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Comment by losteverything | Hacker News Reader

Imo union-ism is an attitide and coupled with experience is effective.

Just because you are salaried and "professional" does not mean you collectively do not have extreme clout.

Whatever the hot issues are - say hours worked in a 7 day period - and the desire is to place limits (say 4 twelve hour days amd 1 eight hour day) having a union attitude means your bargained (agreed upon) rules are enforceable. And you carry a right to not work outside your agreed upon scope.

The attitide comes in when you stop work after the last day. It's your right.

People in unions (i am one) are the beneficiaries of years of compromise and abuse But it's fragile.

All the union is is a sturdy frame which everyone stands on. Its sure footed. Otherwise workers - even professionals- have no true security, no true predictable work conditions.

Iz is very unfortunate that union has become such a negative word. If a handful of people got together and simply stopped the management "abuse" i guarantee (!!!!) you you would be surprised how much power even engineer types can have

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Dunno. Maybe.

All a union did for me in my younger years was have me work my ass off so older union members could sit around doing literally nothing. In fact as far as I could tell their jobs were effectively finding ways to do nothing, and then when they got too good at that finding ways to keep others from doing anything.

I would not be paid nearly what I am today had I been stuck in my first union job. Even if I had stayed in the same field.

Until unions can stop being basically safe havens for either the lazy, incompetent, or corrupt (what they've effectively become in the US) I want zero part of them. The two I were in in my teens and early 20's were enough for me. They were so bad I did not want to be morally associated with them in any way whatsoever. All I ever saw from them was protection for the worst kind of people, and the high performers were ran out of the company as soon as possible by all the other members.

It sucks there isn't something else that can champion the rights and pay of the workers without simply serving the lowest common denominator. I'd actively join and support a "trade guild" where membership was predicated on competence and work ethic - and members actively policed to ensure they meet the standard. I'd also seek out employing such guilds when possible.

Unfortunately that doesn't exist, and I tend to actively avoid union shops with a few notable exceptions. Typically when you say the word "union labor" to me that means it's going to be 4x the price, take 5x as long, and be done halfassed so we'll have to re-do half the work anyways.

My experience is quite similar, in two different unions. The first was in the Teamsters at a bottling plant and the second was some years later, on the other side of the country, in the Teacher's Union in California. I left both jobs because of the way they were run by the unions.

In the first, it was 100% seniority-based with zero regards to effort or skill. The second I left for basically the same reason. Ability played very little part in pay or benefits. It was simply a time served deal.

Anecdotally, a friend of mine was named shop steward at an automobile manufacturer. The next day he showed up at the airport, in the middle of a workday, in a brand new truck that he just took off the lot as a perk. When we asked why he was hanging out with us at the airport rather than at work, he smiled and said that all complaints went over his desk first, and he wasn't likely to let a complaint against him go past him.

I know that unions played a massively important role in the past, but like all bureaucracies, as it aged and evolved, they became something far different.

Yeah unions have definitely changed over the last 40 years. Folks forgot the meaning of the word "solidarity" and are too impatient to put their time in like the older workers they like to complain about. There was an old guy that worked in a union fabrication shop where I used to work. His sole job was to run the band saw that we used to cut structural steel. Given how long a single cut took he spent the overwhelming majority of his time sitting on a stool reading a book and getting paid well for it. Meanwhile here's me pulling overtime fetching shit for every other workstation in the shop and ocassionally pulling 12 hour shifts in front of an industrial milling machine making cable trays. Over time I started resenting the hell out of the guy running the bandsaw, since he had a cushy job and was making way more money than me. I commenced to bitching about it one day on my lunch break and learned from some of the other guys in the shop that this dude had seen more coworkers maimed or killed and hand hung more structural steel than any other 8 men in the shop put together. Among other accomplishments he'd been part of the crew that erected the US 19 bridge over the New River Gorge. He'd paid his dues, put his time in, and was short for retirement, so the Union took care of him. He retired with a full pension (you go ahead and pretend a 401k is equivalent) and healthcare a year after I started working there. The shop found another graybeard to replace him running the band saw.

That was a great example, thank you.

One way of looking at his role could have been that while you were running around, his health and safety was being preserved. If he (or any other vital employee) was injured in an accident that didn’t involve his explicit job requirements, that could have resulted in a bottleneck much more costly than his clocked time spent reading books.

Sad secret is that you'll find pay-your-dues-ism, laziness, incompetence, and corruption everywhere. I've seen it at elite universities, government contractor engineering/research firms, startups, and larger tech companies, and none of those have been union positions.

