(Reuters) -Wells Fargo employees at its Albuquerque, New Mexico branch voted to join a union on Wednesday, opening up a new frontier in the labor campaign against corporate America. Wells Fargo employees voted 5 to 3 in favor of joining the Communications Workers of America's Wells Fargo Workers United (WFWU), the union said. The vote stands "as a testament to workers in the financial services industry who know we need a collective voice to improve the industry we are integral to," said Sabrina Perez, a Senior Premier Banker at Wells Fargo's Albuquerque branch.
I hate it when people downvote questions that aren’t obviously sealioning.
I think they’re referring to how non-democratic workplaces are the norm in capitalist societies, i.e., the employees who form the vast majority of a business have little to no influence on its operations.
I remember back when someone first ran the idea by me. I initially was confused - that’s the way things are, after all! Business owners OWN a business, so they should get to call the shots.
Then I gave it some thought and I began to realize how weird that is. Why should one or a small group of people get to steer the lives of large groups of people with no say in their decisions? For example, if you have a 1000 employee business owned by one person, that single person can make decisions that can result in consequences that strongly affect all of those employees, e.g., reduced income or joblessness, life incompatible changes to work schedule, inhospitable work environments, etc., and face no repercussions from their employees. They’re just shit out of luck. It’s effectively a mini dictatorship or a part-time fiefdom. This is somewhat antithetical to the premises on which many countries are founded, but many are okay with it because of some combination of it having been the way things have been done and because it directly benefits them.
The response I often hear is “they can just get new jobs”. The issue is when businesses are run similarly, they tend to settle into comparable compensation and operation parameters.When the majority of your applicable job market is dominated by similar companies who have settled into similar benefits, having no reason to do otherwise and with many facing investor pressure NOT to do otherwise, moving from one company to the other is just like hopping from one abusive relationship to another: it seems like an improvement, but you’re ultimately still tied to yet another scumbag. You can get a new job but, without working to make significant change, you’re just repeating the previous cycle.
In this situation, as most businesses are set up to specifically prevent employees from being able to make substantive change to the businesses that employ them, unionization provides a means by which employees can gain sufficient influence to make those changes.
This comprises part of what I would’ve answered so I’ll just add a couple of points.
That decisions made by the exec layers in private corporations extend far beyond their employees via externalities. For example DuPont’s actions that lead to polluting everyone’s blood with PFOA whether or not they had any relationship with DuPont, business or otherwise. Or Norfolk Soithern’s decisions that led to the reduction of home values in East Palestine following the freight train derailment earlier this year. Or the decisions made by Exxon’s execs to misinform the public about climate change resulting in climate action delayed by decades and thus all of us suffering the current and future destruction and death. We have to live with all of the decisions made in the private sector that affect us and voting with our wallets clearly isn’t an effective way to influence them.
The other is the ability for the same narrow class of people to decide what politicians to buy and what laws to have tbem write for their own benefit. And if this sounds a bit disconnected from unionization, consider where the money to do this comes from, and where would a lot of that money go in a strongly unionized corporation. The money goes into the workers pockets and there’s a lot less left to buy politicians with. And that directly amplifies the votes of the many individual voters in the political democratic sphere. Of course there’s also the amplification factor that is the higher disposable income in the workers pockets that allows for lobbying of their own. And then there’s the amplification factor that is the unions themselves which can lobby politicians on behalf of their members.
Democratic workplaces such as worker coops are likely even better than unionization at improving on all of these points but that model is less familiar to people and it can’t be applied to established corporations via unilateral employee action.
So to answer the question of what actual democracy means to me, think about the above and picture democraticy as a pie chart. One part corresponds to decisions affected by your political vote, the other - decisions that aren’t. Currently the part that you have no say in is significantly larger than the other. In an actual democracy as I have it in my mind, the proportions would be reversed. The 80/20 would have the 80% of the decisions made in the country by people who represent me or my class. An actual democracy in economic speak is one where the balance of power between capital and labor is heavily tilted towards labor, because labor comprises the vast majority of people in the country. Here labor means anyone who has to work to earn a living instead of living off capital. Therefore it includes anyone from the burger flipper through middle management to the theoretical physics researcher.
