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My girlfriend worked at Macys. She was paid $14hr to do white collar admin work and was in a "union". Each month we would walk a few blocks away downtown to a small office. This is where we paid "dues". We couldn't pay online or have it deduct from her check. The person we handed our check to would just roll their eyes and throw her check into a pile of checks. She couldn't afford these dues. The best part? You were required to be in the union.

The union helped Macys layoff thousands of workers including her with no severance in a nice streamlined fashion. I am wrong, but this is what I learned: Unions are basically fat cat organizations that leach hard working people.

>>ransom+(OP)
Poorly run unions produce bad outcomes. There are also governments and corporations that leech off hard working people. It's a human dynamics problem, not a problem specifically with unions.

>>ransom+(OP)
Like democracies, unions will exploit the people in them if the people in them do not organize and agitate actively for their own interests.

Like democracies, unions suck, but they are not as bad as the alternative -- unless you're the boss or the generalissimo.

>>frabbi+Na
Are you saying that union members need to... unionize against their union?

It's all unions, all the way down.

>>ransom+(OP)
If your girlfriend was in a union, why do you say "we paid"?

>>moron4+qj
Non-ironically, yes, and many union members in the US agree. Even before COVID-19, there were high-profile wildcat strikes this year, and it's only accelerating now.

>>greend+RD
Why are you being such a dick, who cares?

>>greend+RD
I'm going to assune good faith here, maybe it's a cultural thing, who knows?

Regardless, here in the US it is typical for couples to form a partnership in which both income and expenses are shared. Possibly the reason for the recent emergence of the term 'Partner' to describe one's Significant Other.

>>frabbi+Na
Having a union is literally worse than not having one at all.

...unless people are literally dying in the factory. Unions were made for worker safety and made sense THEN - not today.

>>greend+RD
Union members pay the union, supposedly to support costs like materials and salaries for union representatives.

>>effing+021
I'm from Europe and it struck me as odd that the subject of the sentence switched from singular to plural for no good reason.

>My girlfriend worked at Macys

>She was paid

>(She) was in a "union"

>Each month we would walk

>we paid "dues"

>we couldn't pay online

>we handed our check

>throw her check

I was just wondering if there was some hidden twist behind the change of subject, so I asked bluntly.

>>moron4+qj
Essentially yes. Unions have varying levels of active members which sometimes leads to a self-interested bureaucracy acting against the wishes of the membership. See for instance this recent well-known example: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nidhiprakash/bernie-san...

There is nothing magic about unions or democracy which means that they guarantee good outcomes. You have to work at it and be involved. In fact everyone has to.

>>koheri+R31
People are dying due to lack of investment of corporate profits in health care. I cannot believe you need this pointed out to you right now.

In other shocking news today's capitalists don't wear top-hats and drive around in Rolls Royces: they wear hoodies and drive modest cars.