this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2026
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They responded with violence because there were no legal protections for labor unions. Those protections exist in California.
Burning a warehouse is the least effective way to help people. The arsonist ends up in jail, and the warehouse owners put more security and restrictions on employees instead of paying them more. Unionizing forces the warehouse owner to meet the demands of the workers.
"Guys the system WORKS just USE it and don't break its rules!!" You don't sound like someone who has ever had to form a union, maybe even never grew up in a union town. Legal protections are designed to redirect challenge into a controlled environment that is designed in accordance with the interests of capitalism. Legal parameters for strikes has, go figure, resulted in a consistent and gradual erosion of union power that has only began to change post-COVID.
Unionists didn't use violence because they didn't have "legal protection," they did it because capitalists and police would break their bodies either if they worked or resisted. They'd call in militias to bash unionist skulls, they'd pay them in scrip and prevent them or their children from ever freeing themselves.
I don't buy your concern for these communities at all, have you tried to check if there was any harm? Have you heard how they've responded? Would any of them accept that cost if it meant that the visibility of these acts produced a larger movement of labour rights that their kids could benefit from? So fucking disrespectful.
Those are all illegal now. That's why unionizing works now where it didn't before.
I live in California. Air quality is always an issue, whether it's from wildfires or avgas from local airports. These cause real health issues, and the latter causes measurable IQ drops in the poor communities surrounding those airports. Industrial fires are something we need to worry about just like Tehranis have to worry about oil refinery fires.
Unionbusting, like racism, totally not a problem anymore... izzat what you're saying?
Not in California. Air pollution causing health problems is a real problem though.
yes. the strong union protections in California is why Tesla opened all their manufacturing in California and hasn't busted any attempts to unionize those factories. so glad you know better the history of labor in california than the workers there fighting for their rights
Tesla is moving as much manufacturing out of California as it can. The only reason it started in California was that there was already a factory there from a company that had already vacated it years ago after it had unionized, the only unionized Toyota plant in the U.S. to this day. Tesla was more interested in getting manufacturing started as quickly as possible than it was in reducing costs, so it took over an existing factory instead of building one in a "right to work" state and paid workers enough not to unionize or stop work. Now that Tesla has factories in Texas, it has shut down production of the Model X and Model S, which were produced in California, in hopes of eventually vacating or replacing entirely with robot workers, which are the only thing they're making there now.
Dude, I already told you I'm in California. I know what's happening here.
Reality: the burning down warehouses redirects security from union busting to looking for arsonists. And the calculus is sometimes: pay more for security, or just pay workers more.
There is no money spent on security for union busting in California. California has strict laws against violent union busting.
Nobody would do something iLlEgAl
Not if they get penalized for it more than they benefit from breaking the law, and California is strict about enforcing labor laws.
Look man, in addition to being counterproductive, the actions you're defending have a lot of collateral damage. It's similar to Israel saying that they should be able to bomb Gaza to get terrorists even though the bombings also affect children, which is another example of an action that is both counterproductive and has a lot of collateral damage.
Dude caused half a billion in damage. Insurance companies are going to be forced to evaluate the risk of underpaying workers going forward.
I'm pro union but you really need to look up the history of unions friend.
Whether they pay workers more or not, they need to worry about arson, so they'll solve that problem first by imposing draconian security measures. Once they solve that problem, underpaying workers is no longer a problem for them.
I'm a history buff. The NLRA is why unions work now where before there was a lot of labor-related violence.
The only way to solve that problem is to eliminate workers entirely or pay them such that they aren't incentivized to use their access to sabotage operations.
Everyone is politely explaining this to you. Try listening. You clearly have not done the homework we assigned you.
As I've already explained, the only way to solve that problem is security measures. Even if they pay people well, that doesn't stop a disgruntled or temporarily insane employee from destroying the warehouse.
Collective bargaining extracts as much value out of the employer as the employer gets from placing the warehouse in that location.