[Discuss] [OT] unions

[tmetro-blu at vl.com (Tom Metro)]

jc at trillian.mit.edu wrote:
> Tom Metro wrote:
> | In essence (but not really) a union is an employee owned corporation
> | whose sole service is outsourced labor. In an idealized market, there
> | should be multiple labor corporations for any given type of labor, not
> | only one.
> 
> Hey, I know! We could call these labor corporations "contracting"  or
> "consulting"  or  "engineering" companies, depending on how they deal
> with their client corporations.  Why didn't anyone ever think of this
> concept before?

It isn't unintentional that I alluded to this this and explicitly
mentioned consulting companies in the other thread.

A critical distinction has to be made between your garden variety temp
agency and an employee owned labor corporation. There are already
several industries where a high percentage of workers are supplied
through temp agencies, and the the anecdotal evidence is that this
doesn't lead to better worker conditions.

One example of this is an investigative article I read a few months back
where a journalist went under cover working for a mail order fulfillment
company. (They manage inventor and fill orders placed online. They work
under contract for Amazon ad other big online retailers.) The journalist
was hired through a temp agency, which seemed to only be concerned with
their clients needs, and not the poor working conditions.

The governance of a labor corporation would need to be carefully
designed to avoid this.

 -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/