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Comment by Kocrachon | Hacker News Reader

As a former member of a union, I honestly find it odd at how many people think that unions are always good. Of the two unions I was a part of and watching what my dad went through with his Union I'm actually fairly anti-union at this point in my life. I watched a guy get fired for sexual harassment, and rehired due to pressure from the Union. I watched my father not get a manager position, because of seniority ruling, and they gave it to a guy who was fired and then unfired (thanks to the union) for having a secret nap room behind some machines.

I know unions have done a lot of great in the past, but I rarely see much good coming from them anymore. Of course this is all anecdotal, but I've had nothing but bad experiences with them in my life.

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When I was putting myself thru college I took a couple of Union jobs during that time. They both left me with a poor impression. There was little positive for the company (always looking for ways to be _less_ productive) and they took my dues and I had nothing to gain from it. When I got hurt on the job (nothing serious, but still) they didn't bother to help. My impression was they were multi-parasitic, they sapped productivity from the employer and they offered little in return to members except for some pro-forma stuff.

What industry were / are you in?

I'd really like to hear about this from people in blue-collar jobs, with small incomes, and smaller bargaining power. I am not sure if a Silicon Valley perspective about this is necessarily representative or useful.

I actually think this is the wrong way of thinking about it.

While Silicon Valley may be unique, that just means the things workers in those jobs want to focus their collective bargaining around may be unique, too. Not working in Silicon Valley, I won't pretend to know what those things are, but I certainly know that every workplace has issues and that without unions, the power structure is completely unbalanced in favor of management.

OP mentions sexual harassment. But if the workers wanted, they could actually collectively bargain even STRONGER sexual harassment policies than management wanted!

The biggest problem with unions is that they try and force everyone to join them.

Fine, join whatever private organization that you want.

But please leave me out of it. I do not want to follow your ill thought out rules and I want to be able to negotiate myself. I can get a better deal on my own, and I do not want your collective bargaining that they try to force on everyone.

Maybe you're special. And contracts can even be negotiated with a group to recognize individual performance! But the data is pretty clear that when workers bargain collectively, they can negotiate higher pay and better benefits.

I think the real issue is what "benefits" means. If benefits means healthcare, then i'm all for it. If benefits means it's nearly impossible to fire someone, or that seniority trumps performance, then it seems more like it will negatively impact many workers than it is supposed to benefit.

If that's true, that should make it easy for you to work with your coworkers to allow more lax rules about firing when negotiating and in return -- since management will surely be happy too -- you can probably get management to negotiate something that your coworkers would prefer!

>seniority trumps performance

At least people can actually measure seniority.

Indeed, collective bargaining doesn't mean that an individual has no ability to negotiate their own contract with their employer, there are just certain restrictions. See, for example, the collective bargaining done on behalf of professional athletes by unions, like the NBPA or MLBPA.

All such contracts are subordinate to the CBA and can't have conflicting elements.

For example, a ballplayer can't waive a CBA_specified contrast constraint (e.g. many performance incentives are disallowed, can't work for less than the CBA-mandated minimum, etc.).

You're both saying the same thing. What workers negotiate and agree to for their CBA is a contract and they can choose to not include certain things so that individuals can create a second contract individually.

  they can choose to not include certain things

No, they can't. That was my point.

Exactly. Unions built the middle class. Watch Robert Reich's "Inequality for All" which demonstrates how unions benefit workers. In the old days, unions were formed because robber-barons cheated workers out of pay, much like today. It was a hard-won struggle, with many murders.

> I can get a better deal on my own

That's 80% because the supply/demand dynamics currently favor your profession, giving you leverage, and 20% because {markets reward value creation, you are good at bargaining}. Right now it's a harmless attitude, but when the weather turns, or for professions where it has already turned... not so much.

Tech in the USA is so far away from a bad demand/supply ratio that it isn't worth thinking about.

