this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2023
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Doing all of it without voting probably would be just as good.
Voting is a critical step. Without voting you'll lose the ability to the the rest.
How is voting necessary for building unions and helping others?
Unions exist because they were voted into existence. They can be voted out of existence. The right has been working on it for decades
Are you referring to votes among workers in a company, or to participation in elections?
Elections.
No. Unions were never "voted into existence" through elections. It is not possible for a union to form due to government action. A union only forms from a conviction among workers to be organized, and to protect each other from those who would harm them.
The government can create laws to make unions ineffectual.
I don't have the time or patience to give a civic lesson on why voting in political elections is important for unionization.
I suggest you explore the topic on your own if you seek to not be confidently incorrect in life.
The government does antagonize unions, but their strength comes from within them, not from elections.
Again, unions were never "voted into existence".
https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-law/employees/collective-bargaining-rights
NLRB is not a union, nor a body that creates unions.
Workers create unions, by choose to unite, to organize themselves toward shares interests.
I feel you're arguing some pedantic point, possibly to dissuade voting at the political level or just because you enjoy the pedantry of this.
I am not arguing pedantically
Labor organization is the vehicle through which the working class advances.
Voting has very little meaningful effect on conditions.
I am not discouraging anyone from voting, only from believing from that voting is generally meaningful, or the cause of change.
As you conceded, states are generally antagonistic to the interests of workers. When workers believe that the state is their friend, workers lose.
Meaningful change happens from the ground up.
The federal government has rules in place to prevent states from stomping on union efforts.
The state can and will outlaw to right for your union to be recognized.
It's is more than just the people can do it organically since the state will union bust. "Right to work" laws are an example of this.
The state's with these laws actively force your union to protect freeloaders who don't join the union.
Fucking vote.
Any rules of the state that protect unions were gained through fights by unions, and may easily be taken away
The state busts unions because the state interest is in busting unions, not because the state lacks rules within itself that somehow may prevent the state from protecting its interests.
Bosses protect bosses, not workers. Who holds the titles should be of relatively minor concern. No one will protect workers unless workers protect themselves.
You present a weird romanticize idea of unionizing.
Without the support of the state it is a bloody affair.
There appear to be parts of history you do not know. That is not often taught in school.
The idea that bosses were dragged into the street and taught to listen is incomplete. These bosses quickly learned to surround themselves with thugs.
The bosses would deploy mobs to murder union organizers because though numbers are in our favor, a handful of us can be bought to beat the rest.
Things were bloody before laws were passed to prevent this blood shed.
But the blood these laws were written from was soon forgotten.
Once forgotten the bosses learned they could use whisper campaigns to convince their workers that unions were their truth enemy. Their whispers convinced workers to vote for politicians to dilute these laws.
This is where we sit today. Weakened laws whose blood sacrifices have been forgotten.
Their whisper campaigns now include the futility of voting because they know our votes are power.
You have succumbed to these whispers and so you at this moment are doing their work for them.
The no longer need to pay for thugs. People like you do the work for them freely.
Uncompensated, working against your own best interests convincing others that voting isn't important.
It is at best naive position for you to push and at worst you are not what you claim to be; the reality being you work for the bosses.
From where I sit it is best for me to assume you are the later as you continue to insist you are correct and I am wrong. Willful or not, you are an enemy to our unionization efforts by your claims.
The state is us and we are the state. Never forget it. Do not believe anyone that tells you otherwise, including yourself.
An authoritarian state exists only if we allow it to exist. Fear or ignorance. The outcome is the same for the owners.
Vote today or bleed in the streets tomorrow.
If you think that I am romanticizing the formation of unions, then I doubt you have read my comments sincerely.
I think you are romanticizing the relevancy of legislation and the state to support workers.
The state supports capital, not workers.
The structure of our society places the state and capital within the ruling class, with the same interests, the repression of workers. Voting cannot effect fundamental changes, the way you are imagining. It may only offer modest benefit for broader movements.
Meaningful change happens from the ground up.