German Lopez on doing a “complete 180 on unions”: “On November 17, 2017, right after the Vox Media editorial staff started a push to unionize, I sent out my worst tweets of all time. ‘I am against #VoxUnion,’ I wrote in one of the tweets. … ‘I am generally fine with and even supportive of unions,’ I concluded. ‘Just not this one.’ … Good organizing and outreach from colleagues helped change my mind about the need for a union at Vox Media specifically. But so did approaching the research on unions the same way I would any topic in my reporting: by looking at the data and talking to experts. … [A]s I dug deeper and deeper into the research, and as I engaged in the actual organizing and bargaining processes, I was repeatedly proven wrong, in large part because I initially focused way too much on the bad examples of unions instead of the good ones. When you stack up all the research and look at the broader picture, though, the net effect of unions — bad examples included — is good for the typical worker. I hope more Americans go through the transformation that I did. We’d all be better for it.” His article summarises the evidence rebutting common objections to unions.
24 August 2019