I do think even in a worker coop there would be benefits to maintaining a labor union in parallel to that, even if it’s all the same people, since it separates goals and efforts between the labor and the advocacy for the workers. Also if the union spans multiple companies
I hate it when people downvote questions that aren’t obviously sealioning.
I think they’re referring to how non-democratic workplaces are the norm in capitalist societies, i.e., the employees who form the vast majority of a business have little to no influence on its operations.
I remember back when someone first ran the idea by me. I initially was confused - that’s the way things are, after all! Business owners OWN a business, so they should get to call the shots.
Then I gave it some thought and I began to realize how weird that is. Why should one or a small group of people get to steer the lives of large groups of people with no say in their decisions? For example, if you have a 1000 employee business owned by one person, that single person can make decisions that can result in consequences that strongly affect all of those employees, e.g., reduced income or joblessness, life incompatible changes to work schedule, inhospitable work environments, etc., and face no repercussions from their employees. They’re just shit out of luck. It’s effectively a mini dictatorship or a part-time fiefdom. This is somewhat antithetical to the premises on which many countries are founded, but many are okay with it because of some combination of it having been the way things have been done and because it directly benefits them.
The response I often hear is “they can just get new jobs”. The issue is when businesses are run similarly, they tend to settle into comparable compensation and operation parameters.When the majority of your applicable job market is dominated by similar companies who have settled into similar benefits, having no reason to do otherwise and with many facing investor pressure NOT to do otherwise, moving from one company to the other is just like hopping from one abusive relationship to another: it seems like an improvement, but you’re ultimately still tied to yet another scumbag. You can get a new job but, without working to make significant change, you’re just repeating the previous cycle.
In this situation, as most businesses are set up to specifically prevent employees from being able to make substantive change to the businesses that employ them, unionization provides a means by which employees can gain sufficient influence to make those changes.
This comprises part of what I would’ve answered so I’ll just add a couple of points.
That decisions made by the exec layers in private corporations extend far beyond their employees via externalities. For example DuPont’s actions that lead to polluting everyone’s blood with PFOA whether or not they had any relationship with DuPont, business or otherwise. Or Norfolk Soithern’s decisions that led to the reduction of home values in East Palestine following the freight train derailment earlier this year. Or the decisions made by Exxon’s execs to misinform the public about climate change resulting in climate action delayed by decades and thus all of us suffering the current and future destruction and death. We have to live with all of the decisions made in the private sector that affect us and voting with our wallets clearly isn’t an effective way to influence them.
The other is the ability for the same narrow class of people to decide what politicians to buy and what laws to have tbem write for their own benefit. And if this sounds a bit disconnected from unionization, consider where the money to do this comes from, and where would a lot of that money go in a strongly unionized corporation. The money goes into the workers pockets and there’s a lot less left to buy politicians with. And that directly amplifies the votes of the many individual voters in the political democratic sphere. Of course there’s also the amplification factor that is the higher disposable income in the workers pockets that allows for lobbying of their own. And then there’s the amplification factor that is the unions themselves which can lobby politicians on behalf of their members.
Democratic workplaces such as worker coops are likely even better than unionization at improving on all of these points but that model is less familiar to people and it can’t be applied to established corporations via unilateral employee action.
So to answer the question of what actual democracy means to me, think about the above and picture democraticy as a pie chart. One part corresponds to decisions affected by your political vote, the other - decisions that aren’t. Currently the part that you have no say in is significantly larger than the other. In an actual democracy as I have it in my mind, the proportions would be reversed. The 80/20 would have the 80% of the decisions made in the country by people who represent me or my class. An actual democracy in economic speak is one where the balance of power between capital and labor is heavily tilted towards labor, because labor comprises the vast majority of people in the country. Here labor means anyone who has to work to earn a living instead of living off capital. Therefore it includes anyone from the burger flipper through middle management to the theoretical physics researcher.
I hope this makes sense. 🥹
Oooh, great additions!
I do think even in a worker coop there would be benefits to maintaining a labor union in parallel to that, even if it’s all the same people, since it separates goals and efforts between the labor and the advocacy for the workers. Also if the union spans multiple companies
Haven’t thought about that but you might be right.