Hacker News Reader

Comment by briandear | Hacker News Reader

A union would deny me the freedom to negotiate my own wages.

For the majority of America there's no such thing as negotiating wages. Do you think McDonalds or Walmart are going to let you negotiate more than a few cents here and there? Nope. The union would be more beneficial to them.

If your negociating with walmart or mcdonalds you have nothing to offer in terms of skill. (for the jobs you are referencing)

Those people who have skills worth money like to negociate.

The great thing about that is everone can better themselves and be worth more.

Why does more skill imply negotiation opportunity? Because you can then threaten to go somewhere else? That depends on whether those other places have the same non-negotiation policy. That's the idea of a wage fixing cartel.

> For the majority of America there's no such thing as negotiating wages.

What makes you say that?

According to the first report I found via Google [1], workers who earn minimum wage make up about 2.3% of the labor force. Wouldn't that imply that almost all employees have at least some bargaining power?

Note: the report seems to only talk about workers paid hourly, I assume the statistic is no worse for full-time employees.

[1]: https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2017/home.htm

That's the federal minimum wage...a lot of states and cities have minimum wages above the federal minimum wage.

Negotiating only works when you have leverage. And the people with stagnating wages have no individual leverage. Unions work by grouping individuals with no leverage into a larger negotiating unit that does have leverage.

So yes, if you can go to your boss and demonstrate your value to your organization and your value above and beyond any replacement they can find, then you shouldn't need a union. But if that's not the case and your work is in any way fungible, then a union can definitely help tip the balance of power between employees and businesses that try to hoard all the profits for the owners.

It doesn't matter if the employer need to hire ten other guys and pay them double your salary just to do your job, if you can't find another job that pays more.

No one is proposing forcing you into a union Brian, they are pointing out that people in low leverage jobs are likely to benefit from unionizing.

Luckily the world doesn't revolve around you.

Where do people come up with this crap? It’s trivially false: Tom Cruise is a member of the SAG and can demand his wages however he likes.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com