The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Jeff Davis:

Tor @ 57: From what I can tell, UFCW has spent orders of magnitude more money trying to organize Wal-Mart, than they have on migrant farm workers.

I don't know what the difference in expenditure is, but I do know that the UFCW successfully organized a group of migrant farm workers for the first time here in British Columbia last summer, not to mention successful drives at several other farms across the country -- after a years-long, nationwide campaign that involved (among other things) going to the Supreme Court of Canada to overturn laws that prevented farm workers from organizing. So even if their efforts in that area aren't as good as they could be, at least they're seeing some results.

Your thoughts on how a union might approach organizing in right-to-work states are interesting. Certainly, the services you describe are services that unions ought to be providing anyway. I worry, though, that such an approach would create second-class employees and provide an easy way for employers to undermine organizing efforts by playing one group of workers against another, or bringing in a second union that's more sympathetic to the employer (and consequently ends up doing less for the workers).

Also, I'm still not seeing the connection between your criticisms of how unions currently operate and the idea that we don't need unions anymore. I understand that you think existing mainstream unions haven't lived up to their promises, but I don't see how this demonstrates that the idea of the union has outlived its usefulness.

Tor, I think you're conflating two different arguments, and I'd like to tease them apart.

On the one hand, you're saying that mainstream unions have generally not succeeded in making themselves seem relevant to workers in recent years. I mostly agree with this. There are all sorts of problems with the mainstream labor unions, and in many cases, like the internal conflicts you mentioned, they brought those problems upon themselves. (I suspect you underestimate the effect of "outside pressures," though. Right-to-work laws, for example, are part of a deliberate attempt to undermine organized labor under the guise of preserving the worker's freedom of choice.)

On the other hand, you also seem to be saying (mainly in #45, but by implication in several other comments) that there isn't really a need for unions anymore, since things are no longer as horrible for workers as they were in the bad old days. Am I misreading you? Because I think you're deeply wrong on this point. I linked to a couple of articles about migrant workers who pretty obviously need someone to stand up for their rights. I mentioned Wal-Mart; a quick glance at the relevant Wikipedia article shows all sorts of abuses. Those are just two examples where a good union would make a big difference. And that's not even getting into the ancillary benefits of unions (like civic participation), which were the focus of the original post.

Tor @ 49 and elsewhere:

I'm not sure where you get the idea that unions are irrelevant. Wages have been stagnant since the 1970s, as ajay pointed out, and there are still plenty of companies where workers are treated terribly -- from giant corporations like Wal-Mart to small businesses like the local coffee shop that illegally fires an employee and withholds the wages it owes her. And how about all the temporary foreign workers who are brought to North America under false pretenses, underpaid, deported for trying to unionize, and treated like virtual slaves? A few companies that treat their employees well, and a few substantial victories for organized labor, don't mean that unions are somehow no longer needed.

You write that companies "get the unions they deserve." Isn't that precisely what makes unions relevant: the fact that far too many companies still don't treat their employees with respect?

You write that "Good employers provide all the services a union does, without cost." But if workers don't organize themselves to make their employer provide those services, what incentive does the employer have to provide them, and how do the employees ensure that those services aren't taken away when times get tough?

If there are other tactics, like lobbying for shareholder motions, that are more effective than traditional labor tactics, that's not an argument against unions. It's an argument that unions should adopt those tactics. A union is just a group of workers who have organized themselves; there's nothing that says they have to restrict their activities to strikes and contract negotiations (and to the extent that labor laws impose such restrictions, the laws are bad and should be changed).

David Harmon @ 32: "In fact, that would turn the corporation into a cooperative!"

Indeed it would. Maybe we should add Robert Owen to abi's list of 19th-century philanthropists...?

Scott @ 18: Having power is really, not actually, sufficient cause for oppression. "Power corrupts" is a vast simplification. [...] The point is, one person or group, having power over another person or group is not fundamentally adversarial.

I don't think I'm saying that power corrupts, exactly (although I believe it does, more often than not). I agree that a power imbalance does not in itself amount to oppression. And plenty of employers are decent people who try to treat their employees fairly. But past a certain point, employers' interests and workers' interests are incommensurable. Both have an interest in ensuring that the company survives, but it's in the employer's interest to keep wages as low as they can get away with (ditto benefits and so on). For that reason, even when employers aren't as ruthless about it as they could be, the fact that there is a power imbalance -- that they get to make the decisions about wages, and benefits, and how work gets done; that both the law and social norms in the US and elsewhere favor the employer -- means that the relationship is adversarial. Employers' interests are privileged in our society to the detriment of workers' interests, and that has tangible negative effects in the workplace.

It seems to me that the only way to ensure fair, genuine cooperation between employers and employees is to make the workplace democratic. Give everyone an equal say in how the place is run, how wages are determined, and so on, and you erode the power imbalance to the point that real cooperation becomes possible. Of course, that would also mean there wouldn't really be any bosses anymore.

albatross @ 21: The people running the union will behave in their own interests, as will the management--it's quite possible for this to lead to outcomes that prove disastrous for the shareholders and workers.

I'm no expert, but from what I've seen, this has been one of the big failings of the mainstream labor movement: unions representing workers too often become bureaucracies with their own set of interests, which sometimes align with workers' interests. In theory, my union avoids the problem by doing away with the bureaucracy altogether, but that approach has its own pitfalls.

