Comment 32763

By Self Employed (anonymous) | Posted August 12, 2009 at 10:59:07

Unions are institutions and as such subject to the same corruptions and abuses as any organization. As institutions they provide a way for employees to press their own interests in the workplace, rightly or wrongly. Management makes no claim about representing workers' interests. If pressed they will claim to represent shareholders and indeed, shareholders elect board members who are to direct management. That's not always effective either. It is up to union members and shareholders to see that their representatives are responsible and effective.

That's often a difficult task and many fail at the attempt, but those who suggest that such institutions have outlived their usefulness offer no alternative except to depend on the kindness of strangers, which I'd like to suggest is even less reliable. Governments are representative institutions too, and workers have generally found it more effective to lobby elected officials through their labour organizations, just as industry organizations do, than to independently correspond with their MPs or MPPs.

None of this works perfectly, often doesn't work at all, but that is the nature of human enterprise. Still, I have to ask Ben, at the Kit Kat plant, how fair were the managers he wasn't dating, and how fair was the HR "girlie" to those she didn't screw?

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