Only slightly related, but, as a consultant who has done work for a mix of for-profit, fake non-profit (big health systems), government, and real non-profit (policy thinktanks, advocacy groups, etc.) - I cannot exaggerate how frequently the real non-profit places are the most toxic, craziest, least functional organizations out there.
I don't have your range of knowledge, but what you say comes as no surprise to me.
Non-profits have the luxury of not having to accomplish anything. Sure, they may have goals and ideals, but in the end, they can fail miserably at it and still have a job. For-profits don't have that luxury. It's sink or swim. In a for-profit, personality and ego must take a back seat to productivity. In a non-profit, personalities can take full control and become more about pecking order than accomplishment.
It's pretty wild to look at our current economic landscape, in which the richest person in the world is well-known for screwing things up at his for-profit companies by tweeting, and say that "personality and ego must take a back seat to productivity."
I think your example actually nicely illustrates the point you see it as undermining, in both a trivial and a more serious sense.
First, Musk *used to be* the richest person in the world and is now number two, for reasons not altogether unrelated to his erratic tweeting-oriented actions. Suggesting that there is in fact some feedback between business judgment and net worth.
More importantly, though, the whole point is that the shareholders in Musk's companies aren't voting on whether they find his personality and ego intrinsically appealing or otherwise. In that sense the vibes really do take a back seat to productivity. If they hinder productivity on net, that's bad; if they help it, good; if neither, neither. In theory, the profit motive at least partially severs the link between the manager's public persona and the stakeholders' expressive values that's fundamental for a nonprofit.
His finally dropping from the richest to the second-richest doesn't detract much from my point. As for your final paragraph, this might be my fault for not specifying: I am not referring to the economic landscape of planet Theory, I'm referring to our currently-existing economic landscape as it has been shaped by our shared history. Perhaps firms operating out of Theory only concern themselves with the profits springing from the productivity of the workers, but firms in our world derive revenue from a number of other sources, like the financial markets and government subsidies in Musk's case. Your vision of shareholder decisionmaking being equivalent to a short excel function doesn't really hold up outside of planet Theory.
I think you're attacking a strawman here. If your point is just that the differences between profit-seeking and nonprofit entities are less than a theoretical account might predict, then sure, I doubt anyone would disagree with that. I certainly don't. If you mean to say, OTOH, that there's no meaningful distinction outside a realm of pure theory with no practical implications for management incentives or organizational culture, that strikes me as implausible.
Of course nobody thinks capital markets operate on "a short excel function." People have all sorts of different ideas about what leads to profitability, some of which at any given time will be utterly fanciful, as well as different time preferences and levels of risk appetite. There's also a plausible argument that the rise of massive asset managers like BlackRock poses a threat to the system's overall efficiency in allocating capital by decentralized decisionmaking.
That said, I think that if you drop the "in theory" from my claim that "the profit motive at least partially severs the link between the manager's public persona and the stakeholders' expressive values that's fundamental for a nonprofit," it still holds up as an accurate statement about the real world.
TSLA is down only because they missed (badly) last quarter and FY, and estimates continue to slide. It has absolutely nothing to do with Musk’s erratic behavior.
"First, Musk *used to be* the richest person in the world and is now number two... Suggesting that there is in fact some feedback between business judgment and net worth."
If the market worked, Musk wouldn't be rich at all.
One thing I've been considering: Back in the old days, to become filthy rich, you had to produce something tangible. And you had to produce a LOT of it. Think steel, or petroleum, or plastics, or textiles, etc. There was no way to be filthy rich without investing a fortune in infrastructure. Now, the richest people in the world (some of them, anyway) can become filthy rich at their laptops, not producing one physical thing.
Good observation. But it goes toward making my point. People who achieve vast wealth without producing anything tangible have the luxury of believing whatever they want, without regard to reality. Those who make their living in reality must adhere VERY closely to reality. Cars can't be manufactured based on ideology; they must be produced according to the laws of physics and chemistry. Same as for railroads and energy distribution.
I'll amend what I said. Goldman Sachs and their like have been declared by the party elite to be "Too big to fail". It's a little more like, "Too politically connected to fail".
Legitimate businesses that are "Too small for a bailout" must make money. Nobody's giving them anything. The bills get paid by the income from satisfied customers. Or, they go out of business.
I think there should be a government oversight body tasked with auditing progressive nonprofit org charts. If the org chart is too goofy then they get flagged for monitoring by all the relevant state and federal regulatory agencies.
