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Comment by mikeash | Hacker News Reader

I don’t believe companies are forced into any exclusivity agreement like you describe. They choose it. It’s not much different from any other long term business deal.

A union is by default an organization of employees to bargain together. Anything beyond that is extra.

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Even if hiring from the union is not forced onto them, new hires are often glad to join in on the price-fixing.

We get it, you really dislike unions and think that all union members are scum without any ethics. Before you try to walk your comment back, this is a pretty straightforward summation of what you just said. I think you're clearly overlooking the wide amount of abuses being done against employees, especially in the tech sector. How many times have you heard of a "salaried" employee being asked/forced to work 100 hour weeks end on end for months without extra compensation for some pie in the sky promise of stock options that get diluted with every new employee or stock offering? How many CEOs that drive companies into the ground but still get golden parachutes for laying off workers have you heard about. The power imbalance isn't with the ineffectual unions, it's with the corporations and owners that engage in rent seeking behavior.

I'm anti monopoly. Very much so.

I'm okay with unions as long as they don't engage in monopolistic behavior - I haven't found one of those yet though. For one, if unions didn't forbid company X from who they can hire from, and were okay with company X hiring pilots from any of the 10 pilots unions concurrently, then that would often be okay. Right to work laws are a super important step towards this.

Even with that step, union-monopolies and inter-union-collusion would still sometimes be a problem just like it is with companies, and that must be stamped out.

Why is it price fixing when unions do it, but not when companies do it?

If someone is artificially restricted to only be allowed to buy from a single company, then it is price fixing either way.

You said it’s price fixing even when there is no such restriction.

By Artificially I mean wither by law, or more by a group colluding together.

Alice and Bob are negotiating an employment agreement. Alice belongs to an organization and gets agreement from her fellows on how much she should offer, and also that none of them will undercut her and try to make a separate agreement with Bob on different terms. Bob goes it alone.

When Alice is a hiring manager and her organization is a company, we call this “how hiring is done thousands of times every day in this country.” When Alice is a worker and her organization is a union, you call it “price fixing” and “colluding.” Why the difference?

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