There is a hell lot of room for the conditions of software jobs to deteriorate before people become concerned when new grads from unknown universities can do a bit of interview prep and get $160,000 total comp working 35 hours/week with free food, massages, etc.

Unless you are a skilled labor lawyer you will not be able to bargain better than the union. In my union there is a tremendous amount of institutional memory and they know the consequences of management proposals.

If you really think that individuals can bargain better on their own than collectively then why do companies want to get rid of collective bargaining?

"If you really think that individuals can bargain better on their own than collectively then why do companies want to get rid of collective bargaining?"

Because unions mostly benefit low performers and old/senior people.

I don't want to have an organization making contracts that will hold me back just because of age. If I can demonstrate that I can perform/negotiate, then I should be able to command what benefits/salary that I am able to negotiate in the market, as opposed to be in the 1 sized fits all contract that someone else negotiated.

But if you object to joining a union, then why not work a different job that is non-unionized? Why not look at all possible jobs as your market, as opposed to contracts for a specific job?

One possible response to that question: Why is it ethical or fair force a worker to pay union dues as part of a job?

In that case I'd argue that because the union's negotiation affects all employees (it at least sets a baseline) it is ethical and fair to ask every employee to contribute. Allowing every employee to opt out greatly reduces the amount of resources the union has available to reach its aims.

I'm assuming a few things here:

- That the negotiation performed by the union does affect all workers in the job, whether union members or not.

- That collective bargaining enabled by unions can in many cases be a positive thing for workers because it helps fix an information asymmetry that exists between employers and workers. (Such asymmetries break the assumptions of ideal free markets, which indeed are a good thing.)

- That right-to-work laws do indeed adversely affect the resources of a union. (The data shows that public sector union membership greatly dropped after Wisconsin's public sector right-to-work act passed: https://projects.jsonline.com/news/2016/11/27/for-unions-in-... . As an aside: I'm not the biggest fan of public sector unions, but I think it's likely private sector right-to-work laws would have a similar effect.)

I've participated in debates like this previously on HN without a satisfying response, so I'd ask the following for a response:

Which specific parts of my response/assumptions do you disagree with, and why?

How will they hold you back? Has any union ever prevented a company from offering more money/benefits to certain employees?

It's true that a union has more bargaining power. But you've just moved the power from the employer to the union.

As an individual you don't have power over the terms of the collective bargaining. The union can very well bargain against your interests. If you want $250,000 salary as a new grad, you might actually have a higher chance of receiving it in non-unionized world.

I'm not a labor economist but I suspect that unions work best for workers well below the $250,000 salary. For lower skilled jobs the pricing power for labor in the U.S. is clearly with employers. Unions can help with bringing pricing power to a more equal level. Lower skilled workers almost certainly aren't going to out negotiate a union.

Currently, US wages continue to slide and the middle class shrinks, while the top 8 billionaires own as much wealth as half of the world. This libertarian, trickle-down, union-busting, union-whining nonsense has to stop if people are to realize they're not going to get a fair slice of the pie without resisting corporate greed together. Almost every rich person never gives up a dime without a vicious fight, that's just the way it works. So lower- and middle-income people have to coordinate together to stop working until they are paid what the jobs can afford to make a livable wage.

Not only is union leadership democratically elected, but workers literally vote on whether to accept contracts.

You still have almost no power as an individual. It's majority rules. It's a glaring flaw of 'democracy' that prominent figures and governments have tried to work around.

If you perform well and have decent bargaining power, you would not be in the majority. The people who have the most to gain from a union (people who have low individual bargaining power) would likely be the most vocal and involved in the organization.

Right, but that would also be the majority. It boils down to your fundamental values. Do you want to live in a society with minority elites that are wealthy and powerful, but also hard working and smart, but eventually degrades to lazy and complacent once their heir takes over. Or do you prefer a more uniform distribution, with smaller extremes, even though it limits how high you can go and restricts you closer to the middle at all times.