Absolute insanity from the ACLU. Even if they’re blinded by DEI fanaticism and not just being cynical, don’t they realize that forced arbitration is probably going to hurt black workers more?
I don't think they're blinded by DEI fanaticism; this has standard HR cynicism written all over it. Probably that's better in a practical sense because it means they can be reasoned with - ie, made to back off if the cold-eyed calculus changes - but god damn, it is utterly contemptible.
Fanaticism? Cynical? They're employers. They want to discipline their employees without outside influences coming in and demanding workers' rights. That's it.
Coming in late, but without knowing specific cases, I assume the ACLU would go after employers disciplining workers because some other aspect of that discipline offended their sense of propriety (I swear I don’t mean that as contemptful as it sounds). They fight qua that other quality (speech, racism, whichever), not qua boss ascendency
I've been increasingly nervous about my ongoing financial support of the ACLU for a while now ... thank you for bringing this to my attention; I'll be cancelling my donations and directing them somewhere more productive.
Uh, IJ is an overtly conservative project that, to take a not-entirely-coincidental example, wrote an amicus in favor of the conservative political project to defund public-sector unions by constitutionalizing right-to-freeload:
FIRE isn't a reactionary organization; they are genuinely nonpartisan. They routinely defend left-leaning employees against retaliation by conservative thugs.
(IJ, on the other hand, is absolutely reactionary.)
FIRE is run by the "The Coddling of the American Mind" guy and is staffed either and funded by conservatives. I get that they occasionally pay attention to actual censorship, but for the most part, they're reactionaries.
My (current) favorite example of the disconnect between the values an advocacy organization espouses and its own business practices relates to MSNBC. After listening to Rachel Maddow and Joy Reid standing up for the underdog, I'm treated to innumerable commercials for semi-scams like reverse mortgages, extended auto warranty programs, and useless vitamin supplements - all aimed at vulnerable senior citizens and the financially gullible.
There's a fairly longstanding norm in journalism that advertising and content are separate sides of the organization and neither should have anything to do with the other. I mean maybe that's a bad norm, but it does exist.
Well I'm not saying that their advertising should reflect their progressive values. But if a large part of their advocacy revolves around calling out (what they regard as) shady business practices, MSNBC should at least make sure their business isn't shady.
"It’s hard to imagine that the individuals and foundations that donate to the ACLU want to see the organization use their money to undermine workers rights like this."
True, but it is not hard to imaging the individuals and foundations that donate to the ACLU support the woke postmodernist DEI racism against Asians and others not in a sanctioned politically correct victim group.
Many leaders of NGOs that I know and talk to off the record... those that actual care to get anything done... are silently purging their workforce of these toxic robots of grievance ideology. My guess is that the ACLU, because it is such an attractive target for the most ambitious of the Theory-trained enemy of race, gender and sex normality, cannot get off the treadmill.
The way the world is going I recommend everyone get a law degree to defend yourself from harm. I would prefer swords, but so it be.
Nope. Adults can read that crap without any rules. Unlike the Democrat cancel culture. Just no toxic nor graphic gender ideology propaganda in kid’s books in the public schools and library. A civil society always controls what children consume as they are dependent on adults.
Chase Stangio didn't mention anything about being okay with adults having the right to read Irreversible Damage:
"[S]topping the circulation of this book and these ideas is 100% a hill I will die on."
Pretty straightforward censoriousness. Hence why SHE deleted it,* and pretended the whole thing was about "creat[ing] the information climate for the market to be more supportive of trans self-determination". Whatever the fuck that means.
* Fuck you, Chase! It's Substack. I can say what I want.
Unpopular opinion: the hostile, antagonistic collective bargaining process between unions and firms mandated by the NLRA and NLRB is bad. And hostile v. cooperative is also the main substantive differance between American and European unions, not sectoral bargaining or putting workers on corporate boards.
Yes, but the existing spirit of cooperation led to workers getting a seat on corporate boards. Every time I see an American dreaming about putting workers on corporate boards it is so they can overrule management.
Not sure if this is meant tongue in cheek or not, but yeah, probably more companies should make stock incentives part of the job outside the tech field. Tech is a major field where the workers often feel a sense of ownership of the company and want it to succeed.
So, you're saying that I should not be able to invest in a local business providing a service or product I believe to be valuable to the community? Who is going to build factories and businesses?
