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Comment by pathseeker | Hacker News Reader

>Somewhat obviously, I’ve seen some be successful with unions and others be successful without

From the company perspective maybe, but I've not seen a union in the US that successfully rewards high performing employees over mediocre lifers. Overachievers end up leaving and you're left with no innovation. Do you have any examples of unions that have solved this problem?

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NBA players association, actors guild, writers guild etc are famous examples of "rewarding high performing employees"

> NBA player association

I disagree. The NBA players association looks out for the mid level role players (who make up a vast majority of the league) over the highest performing players. The top tier of NBA players are essentially "underpaid" compared to their worth due to maximum salaries. This makes room for mid level guys to make 10-15 million per year. If there was no maximum salary there would be a massive bidding war for the top tier players, and the remaining small slice of pie would have to be split among everyone else.

Judging from this post, I’m not sure you fully grasp how basketball works nor the underlying concept of “team sports.” Even MJ needed 4 other guys on his side to win.

While it may be true that team sports need multiple players, several players have currently signed "supermax contracts." Since they signed a maximum contract, their team would be willing to pay them more, so they are underpaid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBA_salary_cap#Supermax_contra...

If you call US$ 201 million underpaid, sure. Or maybe US$ 229 million.

This is a ridiculous amount to play ball, if that cap means that mid level players get a decent life I think it's more than fair enough. I don't think a salary cap of a couple hundred millions of dollars would stop any human being innovating to get to such a job, I'm sorry.

Every one of those also famously enforces a closed shop for the positions most people have in mind when they think of "high performers".

I'd argue those are more like cartels than unions.

It's interesting that those are all effectively monopolies on the talent. I wonder if that just counters the brain-drain the parent comment was referring to since high performers can't leave the union for a non-union role.

Aren't a lot of professional sports leagues unionized? I know that NBA players have a union, and top players definitely get rewarded well.

When most sports unions started professional players were not well paid. In the 1950s many of the best baseball players didn't play for professional teams because a local hardware store in some small town offered them better wages if they would work during the day and play on the town team on weekends!

>> I know that NBA players have a union, and top players definitely get rewarded well.

relative to what? the top players have always gotten big paydays, and the economics suggest without a union they would get paid even more. They are effectively subsidizing mid and lower tier players.

> Overachievers end up leaving and you're left with no innovation.

Do you have any examples of this problem occurring?

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