What makes you call them goons? Politicians, activists, all sorts of people go door knocking around the time of elections and referendums. What made this interaction so different that you call them goons sent there to intimidate you, not activists trying to attract your vote?
Union activists in the UK have a reputation of being bullies, and in some cases in the past they've used physical violence to try to get people to do things their way.
At the height of union fever back in the 80s it got so bad at one point that union activists dropped a concrete block on someone's head from a bridge because he was trying to get into work and they thought he should be striking (David Wilkie.)
I would not appreciate union goons showing up at my door and I'd have a similar reaction.
>At the height of union fever back in the 80s it got so bad at one point that union activists
Were subjected to police brutality while largely peacefully picketing. Meanwhile the army was called in to do their jobs...
Apparently there was evidence of "excessive violence by police officers, a false narrative from police exaggerating violence by miners, perjury by officers giving evidence to prosecute the arrested men, and an apparent cover-up of that perjury by senior officers."
According to the independent police complaints commission, anyway.
Note the similarities to current protests in the US and similar attempts to depict police as simply reacting to "violent blacks".
If you want to see the full gamut of vicious state inflicted violence you can either be the wrong race, or you can form a powerful enough union and go on strike.
And why are police never punished, because police unions. Unions in their modern form are granted special privileges by the government and use those privileges to extort society. There is nothing wrong with people joining groups, collective bargaining, etc -- the problem is that they are given special privileges by the state.
I don't even understand what you're arguing. Aren't corporations given special privileges by the state? Are you against that well? Can you clarify what you're arguing here?
If any group is being given special privileges by the state, it's the police...
Normally, a union is formed to balance the power of capitalists with the laborers they employ. In the case of law enforcement, there is no capital, nor is their labor being used to produce something of value. If anything, law enforcement defends the interests of capitalists, rather than being subject to abuse by capitalists.
Police unions have no solidarity with workers. They're groups that exist only to protect themselves, and they're happy to suppress strikes when it serves them. It's facile to consider them as part of labour unions.
Well, they did intend to drop the concrete block on his car, the block wasn't dropped by accident or through their gross negligence (in which case it would be manslaughter).
Murder does require intent, but it does not necessarily require an intent to kill that person; if you intend to "just" assault a person but they die, that's murder; if you intend to kill someone but kill someone else whom you did not intend to kill, that's murder.
"extreme indifference to human life" (again, intentional) is generally considered murder - e.g. if you'd intentionally burn down your neighbour's house without knowing or caring if anyone's inside, then if someone dies, it's considered murder. And UK, where the incident happened, has the concept of felony-murder where any death (even if accidental) that happens in the process of felony can be considered murder, because the felony that endangered people's lives was intentional.
> Subject to three exceptions (see Voluntary Manslaughter below) the crime of murder is committed, where a person:
> Of sound mind and discretion (i.e. sane);
> unlawfully kills (i.e. not self-defence or other justified killing);
> any reasonable creature (human being);
> in being (born alive and breathing through its own lungs - Rance v Mid-Downs Health Authority (1991) 1 All ER 801 and AG Ref No 3 of 1994 (1997) 3 All ER 936;
> under the Queen's Peace (not in war-time);
> with intent to kill or cause grievous bodily harm (GBH).
> Well, they did intend to drop the concrete block on his car, the block wasn't dropped by accident or through their gross negligence (in which case it would be manslaughter).
I'm comfortable assuming intent when someone discharges a kinetic weapon at a occupied vehicle. If the car was parked and they assumed it was unoccupied you might have a point.
I wouldn't have any trouble believing there were more attempted murders on the part of the anti-union side, or that this example happened differently than described, but what was described was clearly a (successful) attempt to kill someone.
For sure :). I understand that. I was gently teasing and pointing out that the language you used obscured (as there were no trebuchets, de orbiting asteroids, etc, involved) rather than clarifies.
“Shooting a gun”, or “shooting guns or beanbag rounds, etc”, or whatever is specific and relevant to the topic clarifies thought and improves our thought. The opposite approach occluded and damages our thought.
And since language is how we discuss politics, we need clear language in order to truthfully and honestly discuss politics.
:-)
To quote Orwell from Politics and the English Language:
“ Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers.”