Unfortunately consistent with how many nominally-progressive orgs respond to organizing campaigns. I'm wondering: does your database have the ability to sort by the type of employer? Would be interesting to see a piece listing some of the more egregious ULPs committed by nonprofits/lefty groups/labor organizations as employers.
Type of employer is not tracked like that by the NLRB. I can search the case text for "nonprofit" which will probably come the closest to achieving what you have in mind, as the charged employer's business is generally described in these decisions.
So many non-profits seem to have primarily become golden slippers for their elite college white collar staff while treating their workers very poorly...
I always hate it when nonprofits throw out stupid statements like "we need donations because we're nonprofit". There's nothing inherent about nonprofit status requiring donations to be sustainable (although that's very common). Did you know that Rolex, the watch company, is owned by a nonprofit corporation? They do good works without people just giving them money. Instead, their funds come through the sale of pricey watches.
Nonprofits can have varying sources of income, and they can be very charitable or very self-serving with their proceeds.
As the saying goes, the problem with socialism is socialism. The problem with capitalism is capitalists.
I just read a series of tweets from the union for ACLU-DC that seems relevant to this story. Apparently they just filed a ULP against the organization because management has ended the practice of a 4-day work week: https://twitter.com/ACLUDCunion/status/1750919711519297747.
Actually it’s very easy to see many of those who donate to the aclu don’t care. It’s emblematic of the increasing affluence of many on the left and their focus shifting from due process and civil liberties to identity politics as the basis for their worldview
On reflection, I find myself having mixed feelings about this article.
The underlying conduct is outrageous, appalling even when one's become inured to similar idiocy, and the ACLU fundamentally should not be attempting to defend it in any forum. And it's neither here nor there that I don't really share the article's blanket anti-arbitration stance as a general policy matter.
(That said, if the violation here really is as blatant as the article indicates, that makes it less likely that arbitration and litigation would produce substantially different results. Conversely, if the case were closer on the merits -- and didn't have such an inflammatory ideological aspect -- it might seem less obvious that the equities tilt in favor of a more employee-protective process.)
What I take issue with is the approving characterization of the ACLU as "a progressive organization that sits in a broader ecosystem that includes the labor movement," with the implication that the ACLU's should therefore have a commitment to doing things the labor movement likes. This strikes me as wrongheaded, in a way similar to the "everything bagel" mentality Matt Y. has criticized elsewhere. Maybe the ACLU has indeed come to see itself as an outgrowth of the "broader ecosystem" (a.k.a. The Groups) and not as devoted to certain discrete aims that need not logically or inevitably coincide with those of other "progressive" organizations. If so, that's to me an unmitigated bad thing and the source of much of our present ills.
If we think of this as a case about retaliation against worker complaints about management, or about employee organizing and workplace expression more generally, then it's easy for me to see how coming down on the pro-labor side in this instance flows naturally from a stated commitment to "civil liberties." On the other hand, if we see this as a dispute about enforceability of arbitration clauses, it's not obvious to me which position, if any, aligns with civil libertarianism as a matter of first principles.
I gather the ACLU's framing is that this is a matter of "access to the courts," and that seems like a perfectly legitimate way of characterizing what's at stake from a civil liberties perspective. But one could also plausibly see it as an issue of parties' ability to contract around the need for governmental involvement in resolving disagreements. It does seem conceptually a little incongruous for civil libertarians to be the ones insisting that there can be no alternative to the obtrusion of state power into every conceivable private dispute.
One can, of course, reply that inequality of bargaining power in this instance makes the ideal of contractual autonomy largely illusory and calls for some paternalism in setting aside certain nominally voluntary agreements. And that may be entirely correct on the merits; a little paternalism is sometimes a very good thing. I'm by no means saying it'd be incoherent for the ACLU to support it here. But what I can't get on board with is the notion that it's hypocrisy or a betrayal of principle if the ACLU fails to lead the charge for the maximally paternalistic solution on a contested question of public policy.
"Maximally paternalistic" would better seem to describe the ACLU's position. It doesn't matter whether the paternal entity is public or (nominally) private: there are certain attributes that an autonomous individual shouldn't be able to sign away.
I'm reminded of the erroneous Propertarian (so-called "libertarian") argument against slavery -- that one owns one's own body. One's relationship to the body isn't one of ownership; the body is an integral, inalienable aspect of the Self. The hegemony of Ownership assumes that Ownership is the fulcrum of existence -- that the Self is most fundamentally "that which owns." Holding that belief (Yes, it's a belief!) to be mandatory is itself a form of totalitarianism.
