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Comment by Flammy | Hacker News Reader

Interestingly all drivers are covered, but not all drivers will be voting members.

> only to drivers who have been with a company for the past 90 days and who have made at least 52 trips to or from Seattle during any three-month period in the past 12 months.

Lyft and Uber fought against this, under the logic that more part-time drivers are less likely to support unionization.

Meanwhile:

> Teamsters Local 117 and other drivers have pushed for stricter criteria

[1] http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/city-unvei...

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Not a huge surprise that unions would push for fewer drivers to be voting members - one tried and true union tactic is to negotiate with an employer to take money from non-powerful-union-members and give it to union members. That's how you end up with pay by seniority rather than performance, layoffs where the union decides who gets laid off, and pension deals that are unavailable to new workers.

Can you elaborate on this:

>"One tried and true union tactic is to negotiate with an employer to take money from non-powerful-union-members and give it to union members."

What exactly is negotiated directly between the employer? How does this redistribution work in practice? Thanks.

My understanding is that non-union employees are required to pay union dues since they still benefit from collective bargaining. Some states & contracts have an opt-out.

That's the theory, yes. But there are plenty of examples of unions throwing some of their members (typically part-time employees or those without seniority) under a bus in order to get benefits for the rest; if the members being thrown under a bus don't even get to vote, they're even more screwed.

I am wondering how a practice of an employer requiring non-union members to pay union dues would be legal. Doesn't this constitute a tax?

Edit: it looks like this practice is not legal in right-to-work states in the US. This article seems to explain "Union security agreements" pretty well if anyone is interested:

http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/free-books/employee-r...

I wonder are non-union workers in union shops ever pressured to join?

And it's also how you end up with weekends, benefits, worker protection, full-time employment and reasonable wages.

I think the point is more limited the voting body causes unequal membership.

Basic worker benefits and protection can happen regardless of the number of voting members...

That's how I inferred the OPs comment as well. Shouldn't a union that represents the majority of its workers also be majority vote?

No -- the people most affected by the decisions should have the greater voice.

If a driver drives once:

1. they have less knowledge about working conditions

2. the trip was more of a fling with being an Uber driver and not a source of income.

3. It is easier for Uber or Lyft to stack the deck with drivers who are less informed on the issues

On the other hand, a union that's run by people depending on uber as a full time source of income has a significant interest in reducing the number of people driving for a "fling" or part time - more surge pricing, more guarantee minimum income from uber, less risk of low ratings leading to punitive action, since uber can't just replace them easily.

My point is that while unions benefit some workers, they don't benefit all workers. It's not a black and white situation.

> And it's also how you end up with weekends, benefits, worker protection, full-time employment and reasonable wages.

This will only apply to the top 10% of Union workers. The workers who came late (or the majority of Uber drivers) will receive less pay, have less power, work longer hours, and fewer benefits than the "senior" drivers. Do you really think unions will help everyone? They, just like everything else in this world, are designed to benefit the top.

Contrary to mistaken public opinion, union members are paid commensurate with their skills and seniority. It's foolish to require a company to pay all employees the same regardless of ability and unions make allowances for that in negotiations.

Can you give some examples of this? I'm most familiar with California's public employee unions, which are admittedly an extreme sample, but nearly every attempt to do performance measurement is fought tooth and nail.

>That's how you end up with pay by seniority rather than performance

You get pay by seniority as a compromise because it's an objective measure, it correlates with performance and it can't be gamed by either side.

Does that correlation hold true for jobs already based on seniority?

> it correlates with performance

"Results suggest that, contrary to common beliefs, job tenure is largely unrelated to job performance."

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001879113...

"we conducted meta-analyses on the relationships of job tenure with four types of job performance: core task performance, citizenship behavior, creativity and innovative behavior, and counterproductive work behavior"

Paywalled.

However, the abstract ("citizenship behavior" / "creativity"... meaning what exactly?) hints that the measures are largely subjective and somewhat bullshitty.

Here's another, unpaywalled study:

http://www.people.vcu.edu/~mamcdani/Publications/McDaniel,%2...

"Results indicate that for all levels of job experience and for both low- and high-complexity jobs, the correlation between job experience and job performance is positive. "

(up to 12 yrs)

    That's how you end up with pay by seniority rather than performance

Frankly this is the fault of the employer not the union.

Yes the union is the one _forcing_ the employer to enact such policies but _why_ does the union exist? Because the employer treated their employees unfairly.

Unions are a bandage on a gaping wound, yes you can say the bandage isn't doing the best job. But why do you have the gaping wound to start with?

Whatever the historical reasons for power structures, once enacted they tend to serve their own ends. That they're disenfranchising some of their own members should be a big red flag.

> unions...push for fewer drivers to be voting members

Leaders are incentivised to minimise the number of key supporters they need to stay in power [1]. Having a large pool of potential supporters is a plus.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selectorate_theory

This rule excludes two kinds of people:

* People who are new to Uber.

* People who don't work at Uber very much.

These are people who know less about what it's like to work at Uber or don't have very much skin in the game. In any voting system, if you let people vote who don't know very much about the environment they are voting in or don't have much at stake, it makes fair representation difficult (unless you have fractional votes). To take an extreme example: people who visit Louisiana or have family there are certainly affected by state laws but that does not necessarily mean it is fair for them to vote on the same footing as Louisiana residents.

It also prevents Uber from paying an unlimited number of people to sign up just to manipulate the union.

From a certain point of view you can see these as people who don't have much skin in the game -- so they are willing to sell their votes.

A more insidious way for this to work is that Uber could slightly favor candidates who are likely to vote their way during the on-boarding process -- varying their strategy on a month by month basis, depending on what issues are coming up for vote. You don't need a crushing margin -- and maybe don't want one -- just a good solid 3-4%.

Its more then that. People who drive for Uber rarely or are new to it don't want to pay union dues and are likely going to vote against the union.

The city didn't want a bunch of part-time or brand new drivers killing a union for the larger "full-time" group over union dues. Its a smart and relatively fair play by the authors of the law. The reason Uber/Lyft want these folks to vote is that they're likely to opt out just because of the dues.

I get that union dues can be a contentious issue for members. However, does organizing necessitate membership fees? It feels like jumping the gun to assume right away that an uber-drivers'-union would both have dues and they would be expensive enough to put off new members.

However, does organizing necessitate membership fees?

The union is going to hire an attorney to represent them in negotiations right?

And yes dues are a huge issue for new unions where members don't know what the benefits are yet - particularly for part-timers. My wife who's a management side labor attorney actually raised this point and said it was significant - and the law was written smartly to address this.

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