Cathy, do the math.

I love how one person cites a statistic, and another person just dismisses it as false because of their anecdotal experience.
- Sounds like every online platform ever.
  
  False! Source: my ass
  
  Actually, that's not true at all. This one time, I met a guy who...
- This is how most people think and see the world, which is why we (the US) are in the boat we're in now. People don't see the big picture if they never have to or aren't taught how to think critically.
  
  I think it's a complicated problem. To start with, the studies are usually paywalled. If you can afford to purchase access, you still need the capacity to understand and parse the formal academic language. Most people have neither of those requirements, and have to rely on the media to report the statistics accurately, which doesn't happen.
  This leads to a situation where the media keeps trying to say, idk employment statistics are better than ever, and then everybody updates their mental blocklist to filter out the word 'statistics'.
  
  Almost as of by design of corporate overlords and billionaires. Almost as of billions of dollars and collective hate can't fill the emptiness. Almost as if we should focus on healing everyone's (including billionaires ')wounded inner child schisms and social divides may start healing. Maybe
- And I've never heard of a contract that explicitly ties non-union workers' pay to the union contact, but I'd be cheering the union guys on if they ever asked for a raise if that was the case.
  
  That's actually more common than you think. It's not explicit.
  My niece who works at a very popular coffee shop where some are unioned, the non-union ones get paid a bit extra and reminded on the daily about that benefit of higher pay for being non-unioned.
  And my aunt works as a receptionist in a non-union hospital. Her counterparts in a union, when they went on strike and got a huge pay bump... She suddenly "mysteriously" got a pay bump aligned with it because the non-union hospital was afraid of employees unionizing (which secretly, they were).
- If these people were good at critical thinking, they wouldn't have these stupid fucking opinions to begin with.
- My thoughts exactly. And how I love this complete dismissal style with the "False." at the beginning, that has established itself online. it's a perfect giveaway for " now my personal but universal opinion, also called Truth bomb, is going to destroy your statement" - which in my opinion is just extremely patronizing and never really true.
  Especially when comparing your personal anecdotal experience with a fucking statistic.
  Oh and nobody talks like that in real life, or at least the people that do start their verbal line of argument this way are idiots and everybody knows it.
  
  False. Bears eat beets. Bears. Beats. Battlestar galactica.
- Part of the problem is that statistics can be abused. It takes a reasonable amount of training to be able to differentiate between reliable statistics and potentially dodgy. Even worse, we are often presented with them, striped or context.
  The best solution is to teach people how to both spot problems and seek reliable data. The proper meaning of "do your own research". Unfortunately, a significant chunk just give up with them and only trust their gut.
  
  statistics can be abused
  They can be abused, by people who understand statistics talking to people who don't understand statistics. This is a good reason to learn statistical methods rather than reject them.
  
  Typically, statistics are abused by politicians/partisan hacks who take data from reliable sources and lie/spin it to their narrative. The thing is, the average Fox News viewer with a HS diploma isn't going to dig any deeper. And I wouldn't say they trust their gut... they trust the propaganda narrative.
  When Trump and Vance said immigrants were eating people's dogs and cats, they just nodded their empty heads.. you can't teach someone like that to engage reason.

I live in California, so there was a lot of bemoaning the rising minimum wage.
“Why should someone flipping burgers earn as much as I do in a trade field?”
Mate, you should be arguing for increased wages, not trying to keep others down.
- Seattle metro area has the highest minimum wage in the country. The top 5 cities in the US are all in this metro. This is because when the wage increases were passed by city, they were tied to the inflation rate so that increases every year, so no new laws have to be passed year over year to get this increase. No arguing every year for a simple cost of living adjustment.
  
  Fucking thank you! Why is this so complicated?? Why fight for $15 or whatever if you know by the time your get the fucking laws past your dollar is worth half as much.
  It's so transparently flawed to because tying minimum wage to a formula/basket/col/astrology FFS, Would mean not having to revisit this fight every. Single. Year.
  
  Shit even Republican voters and Republicans "should" want minimum wage tied to rate of inflation. Why? Because it creates incentive for the Federal government in keeping inflation lower, keeping inflation lower being something that "supposedly" the average Republican voter wants.
- Mate, you should be arguing for increased wages, not trying to keep others down.
  It’s my opinion that people like this aspire to be their own boss, make their own money, and look up to business owners as mentors.
  None of that is inherently wrong, until the mentors/business owners start espousing the evils of increased wages, how paying taxes is preventing pay raises for their workers, etc.
  So not knowing any better, these wannabes go out and parrot what they’ve heard their heroes say as if it’s gospel. And of course the talking heads that they listen to say the same shit, further solidifying the class warfare mentality.
- Those same people get mad if nobody is flipping burgers for them.
- This is the new American way. Zero-sum thinking all the way down. Anyone else's win is our loss. Every situation must have a winner and a loser. Win-win situations are considered immoral for these people. We've moved past rugged individualism to a full-on Hunger Games mindset.
- “Why should someone flipping burgers earn as much as I do in a trade field?”
  Because someone flipping burgers has more value to society than someone who spends their day making rich people richer.