Or as an old song puts it more succinctly: "Some rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen."
I've worked with a lot of nonprofits. They are often batshit crazy, but for abuse of non-lawyer employees, the ACLU takes first prize. It's almost as if all the pricey lawyers on ACLU boards hate the employees they're routinely underpaying. They're rich; they love the poor who pander to them, but they can't stand their own sub-middle class receptionists, eds, etc.
This actually isn't uncommon at other nonprofits either. Rich people serve as board members and expect the employees to be their servants. I've never been paid so poorly for my work and expertise. And health insurance? Forget about it.
I'll say this, policy 527 is a pretty decent arbitration clause as far as a non-collectively-bargained one goes. But that doesn't change the outcome of the case at all, and there's something breathtaking about the ACLU's position here. Hard to see them appealing to the full Board but anything is possible I suppose.
What I can't get over... they've gone TWO YEARS without reaching a first contract with the Employer? Why isn't this a story? That's not much longer than the average, but it's the darn ACLU! Come on!
Only slightly related, but, as a consultant who has done work for a mix of for-profit, fake non-profit (big health systems), government, and real non-profit (policy thinktanks, advocacy groups, etc.) - I cannot exaggerate how frequently the real non-profit places are the most toxic, craziest, least functional organizations out there.
I don't have your range of knowledge, but what you say comes as no surprise to me.
Non-profits have the luxury of not having to accomplish anything. Sure, they may have goals and ideals, but in the end, they can fail miserably at it and still have a job. For-profits don't have that luxury. It's sink or swim. In a for-profit, personality and ego must take a back seat to productivity. In a non-profit, personalities can take full control and become more about pecking order than accomplishment.
It's pretty wild to look at our current economic landscape, in which the richest person in the world is well-known for screwing things up at his for-profit companies by tweeting, and say that "personality and ego must take a back seat to productivity."
I think your example actually nicely illustrates the point you see it as undermining, in both a trivial and a more serious sense.
First, Musk *used to be* the richest person in the world and is now number two, for reasons not altogether unrelated to his erratic tweeting-oriented actions. Suggesting that there is in fact some feedback between business judgment and net worth.
More importantly, though, the whole point is that the shareholders in Musk's companies aren't voting on whether they find his personality and ego intrinsically appealing or otherwise. In that sense the vibes really do take a back seat to productivity. If they hinder productivity on net, that's bad; if they help it, good; if neither, neither. In theory, the profit motive at least partially severs the link between the manager's public persona and the stakeholders' expressive values that's fundamental for a nonprofit.
His finally dropping from the richest to the second-richest doesn't detract much from my point. As for your final paragraph, this might be my fault for not specifying: I am not referring to the economic landscape of planet Theory, I'm referring to our currently-existing economic landscape as it has been shaped by our shared history. Perhaps firms operating out of Theory only concern themselves with the profits springing from the productivity of the workers, but firms in our world derive revenue from a number of other sources, like the financial markets and government subsidies in Musk's case. Your vision of shareholder decisionmaking being equivalent to a short excel function doesn't really hold up outside of planet Theory.
I think you're attacking a strawman here. If your point is just that the differences between profit-seeking and nonprofit entities are less than a theoretical account might predict, then sure, I doubt anyone would disagree with that. I certainly don't. If you mean to say, OTOH, that there's no meaningful distinction outside a realm of pure theory with no practical implications for management incentives or organizational culture, that strikes me as implausible.
Of course nobody thinks capital markets operate on "a short excel function." People have all sorts of different ideas about what leads to profitability, some of which at any given time will be utterly fanciful, as well as different time preferences and levels of risk appetite. There's also a plausible argument that the rise of massive asset managers like BlackRock poses a threat to the system's overall efficiency in allocating capital by decentralized decisionmaking.
That said, I think that if you drop the "in theory" from my claim that "the profit motive at least partially severs the link between the manager's public persona and the stakeholders' expressive values that's fundamental for a nonprofit," it still holds up as an accurate statement about the real world.
TSLA is down only because they missed (badly) last quarter and FY, and estimates continue to slide. It has absolutely nothing to do with Musk’s erratic behavior.
"First, Musk *used to be* the richest person in the world and is now number two... Suggesting that there is in fact some feedback between business judgment and net worth."
If the market worked, Musk wouldn't be rich at all.
