Cartoon: Unions Are Imperfect

unions-are-imperfect

Transcript of cartoon:

Panel 1
Two angry-looking men are talking to each other in a house. A window in the background lets us see that it’s snowing outside. One of the men is wearing glasses, suspenders and a striped necktie; the other man is wearing a bowtie and smacks his fist into his palm.

GLASSES: I just realized: Unions are imperfect!
BOWTIE: Then let’s get rid of unions!

Panel 2
Same scene. Glasses is looking down at his clothing with an expression of distress; Bowtie is yellling.

GLASSES: These clothes aren’t perfect either!
BOWTIE: We’ll get rid of them too!

Panel 3
Same scene, but now the guys are naked (“censor bars” have appeared in front of their naughty bits). Glasses is looking around at the room, and Bowtie is holding a can of gasoline.

GLASSES: Hey, our house isn’t perfect!
BOWTIE: Burn it down!

Panel 4

Still naked, Glasses and Bowtie are now standing out in the show, shivering and looking sad. In the background, we can see their house burning down.

GLASSES: I just r-realized: Something imperfect can st-still be c-c-crucial.
BOWTIE: Y-y-ya think?

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10 Responses to Cartoon: Unions Are Imperfect

  1. 1
    desipis says:

    I feel like this cartoon could work as an argument against any sort of radical change or criticism, not just that directed against unions. You could replace “unions” in the cartoon with lots of other things: “government regulation”, “market capitalism”, “police”, “military”, “feminism”, “religion”, “academic elite”, “traditional values”, etc.

  2. 2
    Ben Lehman says:

    Desipis: yeah. I don’t think it works less well, though.

  3. 3
    Sebastian_h says:

    The cartoon makes a very conservative argument. But that’s ok because I’m open to temperamentally conservative arguments.

  4. 4
    LTL FTC says:

    Contrast this with the Chesterton’s (Gender) Fence cartoon from a while back. It’s an interconnected argument about imperfect systems that have perpetuated themselves over time with varying degrees of success.

    This cartoon says we shouldn’t tear down institutions (unions) that work for the most part because the perfect shouldn’t be the enemy of the good. The gender fence cartoon makes the opposite argument: though, in its broadest interpretation*, gender classifications are accepted as accurate descriptions of 99%+ of the population, the pain of the group hurt by the incumbent system outweighs the fact that it works for (or at least doesn’t actively harm) nearly everyone else.

    You can somewhat differentiate the two because the character in panel 4 of this cartoon says it’s “crucial,” like clothing and shelter, whereas the pro-gender-fence guy makes no such argument. But since he’s “wrong answer guy,” a trope you use often, he makes no effort to defend the presence of the fence or even explain why it’s there and what purpose it’s supposed to serve.

    We could swap out the stereotypical gender-nonconforming person trapped under the fence with student with a unionized teacher who molested them but was stuck in a rubber room instead of getting fired. Or a victim of police brutality who had to go up against well-paid union lawyers. Or someone blacklisted from the union hiring hall because of a personal beef. Alternatively, as desipis says, we could swap out “unions” for “gender norms” or “the penal system” and post that cartoon up on the National Review.

    I know that you can’t make a fully-formed argument in four panels that addresses and dispatches all critiques, but putting those two cartoons side by side says something about all of us, and how conservatism of temperment is often just a flag of convenience.

    * This leads to the question of what the “gender fence” means. Does it mean you can assume people are either men or women and there’s no need, outside very narrow circumstances, to ask everyone you meet for their pronouns? Or does it mean that women can’t be garbagemen and men can’t be full-time caregivers/parents? The former is more defensible than the latter from an observational standpoint and from the way “right answer person” looks. But “right answer person” doesn’t really explain themselves.

  5. 5
    AcademicLurker says:

    desipis@1: One difference is that, while I hear calls to reform the police (just to take one example), I’ve never heard anyone outside of the far far fringe call for abolishing police altogether.

    In contrast, there are constant calls to do away with unions.

  6. 6
    Eytan Zweig says:

    LTL FTC @4 – the two cartoons are not simply opposite perspectives on two issues, however, because the assumptions are quite different.

    In the union cartoon, the cartoon seems to take it as a fact that unions are imperfect, and makes the point that, in and of itself, that it not a valid argument for the abolition of unions. No one in the cartoon, including the authorial voice, is denying the imperfection of unions.

    In the gender fence cartoon, the cartoon is arguing that gender binaries are imperfect, which the “wrong answer guy” is implicitly denying. Now, the point is muddled because the genderqueer person is explicitly calling to dismantle the fence, but the point that the cartoon is making is that the fence is causing harm, which the unnamed “they” cannot see.

    This is because the political climate that the two cartoons are responding to – there are calls to abolish unions because of their imperfections, and there are many people who consider the gender binary to be natural law and unproblematic.