Cathy is a dumbass. Don't be like Cathy.
- That’s up there with refusing raises to avoid going up a tax bracket.
  
  I will forgive people who were previously had a low enough income to have benefits that magically disappeared completely at a certain threshold when they received a raise for assuming that making too much money could be a negative. They generally never made enough to understand how tax brackets work and assumed the worst.
  If it is explained to them and they refuse to learn, that is on them.
  
  "If I work overtime, I make less!"
  -- dumbfucks we've all worked with
  
  Or the boss calling a cost of living adjustment a 'raise'. No, motherfucker, I'm just back to where I started.
- Cathy? If I see FirstNameBunchOfNumbers and a twitter checkmark my first assumption would be that its a bot.

Together we bargain, alone we beg.
- This needs to be on a fucking t-shirt.
  
  Sure. Have your pro Union T-shirt. And what better place to buy it from than
  https://www.amazon.com/Union-Workers-Bargain-Collectively-T-Shirt/dp/B08XHYS16W
  Speacial offer for Prime Members: Order today and get to watch the first 30 Minutes of Fightclub Ad-free.

"your statistic is false because I have an anecdote" is literally the entire basis of the conservative understanding of science.
union workers don't make more on average because I earn half a dollar more.
global warming isn't happening because I brought a snowball.
vaccines cause death because my friend walked out of a clinic after a shot and got hit by a self driving tesla.
- vaccines cause death because my friend walked out of a clinic after a shot and got hit by a self driving tesla.
  😂
- It really is a kind of solipsism, emotional immaturity as a self-justifying worldview. Problems don't exist until they impact me personally, repeat and nauseam.
- Because I have an anecdote, and interpret it in the stupidest way possible, as exhibited in the OP
- Global warming is a hoax, it's cold in my basement today!
- "conservative understanding"
  Sounds like all conservatives are idiots or rather idiots are the ones who are politically conservative.
  
  it's both. conservatism is both appealing to stupid people and it compounds stupidity.
- I can continue to eat things that kill me because I take statins that reduce my chance of heart attack by a couple percent.

How is it even legal to have explicitly preferential pay for people not in a union? Is there a limit to that, or can companies just say, "Anyone who joins a union will be paid minimum wage." Ofc with at-will employment they can always just fire you, but like, if you think about it it's pretty fucked up right?
- I wouldn't be surprised if the union has other benefits that more then make up for the 50 cents, e.g. better medical, vacation, or whatever.
  
  I get that, I'm just highlighting the potential for abuse. Or rather, that it's fucked up in the first place.
- sounds like their pay is based on union rates. that's probably just a company policy for everyone.
  
  What I'm saying is that if they can set "$0.50 above union rates" as the company policy for everyone, they can also set "$5 above union rates" as the company policy for everyone and then cut union rates by $5. It's essentially just bribing people to not join a union or penalizing them if they do. It being company policy for everyone is irrelevant.
- I don't think it's preferential pay. It's just that they pay more, somebody in the union also can get more money than the union minimum. Somebody not part of the union can get less or more than somebody in the union, just not below the union minimum.
  It's not that if they join the union that they get less money. The union + 0.5 just means that they earn better than the minimum and the employer gives them more than the minimum, because people like that.
  At least that's how it works where I live and union contracts are common.
  Not everyone part of the union has to get exactly the union minimum, it's just that you cannot legally get less. People might not be part of the union but they still fall under the union contract negotiated by the union, because it applies to the entire company.
  
  My contract states that we make $0.50/hr above union wages
  You may be right, but it certainly sounds like she's claiming it's contractual, explicit, and general policy.
  
  So even then, the union people might be making more than the union minimum, so the non union person might still be making less than an average union person while not getting any union benefits.
- How is it even legal to have explicitly preferential pay for people not in a union?
  Other than the minimum wage and protected classes, there's not really any laws around how much employers must pay. They can have two employees, Bob and Tina, and pay Bob half of Tina's salary because they just hate the name "Bob". If Bob doesn't like it he can quit.
- How do they even know you're in a union? I that they just knew whether there was anyone in the union.

Lol the fact that she even has a contract at all is because of unions.

"Rising waters lifts all ships", Cathy. Ever heard of it?
- "This is my water! You go float on your own water!"
  
  It's worse.
  It's "I'll have you rising my water thank you, but I refuse to concede anything that could help you."

This is what Swedish unions did even more directly. A company hired labour from Latvia I think it was. The union showed up and said that thats all fine, but you have to pay them properly. None of them were members. They picketed the company for the sake of non-members wages. Why? To avoid social dumping down the line.

There are two schools of thought:
Those who want as good life as possible, and Those who want to have a better life than everyone else, no matter what.

Man I was sad as shit when Nina Turner lost. Bernie Sanders backed her up too.
- I think she's running again. I was at a UAW conference last week and Nina Turner spoke there. I think she's trying to drum up support for another run.
  
  I hope she doesn't give up and wins this time
- Wow, that just threw me for a loop. I still remember the hits, like "Steamy Windows" or "We Don't Need Another Hero". But then, that was Tina Turner. Not Nina. 😅
- Didn't Nina Turner turn to the grift or am i thinking of someone else?
  
