memes @lemmy.world

6d ago

Union dues

100 comments

These posters should be illegal.
- It's a nice reminder that one is in a capitalist hellhole. Like taken from a dystopian game.
  
  is this poster real tho?
  Seems low effort
  
  Is this dystopian game something I can afford with my savings from not paying union dues?
- I’ve seen several from this campaign and they’re so dumb I feel like someone was maliciously compliant in making these so that Delta’s opposition to the union would actually encourage more people to vote to join. Like, management came to someone in marketing, but that person actually wanted to support the union effort.
- In a lot of countries it would be illegal.
  In a lot of countries the unions became powerful enough to be governments, and implemented anti-union busting laws.
  For some reason the United States seems to have skipped a bunch of the social development that went on in other countries. Unfortunately this is probably because of the American psyche and their obsession with the idea that rags to riches is possible, despite all the evidence. So nobody wants to limit their own potential wealth by giving away money to the workers, just in case one day they become the wealthy. The end result is that a bunch of people have to work for Amazon.
- We have a husk of a shell that we once called the Supreme Court that decided that corporations have a right to free speech.
  Toe that with all the benefits of a corporate entity and we end up where corporation speech is more free than that of a person.
  
  While true, this shit was going on just as much back when they were "legitimate". Anti-Union mind games are an American tradition.
  
  Lol companies in America literally set union organizers' families on fire well before the modern supreme court.

That’s like one month of US health insurance next year. Way more than worth it over being at the whims of some fuckhead corporation
- DENTAL PLAN
  
  Lisa needs braces!

I guess Delta thinks their employees are complete fucking morons.
- Given Delta hired them and saw their education level, they’re probably right.
- Well, most of them are Americans...
  /flame, I jest

It should be illegal to put up stuff like this.
- In the civilised world (Aka everywhere but the US), it is!
  
  People who refer to anywhere but the US as civilized should be stuffed into a canon and shot into a brick wall.
- Yeah, it should not in the "it would be nice" sense, but in the "it's mental that it isn't" sense.

It cost them 700, not you. You will gain from an Union
- It costs you 700 now and it costs them an unknown amount in the future. They just don't like it because they suspect it'll be quite a lot more than the 700 that you're paying to join. They're right too.
  But union dues are annoying in the moment, because when it happens all you see is a reduction in your pay and initially no change in working conditions. That's why they have posters like that up, because even though intellectually people understand that being in a union will long-term result in better pay, in the short term it does effectively result in a temporary pay cut, which can be hard if you're already not really very well paid.
  If you're joining an established union sometimes they will be smart and not charge members until they've renegotiated their salaries. But that only happens if you're joining a already formed union.
  
  Lots of jobs that need unions are jobs that people don't want to be working in a few years, because they're terrible jobs with minimal benefits and shit pay. Those people can't see that the reason the job is so shitty is because there isn't a union. There's a good chance that they'd actually want to stay with the job once the union transforms the working conditions and compensation.
  Lots of people would be satisfied with a career in a "lesser" job like retail if the job didn't suck. There's nothing wrong with being a cashier, cook, custodian, phone attendant, etc for your whole working life if that's what you want to do, and we should compensate people in those jobs accordingly.
- No it'll cost you, it comes out of your after tax wage. But it's an investment into you and your colleagues futures for better wages, stronger protections and benefits.
  
  In my country you can get union dues back as a tax deduction.
  
  The protections are key here. I'd take a slightly lower wage for a healthy work environment any day, and I know that most people agree.
  
  It comes out of their pocket because unions tend to negotiate for better pay
- Not to mention that you’ll likely get pay rises worth more than what is paid in dues.
- Your choice of articles makes me think you pronounce union like onion

Remember, if your company is telling you how great something is, it is great for them, not you.
- Right, if you ever see an poster or video anywhere, consider that the message was something someone felt was worth spending money on. And if it was a business, why would a business spend money unless it could somehow benefit its bottom line?
  
  Exactly!

