Talk:Industrial violence

Merger proposal

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result of this discussion was to not merge. Rlendog (talk) 15:34, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

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My proposal is that given that there is a very large body of work on industrial violence and it is widely documented, the articles union violence and anti-union violence should be merged into industrial violence. --Goldsztajn (talk) 06:11, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

• Comment — I think this is a reasonable proposal for discussion. I dislike having two articles, union violence and anti-union violence, which could ultimately compete with each other for attention.

This also could solve the problem of where to include intra-union violence (such as the Boyle–Yablonski murder).

One concern that i have is the scope of the term industrial violence. It goes beyond union/organized labor, but maybe that's OK.

Would the term industrial encompass all relationships between workers and their masters, employees and employers, slaves and their masters? Should it? It seems to me that agricultural relationships (for example) pre-dated what we consider to be the industrial age.

I'm leaning toward support, but i'd very much like to see additional discussion on this proposal before i decide whether to fully support it. Richard Myers (talk) 07:48, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

• Comment — I'm not sure if a merger would work, mainly due to the length of these articles. They all have good info and I would hate to chop them down just to make them fit into a single article. If the greater topic is to receive proper coverage then I think it's best to have multiple articles, perhaps with a central article "industrial violence" with a heading for each article there and a short paraphrase with a link to the main articles? - Burpelson AFB ✈ 12:50, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

• Comment — I believe that industrial violence is too broad a term. It leaves out the word "union" altogether. Anti-union violence has a long, ugly history and a good article on it, when balanced with any incidents of striker or union-related violence in a separate article, will keep the two sides of a highly contentious issue at arms length from each other.

People who think unions are violent can post their well-documented evidence under "union violence." Partisans of the other camp can also post the history of strike-breaking etc. under "anti union violence."

Merging the two topics under a title that doesn't even mention the word "union" would be like deleting the articles on the Democratic and Republican parties and merging them into an article on "Political Parties," or Fascism and Communism under forms of government with no separate articles.

Wikipedia should honor any polarized issue with separate forums for input on both sides. This will prevent a shape-shifting phrase duel in the sun within a single uber-article.

By all means, have a article, or topic, on Industrial Violence, but keep separate articles beneath it and point to them.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.15.166.219 (talk) 2011-04-08 21:58:07

• Comment — It occurs to me that there are incidents of industrial violence which are clearly against the union, there are incidents of industrial violence which are attributed to the union, and there are incidents of industrial violence in which the perpetrators are either disputed, or unknown, or both. While these three categories are not always distinct, there are cases where the preponderance of evidence one way or the other is pretty well established.

I would argue that a very good example in which we don't know the truth might be the Independence Depot explosion, which killed thirteen non-union men. No real investigation was ever conducted. If we explore motive, there is both a surface motive, that the union was attacking replacement workers, and a deeper (and in my view, similarly compelling) motive on the part of the mine owners, in that (1) Harry Orchard was undoubtedly a double agent as well as a loose cannon, although in spite of his "confession" we don't even know for certain if he was the perpetrator (he confessed to other crimes that he could not have committed), (2) a railroad detective and a mine owners association detective were caught attempting other sabotage (preparing to derail a train) in order to blame the miners, and (3) the explosion and subsequent deaths allowed the mine owners to blame the union, and therefore to immediately clear the entire district of all union supporters.

My point is, it would be difficult to know which of the two articles (union violence, or anti-union violence) this historical incident would best fit into.

So the idea of a "neutral" industrial violence article which could categorize such grey areas of history is compelling.

In short, i like the idea of creating this article, in part as a neutral index to the other two articles. After thinking about some of the other comments here, i am now leaning toward keeping the other two articles, rather than merging all together. Richard Myers (talk) 14:41, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

• Comment this merger proposal should have been discussed before creating such a short, dictionary definition only article. Merge tags aren't sufficient to communicate to other editors that current work is going on. Many articles sit for years with merge tags. It's now been tagged now as undergoing current major expansion to prevent deletion tagging. --RadioFan (talk) 12:08, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose (with condition) — At the risk of sounding (ATROS:?>) (what's the right word? school-marmish? supercilious?), allow me to remind this sophisticated group of commentators of the old saw that Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia. Content should be consistent with form, and the Medium is the message. Thus, we should exploit the marvelous opportunities presented by hypertext markup and high speed servers. The default presumption should be to expand the encyclopedia, not for the sake of expansion, but for the sake of clarity.