  Tina Nurner?
  
  I mean, did she or didn't she? You're heading us off with a Cavuto Mark, here.

This doesn't even need to be in your contract. When union shops get a raise, non-union shops either have to compete, or lose their best labour.

When somebody insists, "X doesn't matter because my salary depends on X," it's time to stop beating your head against a wall to teach them anything.
- Nah, nah, you see - I had an excellent breakfast today. Clearly that means world hunger doesn't exist! Checkmate, leftist!

The fact that Cathy has a blue check mark proves Twitter is fucking stupid.
- Well it doesn’t mean what it used to anymore. Now you just pay for a subscription and you get it. Hell, I don’t know why you ever thought the check mark pre-Musk ever meant anything other than somebody’s identity being verified as true judging by what you’re saying... Never meant that their opinions were Twitter approved or whatever.
  
  The blue check went through some twists and turns. Originally it was meant as "your identity is verified", then it became a status symbol, then it had extra features attached to it. At one point the people approving them were literally taking bribes to expedite or guarantee your blue check (like personal bribes, not a payment to Twitter). And at some point along the way it somehow became a "Twitter approves" thing, because at least one person had their blue check stripped for going too far as a right wing troll (Milo Yianno-whatever). All of that pre-Muak.
  Post-Musk, it's just a subscription you pay for with some extra features and there's now a different checkmark for corporate or government entities that merely verifies their identity.

Net income is a small factor. One should compare the total package because the unions are usually way ahead of the non-union.
- My union gives me benefits that are included in my $30/month dues and I’m not even full time.
- My company was spread across 3 unions. 1 and 2 got decent healthcare. 3 got a $1000 signing bonus. I hear they like pizza parties.

I got higher at position as senior. But It wasn’t until I was able to join the Union that my income doubled. Year before I joined like in 2007 manager gave me a .10 raise. This shit is real.

Pretty soon we won’t be able to trust BLS data, which is frightening.
- The BLS data has historically been a method by which capitalists measured and managed labor power as a fungible resource. It has historically been a tool of capital to evaluate the influence of policy on labor, not a tool of labor to pressure capital for concessions.
  Not to say the information isn't valuable on its face. But it should be worth recognizing that we are looking at autocannibalization of capital. The people most injured by dismantling the BLS are the people who do the bulk of the hiring, not the people being hired.

My company acquired a division that had a great union and we all got more vacation days. Woot!

Cathy is a fucking idiot
- Cathy is the average American.
  Realize that half of the rest are even more moronic

Well 50 cents are enough for cathy to forget her mathy

Police Unions
- Police "unions" are not actually unions. When you look really close, they are all "police associations".
  
  You misspelled "gangs".
- Well there’s usually at least one exception to the rule.

Yeah Cathy, sheesh

Fuckin Thomas Sowell. Unlearning Economics has many hours of content on why that guy is such a blight on economics and the world that are worth a watch

We could've had Nina in DC if not for some corporate Dem's wounded ego. It's almost like we should work on healing egos instead of fracturing them with culture wars and id pol unless.... That's the point of culture wars and id pol. 🤷‍♀️ 💡
- It was AIPAC money as well. That's also why Cori Bush, Jamaal Bowman and Katie Porter aren't in Congress any more.
  
  Yes, the tail is wagging the dog. Removal of a gangrenous appendage is necessary to save the life.

Cathy do the mathy. Missed opportunity

God damn it, Cathy, you lush.

Ew, a Twitter screenshot

They make 1337? Are you sure it's not $31337 because that would be elite.
- Much better than a measly THX 1138.

God Bless Nina Turner

- Not left or right, it's up and down. Only one union is getting murderers and rapists off the hook. The rest are objectively good.
  
  I would argue that the problem with police unions is that they're too good at what they do. They've managed to achieve a degree of militantism that rivals any black panther or international world worker.
  A single, heavily armed, deeply insular and dogmatic, horrifyingly MAGA-pilled community of workers would be bad in any sector. But to make matters worse, police have this natural affinity with media that makes them the recipient of tons of free positive publicity.
  Would that everyone could claim membership in a union this strong.
- "Why do Unions have to be considered Left?"
  Tell me you have no idea about the history of labor rights without telling me...

Who negotiated for Cathy? She didn't need collective bargaining, she needed to learn to stand up for herself - as every worker should.
- "who negotiated for Cathy" well if her contract is pegged to union pay then the union negotiates for cathy
  
  Management probably giving that $0.50 bump hoping to discourage union membership and undermine their negotiating power.
  
  If I were Cathy, I would help that union raise their pay and membership.
- Individual workers do not have the leverage to "stand up for themselves," they just get knocked down. In all likelyhood, this was just the contract that Cathy was offered.
  
  Their leverage is their value to the company. If you're not capable of providing more than minimum value for your employer, then why should you work for that company? Find a company you can do more for.
- poe's law is real. Can't tell if unmarked joke, or just doesn't know anything about the history of labor or what.
  
  User tagging is great for this
  They're a shitstain!