The more important thing is the freedom to leave a job that doesn't work for you. That's how I went from the shitty non-union jobs to (eventually) a lucky couple decent ones.

If you don’t mind revealing more about your past, I would be very interested in hearing more about the kind of work you were in, and the ways in which certain union members abused the system.

Too much political commentary about unions these days is from pundits looking in from the outside, and there is too much paid anti-unionism to get an accurate description of unions’ actual shortcomings without it being washed out by vague exaggerations.

A union is simply am government. It can be good or bad, but it's almost always better for almost everyone than the natural law of the jungle.

The fact that almost every billion dollar company with decamillionaore CEOs is dead set against unions (not even willing to form a partnership agreement with a union), should prove how good they are for everyone who isn't a multimillionaire.

I am a Teamster and I have worked in union labor jobs, non union labor jobs, and professional jobs.

One of the big misconceptions is that unions are just for workers. In my experience unions benefit the employers just as much as the workers by providing a formal process for raising and resolving grievances. This helps corporations by keeping things smooth and puts a check on low level management that benefits the organization over all.

Unions also bring a lot of BS. They are another hierarchy with their own bosses, and rules, etc. But you will not find any more generous group of people then in a union. When there is a collection for someone who has a sick kid or some other tragic life event the amount of money that gets collected in a single meeting is surprising. I have never seen that kind of generosity in any professional setting.

I have also seen unions vote repeatedly to take cuts in their own pay to help out their fellow members on the pension issue, even knowing that those people f--ked themselves up with their own stupid decisions, but the point of a union is that you take care of your own, and members are willing to take a very real and significant personal hit to do that.

One of the best things about unions is fixed contracts and pay scales. Haggling over money used to be considered disgraceful and beneath the dignity of respectable people. Unions are old school so they still stick to that code and younger people would do well to learn from them on that.

I don't really think that software engineers could benefit much from unionization. Seizing the means of production doesn't have much meaning when you are the means of production. People who already have all the power don't need a union. But understanding how unions work and the benefits that they provide for organizing labor, corporations, and society is definitely a good thing.

This is a great comment. Your point "dont really think that software engineers could benefit much from unionization" I disagree in one respect: hours and time of day worked. If rules exist that mean you dont work weekends or holidays or more than 50 hours in a week you as an engineer could simply cite rules amd say no. Rules could exist for who has to work those times...

Software engineers are not standing on a work line waiting for a minimum wage job where they have no control over their working conditions. Software engineers create value directly with little or no dependence on capital. Their employers need capital to support whatever their business ops are, but creating software itself requires no capital other than the training and experience that belongs to the engineer.

Software engineers already have a lot of leverage. If you have a boss telling you you have to work crazy hours just say no. If you aren't using the bargaining power you already have a union is probably not going to help you.

In unions bosses break the rules continually and you only get them enforced by persistently filing grievances in the face of a lot of blowback, sometimes from the upper echelons of the union itself because they don't like people rocking the boat too much.

In the grievance game management and union sit down every month or so and take the list of proposed disciplinary actions against employees (firings, suspensions, etc) and the list of grievances filed against management and swap them out to prevent the people with the most seniority from getting fired. A lot of valid grievances will get ignored because they were traded out so some old timer could keep their job - not exactly the epitome of justice.

Having a written contract does provide leverage but not as much leverage as being able to tell your boss that their project will fail and they will lose money if they don't give you what you want. Not every software engineer is going to have that kind of leverage but if you want it you are probably more likely to get it by using your existing skills than by trying to organize a union.

Software engineers haven't evolved enough to realize developers and engineering managers both are highly replacaleable cogs in a software factory. Until influential teams (Devs+Mgrs) that work well together learn the value of sticking together, software unions won't take off.

As an IT director, I can tell you first hand neither good devs nor nor product team managers are “easily replaceable”.

It takes months to find a good developer of any type on the open market (in Chicago at least).

Domain knowledge in the vertical markets in which we operate takes months after hire as well.

I know "if you don't like your job, find a new one!" is a tired cliche that often gets thrown at people complaining about legitimate grievances, but software engineering is one of the few fields where a good employee can fairly easily leave for greener pastures whenever they want, at least in the US.

Unions are a negative word because they (in my experience) provide negative experiences. My personal experiences:

1) When a co-op student, a female friend (also a co-op student) was assaulted (punched in the face) when she crossed a picket line to go to work - she wasn't in a union job so she _had_ to go to work.

2) At my first job, another friend related an experience where they beat their daily quota by 3-4x. They were taken aside and told it was amazing how much property damage happened in the parking lot, and perhaps they should slow down a bit.