Haha my Union Dues... 240/yr.
Pay in the five years before the union....no increase. 20 years of union, pay up 100%.

Scumbags. What the hell is this 'murkin propaganda? It's like the whole country is unironically trying to become the Sith.
- There are always two. The sith and the vice sith. They also now have the palantir for some reason
  
  Somehow real life Ready Player One is worse than the book.

My union dues are about 800 a year, we'd be lucky to make only 10,000 less a year without the union, and have way less protections. Joining a union is one of the best investments you can make.

Two questions:
Is this for real?
Does it work?
I feel like a large company going to that kind of effort to explicitly tell me to not spend money on something would have the exact opposite effect. It’s not like they’re saying “unions are bad, actually” it just like “this thing you were going to spend money on, maybe don’t?”
Imagine a poster saying “Drugs are really expensive - you’ll get more value for money if you buy videogames” - would that work?
- It's not a perfect analogy because video games are better while on drugs
- The constant anti-union propaganda has definitely worked in the US

Dystopic shit.
- Utterly hellish. In the UK, which is very far from being a Utopia, this would be almost unthinkable. Real Black Mirror stuff. Sure, the companies may not want you to join the union, but to actively advertise against it is breathtakingly shitty.

Classic misdirection: compare dues to a toy instead of the extra pay, healthcare, and protections.
- This is why corporate America wants our population uneducated and tuned out and hooked on AI slop and distractions.

"Explain."
"Money can be exchanged for goods and services."
"Woohoo!"

~~bread and~~ circuses
- Meanwhile, republicans have been trying to make video games illegal for over forty years now.

When I worked at Best buy over 10 years ago they had the exact same propaganda. You know instead of union dues you could buy an Xbox! (From us no less!)
...okay I added that last bit but it was implied

Explain how.
- Wages can be exchanged for goods and services.
  
  Unions can be exchanged for goods and services.
- It’s a complicated concept but higher wages means you make more money.
  
  Many years ago I had to explain to a coworker how progressive taxation works. He was like "that's a great idea! We should do that! It's stupid that now your pay goes up but you take home less because you get taxed more"
  I had to tell him, yes it is a good idea. It's how it works now. You don't get more pay and suddenly your whole income is taxed more.
  He'd had no idea
  
  Higher whatsit? Huh? What are your taking about? These words don't normally go together I don't understand.
  
  No they don't.
  Source: a union-busting multinational faceless corporation that I'm a slave to

Delta knows their audience. Many pilots lean Republican and see themselves as rugged individualists that have made their own path. Meanwhile, the only reason they're flying in many cases are socially funded training programs. Many from the military.

In Australia, Union fees are tax deductible.
They don't cost you anything in the end.
- Thats not how tax deductions work.
- That just means you’re not paying taxes on the income. It’s not like you get the entire $700 back in taxes, because your tax rate probably isn’t 100%. If you pay 30% in taxes, (no clue what you actually pay), writing off the $700 would simply mean you pay $210 less on your taxes.
  
  Union dues aren't an income.
- I don’t know if tax deductible means the same thing in Australia, but they’re also deductible in Canada. That means that you don’t pay tax on the money you paid in dues, but you don’t get it back.

Tape the meme onto the poster

Union fees are also 100% tax deductible in Australia, so it's all a win-win.

