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Comment by yequalsx | Hacker News Reader

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?

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"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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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