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Comment by ghobs91 | Hacker News Reader

Those who blame it squarely on unions, explain how Europe has strong unions and yet construction there is orders of magnitude cheaper than in the US?

It's because there isn't a proper bidding process. Politicians just give sweetheart bloated contracts to the same contractors every time, and those contractors then "donate to their campaign". If they instead used things like sealed bids and had contractors compete against eachother, it wouldn't cost $1B per mile for NYC's 2nd avenue subway, absurd.

NY Governor Cuomo surprisingly called this out recently, describing it as a "transit industrial complex": https://nypost.com/2019/01/04/mta-officials-are-fuming-over-...

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There are unions, and then there are unions.

In Germany, labour unions are strong, but things like union security agreements are unheard of (and I was amazed something like that would exist when I first heard of it). The stories you read about corruption in US labour unions (admittedly subject to selection bias) are unheard of over here.

There are strong laws and customs around arbitration processes, and a culture of unions considering survival and success of the business above pushing through maximal demands. E.g. in a prolonged strike, if employers and union are unable to resolve the conflict, after some time arbitration by a generally respected elder statesman kicks in. They hear both sides, and then make a binding decision, which usually is generally accepted. It all seems a bit more balanced.

I'm not sure how much that transfers to other European countries. France famously has a different culture around strikes and unions, but doesn't seem to be representative (https://www.etui.org/Services/Strikes-Map-of-Europe).

Unions do what unions can. It's amazing that NYC MTA uses unionized labor for things that could be easily outsourced/contracted.

This strange example of market failure points to us having insufficient information to understand the real transactions. MTA must get something else too from the unions to abide by their rules. (Allegedly it's Cuomo himself who benefits, thus he pressures the MTA.)

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