One thing I've been considering: Back in the old days, to become filthy rich, you had to produce something tangible. And you had to produce a LOT of it. Think steel, or petroleum, or plastics, or textiles, etc. There was no way to be filthy rich without investing a fortune in infrastructure. Now, the richest people in the world (some of them, anyway) can become filthy rich at their laptops, not producing one physical thing.
That seems like an odd complaint to make about Musk, who runs a physical car manufacturer.
Good observation. But it goes toward making my point. People who achieve vast wealth without producing anything tangible have the luxury of believing whatever they want, without regard to reality. Those who make their living in reality must adhere VERY closely to reality. Cars can't be manufactured based on ideology; they must be produced according to the laws of physics and chemistry. Same as for railroads and energy distribution.
"For-profits don't have that luxury..."
The last several bank bailouts would seem to disagree with you.
I'll amend what I said. Goldman Sachs and their like have been declared by the party elite to be "Too big to fail". It's a little more like, "Too politically connected to fail".
Legitimate businesses that are "Too small for a bailout" must make money. Nobody's giving them anything. The bills get paid by the income from satisfied customers. Or, they go out of business.
I think there should be a government oversight body tasked with auditing progressive nonprofit org charts. If the org chart is too goofy then they get flagged for monitoring by all the relevant state and federal regulatory agencies.
same, same 😖
Absolute insanity from the ACLU. Even if they’re blinded by DEI fanaticism and not just being cynical, don’t they realize that forced arbitration is probably going to hurt black workers more?
I don't think they're blinded by DEI fanaticism; this has standard HR cynicism written all over it. Probably that's better in a practical sense because it means they can be reasoned with - ie, made to back off if the cold-eyed calculus changes - but god damn, it is utterly contemptible.
Fanaticism? Cynical? They're employers. They want to discipline their employees without outside influences coming in and demanding workers' rights. That's it.
Why then do they fight other employers wishing to discipline their employees?
Because they're selfish.
But not rationally self-interested. They're soon going to be as worthless as a truckload of dead rats in a tampon factory.
Coming in late, but without knowing specific cases, I assume the ACLU would go after employers disciplining workers because some other aspect of that discipline offended their sense of propriety (I swear I don’t mean that as contemptful as it sounds). They fight qua that other quality (speech, racism, whichever), not qua boss ascendency
This is insane and terrible. The complete meltdown of the ACLU in recent years is shocking.
>I don't like my boss
>Aha, because of his skin color??!?
Very normal and cool way to think about it
I've been increasingly nervous about my ongoing financial support of the ACLU for a while now ... thank you for bringing this to my attention; I'll be cancelling my donations and directing them somewhere more productive.
Try FIRE. Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Non-partisan free speech advocates. Like the ACLU in the 1970s.
https://www.thefire.org/
Also the Institute for Justice, which has picked up the ACLU's mantle in non-speech areas. www.ij.org
Uh, IJ is an overtly conservative project that, to take a not-entirely-coincidental example, wrote an amicus in favor of the conservative political project to defund public-sector unions by constitutionalizing right-to-freeload:
https://ij.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/rebecca-friedrichs-et-al-v-california-teachers-association-et-al-amicus.pdf
The ACLU is abandoning its progressive mission.....so you should donate to reactionaries
FIRE isn't a reactionary organization; they are genuinely nonpartisan. They routinely defend left-leaning employees against retaliation by conservative thugs.
(IJ, on the other hand, is absolutely reactionary.)
FIRE is run by the "The Coddling of the American Mind" guy and is staffed either and funded by conservatives. I get that they occasionally pay attention to actual censorship, but for the most part, they're reactionaries.
My (current) favorite example of the disconnect between the values an advocacy organization espouses and its own business practices relates to MSNBC. After listening to Rachel Maddow and Joy Reid standing up for the underdog, I'm treated to innumerable commercials for semi-scams like reverse mortgages, extended auto warranty programs, and useless vitamin supplements - all aimed at vulnerable senior citizens and the financially gullible.
Like they stood up for humans who live in West Virginia by viciously stereotyping and mocking then on election day?
There's a fairly longstanding norm in journalism that advertising and content are separate sides of the organization and neither should have anything to do with the other. I mean maybe that's a bad norm, but it does exist.
Well I'm not saying that their advertising should reflect their progressive values. But if a large part of their advocacy revolves around calling out (what they regard as) shady business practices, MSNBC should at least make sure their business isn't shady.
