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It's much like a HOA or any other political organization. The check and balance is YOU. If you are involved in the Union, and other workers are involved, there is seldom a problem. If like the current U.S. political landscape, people abdicate their responsibilities because it's harder and more work, you end up with less than ideal people in the leadership roles.

I was in a condo with like 8 units. Got in the HOA board, because it wasn't that hard (3/8 owners get membership). I could pretty much stop stupid stiff.

Now let's say I work for a hypothetical Walmart union. 1 million members or whatever. What can I do to check and balance anything? How can I bet anything except a tool to be used for various warring factions to extract more money from each other.

> What can I do to check and balance anything? How can I bet anything except a tool to be used for various warring factions to extract more money from each other.

See also any democratic society.

But this is why we lean towards a lot of freedom in society.

We also lean towards creating plenty of institutions in society. We have regulatory oversight groups. We have law enforcement groups. We have trade organizations and Parent Teacher Associations and lobbying interests and and and.

> We also lean towards creating plenty of institutions in society.

Most of which are not democratic.

Democracies are extremely inefficient compared to a "dictatorship" where the president of the institution is in charge. You should only switch to a democracy as a last resort due to systemic abuses that can't be resolved any other way. I haven't worked in the games industry, but so far working as a software developer I have not encountered systemic abuses that merit introducing an extremely inefficient democratic oversight system to the company.

Count yourself fortunately that you had the opportunities to work in better working conditions. The software developers and other creatives in the gaming industry may feel different.

In Ontario, Canada, the autoworker unions have been trying to unionize the Toyota plant and have not been successful: the workers always vote 'no'. The works at GM and Ford plants felt differently.

Just because you work in a 'good' part of an industry does not mean everyone does.

> Just because you work in a 'good' part of an industry does not mean everyone does.

Right, but the article in question is arguing:

> A union isn’t just right for Vox Media, but for everyone

And I'm questioning if it really is. I, for one, don't want yet another democratic system I need to invest time and thought into in order for it to be effective. Local, state, federal government + HOA is enough already.

I'm happy with the way the president of past companies I've worked for ran things and I'm glad I didn't have to research union candidates, run for union positions, and/or vote on union issues in my already limited free time.

That's a lot of assumptions my dude.

I don't see who is the "dictator" in your example as it relates to a union shop. You're all small (1 person) dictatorships, but you could also frame it as 1 person democracies? In this situation a systemic abuse is any abuse that happens to you, because you're the entire system? Or this is just a really hard metaphor to work with?

I get that you're argument below was "I'm lazy and don't have time to deal with being informed about the issues that would come with a union" but how is that any different from "I'm lazy and don't have time to deal with being informed about all the possible labor abuses my employer is perpetrating"? Why does it have to be systemic to be a net negative, and how do you know you're aware of everything going on?

You can just be a lazy union member and assume that "the union is a net good" the same way you can be a lazy non-union member and assume "being unionless is a net good".

Many revolutions started when one person though things weren't right.

> Now let's say I work for a hypothetical Walmart union. 1 million members or whatever. What can I do to check and balance anything?

You misunderstand how unions work. Unions aren't monolithic organizations, but rather organized around locals (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_union), with a local being the unit of the union representing a single workplace. While locals are affiliated with a larger union, they also have some degree of independence (exactly how much depending on a variety of factors), including electing their own leadership.

For most union workers, while they are technically members of a much larger union, almost all of the ways they interface with that larger organization are through their local. So they're not one among a million members, they're one among (say) a few hundred, all of whom are people who work with them and live in their community. And if you're part of such a group and want to change its direction, you can run for a leadership position in the local, just as you would in the HOA.

I'm not sure thats the right comparison.

Eletricians tend to work within a city, at a given job site. So they are fairly autonomous.

A walmart union would not. For example, look at United Auto Workers. How much control does the average UAW union member have over his life?

Compare to the average software engineer. How much control does he have over his working conditions and pay?

> If you are involved in the Union, and other workers are involved, there is seldom a problem.

OP was asking what he can do as a small business owner.

When unions were illegal, they could only survive by being in the interests of the workers they represent. The ones that became legal were the most willing to cooperate with capital, and in turn were given structural advantages against more radical unions.

