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.
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?
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.
Most american unions are reactionary because most americans are reactionary.
I work in Illinois with union people who openly cheered the Janus decision. They were so excited about getting their money back that they didn’t understand what they were giving up.
vaccines aren't political. you cant draw a line from class conflict to vaccines.
Getting the COVID vaccine is a political signifier in the US because conservative propaganda has made it part of the culture war, much like wearing a mask.
totally agreed. It's been absorbed/sublated into the culture war. which is why I think drawing the line between reactionary/comrade here is wrong.
as LeninsRage explained better than I could, a union's job is to listen to the will of it's workers and fight employer coercion.
if we want to draw the line between between reactionary/comrade here we would be anti-union and for employer coercion.
the more accurate criticism of this insane conflict has to do with the powers that exist beyond workers, unions, local governments and individuals.
which is why I myself have been losing my mind as libs/leftists have enjoyed the schedenfreude of watching random anti-vaccine people die of covid on the news.
this shit is not a matter of individuals making decisions, it's a matter of disinformation in the interest of capital.
I think that's definitely a factor - beyond just reactionary rank-and-file members of unions businesses are totally unwilling to engage with unions outside of the context of union pressure itself.
The push to get everyone vaccinated has broad support unless you're in the Fox/Q extended universe, but a lot of normies still equate mandates with scary gommunism authoritarianism
Employer: "I should get to fire individual workers for THIS arbitrary reason."
Union: "No."
Employer: "Why do you support THIS?"