“ Operators, or verbal false limbs. These save the trouble of picking out appropriate verbs and nouns, and at the same time pad each sentence with extra syllables which give it an appearance of symmetry. Characteristic phrases are: render inoperative, militate against, prove unacceptable, make contact with, be subject to, give rise to, give grounds for, have the effect of, play a leading part (role) in, make itself felt, take effect, exhibit a tendency to, serve the purpose of, etc. etc. The keynote is the elimination of simple verbs. Instead of being a single word, such as break, stop, spoil, mend, kill, a verb becomes a phrase, made up of a noun or adjective tacked on to some general-purposes verb such as prove, serve, form, play, render. In addition, the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference to the active, and noun constructions are used instead of gerunds (by examination of instead of by examining).”
>I was gently teasing and pointing out that the language you used obscured
I'd gently suggest it was quite the opposite; used to call attention.
"Understatement often leads to ... rhetorical constructs in which understatement is used to emphasize a point. It is a staple of humour in English-speaking cultures."
“Understatement is a form of speech or disclosure which contains an expression of lesser strength than what would be expected. It is the opposite of an embellishment.”
What’s the “expression of lesser strength” in this case? Confused.
Also, the bit you quoted continues with this as an example of the sort of rhetorical construct used in understatement:
“ For example, in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, an Army officer has just lost his leg. When asked how he feels, he looks down at his bloody stump and responds, "Stings a bit."”
That’s a quite different style from the “discharged a kinetic energy weapon” phrase which we are analyzing.
If the Army officer in the Monty Python skit had said, “hmm, there seems to have been an incision made through my epidermis, muscle, and bone, resulting in a reduction of my ambulatory capacity”, that might have been funny in other ways but I don’t think it would have been understatement.
Similarly, while I have no idea of the intent of the author of “kinetic energy weapon” phrase, I argue the language in question is not understatement.
>What’s the “expression of lesser strength” in this case? Confused
Well, that particular Wikipedia article is not a complete guide to the English language or the topic of understatement. Taken in isolation, it doesn't prove the existence of the sort of phrase in question.
I guess if this were in court, I'd lose my case because I didn't spend enough time researching.
> pointing out that the language you used obscured (as there were no trebuchets, de orbiting asteroids, etc, involved) rather than clarifies.
And I was pointing that dropping a large rock on someone is a attempt to kill them. I don't particularly care about it happening to be politically motivated.
[EDIT EDIT EDIT EDIT EF-IT: The other guy was technically correct. And there are lots of edits here. It’s the “Pale Fire” of HN comments.]
[EDIT: All this because I lost the thread that we were talking about when striking miners in the UK dropped a concrete block from a footbridge onto David Wilkies taxi whilst he was driving a strike-breaking miner to work, killing David. Hopefully future HN readers will find some value and pleasure in this thread, however.]
Ah. I didn’t realize a naturally occurring solid mass or aggregate of minerals was involved.
:):):)
And with regards to politics, part of Orwell’s point was that our language - how we choose to express things - is political, too. Regardless of our intent.
I wasn’t saying anything about the politics of anyone throwing a rock. And I’m not saying anything about your political beliefs.
I’m saying there’s a political power in how language is used, even if the subject under discussion isn’t expressly “political”.
Finally, to be a complete pedant, although “discharge” is often used as a synonym for “shoot”, I’ve never heard it used as a synonym for “throw” before.
So the correct way to use overly complex language to say “throwing a rock” would be “launching a kinetic energy weapon”. Or “releasing”.
Because unlike a gun, or bow, or whatever, in this case the “weapons system”, if it wouldn’t be a dehumanizing offense to call it such, is a persons arm.
Not a gun or bow or phased plasma rifle in the 40-watt range or whatever.
And when we throw things we don’t “discharge” them.
Which is actually a perfect example of Orwell’s point.
To try to call someone throwing something a “discharge” is to dehumanize them, because humans do not discharge things from their arms when they throw them.
We do, however, discharge snot from our noses when we sneeze ;)
We are talking about throwing a rock at a truck, right?