"It’s hard to imagine that the individuals and foundations that donate to the ACLU want to see the organization use their money to undermine workers rights like this."
True, but it is not hard to imaging the individuals and foundations that donate to the ACLU support the woke postmodernist DEI racism against Asians and others not in a sanctioned politically correct victim group.
Many leaders of NGOs that I know and talk to off the record... those that actual care to get anything done... are silently purging their workforce of these toxic robots of grievance ideology. My guess is that the ACLU, because it is such an attractive target for the most ambitious of the Theory-trained enemy of race, gender and sex normality, cannot get off the treadmill.
The way the world is going I recommend everyone get a law degree to defend yourself from harm. I would prefer swords, but so it be.
Heck you had a member openly calling for censorship of any anti transgender works
Nope. Adults can read that crap without any rules. Unlike the Democrat cancel culture. Just no toxic nor graphic gender ideology propaganda in kid’s books in the public schools and library. A civil society always controls what children consume as they are dependent on adults.
Chase Stangio didn't mention anything about being okay with adults having the right to read Irreversible Damage:
"[S]topping the circulation of this book and these ideas is 100% a hill I will die on."
Pretty straightforward censoriousness. Hence why SHE deleted it,* and pretended the whole thing was about "creat[ing] the information climate for the market to be more supportive of trans self-determination". Whatever the fuck that means.
* Fuck you, Chase! It's Substack. I can say what I want.
Chase Stangio is a lawyer with a history of trans activism. Are you suggesting a hidden agenda?
Is it even a hidden agenda when you're that blatant about it being the only thing you care about?
Unpopular opinion: the hostile, antagonistic collective bargaining process between unions and firms mandated by the NLRA and NLRB is bad. And hostile v. cooperative is also the main substantive differance between American and European unions, not sectoral bargaining or putting workers on corporate boards.
Could you spell this out? I'm not sure I'm following where the NLRA's structure _mandates_ hostility. How does the Act itself dictate that hostility?
Doesn’t being on the board and cooperative bargaining go hand in hand? A sense of ownership gives workers incentive to cooperate
Yes, but the existing spirit of cooperation led to workers getting a seat on corporate boards. Every time I see an American dreaming about putting workers on corporate boards it is so they can overrule management.
Well sure, because workers don't feel ownership in the company.
They should buy stock.
Not sure if this is meant tongue in cheek or not, but yeah, probably more companies should make stock incentives part of the job outside the tech field. Tech is a major field where the workers often feel a sense of ownership of the company and want it to succeed.
Owning stock is one way to feel ownership. Being committed to doing an honest job is another. I've never really understood "don't feel ownership."
They should be issued stock upon being hired, and only people who participate in making the products the company issues should be able to buy stock.
So, you're saying that I should not be able to invest in a local business providing a service or product I believe to be valuable to the community? Who is going to build factories and businesses?
Unfortunately consistent with how many nominally-progressive orgs respond to organizing campaigns. I'm wondering: does your database have the ability to sort by the type of employer? Would be interesting to see a piece listing some of the more egregious ULPs committed by nonprofits/lefty groups/labor organizations as employers.
Type of employer is not tracked like that by the NLRB. I can search the case text for "nonprofit" which will probably come the closest to achieving what you have in mind, as the charged employer's business is generally described in these decisions.
Please do so!
So many non-profits seem to have primarily become golden slippers for their elite college white collar staff while treating their workers very poorly...
It's what Noah Smith calls the Non-profit Industrial Complex. It's not that they don't make profits - they distribute them as very fat paychecks.
I always hate it when nonprofits throw out stupid statements like "we need donations because we're nonprofit". There's nothing inherent about nonprofit status requiring donations to be sustainable (although that's very common). Did you know that Rolex, the watch company, is owned by a nonprofit corporation? They do good works without people just giving them money. Instead, their funds come through the sale of pricey watches.
Nonprofits can have varying sources of income, and they can be very charitable or very self-serving with their proceeds.
As the saying goes, the problem with socialism is socialism. The problem with capitalism is capitalists.
I just read a series of tweets from the union for ACLU-DC that seems relevant to this story. Apparently they just filed a ULP against the organization because management has ended the practice of a 4-day work week: https://twitter.com/ACLUDCunion/status/1750919711519297747.
