this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
800 points (96.8% liked)

Work Reform

10131 readers
1303 users here now

A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.

Our Philosophies:

Our Goals

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

There is no universe in which Chinese labor unions are even remotely the same thing as labor unions in the western-style industrialized democracies. China is an authoritarian top-down quasi-capitalistic system which means that there is no management for workers to negotiate with apart from a single massive structure that's ultimately controlled by Xi's government.

Contrast that to western-style industrialized democracies wherein unions are meant to use organized labor as a ballast against the power of privately owned industrial management.

It's just not the same thing at all.

Furthermore, while virtually all modern machinery contains Chinese-made parts, it's just a fact that in the western-style industrialized democracies, tradesmen vastly prefer power-tools made in places like the US or Germany or Japan because they tend to be much better in terms of quality and reliability and lifespan then are their Chinese-made counterparts.

Go to any big construction site in the US and you'll immediately see that the workers prefer brands like Milwaukee, DeWalt, Makita, Hilti, Husqvarna and Bosch over the cheaper Chinese-made alternatives, for example.