefit equally. In regions with large populations of less educated, low-income immigrants, native-born
residents bear significant net costs due to immigrants’ use of public services, especially education.

I read all of this. Thanks for writing it all up from your experience.

That said...geeze if it's so awfully expensive to take such a huge risk on employees...can I just get affordable and adequate education so I can do my own thing instead of being part of a "business unit" forever trying to increase my Sisyphian "perceived value" to infinite heights until I expire?

That'd be cool. Because the business unit "starved rats eating each other in a cage for budget money thing" sounds pretty awful.

I've never been paid $50 an hour for anything though. (I know, not with that attitude, right? Lol) Maybe it starts to feel worth it at that point?

Maybe I'm just naive and behind though. I still can't understand why people accept "salary" to basically be owned by their boss/corpo, especially in the U.S.

Can be called in any time and never get overtime? That very idea sounds like a way to sidestep labor rights to me.

I've heard of fabled lands far away where the relationship is far less antagonistic and employers value and take care of their employees who, in turn, genuinely enjoy striving for their workplace's success. . .but here? Ha. Maybe in those fun days where joining a tech giant made you 250k a year or something.

I love the idea of them, but do they actually wield much power anymore? I've heard of people trying to contact chapters and barely getting any responses, that kinda thing.

The state of unions is saddening. Would be cool if IWW is coming back, or has already come back in force.

Led to the Chinese exclusion acts. Those are a fun (not fun) tidbit of U.S. history.

It's pretty disgusting you'd try to use this misleading appeal to authority, attempting to frame this as some reputable government finding when it's only just a third party document mirrored by the congress website. Let's dive into the obvious problems here.

• Unknown author and funding: No named author, no disclosure, no sign of peer review.

• Advocacy-linked sources: Key claims cite Cato, NFAP (Stuart Anderson) and the Partnership for a New American Economy. All are policy advocacy organisations.

• It's 9 pages with no original analysis beyond a couple of charts. Its conclusions depend on a handful of studies chosen by the author.

• Old data: It's a 2016 brief using 2009-2013 figures, so it misses the post-2020 immigration surge, post-pandemic labour markets and recent fiscal studies.

• "Economists generally agree": The only support is a 2013 IGM expert poll in a footnote.

• Contested findings downplayed: Borjas's estimate that 1980-2000 immigration cut wages about 3% is footnoted, then treated as an outlier.

• Static framing: It doesn't model scenarios, uncertainty ranges or sensitivity to assumptions.

• The brief's chain of reasoning is that immigration adds labour supply, wages dip, firms invest more, capital per worker recovers, and so wages recover. Except no evidence is presented for wage recovery. The theory needs capital per worker to hold. Wages also depend on labour's share of income, which the brief admits has fallen since 2000. It dismisses that in a footnote as "technology and globalisation"

• The two studies in Table 2 are simulations that build in the investment response and imperfect substitutability between immigrants and natives. The roughly +0.5 percentage point result for native wages depends partly on those assumptions, so it is not an observed wage change.

I could go on but the fact you're trying to claim this very misleading report produced by lobbyists is reputable is insane. If anything, it strongly supports immigration causing immediate dip in wages. They have a theoretical simulated scenario to suggest wages might improve afterwards.

It is a peer reviewed non-partisan Congressional report about the country with the most immigrants in the world. Clearly you are much smarter than these experts.

Edit: Just a few more sources all saying the exact same thing. Feel free to do your arm chair AI dissection.

https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/blog/immigrants-do-not-take-americans-jobs-wages/

https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU01/20251217/118767/HHRG-119-JU01-20251217-SD001-U1.pdf

https://www.cato.org/blog/immigrants-dont-lower-blue-collar-american-wages

https://immigrationlab.org/2017/08/31/fact-check-immigration-harm-american-workers/

https://theconversation.com/nobel-winner-david-card-shows-immigrants-dont-reduce-the-wages-of-native-born-workers-169768

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/what-immigration-means-for-u-s-employment-and-wages/

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8612123/

https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/the-labour-market-effects-of-immigration/

https://timesofsandiego.com/politics/2016/09/21/influential-report-finds-immigrants-dont-lower-wages-or-steal-jobs/

https://ucalgary.ca/news/nobel-winner-david-card-shows-immigrants-dont-reduce-wages-native-born-workers

With ALL key sources being policy advocates?

Stop pretending and go shovel your AI slop somewhere else.

Thanks

Want higher wages? Support legislation to enact a global minimum wage and/or legalize unionization. Blaming individual bosses is futile.

Oh cry me a river. Large companies are profitable enough, and it does not take one year to get an employee up to speed. The fact that the BU unit's budget is so limited is because the money is flowing to the investors, that's all. And that's your boss' boss' boss.

Alright, I appreciate that instead of union activity, they're into political activity. When you said 'soft handed', did you mean those who do no work need not have union, or those employed in clerical work do not deserve union? A sickle/hammer chauvinism over keyboard?

Ya, that's the point - for a particular designation, the wage will have downward pressure, but for workers as whole the distribution of wages gets an upward pressure.

Why on earth would you think I'm saying those who do no work dont need a union or clerical work doesnt deserve a union. Seems like you're intentionally missing the point.

The first part is obvious and proven, but the second part is hotly contested

Just wanted to know what you meant by 'soft handed' and why you brought that up?