Actually it’s very easy to see many of those who donate to the aclu don’t care. It’s emblematic of the increasing affluence of many on the left and their focus shifting from due process and civil liberties to identity politics as the basis for their worldview
On reflection, I find myself having mixed feelings about this article.
The underlying conduct is outrageous, appalling even when one's become inured to similar idiocy, and the ACLU fundamentally should not be attempting to defend it in any forum. And it's neither here nor there that I don't really share the article's blanket anti-arbitration stance as a general policy matter.
(That said, if the violation here really is as blatant as the article indicates, that makes it less likely that arbitration and litigation would produce substantially different results. Conversely, if the case were closer on the merits -- and didn't have such an inflammatory ideological aspect -- it might seem less obvious that the equities tilt in favor of a more employee-protective process.)
What I take issue with is the approving characterization of the ACLU as "a progressive organization that sits in a broader ecosystem that includes the labor movement," with the implication that the ACLU's should therefore have a commitment to doing things the labor movement likes. This strikes me as wrongheaded, in a way similar to the "everything bagel" mentality Matt Y. has criticized elsewhere. Maybe the ACLU has indeed come to see itself as an outgrowth of the "broader ecosystem" (a.k.a. The Groups) and not as devoted to certain discrete aims that need not logically or inevitably coincide with those of other "progressive" organizations. If so, that's to me an unmitigated bad thing and the source of much of our present ills.
If we think of this as a case about retaliation against worker complaints about management, or about employee organizing and workplace expression more generally, then it's easy for me to see how coming down on the pro-labor side in this instance flows naturally from a stated commitment to "civil liberties." On the other hand, if we see this as a dispute about enforceability of arbitration clauses, it's not obvious to me which position, if any, aligns with civil libertarianism as a matter of first principles.
I gather the ACLU's framing is that this is a matter of "access to the courts," and that seems like a perfectly legitimate way of characterizing what's at stake from a civil liberties perspective. But one could also plausibly see it as an issue of parties' ability to contract around the need for governmental involvement in resolving disagreements. It does seem conceptually a little incongruous for civil libertarians to be the ones insisting that there can be no alternative to the obtrusion of state power into every conceivable private dispute.
One can, of course, reply that inequality of bargaining power in this instance makes the ideal of contractual autonomy largely illusory and calls for some paternalism in setting aside certain nominally voluntary agreements. And that may be entirely correct on the merits; a little paternalism is sometimes a very good thing. I'm by no means saying it'd be incoherent for the ACLU to support it here. But what I can't get on board with is the notion that it's hypocrisy or a betrayal of principle if the ACLU fails to lead the charge for the maximally paternalistic solution on a contested question of public policy.
"Maximally paternalistic" would better seem to describe the ACLU's position. It doesn't matter whether the paternal entity is public or (nominally) private: there are certain attributes that an autonomous individual shouldn't be able to sign away.
I'm reminded of the erroneous Propertarian (so-called "libertarian") argument against slavery -- that one owns one's own body. One's relationship to the body isn't one of ownership; the body is an integral, inalienable aspect of the Self. The hegemony of Ownership assumes that Ownership is the fulcrum of existence -- that the Self is most fundamentally "that which owns." Holding that belief (Yes, it's a belief!) to be mandatory is itself a form of totalitarianism.
Or as an old song puts it more succinctly: "Some rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen."
I wont contribute to the ACLU again.
This is tough. ACLU obviously being insane, but neutering rent-seeking, parasitic unions would be great for the country long-term.
At the ACLU these days, it's not called "neutering"; it's "impotence-affirming care." ;-)
I've worked with a lot of nonprofits. They are often batshit crazy, but for abuse of non-lawyer employees, the ACLU takes first prize. It's almost as if all the pricey lawyers on ACLU boards hate the employees they're routinely underpaying. They're rich; they love the poor who pander to them, but they can't stand their own sub-middle class receptionists, eds, etc.
This actually isn't uncommon at other nonprofits either. Rich people serve as board members and expect the employees to be their servants. I've never been paid so poorly for my work and expertise. And health insurance? Forget about it.
I'll say this, policy 527 is a pretty decent arbitration clause as far as a non-collectively-bargained one goes. But that doesn't change the outcome of the case at all, and there's something breathtaking about the ACLU's position here. Hard to see them appealing to the full Board but anything is possible I suppose.
What I can't get over... they've gone TWO YEARS without reaching a first contract with the Employer? Why isn't this a story? That's not much longer than the average, but it's the darn ACLU! Come on!