These desires are at odds. Statistically, the majority would likely always prefer the latter, since the former assumes a poor majority and a rich minority.

There's some values that gets closer to a combination of these, such as going with the former, but banning inheritance (or indirect form of it). Effectively reseting the playing field every once in a while. Or focusing on increasing the minimum, but keeping the distribution like in the former. Like with universal minimum income for example.

That sounds like the same argument made against single payer.

a few years back in Michigan, governor Snyder signed into law the right-to-work legislation. Indiana did the same earlier that same year (2012 I think). Giving employees to opt out of any unions

I'd be fine with this, just don't expect any of the rewards that unions fight for. You can negotiate your own wages, your own holiday leave, your own cost of living increases, your own disciplinary process, etc.

I'll stand up for your right to opt out and get none of these benefits.

If you're in the U.S., this is an interesting layer to the labor rights debate: "right-to-work" states.

Now 28 states (including all of the South, where wages are low) have passed laws that guarantee those who opt out of unions in unionized workplaces receive the same benefits as those who are members.

As you'd guess, that works really effectively to undercut the appeal of joining a union.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law

What on earth was the justification for that? "We hate collective bargaining but want the benefits of collective bargaining"?

I mean, if you are anti-union, it's a pretty genius play politically because it legalizes and incentivizes free riding.

Unions exist on dues. As organizations, they were already weakening, and then if you further limit membership, you've really undermined their ability to collective bargain.

I get why they did it, I just don't get how they sold it to either people or corporate backers. The former may have been financially incentivized enough to override their ideology, but I would have thought the later would be dead against it. Or are there not a lot of half union shops?

This is a bit like saying the wealthy are all bad or the poor are lazy. Sure some could be but if one takes the worst examples to draw a conclusion then it becomes idealogical.

The demonization of unions in the country is a pointless exercise and seems ideological.

Unions are an organizational structure, like industry groups or lobbying groups. Just like the latter exist to represent industry interests, unions need to exist to represent workers rights and interests. Like any other organization they can do good or bad depending on their management and objectives.

> The demonization of unions in the country is a pointless exercise and seems ideological.

Ideological? A vast multitude of people have cited ongoing examples of misbehavior and abuse that they themselves have personally witnessed, which you casually handwave away by saying it's just "ideological".

How about unions start actually cleaning up their act and making themselves respected champions of the worker again?

No one dismisses the concept of banking because of bad banks or startups because of say Theranos, so why must unions live up to this mythical status of a perfect organization?

There will be bad eggs so blame them. Using that to demonize unions as a concept is ideological and disingenuous.

Business and industries have industry groups and lobbying groups. Professionals like lawyers, doctors, architects and engineers have their own groups. Why would everyone in the system need protection and safeguarding of their rights and interests except workers?

It is ideological. The same people decrying the wholesale existence of unions due to bad unions are very rarely willing to decry the wholesale existence of corporations due to bad corporations. Unions and corporations are just flipsides of the same coin. They exist to balance one another.

> The same people decrying the wholesale existence of unions due to bad unions are very rarely willing to decry the wholesale existence of corporations due to bad corporations. Unions and corporations are just flipsides of the same coin.

Unions are corporations, in every sense of the word, both legally and conceptually.

Unions are just a special type of corporation that has been granted a special right: the exclusive, irrevocable[0] right to dictate the terms of employment of its members.

In some states, the union even literally acts as the employing entity, creating a de facto subcontractor relationship.

[0] In theory, the NLRA allows for members to deunionize. In practice, this is almost impossible - once a union forms, there is almost no way it's members can feasibly remove it if they decide they don't want to be represented by it anymore.

No, they aren't legally or conceptually.

Legally, they're in a unique class. They're 501c5s. They have their own unique set of laws that apply to them. Conceptually, they're democratic institutions and not at all like corporations.

Irrevocable? Getting rid of them is the exact same process as starting one! You have to convince your coworkers and win a vote.