Oh you seem overly confident about studies confirming your beliefs and doubtful on those that do not

People who work with their hands vs people who dont.

Given that their whole union is based on industrial workers its pretty weird for them to not be industrial workers or adjacent in anyway. Im pretty sure this is a scam.

I feel like the law is the problem if a system allows for the exploitation of the desperation of migrants and remove any of their worker protections to make this possible.

People are trying to maximize currency because this is how we measure success nowadays (the same metric which says Pablo Escober nr1, good job.) What's should a small business owner do? Not hire the cheapest LEGAL avaible worker?

Or are we blaming the "bosses" who has enough money to lobby only?
Or are we blaming the system (too abstract to act on)?

So, if it were called something like 'All Workers Union', it's alright?

Yea assuming they actually pursued workers rights and benefits. I have two problems with them. They are larping as an industrial union and they dont do any worker advocacy. Its just a political org using unions as a front.

I have seen my local chapter advertising. Guess where they are advertising, right in the cbd as if any fucking industrial workers are in the cbd. Ive driven through the industrial areas(only 15mins drive away) not a single poster. It should be the uni student and cafe worker union.

Part A is easy to show and has obvious effect

Part B is hard to prove, if true, and might only be true in specific contexts

Denying part A is denying basic reality

The law is, first and foremost, a way to keep shitty people at bay. It's still people who are the problem, but since we can't just agree to all be kind to each other, we have to invent ways to either sanction or use violence (note: that includes police) against those who make things worse for everyone else. We need laws, but they are incomplete solutions, not source of the problem. And sometimes they can be weaponized exactly by the individuals we'd rather put the law against.

The blame here is on all bosses who can afford to pay their workers decent wages, but don't. And - personal opinion incoming - if your small business can't employ people for decent wages, it's already financially unsustainable, you just put it on the shoulder of your workers and add insult to injury by trying to also take something for yourself. Should the state do more to support small businesses, to make sure they can pay good wages and be sustainable at the same time? Yes. Is being a small business an excuse to abuse workers? No.

That's why there are things like minimum wages. Businesses must respond to their workers.

I capitalized LEGAL in my comment because if it's legal, it's legal (I'm not condoning it since slavery was legal once).

Culture wants profits. You are a sucker if you don't it. You are evil if you do it. I have a problem with this spreading culture and its laws about work. I'm from a developing country (not residing there though) and all the "free help, sharing is caring etc" stuff is gone now. It's all money.

Are we living in the same reality where we (society) teach 18 years old students how to distill people into numbers so you can apply data science to it (i.e. business school)? It's paid by public tax, completely seen as prestigious? Culture demands returns!

And interested people drive the culture in this direction. They separate us, shove us algorithms and influence public opinion to make this insanity look normal.

It is culture, sure. The culture manufactured to serve the interest of the few. But us talking here is culture, too. And that's why we share opinions in the first place. We can drive the culture against those who use it to exploit us.

That's fair, yeah, I understand. Thanks for the learning journey :)

I work high up in large business, so I know how it works.

Let's say you're correct, so what? Let's say I have $10,000 to invest. I notice that the electronics sector is a good place to invest based upon recent trends, so I want to invest there. I do some research and conclude I will either invest in Apple, or Samsung.

If I choose Apple and they give me a 5% return on investment but Samsung gives me 8%, I will invest with Samsung. My money isn't a charity, it's an investment.

I am relying on the company to do the best job that they can to provide me with a return on my investment because I would actually LOSE money on my investment, and if I keep losing money, that would be quite irrational of me to keep investing, wouldn't it?

And if Samsung ends up getting 70% of the investment and Apple only 30%, Apple is going to go out of business, and it should. This would fundamentally mean that Samsung is the superior business in that sector and Apple is doing so poorly that it should not exist.

Investors by the way do not obtain a fixed percentage of profit from a company's income statement. What they receive depends on a myriad of things like earnings through dividends, equity appreciation, interest rates, type of investments, etc.

Publicly traded companies have benefits over private. They for instance, can produce large amounts of money through selling stock or bond issuing, and shareholders being able to easily buy/sell shares gives good data on company value. Private businesses on the other hand often have more limit on raising funds, so it can make it very challenging, if not impossible, for private companies in some sectors to compete with publicly traded ones. Keep in mind it's also more complicated than that.

I can give you an example from my business life as well. About 5 years ago a mid-market business (let's just say around 5 billion in annual revenue) was bought by a private equity firm. The reason was the business was failing. If not for private equity, the business likely would have died.

Through private equity and their investor base, the business is still afloat and doing even better. Private equity was able to invest in the business to make it more profitable, but they don't want to do that with nothing to gain. The goal in that investment is they make enough of a return in the future that they made a profit off the endeavor. It's a risk - the firm could have invested billions only to see nothing but a loss. Do that too often and the entire firm would fail and thus, close.

A lot of terminations were done too, but new people were also brought in and a lot of changes were made.

But without giving to that investment, the business would have failed and 100% of its employees would have been without a job. This business currently employs over 10,000 people, mind you.

I've actually fought my entire life against the "game" of business. I don't like the lingo, I don't like the corporate nonsense, and I don't like how business in general is conducted. I mostly work by myself. I've simply learned some skills that let me produce value for businesses so they want to give me a paycheck, but even then it's always an ongoing challenge because anyone can be removed from a role at any time and for any reason.