this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2024
79 points (98.8% liked)
Asklemmy
43733 readers
1389 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I've got a pretty sweet gig, all of us do at this company, and I think "rocking the boat" could only make my situation worse. We are only like a dozen people and there's only one person in each "department". We aren't being mistreated and we are privileged enough to be able to leave if we were.
Well, fundamentally capitalism involves the deprivation of the means of subsistence and production from one class so that they are forced to sell their labour-power to the capitalist class in order to obtain the means of subsistence. You could define that as "mistreatment" or not I guess, but whether or not you do, personal treatment by your capitalist does not change the form capitalism takes. Workers' power comes from combining. Capitalists are already combined—they work together to keep wages low and prices high. Unionising only levels the playing field in that regard.
I'm not saying that you should always focus on unionisation in every situation—sometimes there is more important political work to be done. But if you have nothing else to do, it's often the most accessible starting point.
Think of unionizing as ensuring that the good situation you have now will endure over time, for you and the workers after you. Without unions, the only thing stopping your workplace from going from heaven to hell is your boss' boss' mood. Or they moving on with their lives.