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Exactly, consider the case in the article, lunch breaks.

The employer has ALL of the power in the employer/employee relationship without unions. If the employer hints or suggests that you work through lunch for no pay and you don't want to get fired, you skip lunch. Regulations are the only way we have left to ensure employers don't abuse their employees.

Employers have worked very hard over the last century to destroy unions entirely (in the public eye with a very powerful propaganda campaign, with intimidation and physical violence, with lobbying and changes in legislation) and they've largely succeeded. Well, you decided you don't want to negotiate on even terms with your employees and find some reasonable compromise, you want to treat your company like a dictatorship, so now the government has to come in and set ground rules since you couldn't play nice. Sorry, no sympathy.

I think exempting businesses from most regulation if their workforce is unionized is a reasonable compromise. As a business owner, you can choose; the negotiating table or the government can come in and tell you exactly what you can and cannot do in great detail and force you to prove that you are compliant. If you have a good relationship with your employees and treat them well, this is a win-win no brainer.

I'd suspect the relationship with a given Union will have drastically different outcomes that are purely contingent on the people. Be removing it from the equation it gives a level of certainty for labor (sadly also dehumanzies labor to a certain extent too) for management, and if I were in such a position I'd value the predictability.

In regard to the article, regulation is starting to be used more as a barrier to entry than what it's advertised for protecting worker/environment/etc... When you slap a new regulation on any industry, the large players just add another lawyer/accountant/operations staff, while the small business owner has to personally work an extra amount of hours. Once the compliance reaches a level it can no longer be brute forced, this becomes an obstacle that'll effectively bar new entrants.

The trouble is that a union can gut many kinds of businesses since all the workers can not be replaced without greatly and often fatally disrupting the business, and then if an industry is unionized, workers become a monopoly and this can result in large deadweight losses for the economy; this is not to say that without unions everything works out perfectly, just that unions have their problems.

> Unions in California were criticized in a recent forbes opinion piece I read for wanting to exempt union run shops from the minimum wage, but frankly, that seems like a sensible position to take.

I can sort of see that, because those employees (supposedly) have the union to take care of them. But if below minimum wage isn't enough to live on, below minimum wage plus having to pay union dues isn't enough, either. And "it's legal to do that to union employees but not to non-union employees" reeks of double standard.

It allows them some leverage over their constituents. For instance, in Michigan, a big union state, there is no state law mandating lunch or other breaks. That way, unions can say to employees, "Without a union, your employer can deny you a lunch or bathroom break."

From a naive perspective, it has historically been ironically anti-union politicians who have backed worker protections, precisely because it takes ammunition away from unions. Why do you need a union if all the benefits are already written into law? Less union shops mean less union voters.

But, to argue for the unions, not only do they negotiate wages, but also benefits. Maybe you aren't getting the minimum wage, but you might be getting better health care, a retirement account, overtime, paid vacation, sick time, flex time, etc. Whereas a non-union employer can say "We're paying a $15 minimum wage so we can't afford health insurance, vacation, etc." With a minimum wage, all you're guaranteed is that wage (other state laws aside).

I fail to see why it is the state's business to write the laws in such a way as to give unions leverage over their constituents.

I also fail to see why other benefits that a union could get should exempt them from minimum wage laws. Employers could give non-union employees benefits, too, but that doesn't exempt them from the minimum wage laws. I fail to see how a union being in the mix should change anything.

It's not that the state writes a law that gives the unions leverage. They write laws to /take away/ leverage from a union.

There's nothing to guarantee any kind of break from work for an employee, unless it's a law or it's part of the agreement between the employer and the employee. So if the state makes it a law, that is one less benefit a union can negotiate for their members.

Giving up 50 cents an hour to get employee provided health care that would, if you had bought it yourself, cost way more then you'd have made seems like a reasonable choice. Remember unions have to have the workers approve any deal, so if they want to make less then minimum wage, it will be for a good reason.

I agree and had said so before [1]: it's in the same spirit as "if you make this much, you're doing fine and don't need the overtime laws" or "if you make this much, you can invest in shadier stuff since you have the resources to do your own diligence first".

But that's not to say that unions are favoring the exemption for this more noble reason, and we have to be on guard against abuses of it e.g. a consultant who charges a fee to get your workers classified as being in a worthless, token union so you can pay them less but without giving them enough bargaining power to ensure that the lower amount is still a good deal.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11413461

The union minimum wage exemption is just a union tool to apply leverage companies into unionizing. If you don't unionize, we'll force you to pay higher wages to non-union employees.