3) An immediate relative was bullied at work. The union represented her until a point it became contentious. Then they ignored the issue hoping it would go away.

4) Another immediate member of my family had someone protected from repercussions after endangering 100+ people in a safety critical role because they were part of a union drive.

Those experiences all happened in rapid succession in the 90s, it formed an opinion in my head of what a union is, and I didn't want anything to do with them.

None of these anecdotes are union-specific. People are assholes and behave poorly at work in every industry regardless of how the labor force is organized.

My personal issue with unions is I've seen the way my family members work places have acted through the fact that collective bargaining has given them the ability to leverage things such as years served as a way to dictate many aspects of how the organization is run. Additionally, it is very hard to fire people, where people can coast for years and still continue to get raises and even promotions.

Additionally, unions force costs to go up on many projects and revert any productivity gains that technology has provided. This prevents projects from getting done reducing the GDP impact of the larger industry even though certain people would likely get paid less.

Yes, for labor jobs, unions are absolutely necessary, but from my perspective collective bargaining presents many failures when it comes to coordinating large projects across multiple union groups, in addition to demoralizing high performers as unions as of right now have not adopted well to any sort of up or out promotion structure.

> Additionally, unions force costs to go up on many projects and revert any productivity gains that technology has provided.

Honestly, I think this is worth some honest discussion about the big picture. Many of the critiques against neoliberalism[1] is that all of the benefits of opening international trade and automation have gone to the rich. In 1930 John Keynes predicted 15 hour workweek for his grandchildren[2]. The average workweek in the U.S. is 47-49 hours[3]. This is in a world where dual incomes is common.

I'm not advocating paying people to sit around all day, but I think it would be good to look at what we're trading work/life balance, job security, income, life expectancy, age of retirement, and the other things we give up for it. Personally, I still like the current world of iPhones and Amazon delivery, so it's not a clear argument in one direction, but it's not something I hear people talk about.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism#Focus_on_economi...

[2] http://www.businessinsider.com/john-keynes-predicted-15-hour...

[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2014/09...

Examine amazon. I deliver them. Im in a union. I've had a $100+k prosthetic at <$4k out of pocket. Pooled healthcare. Savings is matched and now i have $100k waiting and i did nothing. I have safe conditions to deliver. I get paid if im sick. I have a predictable schedule

Now, if i downloaded the Amazon app and became a delivery dude i would still deliver Amazon. No insurance No savings. Use of my own car. I could do this for amazon for 5 years and i would have nothing.

The union already blazed the way for my salary and benefit package.. So i simply benefited from it.

Amazon and uber workers and drivers have so untapped clout..

There are of course other ways to see things e.g. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/08/sweden-social-democracy-m...

>Additionally, unions force costs to go up on many projects and revert any productivity gains that technology has provided.

Perhaps at individual companies, but the overall trend is pay has not kept pace with productivity gains, so the overall trend across society is the reverse of what you're worrying about.

The productivity in certain aspects of construction and many government services has in fact gone down in recent years. Sure society wide, we have seen massive productivity gains, and unionization with the only purpose of capturing these gains back to the workers would be one thing, but to force them to fall without anything new added to the table is problematic.

I only know American unions from stories (such as the ones in this thread, or the one where a Hollywood director got in trouble for using a towel to wipe some sweat off the face of an actor - that was someone else's job), but wow.

Both American political parties are (from a socio-economic perspective) more right-wing than all mainstream parties in my country. Even the most right-wing party we have is pro (partly) subsidized health care, pro minimum wage, pro decent unemployment and disability benefits, etc etc. You could say my country is way more left wing than the US.

But the unions! Wow USA unions appear to be little communist islands. I've never seen unions so extremely, maybe obscenely left wing than those in the USA. Again, this is just from stories so maybe I have it all wrong, but the unions appear to me like the last remaining instance of "all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others" in the Western world.

If I'm not mistaken (and I might be), then I wonder whether maybe this is because US politics is so bizarrely (from a European perspective) right-wing. If you can actually die from hunger in your trailer home after a bad day at work, then extremely protective unions make a lot more sense than if you know you'll stay alive even if you lose an arm or your boss screws you over.

Not sure whether there's a point I'm trying to make but I wonder what HN thinks about all this :-)

I think that you're not well-informed about the character of U.S. unions. Most are in the trades and manufacturing sectors. Members of those unions are typically right-wing and would be appalled at your characterization. The largest U.S. union, AFL/CIO is hardly leftist.

It's interesting that you mention Communism. Historically, U.S. unions have been vehemently anti-communist after widespread suspicion of the U.S. Communist Party spread, due to developments (mass murder) in the Soviet Union and also due to its overt link with the Soviet international organization (Comintern).