For example, in many shops there is only one union. It is not difficult to see how that would lead to perverse incentives on the union's part.

I can ask you in turn: What checks and balanges are in place to prevent businesses from:

- Rampant corruption

- Protecting bad/lazy managers

- Blocking strategic decisions in the name of protecting profits

- Manipulating national politics for their benefit

>I can ask you in turn: What checks and balanges are in place to prevent businesses from:

A business is trying to make money. The first 2 out of the 4 points directly harm their profit motive, the 3rd and 4th are what companies should be doing (it's not great, but it fits their profit motive).

Oh yea, I guess it never happens then, because of the profit motive.

Yea nah I don't know which businesses you've worked at but the top 2 are endemic to every large business. It turns out that the people running a business don't necessarily do what's best for the business, either.

In theory, theory and practice are the same thing. In practice, not so much.

> * My only question with unions is: what checks and balances will be in place this time around to prevent unions from:*

The same can be asked for elected representatives in government.

See "Democracy or Oligarchy? Models of Union Governance in the UK, Germany and US":

* https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2995297

To my understanding, unions arise where some form of abuse is systemic. I.e., as an employer, I can rely on my employees not giving me the middle finger and just walking out since they are unlikely to be treated any better anywhere else. From the employee's perspective, the market doesn't work for whatever reason.

See the recent talk about unionizing people who work in the games industry, for example.

What happens to unions after their original purpose for existence has been fulfilled, is another story. Some might turn into vehicles for illegal activities, as some individuals move to take advantage of the existing power structure.

Nevertheless, their existence should be seen as a symptom that something isn't right. An employer can probably avoid the unionizing of their workforce by addressing the underlying problem.

They can also avoid or postpone it by striking down even harder on their workforce. Like so many fascist regimes have shown, this can be particularly effective in the short-term.

I think the main checks and balances should come from the union members themselves, however, often times it's the "loudest voice" that wins over.

It's difficult as an individual to make an argument against striking for increased pay for example, even if you believe the long-term impact of that decision will ultimately be worse (i.e. it could lead to increasing the speed with which the employer investigates automation to stop the impacts of you striking).

Am almost wholeheartedly in favour of organised labour, but am not convinced most unions have the right organisation (although something is often better than nothing in the case of workers rights).

> - Rampant corruption (i.e. Teamsters in the 60s is the most egregious example, but probably even a lot of current unions are rife with corruption)

> - Racketeering (i.e. like what happened when Theranos tried to move offices)

RICO act which pretty much destroyed unions in the US... the ones which were left and were pretty corrupt.

> - Protecting bad/lazy workers (i.e. impossible-to-fire poor performing employees that do nothing yet collect a paycheck every week)

Union contracts or collective bargaining agreements lay out these sorts of things, and they have to be negotiated in that contract.

> - Blocking strategic decisions in the name of protecting employees (i.e. "Sorry, we won't let you automate X; too many people would lose jobs")

If all companies were set up with unions then they would all oppose altogether which would not effect the competitiveness of a company... but the entire industry. So such a move would have to be an industry move. This then makes a key industry beholden to not just the shareholders but also the employees when the government goes to set policies for that industry.

Imagine a hypothetical metro system where the drivers were unionised. Imagine driverless trains were possible from a technology and safety perspective. And imagine they were only planned for new lines, and future automation was guaranteed to happen below the rate of driver retirement, so no union members would lose their jobs.

Would you expect the union to oppose such automation? If not, what should happen if they did?

If automation is guaranteed to happen below the retirement rate, then you’re still going to be hiring new, possibly interim, drivers to cover the deficit between retirees and automation. I’d expect the union to be concerned with the career prospects of those not-yet-hired drivers in addition to their current members.

Even if the plan theoretically matches up perfectly, reality isn’t so neat and tidy. People decide to retire early or logistical problems prevent the automation from coming online on schedule. Any competent union should be negotiating for a more nuanced transition plan, at least, that accounts for the effects of potential over- or under-staffing scenarios on the workers.

> Would you expect the union to oppose such automation?

Yes. Though the automation as described hurts no workers it kills the union itself.

> My only question with unions is: what checks and balances will be in place this time around to prevent unions from:

What checks and balances are in place to stop corporate entities that happen to not be unions from screwing their workers, screwing their employees, and screwing their community?