> No, they aren't [corporations] legally or conceptually. Legally, they're in a unique class. They're 501c5s.

What do you think a 501(c)5 corporation is?

> Getting rid of them is the exact same process as starting one! You have to convince your coworkers and win a vote.

Sort of. Companies are strictly prohibited from taking retaliatory action against employees who attempt to organize their workplace. In extreme cases, this can even result in mandatory recognition of a union without a vote.

Unions, on the other hand, have great leeway to terminate membership association with members who speak out publicly against the union, which is de facto termination. They are also legally permitted to suppress counter-organizational activities in many other ways which companies cannot do legally to prevent the formation of a union.

In practice, deunionizing a workplace is many orders of magnitude more difficult than unionizing it, because you have to obtain the written permission of 30% of the bargaining unit without attracting the attention of the union leadership.

There's a reason that only 10% of union members in the US ever had the opportunity to vote (for or against) union representation - unions are not legally required to undergo periodic re-certification votes, and they are given great latitude to prevent themselves from ever having to face a vote.

501c5's are non-profit organizations.

The idea that unions have greater ability to coerce workers is LAUGHABLE. First, to your point directly, the NLRB website notes that "Threats to employees that they will lose their jobs unless they support the union" are ILLEGAL, just as it is for corporations. At the same time, however, corporations are able to force employees to listen to anti-union propaganda and pressure them to vote how they want.

If you want to compromise, and say every workplace in America gets to vote every year on whether to have a union, I'd take that deal. Because yes, getting 30% signing decert cards is difficult -- as is getting the 30% of authorization cards to have a vote in favor of a union in the first place without attracting the attention of management! But no, you want elections in places WITH unions annually, but you don't want elections in places WITHOUT them. Democracy only when it suits your desired outcomes.

> 501c5's are non-profit organizations.

Which are corporations.

> But no, you want elections in places WITH unions annually, but you don't want elections in places WITHOUT them. Democracy only when it suits your desired outcomes.

Aside from having a number of basic misunderstandings about corporate and labor law, you're making enough assumptions and judgements about what I want that it's clear you're really interested in having a discussion with a straw man that doesn't actually exist, not with me. So I don't think this discussion is going to go anywhere fruitful.

Here's my attempt at compromise on the "corporation" thing. They're in the same basic category as churches and social clubs. And these different types of non-profit organizations have to go through a process to be recognized by governments. I think we can agree on that. People can decide for themselves whether you're being misleading with how you use the term and what you say makes them different from, say, Google.

The only assumption I made is that you would be opposed to a union election in every workplace in America on an annual basis. If that's wrong, let me know, and I'll actually be quite thrilled.

I guess my point is more about the language difference employed when we talk unions vs companies. For example, I posted a thread earlier today about Wells Fargo abuses and there was no one in there saying: "see corporations are a bad idea and we should get rid of them." Yet there's a few people in here making that exact comment about unions. To me that's a contradiction.

> As a former member of a union, I honestly find it odd at how many people think that unions are always good.

Unions are made of people, like any group, there are as good or as bad as the people they are made of. Unions absolutely can make the difference for underpaid workers. Unions have lawyers workers can get advisce from and they level the playing field between the employer and the worker.

What I find odd is you pretending a lot of people think that unions are always good. In US the majority of people think unions are bad.

I think I hear more negative anecdotes about unions than positive ones. I can think of three reasons why this may be the case.

One is that there's a great deal at stake and most companies are going to resist unions any way that can, and we can reasonably expect that to include negative propaganda.

A second is that unions really are terrible because corporate interests have succeeded in subverting the unions they couldn't destroy and have influenced them in ways that render them dysfunctional in hopes that that will discourage employees from joining.

A third is that unions have an inherent tendency to become terrible due to internal dynamics.

I suspect all three of these are true to some degree. It seems like a good way to defend against the second and third is to have multiple competing unions and allow employees to move freely from one to the other, or start up a new union if none of the ones that exist are any good.

