Comment by FighterMafia | Hacker News Reader

Comment by FighterMafia | Hacker News Reader

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"All my experience shopping at grocery chains in the US and elsewhere has impressed upon me that these workers represent the absolute classic, textbook case for unionization."

Why?

"...an industry that needs a union.."

Why?

"...more union-friendly in the coming years"

Why?

Nothing you said is grounded in any actual analysis or verifiable facts.

I'd argue that undifferentiated skills that require little education make this an industry poorly suited to unions; Even if you unionize you have little chance of success since most workers are easily replaced by scabs or increased automation. Many workers are also kids in school (speaking from experience -- I used to work in a produce department while studying),and so would not join a union regardless due to the temporary nature of their employment. Butchers and bakers may be an exception, but these are the minority compared to checkout workers, stock boys, or produce workers.

So maybe they'd benefit significantly from the fruits of unionization as experienced in more technically complex industries...but they are highly unlikely to receive those fruits.

Speaking from the perspective of working unions (Scandinavia) what makes unions work and be relevant are the protections they enjoy. The unions fought for these protections. Without being able to unionize you can't improve your position as a union either. You have to start somewhere.

So: first: employers can't choose (freely) who to lay off. It's first in last out, or if you want to sidestep that, you'll have to compensate the employee quite heavily.

Second: "proper" union strikes have a very protected status. An employer who would hire scabs would be quickly taken out of business. They'd switfly be blockaded by other unions in sympathy. So for example: a store hiring scabs to replace striking union store workers would quickly find that their trash isn't picked up, that the cleaners don't show up, that no electrician fixes their fridges, and so on (Also: these type of measures are also protected).

Without having these two protections (can't fire, can't hire scabs) unions are very weak compared to employers. I'd argue that with these protections, unions and employers have a pretty equal playing field.

Note also that these protections didn't come free: the employers' share of the deal was that there is no minimum wage and you can't have protected strikes during the agreement periods which are typically 1-3 years. So the strikes will occur at known intervals if negotiations for the next agreement stalls.

First-in-last-out is an objectively terrible way to hire and fire though. As an employee I feel personally invested in the success of the business I work for. I don't want to work with less competent employees because of an arbitrary rule. I want the weaker people to eventually be let go. I do want a safe secure workplace. I don't want people fired on a whim. I want training opportunities to be provided first. I want people's performance to be judged over the whole course of their employment not just the last quarter. But at crunch time I want the less well performing people to be let go rather than just the newest.

EDIT Re-reading this I realised I missed some perspective. A key ingredient related to hiring and firing in the society I want to (and do) live in is that when someone loses their job they have unemployment benefits that cover a significant fraction of their salary. This gives them time to find another job and makes losing your job a much less traumatic event.

As an aside, Let go is such an interesting term. It's such a well accepted piece of corporate doublespeak.

It's like they want to go, and their employer is letting them. They're straining at the leash to be unemployed, and the employer graciously releases them from the burden of their contract.

They're being fired.

Fired implies that the employee did something wrong.

Let go is a euphemism for made redundant/laid off. I do agree that it is a euphemism.

In my experience, let go is a euphemism used to avoid saying if they were fired or made redundant.

It’s more like they are dangling over an abyss and the person holding them up lets go.

I get an uneasy feeling every time I hear it. It twists the situation around, like you said, to make it seem like they are doing a great benefit to the employee.

My all time favorite ridiculous doublespeak is "we reached out to the employee and let them go". I heard that once from a company's pr dept. after firing a worker due to some public scandal.

It honestly reminds me of The Giver. They're being released.

First-in-last-out isn't a good solution, it's just one of the bad solutions to the problem of firing replacable workers. The idea is that it's the starting point of negotiation, and the employer has to compensate to go around it, and that added cost to the employer is what gives more security with longer employment. It's important to note that it's very common for employers to still keep newer employees and use the compensation workaround.

Also, some people may not be aware that many countries have plenty of restrictions around layoffs, totally separate from the unions.

For example I work in a non-union company, and if I have children and you have none, you get laid off before I do. Regardless of who's "better" and who's been there longer. That's in Germany; I would assume, say, France and Spain have much stricter rules around layoffs.

The parent comment does allow for a way to let incompetent people go:

> if you want to sidestep that, you'll have to compensate the employee quite heavily

That makes it less attractive to fire an employee, but still potentially worth the business' while in some cases. It feels like it's tipping the balance slightly more in favour of the workers, and doesn't inherently seem wrong to me.

> employers can't choose (freely) who to fire. It's first in last out, or if you want to sidestep that, you'll have to compensate the employee quite heavily

Do you mean "lay off"? Employers should be able to fire anyone with cause regardless of when they were hired.

Sorry yes I mean "lay off" (edited). With cause obviously you can fire anyone.

'layed off' means different things in the US versus Europe.

In the US, an employer may 'lay off' as much staff as they want and then hire new people into those positions.

In France, for example, a 'lay off' must close the position and not hire a new body into that role for 12-24 months.

This may be difficult to prove, but the laws exist.

Wow, I actually really like the French policy. It would make employers actually distinguish between a temp position and a full hire up front. Too many small businesses try to optimistically hire in good times, only to suddenly realize a few months later that they would collapse under the new payroll when business is normal.

Yes, and I've been "laid off" before after having compensation discussions with management. The employer dodges a lot of liability they would have if they fired me after asking for a pay raise. But for me the end result was I still lost my job.

I like the 12-24 month waiting period as it would help reduce lay off abuse.

Does Scandanavia suffer from the same stigma as French companies? In the States, working with anyone in France is absolutely terrible because its near impossible to fire anyone and they never work due to labor laws. Do you think Scandanavia still encourages productivity enough? The problem of having workers rights and encouraging productivity seems a fine line to walk

You mean that the guys who are in front of the praised Germans, largely in front of your English cousins, and rocking the EU average, are “never working due to labor laws”? Your post reeks of crawling xenophobia.

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2013/02/25/french-workers/

People keep saying things like this, while France remains a technologically advanced society with nuclear powered 200mph trains, chip fabs, aerospace industries etc. Nominal GDP per capita has just overtaken the UK. It's not clear that it produces less work, just less presence in the office.

When I got a job at the local Stop 'n Shop, union dues were part of the gig.

Why shouldn't Whole Foods workers form a union as well? I remember I was 5 minutes late once at a mom and pop health food store and the boss put up a very public and angry note about the behavior. It was rude and embarrassing. I was probably making $5/hour, if that. I guess the job was easy... but appeasing the very particular clientele was NOT.

You don't need verifiable facts to know that retail and warehouse workers are wage slaves. Thats why unions are needed. Need a verifiable fact? Try living on $10/hr and tell me how that works out for you.

It worked well enough for me when I was younger, though I wasn't living in SF.

younger is the key word there.

What's wrong with providing low wage entry level jobs for young people? It gives them experience. Rising wages would incentivize employees to stay in low-skill jobs for longer instead of moving to higher-skill-higher-pay jobs and letting other young people get those low skill jobs.

Not really. Everyone else who worked their longer, or had more experience elsewhere, got paid more, typically with a different job title.

Another job that was more uniform was in a factory, where I was making roughly $12 / hour. Not only was it unskilled labor, but those jobs were slowly disappearing as lines were being replaced with fully automated systems that only needed a third, at most, of the people to run them. Any effort to raise wages or unionize would merely ensure that the remaining lines were replaced sooner rather than later.

Therein lies the problem with trying to "solve" unskilled work. It's easier to automate, and there's more people capable of doing it. Given that often means that supply exceeds demand, wages are inevitably going to stay low, or the jobs will simply evaporate.

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