[EDIT EDIT: We are not. We are talking about pushing a concrete block off a bridge onto a car below. Which I suppose, pedantically, is to “discharge” since the stored potential kinetic energy of the block is what makes it a weapon, although “pushing” is still a human thing, but it doesn’t feel as dehumanizing as the “throwing” case for some reason. You were, technically, correct, which is the best kind of correct. Ah well, at least we got a lesson in the relationship between language and politics out of the whole thing.]
I didn’t just write a pedantic magnum opus on the wrong subject because I didn’t realize the other person was still discussing hypothetical asteroids being de-orbited to destroy planets, or hypothetical kinetical bombardment weapons aka “rods from god”, did I?
;)
[EDIT EDIT EDIT: You did not, but what you did is almost as embarrassing.]
Lord, I hope I’m not arguing with a 16-year old on the Internet. It’d be like arguing with my younger self :/
Love the way you've got to reach back literally 36 years to find one example of union violence. The reputation that British unions actually have is for getting shat on by bullying employers.
I think it was a pretty watershed moment in union relations in the UK. It's what a lot of people think of when they think of unions in the UK. They're pretty unpopular here. I was explaining why a British person might call them goons.
The Labour party have been ineffective for a decade and haven't been less popular since 1935. They're at their least popular when their leadership is more aligned to the unions. They were at the most recent popularity when they were furthest from the unions. They have just one representative now in Scotland, once a key area for unions.
OK. At a keyboard now so I'll flesh this out a bit.
In my experience people have a fairly balanced view of unions. There's pretty broad membership. In most places I've worked people join the union if there is one. Some unions where regarded negatively at some points in time but there's also general sympathy for some industrial action. It varies - blue collar workers tend to be more positive and white collar workers (especially in non-unionized fields) tend to be less.
But this guy seems to be implying that that's wide-ranging hostility to unions in the UK - which I've never been aware of. There's a plurality of views as you would expect. I've known plenty of tory-voting union members so it's not even a strict right/left split.
Condemning all unions because some stupid idiots dropped a concrete block one someone? Are you a Pinkerton?
As for the union "goons" well it's safe to assume that the people doorknocking are going to be the ones who haven't been driven away by random verbal and physical attacks.
Also at the time that the leader of the NUM, the striking union, was a self-avowed Stalinist.[1]
It's hard to overstate the extreme militancy of trade union leadership in the UK during the late 1970s. While Thatcher gets the blame for the disintegration of the labor movement, just as big an issue was that the union leadership no longer represented the opinions of its rank-and-file members.
The 1984 miners strike largely failed, because most of the local unions decided not to join. Scargill never put the strike to a membership wide ballot, because he knew it probably wouldn't have passed. Union leadership became more focused on pushing communist ideology than it was on representing its members.
this is part of history and one of the many reasons unions have failed in the UK. and they're still failing having lower number of members every single year.
Probably because of the same sentiment towards rewriting history that's going around now. Rather then learn and move forward lots of people seem to prefer going back in time and judging history through today's lens.
I used quotes because I was quoting my flatmate. She said their demeanor was not welcoming at all, and it felt very aggressive. I kind of wish I was there just so I could have told them what I thought, but spilled milk and what not.
Not saying this is the case, but it occurs to me... that would be a good way to sabotage the start of an union. Just send some aggressive people posing like members of the union.
It is, and there's evidence that has happened in the US.
The Pinkertons have been busting unions for over a century - they have pretty much explored the full range of options for worker suppression available to capital.
False flags can be a powerful tool (but becoming less so, as surveillance makes deniability harder).
Each location should have its own union, grouping them all up allows the needs of the few to get drowned out by the wants of the many, and elevates union leadership to a position of power over the workers as union reps have easier access to spread their messaging to employees across locations while normal employees can only organize within their location.
It also significantly decreases negotiating power. The point of unions is that someone small (an individual) has a hard time fairly negotiating with an organization (a company). Multiple small single-site unions would be just as ineffective negotiating with one large multi-site company.
>>> corpitized unions (anything union organisation bigger then 1 location of 1 employer) are goons.
> Each location should have its own union
You might as well go all the way, and condemn any union with more than one member.