Like most HN readers, I don't have any experience working in a unionized industry or know much about how rules governing unions vary from state to state or which unions are better than others or what kind of checks and balances exist internally to prevent unions from become corrupt or ineffectual.

I do expect that if the tech industry were to become unionized, we would need a different kind of union. It makes sense for unions to force people to work slowly in industries where employees are at risk of ruining their joints and then being discarded by the company when they can no longer shovel their daily quota of coal. In software development, anything that slows you down is frustrating and I think most of us would rather work in an environment where under-performing employees can be fired than one where they can't. We could borrow plenty of ideas from existing successful unions, though.

> I watched my father not get a manager position, because of seniority ruling, and they gave it to a guy who was fired and then unfired (thanks to the union) for having a secret nap room behind some machines.

So the guy should have been fired for taking a nap?

Jez man, you and I so don't see eye-to-eye on this one. If someone is tired, they are not functioning well. If a manager is tired, they are not going to be at their best for handling employees without saying something improper.

But just based on your statement, he should have been rehired.

> I know unions have done a lot of great in the past, but I rarely see much good coming from them anymore. Of course this is all anecdotal, but I've had nothing but bad experiences with them in my life.

This post includes the work NYTWA did to resist the travel ban at JFK (but is otherwise irrelevant to the current discussion, so search for the relevant parts): https://thebaffler.com/outbursts/all-worked-up-nowhere-to-go...

What did your company do to show solidarity?

Unions are meant to be a democracy. If you and others had a problem with the way it was run, ideally you could change it. The fact that you felt it was an organizational issue leads me to believe there is an issue with the leadetship

Unions aren't bad in itself. They largely solve the power asymmetry that exists between larger companies and their employees. Its only that at a certain point unions get so big there's actually a power asymmetry the other way: unions can strongarm the companies. How to restore the balance? I have no idea.

The way that you restore balance is that you make it illegal to force people to join them, as it is in many right to work states.

If unions are so great, then they can stand on their own.

If they end up sucking, then people will leave them.

Except right-to-work laws allow non-union members to freeride. If we truly wanted to restore balance then people opting out of the union wouldn't be able to benefit from any of the union's negotiations. Of course then everyone would join the union so...

And it's quite hard to do that. Companies tend not to want to negotiate with a union and have a separate compensation structure for non-union employees in the same job families. It's hard to have or benefit from one set of working conditions for union members and one for non-members.

IMO, both employees and employers should be free to form what groups they please and negotiate what contracts they will. This includes contracts that forbid an employer from hiring non-union workers. But there should also be no law mandating such a provision. Of course subject to government regulation that supersedes contracts (health and safety, human rights provisions, others).

I don't want your union negotiation benefits, though. I don't want to be covered by the union contract.

You should be able to negotiate with your own group of people to get certain benefits, and I should be able to negotiate on my own. And then we could see who really gets the better deal.

Personally I am confident that my own deal would be better, but I have no problem with other people deciding for themselves that they would prefer whatever deal that a union was able to negotiate.

I see the exception that proves the rule has showed up. You know it's obvious to me that you're in a privileged position and can leverage this to do quite well in the job market with or without worker collective action. One thing I would say is that even someone like you benefits from unions. Unions have negotiated many benefits we take for granted today and can even benefit workers not in the union. For example, my mother did not go to college and started working straight out of high-school. She was able to get a job that paid her really well considering the time and her inexperience. And she didn't even have to join a union to get it. Instead her employer always kept wages a little above the other unionized shops in town, in order to keep the union at bay. Which is all to say that if common workers in your industry unionize you will probably be able to negotiate an even higher premium in exchange for not joining the union.

Also keep in mind unionization is a freedom which is currently being infringed! I firmly believe that organizations should be able to draw up agreements with another! If a union and a company mutually agree that all the company's workers must join the union, I don't see a problem with that. The fact that our lawmakers are going in and writing backdoors so that this is serious government overreach.