While public sector unions, ---particularly teachers unions and police--- can engage in what could be called leftist tactics and attitudes, your description doesn't fit private sector unions.

Some private sector unions in the U.S. have a long history with corruption, particularly Mafia involvement with meat packers and longshoremen in New York, but that is an entirely different matter.

if unions aren't leftist then maybe that's why they are broken.. Being more socialist isn't about inefficiency, but about solidarity.

If your union isn't a bit socialist, won't it easily end up becoming a protectionist nightmare?

Thanks, I appreciate your elaboration.

I am in agreement that the European collaborative union-management relationship is far more productive than the adversarial American one.

(disagreements noted in my other comment)

my attitude in general is that unions are something you earn - as a company, you either treat your employees fairly (and pay reasonably well), be transparent in management, and give non-management people a voice at the table of how the enterprise is run, or you earn a union, the LAT was a bastion of anti-unionism for years, but the Chandler family (who owned it) treated its folks (for the most part) quite well.

I've experienced union and non-union workplaces - I'd have no problem working in either - in the end, if the company rewards loyalty, and longevity - you're going to have a good time all around - union or not.

"Otherwise workers - even professionals- have no true security, no true predictable work conditions."

How do you shore this up the the fact that many of us engineers have pretty freaking awesome, high paying jobs?

Things have seemed to work out great for those of us who are willing and able to negotiate well for ourselves.

Thats the problem I have with unions. I do not for a single second want someone else to be negotiating for me. I can do that on my own, and I have done well for myself using my own negotiation power.

Every time there's an article about unionization (here, yes, but anywhere else too), there's someone in that article extolling the virtues of all unions, followed up by others denigrating the state of unions.

As a younger man, I've been a member of unions that were good, and unions that were bad, and while I don't remotely proclaim myself to be an expert on them, but I am experienced enough to have observed what I believe are patterns.

Ideally, unions aim to solve power imbalance between workers and employers, which it does by giving power to a presumably disadvantaged party. Where the employees are already in demand, or are highly skilled, what have you, employers already have to work hard to maintain the employee base it has because replacement employees are difficult to find.

Where the employees are less skilled, or more easily replaceable, unions can be super effective at raising workplace standards and wage negotiations.

That said, I'm wary of anyone who speaks in absolutes to either end. Some unions arrive at too much power, and can be self-defeating or exploitative. Some unions are corrupt. Some unions don't work very hard for their members. Some unions are horrible, and then turn it around, and vice versa. Unions can be effective at raising wage floors, but can also lower ceilings for workers who might be best off without them.

The assertion that any given union is de facto good or bad seems flawed to me, as I've seen both sides of that particular coin, and like all eco-systems, work very well when a particular set of conditions are met and a particular balance is struck.

"Where the employees are less skilled, or more easily replaceable, unions can be super effective at raising workplace standards and wage negotiations."

The presence of a union can also make the difference in management resorting to close/offshore the operation altogether.

>Things have seemed to work out great for those of us who are willing and able to negotiate well for ourselves.

Yeah, but companies are also really good at making people think they are getting a great deal when they aren't.

There was a thread a few years ago where someone posted a police agency's salary database disclosure and the comments were along the lines of "zomg some random guy I knew in high school makes way more than me".

Not to contradict the poster who claims that unions can become parasitical--both on employers/taxpayers and on newer members--but in the end which benny is more valuable: free meals, or a fully COLA'ed pension that's still paying out when you're 80?

Consider a few ways engineers could have things Even Better:

Less / No crunch time. Ethical support so you can refuse to do something shady. Support for union members getting equal pay and equal treatment, despite marginalized status. Job security for people over 50.

Those are just off the top of my head. And yes, I get that not all of those things are delivered by all unions. But ultimately, there is a lot to be gained from banding together and cooperating, which cannot be negotiated singly.

A professional association with ethics standards you could quote to say "no I won't build your creepy backdoor/logging/privacy-invading tracking feature, it's against the code" would be pretty sweet...

Professional Engineer certification exists for software engineering and requires testing on and then swearing to a code of ethics. Though the code of ethics you swear to doesn't cleanly apply to the challenge you present, I've often thought more SWEs being professionally certified and bringing the ethics and standards to their field would bring benefits on many fronts.

It's easy to see when designing reactors, or building bridges that your work and decisions can directly impact human welfare and correspondingly I have seen a very high standard of attention to detail, standards compliance and ethics in those fields. When designing software systems and applications it's harder for some to see, but the potential impact is still present.

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