PNH @ 5: "A union is something else: a legal entity with enumerated public responsibilities."

I agree with your larger point (that unions are a site for learning civic participation), but I have to quibble with this sentence. A union is a group of workers consciously organizing and acting collectively to defend their interests. The legal status of that organization is incidental. Or to put it another way: the institutional form that workers take when they organize is secondary to actually acting in solidarity with one another.

In workplace organizing workshops I've attended, the process is known as AEIOU: Agitate (for your interests), Educate (your fellow workers about their rights and their options for defending them), Inoculate (against counterattacks from the bosses), Organize (to get what you're fighting for), Unionize. Forming a formal, legally certified union is the last step -- and if the solidarity that made it possible in the first place doesn't continue to exist, the union is in danger of becoming just another bureaucracy.

Bruce @ 9: "At its best, a union can help its members define and clarify their relationship to the company they work for. That relationship may be adversarial or cooperative with the company, depending on how the management sees the relationship between their own goals, the company goals, and the union goals."

It's telling that we think of the relationship in terms of how the management sees things, rather than how the workers see things. It seems to me that as long as the bosses are the ones who call the shots, they'll have an incentive to exploit the workforce, no matter how "cooperative" they may seem to be. The relationship is fundamentally adversarial as long as one group (the bosses) has power over the other.

Dan Blum @ 18: Except that Dragon comes after Phoenix, not before.

Kathryn @ 45: A fair chunk of my income over the past few months has come from moving an old website into Drupal. I am by no means an expert, but I have learned a few things. For example:

(1) Drupal is the Linux of content management systems. It's very flexible, but it has a steep learning curve. I was learning Drupal as I went along, and I spent a lot of time feeling frustrated before I got the hang of things. (You'll probably have an easier time of it than I did; the site I've been migrating is rather complicated.)

(2) The official handbooks do a decent job of covering the basics.

(3) Modules are your friends. They let you add all kinds of useful functionality to your site, including some really basic stuff like generating lists of content. There are a lot of modules out there, but it's worth spending some time finding out what's available and which ones are commonly used. You will definitely want to check out CCK and Views. There are also modules out there for doing newsletters and forums. (I suspect you'll want to use something other than Drupal for the wiki portion of your site.)

(4) If you get stuck on something, ask for help on the Drupal forums.

(5) If you find yourself moving beyond the basics, I highly recommend reading Pro Drupal Development by John K. VanDyk and Matt Westgate. Westgate's company, Lullabot, also has a website that contains a wealth of information for Drupal developers.

Feel free to email me if you have more questions. As I said, I'm not an expert, but I've been through what you're about to go through.

heresiarch @ 94: I suspect this is a terminological dispute...

Correct. Most anarchists (myself included) would agree that what you're calling "pure anarchy" is neither realistic nor desirable -- societies do need mechanisms for dispute resolution. Some people (David Graeber, for example) would even say that contemporary anarchism is all about developing non-oppressive forms of dispute resolution.

In other words, to quote Proudhon, "Anarchy is order."

Tony @186: The two-party system is a kook filter.

This interpretation only works if you assume that any problem can be solved by either a center-right (Democratic) or far-right (Republican) response.

Steve @189: Another reason that two-party system is important is that so much of Congress is built around it.

Yes, well, that's part of the problem that an electoral reform movement would have to try and fix.

Please note: I'm not asking why there isn't a significant third party in the US. I'm wondering why there isn't more of a movement to change the system so that third parties can be viable -- something like the group mentioned by sherrold in #201, which I hadn't heard of before (so I'm assuming it's pretty marginal at this point).

Anticorium @120: Stephen Harper he ain't.

I'm afraid I'm not getting the point of comparison here. If you're referring to the Reform Party's success at building up a grassroots movement into a legitimate political contender, surely it's Preston Manning who deserves the blame credit?

Bruce @123: The time to begin dealing seriously with reform of the two-party system is shortly after an election. [...] If someone were to set up such an organization with what looked to me like basically competent management, I'd donate to it.

It never ceases to amaze me that no such organization exists. The two-party system is so obviously a problem, and yet as far as I can tell there's no significant movement to reform it (aside from a few folks who want to abolish the Electoral College). Why is that?

Bob Webber @ 552: "Bill Gibson of course did very well, and the fix-up that Terry Carr got out of him and published as Neuromancer set his feet on the path of fame."

Neuromancer was a fix-up? What stories is it a reworking of? Or am I missing a joke?

Jonah @ 11: Huh. Judging from the expression on Pikachu's face, I would have said it's the children who are bringing the, um, happiness.

This is not a DMCA takedown notice.

Diatryma @ 21 (and myrthe @ 36): Ah, like this.

Further poking about on the interwebs returns the Zebra Puzzle, a six-dimensional logic puzzle attributed variously to Einstein and Lewis Carroll. I'm scared to try it.

Konrad #15: I'm not Derek, but I definitely made that assumption. It doesn't appear to be wrong.

Gigi Rose #17: Is there a particular technique that one should use to solve these things besides putting the position of each element on paper? I'm usually not good at logic puzzles; I'd love to know if there's some method I should be applying.

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