In a world of regulatory capture, pretty much the only weapon anybody else has is "we'll turn off your money spigot," yeah?

> What checks and balances are in place to stop corporate entities that happen to not be unions from screwing their workers, screwing their employees, and screwing their community?

At least in the tech industry: dead sea effect. If you screw your workers, they'll get up and leave and go work for your competitor. Companies don't want this.

"Like I read a few years ago at some convention in NYC some organization couldn't get their booth up and running because they weren't allowed to plug in their own equipment because "that's union work" and they had to wait for a card-carrying union member to come plug in their TV or something ridiculous."

That sounds almost as bad as an open-plan office.

How does one determine who's lazy and under performing and not? There is not a good qualitative way to evaluate this. Most of the time it just boils down to do you like the person or not.

Secondly, how do you address the racism in Unions even now? Within the last year multiple African American Union workers were complaining about racism within the Union and they were largely ignored by the Union.

I remember when I used to work at XYZ Company I would have to wait for weeks to have a union employee move my stuff from desk to desk (even a desk that was 1 desk over) when I could've done it myself in minutes. Why do I need a Union worker for something I can do myself? Why does a company need to spend $600 for something I can do myself in less than an hour for free.

Maybe in the US journalism and entertainment fields people can get off more easily with a Union as their jobs are somewhat shielded from the threat of offshoring. That is not the case in engineering and manufacturing. Unions are not for every industry and these things should be done at the Local, State and Federal level so everyone can benefit. The government is supposed to be counter balance to business. The government is outsourcing their job to Unions.

> How does one determine who's lazy and under performing and not? There is not a good qualitative way to evaluate this. Most of the time it just boils down to do you like the person or not.

Um, no. There is a massive difference between "lazy" and "I don't like them". I may not like them because they're lazy, but they are not at all the same thing. The problem is, if you're trying to get rid of a lazy employee, and they have a union (or any other lawyer) trying to protect them, then the lawyer wants to paint "lazy" as being as non-objective as possible, so it becomes something they can't be fired for.

I know I'll get downvoted but most of the time in my experience the people aren't actually lazy or underperforming. It's just that their manager doesn't like them. I'm going by what I've seen. TBQH! Usually if people are bored or lazy for too long they quit anyway.

My only question with corporations is: what checks and balances will be in place this time around to prevent corporations from:

-Rampant corruption: (i.e. funding anti-global warming, pro-tobacco propaganda science, etc. Bribing governments. Trashing the environment.)

-Racketeering (i.e. Missouri & Kansas suing opioid manufactures under RICO, rent-seeking behavior/aspirations exhibited by nearly every major industry today)

-Protecting bad/lazy CEOs, Officers & Board Members (i.e. golden parachutes, do-nothing Board Seats filled by nepotism)

-Blocking strategic decisions in the name of providing value to shareholders (i.e. Stock buybacks over R&D, laying off experienced engineers in favor of cheap juniors, etc.)

...

So what if you have to wait a bit to have some one hook up your A/V equipment? Corporations generate their own byzantine bureaucracy without any help from unions (try getting a upfront quote for a medical procedure sometime). What undesirable activity would industry-wide unions do? Prevent IT outsourcing? Force considerations in international trade relations? Claw back some profits for workers instead of shareholders? Slow down the frantic rush to turn every industry into a duopoly? Put a check on C-Suite compensation? Hold a general strike the next time there is a push to get us into a war?

I look at the shenanigans going on at WeWork and others, and I start to think maybe capital shouldn't be trusted to the Capitalists. Re-Unionization is really the only way I see to reign things in before the next generations turn to full-fledged-capital-S Socialism.

We should all agree that organized labor is a net-positive for most industries first and then recognize their downsides and mitigate them.

We don't ask "Should we have government? What should we do to minimize corruption?" We recognize the need for government, then work to make it better.

Furthermore, like most regulations, I would hope that the power of union against corporate would scale with the size of the business - that not every profession would be a guild, but that the larger and more powerful a business to a region, the more power the union has against it. This would be to avoid the last example you cited.

Edit: Lest I draw the ire of mods, I am tired of getting downvoted for a good faith discussion relevant to the linked article. If you have a problem with a statement, please reply constructively.