"I am alright jack." the slogan of British unionism turned the UK into the sick man of Europe. It was Margaret Thatcher who confronted the unions and turned Britain around.a union job is a pain in the arse , i know a few State Organisers as i have had to come up against them... On the one hand they have to deal with usually a panic/manic driven union member for fear of losing their job(90% union members know they have f$%%ed up and they trying to get out of it) calling them at all hours of the day...and then they have to deal with Mgt...most union reps who work full time at it are Lawyers who want to run for parliment for Labor for eg ...unions make people lazy for sure and it promotes offshore manufacturing as costs go up. Unions were useful in help setting a certain Std of living many years ago but now are an obstacle to progress. Having said all of that, there are many useless managers who treat people like Sh$% and they deserve what they get and sometimes a Union is needed to correct/sack such poor creatures. lol...
I wonder why unions work in German but in the UK & US they don't seem to work that well. It could be the culture of work in these countries are different. It could be that the heavy machinery that Germany exports is really a high skill profession helped by unions but low skill industries don't really create any value to anyone.
I know here in the US most of the industries that have unions usually end up badly except for the transport & telecom unions. The Teamsters union has not destroyed their companies. Public unions never work out since politicians who give them free stuff aren't around to watch the pension ponzi schemes collapse see for example Cook County in Illinois. Even FDR in the 1930s & 1940s specifically stated that public unions would destroy the finances of local governments.
Yeah. That makes sense. I think US used to have that culture before the Reagan Revolution as well. I think the rise of LBOs in the late 1970s & 1980s helped to end that culture as well. All assets became financialized.germany has a strong culture that you train for a job and that becomes your career, even at menial levels. That doesn’t exist in the US. No one joins an Amazon warehouse expecting to work there for life. In Germany, you would be an apprentice for 2 years before getting that role.