If corporations were fair, unions wouldn't be needed at all.

:popcorn:

pay them living wages.

Where's the Jimmy Stewart of our time?

And, if corporations were fair they'd be history.

Corporations have to make profits to expand or they will die. Playing fair and being a corporation is an oxymoron.

No it isn't. Sam Walton would be turning in his grave over what his kids have done to what he's built. When he was alive, he insisted that workers be paid and treated fairly and that the products sold be made in the USA unless there was absolutely no equivalent made here. He wasn't against unions but his people felt that they didn't need one. He made money. A lot of money. By playing fair and treating his workers with respect.

His kids killed that. But not until after he was dead.

He showed that it could be done, though.

IBM used to brag that they didn't need unions b/c they treated their employees so well. They also never laid people off.

And they made damn good electric typewriters.

If I were a Volkswagen, I'd have four wheels.

I do not understand your response.

I am not a Volkswagen.

And so, I do not have four wheels.

Corporations are never fair.

Therefore, unions are always necessary.

that often conflicts with the interests of workers, many of whom aren't shareholders.

This was laid down in the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Dodge v. Ford that said that Ford basically couldn't use the corporation as a means of caring for the welfare of the workers but as a vehicle to generate profits for shareholders. What many shareholders found objectionable was excessive compensation of workers. Henry Ford thought it made sense that workers should be paid enough to purchase the products that they produce with their own labor.

The reason why management largely detests labor unions is because it represents a threat to their management authority as well as the arbitrary and rapacious nature of certain managers and also because the shareholders may object to higher labor costs due to workers seeking better compensation, treatment, and safer working conditions, all of which costs more money.

Before the industrial era's version, many corporations were formed for temporary ventures, and dissolved afterward, and were expected to give a good ROI, nothing more. That didn't mean maximize profits at the expense of all else. In my reading of the synopsis of that case "charity" was wrongly defined. Henry Ford wasn't being charitable, he was promoting a long term strategy for continued growth and profitability.

You know, even Supreme Court justices can get something wrong, but just like declaring corporations equivalent to people, they had their reasons.

The history before that is irrelevant to the original scope of the thread's originator, but the history of corporations is noted. True, ROI is one of several measures various corporations may use, but on the same token, you do what the shareholders want you to do. We need only look to that Supreme Court case as an example. For example, there is no silver bullet solution to narrow-minded or miserly stockholders on the board of directors who may push short-term profitability at the expense of long-term viability.

All they need do is look after their own self interest. Problems come because the relationship between workers and employer is inherently biased in favor of the employer.

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