"Also keep in mind unionization is a freedom which is currently being infringed! I firmly believe that organizations should be able to draw up agreements with another!"

Here is why this is incorrect.

It is illegal to fire someone for joining a union. This is a right that all workers have.

For the same reason that it is illegal to fire someone for joining a union, it should be illegal to fire someone for NOT joining a union.

So take you pick. If you want full freedom of association, sure, lets do that. You can make whatever contracts you want, but you can also be fired for it, (ie legalize firing people for joining a union). I think I would be happy with this outcome, to be honest.

But as long as union people are receiving this protection, NON-union people should receive the SAME protection.

If I own a plastic company I can easily write an agreement where, for example, Widget Co. agrees to buy only my plastic for some price. Now imagine a state legislature came in and said that Widget Co. can't write that, that Widget Co. always has to be open to buying plastic from other companies and that when we spend a bunch of time negotiating price and writing a contract, Widget Co. can just run that to a competitor and write a new for one cent less. That's obviously infringing on my ability to write contracts.

But then we do that exact thing when the product is labor and not plastic. Your freedom of association is on the macro level, as in you can go from firm to firm to firm and if that firm requires you to join the union you just keep moving, same as if that firm pays a low wage or has no health insurance or anything else.

> Which is all to say that if common workers in your industry unionize you will probably be able to negotiate an even higher premium in exchange for not joining the union.

Or the union can force you out of your job by forcing the employer to hire unionized employees only.

That sentence was about joining a firm which doesn't use a unionized workforce (like my mom). That should have been more clear, my bad.

This is like making taxes optional.

I am not suggesting that I should be covered under the union contract, without paying union due. Far from it!

I do not want the union contract, because I believe that I can get a better deal for myself. The unioners can have their contract, and I can have mine. In the same way that I negotiate for myself right now, in a fully union free industry.

Right-to-work hobbles unions, not exactly "restoring the balance", if there ever was one.

Living in Washington State, I've watched the Machinist Union almost cause Boeing to completely leave the state of Washington, and even though Boeing stayed, they moved a lot of their work to other plants. So yes it is a very dangerous game.

Can you provide a little more detail on how the union caused them to leave and not tax incentives from other states?

Pretty sure this didn't help: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/boeing-unions-move-to-end-strike...

> Boeing's value has reportedly fallen by about $5.3 billion since the walkout began and that strikers have lost more than $125 million in wages

Followed by this 8 years later... http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/06/news/companies/boeing_strike...

And then this 5 years later... http://money.cnn.com/2013/02/20/news/companies/boeing-strike...

At some point, it's getting ridiculous.

Unions exercising the one power they have 3x in 15 years (by your timeline; the url dates suggest otherwise) is ridiculous? What should they have done instead?

This was a rejected offer from that 2008 article. The url without a date on it was March 17, 2000.

> The company had offered union members raises over the next three years totaling 11% of current pay. Boeing also offered bonuses and pension improvements it said would give the typical worker about $34,000 in additional pay and benefits during that time.

When you're given offers like that and rejecting them and it becomes a pattern that the company can expect to cost them billions of dollars every few years...what exactly do you expect company execs to do? Not have backup plans?

This is a company that's literally handing out jobs throughout a lot of the worst periods of the US economy...and it warrants constant strikes?

Look up some Airbus strikes for comparison. The articles I've seen are strikes over job cuts. There was a German strike at 4 plants that lasted...90 minutes.

At some point...yes...it is ridiculous and there are a lot of other people who would be more than happy to have the jobs you're striking over.

WA already provides massive tax incentives, and further increased them to get them to stay. To say the massive strike going on at the time had nothing to do with it would be disingenuous.

Solve a problem and create two?

Counter-anecdote: my uncle died on a non-union construction site.

What did your father do within the union? Did he vote for reps that were against practices like this? Did he stand for election himself? Did he advocate that the union adopt a policy sexual harassment being a valid firing offence?

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