This is a meme community, so it's time to get serious!
This happened around 6 or 7 years ago. The company in question only has two work groups that are unionized -- Pilots and Dispatchers. Mechanics, Flight Attendants, Ground Service, etc. are not unionized.
Flight Attendants have attempted to unionize many times, but the vote always fails.
The poster included in this post was for Ramp workers -- the people who load baggage, marshal the planes into the gate, fill the potable water, etc. That vote ultimately failed, but these posters were only a small reason why. In my opinion, the biggest reason that other work groups don't want to unionize (they absolutely can, nothing is stopping them) is profit sharing.
Years ago the pilot union negotiated an extremely excellent profit sharing agreement, and it was negotiated for pilots only. Depending on the amount of profit for the year, employees can expect 10%-%20 of their yearly income paid in a lump sum. The company in question is typically very profitable (I can already see the "profit should be illegal" type of comments coming, but please spare me. I'm just trying to explain how it works).
Over time, other work groups started to catch wind of how much profit sharing pilots were getting. Naturally this sparked talk of unionizing in other work groups, so in order to calm things down the company extended the same profit sharing to all workers, not just the pilots.
This sort of reversed the desire to unionize for a lot of people (I disagree with them, but this is their thinking)... Now if the ramp personnel do unionize, they'd have to negotiate their own profit sharing as they would be excluded from the company wide payout. That's not to say they couldn't negotiate to keep the profit sharing, but the fear is real and people don't want to lose the big fat checks that come almost every year.
In summary, the workers aren't unionized but the company pays a lot of money to them to keep it that way. Would they be better off long term if they unionized? Yes, of course. But this poster, as ridiculous as it is, is not the only reason that work groups aren't voting in unions.
Here's a link to the AFA page talking about it a little bit https://deltaafa.org/news/profit-sharing-2025
- Its crazy to me how short term so many people think.
  I mean basic logic dictates that the companies clearly know the union is the better option for you and worse option for them when they're willing to give up concessions, and it should be similarly obvious that inherently, the concessions will never be equivalent to what you are losing in increased wages and protections from if you had made a union.
  
  There's also no accountability for companies and it has been like that for way too long. Look at Starbucks... some stores unionized so they just closed the stores and fired everyone. Completely illegal, but no consequences for the company. They succeeded in scaring the rest of the baristas, though, so mission accomplished.

- I know that this is what a lot of Americans think socialism is but it's worth pointing out that socialism is not communism.
  Communists want to take over with force and violence and overwhelming thought policing. Inevitably this pisses people off and ultimately doesn't work. See literally every communist regime ever.
  Socialists simply want to implement progressive policies and are generally happy to do that within the confines of current law (assuming the current law isn't oppressive).
  The US becoming socialist would simply be via a series of increasingly progressive policies over a period of several electoral cycles. It wouldn't be violence in the streets.
  
  Okay I'm not sure where you got this from, but you're wrong on both counts. Socialists absolutely want to do more than just implement progressive policies (you're thinking of social democrats); the definition of a socialist is someone who believes the working class should seize the means of production. Some socialists believe that can be done through capitalist democratic systems (we call those democratic socialists), but still the goal is a lot more broad than just implementing progressive policies; on the other hand you have more militant or even revolutionary socialists, who usually advocate direct action (sometimes but not always including violence). Meanwhile communists are a subcategory of socialists who believe in the creation of a moneyless, classless, stateless utopian society as described by Karl Marx.

I like how the URL listed beneath the Delta logo (https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/5/10/18564745/delta-anti-union-video-game-poster) just goes to a site with fake statistics and SEO slop now.
"near me in USA"
"Looking for services near you? Find reliable and experienced in the USA."
"15000+ Services Provider"
"Professional services Near Me"
etc, etc.

The union workforce in the USA is about 10% (6% Public and 4% Private?) WTF AmeriKa!?!?

AI Agents don't form unions and THATS why the dems are toothless. AI is the solution to the biggest thorn in their greedy sides

Its_scared.jpg

With all the layoffs right now, it's a great opportunity for unions to make people aware about them and how they can be beneficial.
I wish unions were more active on LinkedIn, so that we could like and share their posts. Recent layoffs at Omnicom/IPG have led to people discussing unions in the advertising subreddit..

we need labor vouchers

In my country uniona are not even a question. Qlso qe just had a meeting about annual salary adjustments and added benefits. And yes, it does cost me about 700 but we gain a lot lot more

Well, you might get higher wages. Or the airline might either go under, or just fire everyone in the union thanks to at will employment.
- If they could do that they wouldn't try to get people to avoid unionizing. They still need people to work for them, regulations or no regulations.

100 comments