• Point Two: Industrial violence in the form of pro and anti-union violence are obviously interelated. Their histories are intertwined. However, they also have an independent history of their own, despite the "dialectical" (ATROS:Marxist). In order to understand the relationship between the two, it is appropriate to explicate the distinguished history of each.
• Conclusion and statement of condition: Thus, IMO there should be a third article, Industrial violence. (ATROS:Hegelian), that would be a synthesis. Thank you in advance for fully considering this approach. Bard गीता 18:29, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose - The industrial violence article has no refs and should be deleted. The term industrial violence is overbroad and should logically include things like Animal Liberation Front which have nothing to do with labor or union relations. It might make sense to merge pro and anti-union violence, but it probably doesn't make sense to merge them where they belong, which would be in a broader labor or union relations article.Jarhed (talk) 00:24, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

• ""Oppose"" I afraid that what's now under the heading of industrial violence is what will eventually become of the Anti-Union Violence. I'm would establish a personal degree of involvement. I was at one time a executive committee member of a large AFL-CIO local and negotiated a contract covering 1,000 workers as Deputy Chief of that committee. I personally handled pension issues at a critical juncture. I voted on both the subcommittee and the full committee on advanced handling of grievances and arbitrations. I later worked the other side, as management deputy chief negotiator and acted as the sole person handling pension issues. I spent the rest of my career in management positions although for about 20 years I handled grievances for the most part. I had a real job as well. some might be surprised at my lack of internal conflict. But I was never in a position of wanting to destroy the employer or seek to destroy the union. It would be senseless. There was workplace violence and in a few cases, there was violence from the union side. In the first instance, it was always a question of interpersonal relations, akin to going postal. The pro-union violence was not sanctioned by the union and would not have represented the membership. There are always occasions when it might seem to extend beyond "industrial violence" but the truth is that there is very little connection between industrial violence and anti-union violence. I would even urge a degree of caution in what is called anti-union violence. As a senior manager, I had to deal with supervisors who went rogue, i.e. demanding in effect their own version of a contract.

Grown up companies don't look for war against unions and the other way around. Bismarck, a right-winger anti-left character if ever there was, also advocated workers rights within limits, in part to suppress unions and socialism but also because he believed a healthy, reasonably happy worker was more productive and of more value to the nation. Germany adopted advanced social legislation that the United States still resists and reacts against which speaks to corporate juvenile behavior German unions aren't particularly strong, but the social compact still holds (in the absence of war). We're now seeing German exporting while we complain we can't because of Chinese labor costs.

Anti-union violence is something more than simple workplace violence. It is part of a pattern of suppressing worker human rights. That's what we called it when it happened to Solidarity in Poland and other communist states but somehow we want to lump all violence involving union workers together, even if it's a bar fight. Anti-management violence? It's happened, but it can hardly deprive the management of its right to close a mill or office, to impose wages if it has the power and do any number of other provocative that include the corporate death sentence, i.e. firing someone or group of people. It happens with some frequency. A plant is closed down or the work is taken from Union workers and given to non-union or right-to-work states. Witness Boeing's attempt to open a wide body assembly plant in anti-union South Carolina in what has been adjudged as retaliation against the Machinists Union for a strike in Washington State. The reality is that Boeing acted stupidly and said all too obviously what they intended to do. The plant was threatened and then acted on. Boeing knew the law and ignored it. Do unions retaliate. Yes, but it's limited. The owner can just pack up and move, or close down or sell to rid itself of unions. The union has the employer and that's about all although it does seek to expand its reach with a wider grasp. Violence always works against the union. Violence against the union rarely results in real consequences. If you want to say it doesn't happen, it has done so in the past to an extent that anti-union violent holds a unique position in our history.

Mutinies against bad captains have happened for as long as we've had ships and navies. But there was something unique about the "great mutiny" against the British Navy during the Napoleonic war. Seamen who had carried the brunt of the war, frequently against their will, were restive not so much about individual captains but against the Navy as a whole, the use of the Articles of War to impose inhuman living conditions as a right. As a group action, it's power was that it could not be handled with the usual brutality although some leaders were executed. Changes were made to make wartime conditions more tolerable.

Anti-union violence is a classic example of Haves oppressing the Have Nots. It is not violence that results from the nature of the industry but as part of the denial of the rights of free men (and women) to associate freely and to act in concert for their own advancement. The industrialists still have greater rights in most areas and it takes real grownups not to act arbitrarily. Anti-union violence is the imposition of a powerful class of what it wishes on a group of people who have much less if any power. Industrialists operate in concert, acting together against unions in related fields while the industrialists with their huge financial resources can act directly in seeking the intervention of political and military power.

There is a huge gulf between industrial violence and industrial relations and anti-union violence. And-union violence is not and never will be an acceptable part of industrial relations and no responsible industry will engage in violence, secretly or otherwise, not will it encourage situations that it reasonably expects could lead to violence from union members. Union members are real people as opposed to the supposed "personhood" of corporations which we're taking to huge extremes in this day.

01:04, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

jmc— Preceding unsigned comment added by Jmc9595 (talk • contribs) 01:04, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose The majority of unions in the US at this point are no longer industrial. I'm not sure if that's the case in other countries but non-industrial unions are certainly an international phenomenon. When thugs from non-industrial unions beat someone up, that would neither fit in industrial violence nor would there be a union violence article to take up the material. TMLutas (talk) 02:51, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.