I confess to not really being up on my labor laws and the like, but I'm really curious about the idea of unionizing students. Aren't they customers, not employees? Or is it grad students who work as TAs and the like?
Almost every PhD student and many/most masters students work in some capacity for the university as a form of tuition scholarship. TAs, RAs, reception/administration, etc. Half the reason that universities have grad students is that they literally couldn't operate without the academic grunt work that they provide (lab work, test-correcting, etc. Some times all the way up to "writing half the damn paper.") To be honest, they seem like decent candidates for needing a union, since they're kinda inextricably tied to their institution (they can't just "get another job").
I live in a HEAVILY trade unioned country, so bear with me. Focus: Should a government have the right to force organized labour unions back to work? It would honestly depend on how important that industry is as to whether the country can function somewhat with their absence. For example, essential services (e.g. paramedics, most nurses, police) are not allowed by law to go on strike here, but often they still get away with strike action anyway. People get fired and then rehired right after the strike action. We have at least 4 major national strikes per year here - usually, it's the nurses*, police, private security guards, mine workers or just these dildos who then make everyone who is a member of one of their union affiliates go on strike and if you refuse, they send the thugs around and you get beaten up or killed or have your home burned to the ground (or some combination of those). The only winner here is the people who go on strike - they still get paid and do NO fucking work AND still cannot get fired if it's a legal strike (i.e. they have a court order allowing the union to strike, which happens when no agreement is reached). Both the general public and the companies get fucked in the end by strike action, which leads me to the next point... Alt Focus: Do strikes work? Are they an effective tool, or do they just sour the public's opinion of the strikers? I think from my post that the answer is obvious. When people here strike, it usually becomes like the Vancouver Canucks fans rioting last year. Roads, buildings, vehicles get trashed and yet NO-ONE is ever prosecuted. Last time the private security guards went on strike, they caused millions of Rands in damage in total over three different cities - so many shops got fucked up by strikers who then looted the shops. There is no such thing as a peaceful strike here - these asswipes are out to get their pound of pillage and maybe a pinch or ten of thievery, again at the cost of the general public, who get fucked in the ass with higher and higher taxes to pay for the damage. I think it should be legal for members of the public here to fuck up or kill people on strike who are causing damage or behaving violently towards others. A strike is supposed to be a PEACEFUL protest - no-one in this fucking country seems to understand that. Just because you are on strike does NOT give you permission to vandalise someone else's shop or set their car on fire - that person usually has NOTHING to do with your fucking strike. Assholes. Fuck unions, and fuck strikers.
Focus: The government forcing citizens to work against their will is called slavery. I'm against that so no. Alt-Focus Strikes don't seem to be very effective. Unions are also ineffective.
Focus: The government forcing citizens to work against their will is called slavery. I'm against that so no. It's more like conscription. It's not like they're forcing you back to work permanently, and you are being compensated somewhat fairly. I do agree with your conclusion, and the idea that there's something morally reprehensible about forcing someone to work though. I just think it's a different kind of thing than slavery. I think in times of war or extreme national disasters it might be appropriate. But transit workers shutting down? No. Sure that will disrupt the economy, but that's not the level I think we should get to before we start forcing people to work.
Really? It's not at all like conscription. They're not just pulling people randomly off the street and putting them to work. All they're doing is forcing current employees to uphold the agreement they made when they took the job in the first place. You think it's "morally reprehensible" for an employer to require its employees to uphold an agreement? Public workers are free to quit their jobs and go find work elsewhere instead of suffering under a no-strike clause, or not take the job in the first place if that condition seems unreasonable.
Breaching a contract doesn't necessarily mean you can be forced to perform work. It can mean various kinds of damages in a civil suit and the like, but it's not (or should not be) a crime. And currently, military aside, the only people I know who can be forced to work are convicts currently incarcerated. In some states. And even that has some controversy around it. Now, if you don't work according to a contract you agreed to, facing termination of employment is reasonable. The government using its police power to physically force you to perform labor is a form of slavery.
It's not slavery at all and you can be forced to work if those are the conditions to which you agreed when you took the job. If your contract or employment agreement states it is a crime to strike against your employer and you're aware of that fact, and then you later engage in a strike, there's really no surprise when you're considered a criminal by the state/city/gov't entity, is there? It would be wrong if that were to happen retroactively, but if you know it up front, you have nobody but yourself to blame. Work under the terms to which you agreed or go work somewhere else. The same is expected of the employer.
You cannot create a crime via contract. Maybe the NLRA has some kind of provision for that, i don't know it, but generally speaking private entities cannot contract in such a way as to cause the government to impose criminal sanctions for breach. Now, there's a difference when you're contracting with the government, which is how the military presumably is able to do it (plus various other constitutional provisions for a military, etc), but if you work for a private company and go on strike it's absolutely a form of slavery for the government to use its police power to literally force you to get up, get dressed, drive to work, and do your job. Forced labor is forced labor. Being fired, being sued, having your reputation tarnished, losing a professional license, being fined are not the same as actually, physically, being made to work.
The discussion is about public employees. I didn't make that clear in my post, but yes, it would only apply to gov't workers, and only to those who are already defined as performers of essential services.
That definitely broadens things up a bit, at least for me. Though I'm still pretty leery of the idea. I think part of it is how we define what services are essential enough to justify forced work. For example, is mere economic criticality enough or should it be imminent harm to someone? There's probably case law on this sort of thing that, while I'm a lawyer, I don't know because it's not my field. Anyway, I can see why cops, firemen and ER personnel (for a county hospital, say) might fall under this umbrella, but who else would? Not to mention, if cops, say, were able to be forced to work, who would force them if they refused? And if the theory is that cops prevent harm, does that mean only beat cops and SWAT can't strike, but after the fact investigators, administrative personnel, and meter maids can? To kind of loop back to the beginning of everything, I think strikes are both effective and annoying. They work, unions often get what they want. But as many have said, they are often at a point where they are about self-perpetuation of the union organization and not about the workers. And that is causing them to do things that are pretty harmful to their own industries.
This is it in a nutshell for me. I appreciate that unions exist, because the threat of unionization and it's incumbent costs are enough for most organizations to offer wages and benefits to their employees that are good enough to prevent any real push towards collective bargaining. That being said...I never want to be in a union, or have to deal with a union - but I don't want them to disappear either.
My girlfriend is in a union right now and has a love/hate relationship with it. From what I hear, her supervisors are such chickenshits when it comes to unionized employees that the inmates practically run the asylum. While it's nice to have management afraid of the people backing her, it sucks for her because there's absolutely no incentive to want to get ahead. She gets automatic raises that come out to about 12% a year. Great, right? Well, if you're the motivated ambitious type like her, it's galling. As long as she's in the union, she will never get a raise based on merit. Only time served. And eventually, she'll get capped out on what she can make, based on her position. She'll be capped out in about 4 years, I believe. At which point she needs to decide if she wants to go to the management track (non-Union) or stay in the union, have job security and a minimal cost of living increase. Guess which choice most people make? It almost seems like communism to me.