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Comment by dizzystar | Hacker News Reader

Unions were a major force in America as well. For what it's worth, their tactics were truly vile, and it's a bit revisionist to claim we'd have no working rights without them.

Office workers never had unions, so why the need today?

The fact is that, today we have many government controls in place that protect workers. We don't owe unions a share of everyone's salary for eternity for work they take credit for.

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I'm an office worker and I am in a union.

> today we have many government controls in place that protect workers

You're joking right? You brought up America so I assume you're discussing America. How can you possibly, even slightly claim that the government protects workers rights when 90% of your country has at-will employment?

Is that seriously what Americans think passes for satisfactory workers protection?

We have laws against discrimination, workplace safety regulations, the Family and Medical Leave Act, numerous state and local laws for starters. These things have teeth and companies have to take them pretty seriously.

You do realize that it was unions who brought about the change for these laws right?

The suggestion is that unions need not continue to exist just because they take credit for accomplishing something in the past. And then you say, "Oh yeah, well they can be credited with accomplishing something in the past." Okay. We've gone in a circle now.

> The suggestion is that unions need not continue to exist just because they take credit for accomplishing something in the past. And then you say, "Oh yeah, well they can be credited with accomplishing something in the past." Okay. We've gone in a circle now.

The best part is that you can point out all of the really horrible and repulsive things those same unions did at the same time - like lobbying to strip non-white Americans of citizenship and pushing the government to round them up in internment camps - and somehow they don't have to take responsibility for that part of their history as well.

No, the OP left that out de facto. And it’s disengenious to ignore the primary drivers.

Henry Ford introduced the 8 hour work day. That was non-union.

Unions also openly shut out non-whites and burned down competitors businesses, and many other things.

The unions were the Mafia. They lost power over the things the Mafia likes to do. It's a minor a miracle they survived.

I suggest you brush up on your American history: https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/august-20/

If you cannot fire workers at will, you will be much more cautious when hiring and trying to ramp up quickly. When I read about other areas trying to incentivize startup culture (e.g., France) they try to replicate one or two factors of Silicon Valley's success, they seemingly fail to realize that there is a panoply of reasons why Silicon Valley is what it is.

I won't try to argue that at-will employment is the primary reason, but I do believe that it is an important one.

You can get around that with contract-to-hire (to make sure people will work out). California also bans non-compete agreements and has 11 month turnaround times for tech workers. It's a place that has innovation because it protects workers rights and also moves, incredibly, incredibly fast.

> You can get around that with contract-to-hire (to make sure people will work out)

Incidentally, that's one of the first things labor unions seek to prohibit in their contracts.

I wish argentina had at-will employement. Making it hard to fire is one of the most terrible things you can do in the workforce. An eternal origin of unemployment, disinvestment and poor performance.

There are a growing number of smug Europeans on this site that seem to think they have all the answers to America's problems, even when there isn't any. This argument could go on for ages but obviously people already have their own views.

You should be able to fire slouches no questions asked. Not sure why that's controversial.

Yes, we have minimum wage laws, child labor laws, OSHA, laws in place to ensure you get paid, wrongful termination laws, and so on.

You're kidding yourself if you think at will employment is used to just "fire slouches no questions asked". It's a gun to your head held by your boss. One wrong step and you're on the street. It's ironic that "the land of the free" is so keen to submit its citizens to such a tyrannical workplace.

If you think your boss is responsible for leaving you out on the street, you have to believe he is your savior for giving you a job.

I rather not revere employers that way.

I lost count of how many mistakes I made on the job, but fair enough.

> one wrong step and you're on the street

You'd make a great union organizer with fear mongering like that. I've worked in a variety of places in a variety of fields, and I've never seen that done. What's more, the times when I have seen people fired they usually get a fat severance package that ends up putting a lot more money in their pocket than otherwise.

I'm sure that there are terrible places like that, but generally speaking doing business that way is much more expensive than treating your people well. When I was in management, turnover was one of the most expensive things to have happen. In some cases the people were irreplaceable (the experience and history they had in their brains was not possible to transfer). From time to time we'd have someone that just wasn't working out, but most of the time we treated people exceptionally well so they wouldn't leave and go to the startup down the street that pays more and keeps the fridge stocked with beer.

If things really were like you say they are, I'd be supporting unionization as well. However, in a couple years of management and a dozen or so as a grunt, that has not been my experience.

If we're gonna do anecdotes here I've seen management refuse to give a 5k raise to someone when they knew replacing them was going to be 40k minimum because "no one gets more than 2%", and I've seen that multiple times.

I've also been threatened before with concerns about my "culture fit" in a meeting my boss brought me into 5 minutes after I told him I disagreed with his approach but would do it if he said so.

I've had good managers but it only takes one asshole getting Peter principled above them to neuter most of their ability to run a team well

I have seen it quite a lot in software engineering in just my 5 years in the profession, happened to myself and many friends - hell, I was even in management last time it happened to me. Many times it came down to whether the people were a part of [insert manager's] inner circle/did whatever management wanted.

The stories are all too common, even at companies that supposedly treat their employees well. At will employment is a terrible thing.

Without mechanisms to discourage unfair termination (like unions and strong law enforcement), companies can and will and do ignore the law and just fire whoever they want. The threat of being knocked around by unions and/or the government for doing it is the only thing that stops companies from firing people when they get pregnant, or when they get diagnosed with cancer, or when they get engaged to their same-sex fiance, or when they adopt a kid from a foreign country, or when they report their boss for sexual harassment.

While you're waiting for your wrongful termination/retaliation complaint to wind its way through the existing systems, you don't have a job and you aren't paying rent. It's good to have multiple layers of protection so ordinary people don't get screwed by a business operator looking to save a few dollars.

fwiw the US's current government infrastructure is absolutely miserable at enforcing labor rights laws, so that makes unions a regrettable necessity no matter how bad they are. It'd be awesome if the country was in a good enough state to make unions no longer necessary.

Sure, but who gets to decide who is a slouch?

And once you dive in to the details, thats where life gets muddy.

I do think it's controversial that a single boss that might hate you for totally irrelevant reasons be able to fire you on a whim. Made up performance standards and the like.

And it gets more hairy because unemployment in the US (in most states) needs to be approved by your employer. That's really fucked up. If you think it helps prevent abuse of the system, I'd rather some people abuse the system and everyone get unemployment rather than people have to fight shitty employers for it.

Unemployment should be insured by the state. I've heard social workers tell me "Of course you should apply. It's your money" but I've also heard HR people tell me companies in most states have to pay out unemployment which is why they fight it so hard.

Anyone care to chime in on how unemployment generally works and who pays for it in the US?

How about minimum vacation days, parental leave and healthcare coverage?

Corporations were a major force in America as well. For what it's worth, their tactics were truly vile, and it's a bit revisionist to claim we'd have no modern society without them.

Many early innovators never had corporations, so why the need today?

The fact is that, today we have many government controls in place that protect corporations. We don't owe corporations a share of everyone's money for eternity for work they take credit for.

(shall I keep posting comments like this?)

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