Is it possible to have true unity in a union? Is it possible for people to truly put aside their own goals, agendas, needs, and desires in order to be truly unified in a union? Speaking from personal experience, I have some serious doubts.
I would like to preface this by stating that I do believe in the power of 'United We Stand, Divided We Fall'. There is tremendous power and potential when people can put aside their differences and stand together behind a united cause. We have seen this time and again, unfortunately, usually during a disaster of some sort. Kind of sad really that it takes devastation for people to stand together regardless of their petty differences and act as one.
However, people, by nature, are, at the very least, a little selfish. And I don't think that this is necessarily a bad trait. It might possibly be a trait left over from our earlier days of hunter/gather survivalists that still works for us and even comes in handy sometimes. However you want to look at it, we are to some extent selfish.
So, are we capable of putting aside all selfishness to have unity in a union (without any previous devastation or country to save)? Are we capable of putting aside our differences for a very simple reason of standing together in a union? There is no country or community to save, just people wanting to get the best contract or deal we can?
One of the first problems I see with this is who gets to decide what the union should focus on? What issue should we stand behind, unified as one? There are a lot of ideas on this; hence we become divisive and petty. This is generally where we start to diverge and break apart.
Of course, it has been suggested that it might be possible to have multiple goals supported by a unified group (with individual ideas). There might even be enough goals to satisfy all the different individual goals. However, the problem I see with this is the paranoid fear that one group is getting more than the other. Such that the goal then evolves, or rather devolves, from standing together and supporting each others different goals, to instead worrying that Group A is getting more than Group B, and let us not even discuss just how much Group C is getting etc... We are back again to being selfish. This is also where we start to diverge and break apart. I just don't think that it is possible to unify for multiple purposes.
I believe that unity is the idea that people can come together, in agreement, putting aside all differences, and operate as one. We have been able to accomplish this. We have been able to come together and realize great things while we were unified and operating for one common purpose. Unfortunately, this is usually in the face of disaster. Although there have been some positive projects that unified groups have accomplished. The Pyramids come to mind, as well as other ancient wonders of the world. Heck, even Unions at one time were able to do great things. They were able to change the world of Big Business because they were able to change the way we regard work place environments and rules. The one common goal was to create a safe place to come to work!
Of course, that goal is a little nobler than 'I want a bigger raise or more benefits'. I think that might be why we are having such a hard time creating unity in unions today. Unions have achieved their goal of creating safe work environments. In addition, we now have numerous agencies all dedicated to preserving, enforcing, and improving those rules.
So what does that leave us with?
It leaves us with all of our petty differences. It leaves the nit-picky things like a bigger raise (because some have an over inflated sense of worth and contribution - a petty difference). A better retirement (because a few did not know that one had to save for that - another petty difference there). Or better benefits like free wi-fi instead of dial-up, leather jackets instead of trench coats etc... Is it any wonder why we can not seem to come to an agreement?
So not only do I think that it is unlikely that we can achieve unity in a union, but what purpose does a union serve in today's environment?
1 comment:
I think this is a question of human nature, rather than one of unions per se. We have as much unity in our union dealings as we have in desire of outcome. Insofar as things are basically good, we seek to improve things incrementally; when basic needs are met, we each occupy our little piece of Maslow and fight for the gains that benefit us. Alliances enable us, like society generally, to agree to forego A in order to help another group get B, with the understanding that they'll help us with C, etc. We're likely to find greatest unity when the stakes are highest: threaten to close the job altogether, and we'll unite 100%.
I think human nature doesn't change. We're always selfish, and unity is an illusion where each of us wanting the same thing makes us appear to be working together. We may in fact be, but it's a common goal that leads us, not altruism.
As for the usefulness of a union, I think that even when fractured we still have (in our case) 25 goals rather than 2,500. There's still a benefit to having a voice for each thousand people, since some companies (...) would simply eat individuals alive.
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