    That said, I agree with the sentiment that the union cartoon feels somewhat vague because it’s really about the nature of the argument rather than the nature of the unions. It’s easily countered by “not everything flawed is inessential, but unions are both”. If it existed in a vacuum – and was the only point anyone made to defend unions – it would be grossly ineffective. That is not the case, though.

  7. 7
    Charles S says:

    The other major difference between the two cartoons is that the problem with unions is presented as an abstract argument about wrongness (bow ties, suspenders, glasses, and baldness are all signifiers of pointy-headed intellectualism), not as a direct experience. The problem with the gender fence is presented (rightly so) as a direct experience of a wrong.

    Calling for the abolition of the thing that has you pinned down or impaled is very different from calling for the abolition of the thing that you have decided is generally bad. If someone who has been directly and significantly harmed by the flaws in unions calls for the abolition of unions, it is worth figuring out how they were harmed and what could be done about that. If someone has decided that gender should be abolished because they have reasoned out that gender is bad, then it is worth pointing out to them that defective things can still be useful and that abolition may do more harm than good (and I say that as a gender abolitionist who has not been that substantially harmed by the gender system).

  8. 8
    Realist says:

    “there are constant calls to do away with unions.”

    Yes and no. The true goal is removing their special protections and making them voluntary. Some unions may disappear. Some unions may not disappear. It’s a lot simpler to call for their elimination but in the private world that is shorthand; people really want to stop protecting them.

    In the public union context more folks want to eliminate them but public unions have a lot of problems that private unions lack.

    1) If a worker wants to join a union, she should be able to do so. She should be able to bind herself to any terms that she wants. Given the frequent union claims of increased benefits as a result of unions, it would be surprising if some workers didn’t join voluntarily. It’s also likely that the absolute top performers will seek out non-union shops where they can advance faster: that is a benefit to everyone.

    2) If a company wants to do business with a union, it should be able to do so. Given the frequent union claims of increased efficiency and productivity as a result of unions, it would be surprising if some companies didn’t do it on their own since communication usually benefits profits. In fact many companies used to have workers committees but the union laws prevent them from doing so.

    3) If a company and union want to contract for a “closed shop” they can do so. Freedom of contract is good.

    4) If a company and union want to contract for special negotiating protections (mandatory arbitration, strike protection, etc.) they can do so. Freedom of contract is good.

    5) No worker should ever be obliged to join a union because of a law, and no company should be required to deal with a union because of a law. The situation “union membership is required for a job here” should only result from a contract. If the unions are concerned with free riders they can bargain against them, just like the company can bargain for a non-competition agreement.

    6) No worker or company should ever be restricted from dealing with a union because of a law.

    In a certain sense this would make unions a bit like large contractors. Unions would probably offer a better-than-average skillset together with some other benefits (internal dispute resolution, automatic coverage of absences, etc.) in exchange for employer concessions like long term contracts, wages, and closed shops. Some unions would succeed, and other ones would not.

  9. 9
    LTL FTC says:

    Re #6, #7, I think we’re close to the same place.

    I don’t really think that most the calls to end unions spring from their imperfections. Absolute freedom of contract is a main tenet of libertarian thought. Similarly, gender abolitionism (or destruction of the gender binary) is a tenet of certain gender ideologies. People who are harmed by neither (cisgender/non-union ideologues) have very strong opinions without experiencing harm.

    Wrong answer guy in the Gender Fence articulates his opposition to the right answer in terms of indifference rather than the Union cartoons’ nitpicking. Their reactions only exist to be unconvincing. In both cases, a longstanding institution is questioned. In one, we assume it has good qualities and works for most people (and that the imperfections are tolerable). In the other, the author doesn’t try to understand why it’s there, focusing instead on claims of harm.

    Now, as a pro-union guy and someone who believes gender expression is a personal decision we shouldn’t butt into out of common human decency, this sounds like belaboring the point. But this gets to a problem intrinsic to adherents to any ideology that wants to tear down an institution.

    You can understand the harm caused by an institution, but can you understand why it is popular among so many people? Do you really understand why it was created, or do you just blame bad people with selfish motives for being mean? Can you convince the people for whom it works to agree with you without understanding why they feel like they do? If you can’t, what hope do you have to convince people or to build a better system in its place that works for more people?

  10. 10
    Ortvin Sarapuu says:

    “That said, I agree with the sentiment that the union cartoon feels somewhat vague because it’s really about the nature of the argument rather than the nature of the union”

    It also doesn’t actually address the criticisms of those who want to abolish unions. Nobody says “we should abolish unions because they’re imperfect”. The people who want to abolish them believe that unions are a lot, lot worse than imperfect. The disagreement is not what to do with imperfect things, but whether unions are imperfect, or a lot, lot worse.

    “Abolish it because it’s imperfect” is a position that literally nobody holds, so this cartoon isn’t arguing against a point of view that actually exists.