It's just as likely of a conclusion (as pointed out elsewhere) that people are informed because of unionization - i.e. that union workers are better empowered to point out design flaws or other recall-worthy issues (without fear of reprisal over having embarassed the management) than non-union workers.
That is: using recalls to measure product quality is highly misleading for reasons that take all of five seconds to identify, and the fact that the paper chose such a metric despite such an obvious flaw reeks of bad faith.
> Are you saying that we should prioritize product quality over the workers who make them?
It depends on the product in question but of course the product should be prioritized, it is what is being produced and sold after all. Without the product, the workers would not be at that company.
You know there are other conclusions one could draw from that.
If unions really do produce lower quality products then there's sort a of a nice cycle that happens (albeit likely over far too long a time period). A company mistreats its workers, the workers unionize, the company's product-quality reduces, the company becomes a better target for competitors.
I'm all for making it easy for workers to unionize, but in a lot of cases I'll hope they don't.
That kind of logic might not apply to scenarios where companies are too huge, but that seems to be a problem best solved with other tools.
In the case of the unions, the plus side outweigh the downsides.
It is a pity that one country that fought so hard to have them a century ago after its first capitalism collapse, nowadays has a society that pushes back to a feudal system (aka gig economy and perks instead of salary/decent work hours).
Truthfulness and propaganda are orthogonal attributes. To anyone who things that they are exclusive, pull up a chair, I've got some bad news for you. This is going to be hard to hear.
A piece like this puts out the idea that unions are harmful, but the idea that it puts forward alongside that is that the quality of products takes priority over the wellbeing and care for the workers themselves. It's telling us that we need to think about product quality before workers. Products before living humans. Profit over life.
Even if it is true, this is harmful. There are other ways to improve product quality besides shitting on your workers and taking away any bargaining power that they have to squeeze them of every little bit of productivity.
It's possible to come up with different conclusions than that, IMO, rather pessimistic one.
I had already had this notion that unions likely decrease quality of work, but my conclusion has not been "products over workers", my conclusion has been that companies which mistreat their workers so much that they feel the need to unionize deserve to suffer. There could even be a deeper correlation there in younger companies. Worker mistreatment seems to me to be a sign of incompetence. The companies that do so deserve any ill results they get from unionizing and better companies that treat their workers better and make better products deserve to win out over them.
> It's possible to come up with different conclusions than that, IMO, rather pessimistic one.
It being possible does not make it probable. I would bet that most people reading the paper are going to come to the "unions bad" conclusion, specifically because people (at least here in the US) have repeatedly been told over and over again that "unions bad".
Ignoring that unions can have both good and bad effects will lead to suboptimal outcomes. By understanding and quantifying the pieces, it may be possible to improve benefits without cost or to lessen downsides without cost. It also allows actors (employees, employers, society) to make better decisions if they have accurate information. None of this makes it propaganda.
Propaganda includes ignoring problems by calling them propaganda.
A union is exactly a monopoly on labor, both by definition and legally (certainly in the US, and likely elsewhere). Any monopoly has expected pros and cons.
Weird how people seem to be okay with oligopolistic and monopolistic behavior from corporations but when workers unionize and take action to improve their material conditions it's the end of the world
We can see this attitude in the way that UK media has been covering the tube strikes
Yes seems to be just an abstract. There's also the weird sentence that the article was accepted by Gustavo Manso, so does that mean he was the reviewer? Was there only one?...
Makes it hard to see the actual methodology. Lot of heat and smoke in the comments for just an abstract.
A quick search for the title in DDG yields verbatim copies of the marginal revolution words, no actual paper. So it's not like anyone is actually writing for marginal revolution here.
Or unionized firms have a culture where employees are more empowered to report dangerous and defective products to regulators without fear of getting fired, and so are more likely to have product recalls than non unionized firms. See, I can draw unwarranted conclusions based on my own prejudices too.
>See, I can draw unwarranted conclusions based on my own prejudices too.
They backed theirs up with a well written paper, so it not an unwarranted conclusion. It follows from their data. Did you read the paper? What in it is incorrect?
The nurses in my city formed a labor union recently, and one of their key demands is to increase the number of nurses on duty at any given time- which will decrease wait times, decrease burnout, and increase standards of care.
The paper uses a dataset of all 6000+ recall events from the FDA, NHYSA, and CPSC for recalls, and the results of all 1,144 union elections during the same time frame for their analysis. It's a pretty comprehensive dataset, so I doubt they care much about two specific factories. They may not even have any recall events from those places.
38 comments
[ 0.12 ms ] story [ 89.2 ms ] threadThat is: using recalls to measure product quality is highly misleading for reasons that take all of five seconds to identify, and the fact that the paper chose such a metric despite such an obvious flaw reeks of bad faith.
It depends on the product in question but of course the product should be prioritized, it is what is being produced and sold after all. Without the product, the workers would not be at that company.
If unions really do produce lower quality products then there's sort a of a nice cycle that happens (albeit likely over far too long a time period). A company mistreats its workers, the workers unionize, the company's product-quality reduces, the company becomes a better target for competitors.
I'm all for making it easy for workers to unionize, but in a lot of cases I'll hope they don't.
That kind of logic might not apply to scenarios where companies are too huge, but that seems to be a problem best solved with other tools.
In the case of the unions, the plus side outweigh the downsides.
It is a pity that one country that fought so hard to have them a century ago after its first capitalism collapse, nowadays has a society that pushes back to a feudal system (aka gig economy and perks instead of salary/decent work hours).
Even if it is true, this is harmful. There are other ways to improve product quality besides shitting on your workers and taking away any bargaining power that they have to squeeze them of every little bit of productivity.
I had already had this notion that unions likely decrease quality of work, but my conclusion has not been "products over workers", my conclusion has been that companies which mistreat their workers so much that they feel the need to unionize deserve to suffer. There could even be a deeper correlation there in younger companies. Worker mistreatment seems to me to be a sign of incompetence. The companies that do so deserve any ill results they get from unionizing and better companies that treat their workers better and make better products deserve to win out over them.
It being possible does not make it probable. I would bet that most people reading the paper are going to come to the "unions bad" conclusion, specifically because people (at least here in the US) have repeatedly been told over and over again that "unions bad".
Such as suppression of worker rights and unions
Humans should take priority over money
Propaganda includes ignoring problems by calling them propaganda.
A union is exactly a monopoly on labor, both by definition and legally (certainly in the US, and likely elsewhere). Any monopoly has expected pros and cons.
We can see this attitude in the way that UK media has been covering the tube strikes
Almost like there's been a lot of... propaganda
A quick search for the title in DDG yields verbatim copies of the marginal revolution words, no actual paper. So it's not like anyone is actually writing for marginal revolution here.
They backed theirs up with a well written paper, so it not an unwarranted conclusion. It follows from their data. Did you read the paper? What in it is incorrect?
The paper uses a dataset of all 6000+ recall events from the FDA, NHYSA, and CPSC for recalls, and the results of all 1,144 union elections during the same time frame for their analysis. It's a pretty comprehensive dataset, so I doubt they care much about two specific factories. They may not even have any recall events from those places.