The whole point of a union is to have an organization representing the workers that has enough power to negotiate with the employer as a relative equal. Your "single site" unions would be pointless in many cases. They'd have no power, because the employer's power to close and transfer work between sites would completely undermine the union with little disruption to the employer. Just look at how Walmart handled it's only successful unionization effort:
> The United Food and Commercial Workers is seeking an injunction against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to prevent the giant retailer from eliminating meat cutting departments at 180 stores with prepackaged meat....
> The decision to eliminate the meat cutters came just weeks after the butchers at the Jacksonville, Texas, Wal-Mart voted 7-3 to join the UFCW, the first successful union vote in the country at a Wal-Mart, a company well known for its opposition to organized labor.
> The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union has filed a claim with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that Walmart's (WMT) recent closing of five stores was done in retaliation for a history of labor activism at one of the locations, rather than because of the plumbing problems the retailer cited, The New York Times reports. The union is asking the government agency for an injunction that would require Walmart to rehire the 2,200 workers who were temporarily laid off or affected by the closings.
Your "single site" unions would be anything less than a sham to neuter unions was that if businesses were also forbidden from expanding beyond a single site, so each location would have to be a totally independent business. So instead of the Walmart corporation, you'd have 11,496 independent retail businesses with no common ownership or management structure.
> (...) and elevates union leadership to a position of power over the workers as union reps
I don't understand your point. Do you believe that this so called risk of an elected representative getting more power than the people that elected him is overall worse than the people having absolutely no power or representation?
I mean, can you explain why in your view leaving an employee SOL is more desirable than ensuring he has some say?
My view is that laws must keep unions from acting in bad faith before forced unions can be allowed to exist.
The primary positive effect of a union is its appeals process that keep employers from firing you on a whim.
Nothing about that positive effect requires the union be forced upon you, and if unions had to earn their dues they wouldn't act in bad faith as often.
> My view is that laws must keep unions from acting in bad faith before forced unions can be allowed to exist.
Who said anything about forced unions? We're talking about allowing unions to exist so that workers are free to join them if that happens to be their wish.
I mean, we're having a discussion on how corporations use their coercive power and influence over workers lives to degrade their lives to serve the interests of a few, and somehow you're expecting to shift the conversation to how bad unions are if we don't get a say whether we join one or not?
Unions can (and, if they're strong and it's not prohibited, often do) make collective agreements with the employer that mandate that the employer will not be permitted to employ non-union workers for these jobs. In a "closed union shop" you'd be required to join the union when you're hired, and if you would not join or if you would get kicked out of the union, the employer would have to fire you. This is pretty much 'forced unionisation'.
Another possible part of such collective agreements is that the employer will withhold union dues and hand them to the union no matter if the employee wants to join or not; to prevent the 'free rider' effect where some employees get the benefits of collective bargaining without paying for the representation (the appropriateness of this argument can be debated, but that's at least the stated intent).
In about half of USA ("right to work" states) such agreements are illegal, and in about half of USA unions can have such practices.
Yeah, stupid laws then. Considering whether someone is in a union or not before hiring them is discriminating and ought to be illegal. Thanks for the background.
How it works in my state is every grocery chain (except walmart) joined an employer union, called allied employers inc, and they negotiated a union contract with UFCW21. (yes, the employer's answer to unions, was to start their own union)
The effect is every grocery chain in the area has the same price-fixed wage they offer, price-fixed benefits, and etcra.
Don't like your wage at Fred Meyers? too bad, the safeway down the road is in the same union contract and thus the same wage.
Get kicked out because an unexpected financial/medical expense killed your ability to pay dues? too bad, none of the other chains in the area can hire you until you pay off the back dues, that you can't pay because you can't get a job.
Union is holding a vote to strike and pushing out misleading information when really the only provision the employer is objecting too is a new one that requires the employer pay the union dues for any unfilled position because the union just wants to make more money so they can vote themselves into a raise? too bad, you can only communicate with people on your shift at your location in your section of the store, the union however has mandated access to break rooms, as well a mailing and email broadcasts.
What people don't seem to get, is that sometimes, the power unions get from getting so large, can be used against the employees, not just the employer.
But you can't even bring that up without getting strawmanned as a republican union hater.
I haven't even gotten into programmer unions, with high dues and 9k initiation fees that get voted for because nobody who votes it will have to pay it as they are already in.
