A colleague of mine was ranting about how the local teachers union was against a vaccine mandate. Upon further inspection, it seems like a lot of unions are against mandatory vaccines.
Does this basically boil down to labor not wanting to be forced to do something by management? Or is there something more?
Because their fucking job is to resist coercion of workers by management, and yes it is a contradiction that this applies to resisting employers mandating their employees get vaccinated for the good of the public
It is literally a manifestation of the limitations of trade union consciousness that Lenin wrote about. But the unions are nevertheless compelled to fight against this, because if they don't then their defense of workers' rights becomes arbitrary.
It is literally the same exact logic that drives unions to defend objectively shitty employees from being fired arbitrarily. Yeah maybe they deserve to be fired, but it's the union's job to defend them, because otherwise it directly undermines their mandate to be the indiscriminate arbitrator for the united front of the workers
To draw from real life experience, my union is actively encouraging everyone to get vaccinated, but I guarantee that if the union backed the company in mandating vaccination, an enormous chunk of the work force would turn against the union. And this is literally a period of contract negotiation with the company - they can't afford to alienate anyone. The odds of union hostility is probably the primary reason my employer hasn't already mandated vaccination and is applying soft pressure at worst.
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Can the union require vaccines though? Not in agreement with management, but on their own? Basically is there a situation where the union could get ahead of these kinds of mandates, instead of reacting against it?
That would be very unwise. There are many anti-vaxxers here
Oh, I agree! I know of some in my office building. But the ones I know are also against having to pay dues for political organizing, and the union wanted to force them to do it anyway (Janus ). So there are some situations where the union does go against its workers. I'm just trying to see if there's a scenario where they could force the vaccine.