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Comment by ipsocannibal | Hacker News Reader

Tech companies in general and Amazon specifically seem scared to death of unionization. I think Amazon's actions in this matter are going to backfire tremendously.

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...and anyone who's had to work with a union can understand why.

You mean like, most of the companies in Europe?

Europe, which has a per-capita GDP ~1/3 lower than the US.

This didn't pass the smell test, and sure enough Monaco, Norway, Switzerland, Ireland, Iceland, all have higher per capita GDPs. Denmark, Sweden, Austria, and Finland are in the same ballpark or a little lower. Germany and Belgium are lower, but still above 1/3 lower.

UK and France are ~1/3 lower. Italy and Spain are ~50% lower.

2018 numbers I found[1] show the EU as having ~69% the per-capita GDP of US. That's pretty close to 1/3 less.

1: https://tradingeconomics.com/european-union/gdp-per-capita

The EU includes a lot of less developed countries from former dictatorships, former communist countries, and the former Yugoslavia. There's a lot of catching up which hasn't finished yet. Plus it's mostly missing the US's oil resources. Straight-up GDP comparisons don't tell you so much about quality of life for the average person in the street.

Right, and if the United States merged with a cross section of less developed countries our GDP per capita would look smaller, too.

but it didn't, and this is moving the goalposts. the original claim was correct.

The original claim was also a bad and misleading comparison. It doesn't make sense to compare a single country to an entire continent of 44 different countries, which are quite different from each other in a large variety of salient ways.

why not? the US is a large country (with more land area than the "entire continent" it's being compared against) with fifty states that are also quite different from each other. the US states are less autonomous than EU, but the country is large and diverse enough that it makes more sense to compare it to the entire EU than a very wealthy subset of US state-sized countries.

It doesn't make sense to compare the EU to a federation with more than double its land area, composed of 50 different states, which are quite different from each other in a large variety of salient ways.

It assuredly does to citizens of the United States.

The hint is in the name.

If you drop Mississippi, Idaho, West Virginia, Arkansas, South Carolina, and Alabama from the US numbers, then the US GDP per capita number would look bigger. Anyone can get different numbers by cherry-picking higher performers and dropping lower performers, but OP wrote "Europe" not "this list of rich countries in Europe".

It's not cherry picking. One of these entities is a nation and the other is not. It's a bad comparison.

No it isn't, people compare the EU and the US all the time. A bad comparison would be comparing the US to the Nordic subsection.

People doing something all the time doesn't make it a good comparison.

The US isn't homogenous either. DC, Massachusetts, New York, California, Alaska, and Washington have much higher GDPs per capita than other states / provinces.

The US is a nation state, the European Union is not. Comparing the two should only be done with a truckload of caveats to begin with. If anything, compare the Eurozone to the US.

With visa-free travel, common regulations, etc., the European Union is certainly starting to approach the United States (notice the plural in "States"?) in developing a similar federal structure.

Brexit shows that there's still a major difference: member states can elect to leave. Economic penalties etc follow, and political fallout, but here in the US we fought a major war to demonstrate that states are _not_ allowed to secede from the union. (As much as many blue states might wish they could ...)

There are only two states in USA that could secede and not feel crippling economic impact. Texas and California. One Blue, one Red

Using the OECD numbers[1]:

(USGDPPC - EurozoneGDPPC) / AVERAGE(USGDPPC, EurozoneGDPPC) = 0.283

Roughly speaking, you could write this as "The GDP per capita of the Eurozone is 28.3% lower than the US".

[1] https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=PDB_LV

I think the merged-with-less-developed countries is a red-herring. Run the calculation against the Eurozone and it doesn't change much.

There's no single apples-to-apples measurement we can make; the US has more natural resources than the EU, suffered far less harm from all the major conflicts up through WW2, &c.

I don't know whether or not liberalizing the economy of the EU would raise per-capita GDP or not, but the post I was replying to was claiming that a very specific and easy-to-check fact was wrong, so I checked it.

Yeah, we call it "the South" here in the United States.

some of those countries have smaller populations than some US municipalities, of which there are many wealthy ones to cherrypick data from.

Not making any causal claims about unions, but using the OECD numbers[1]:

(USGDPPC - EU28GDPPC) / AVERAGE(USGDPPC, EU28GDPPC) = 0.338

So the comment you're replying to was correct, for at least one plausible definition of "1/3 lower than the US".

As for the countries you mentioned:

Monaco: < 1 square mile, not reproducible in a larger country

Norway: Giant oil reserves / tiny population, not reproducible without that

Switzerland: Valid

Ireland: GDP numbers shouldn't be taken at face value because tax laws[2] encourage corporations to attribute EU-wide revenues to Ireland. Reported GDP per capita is 135% of the US value, but 2016 median household income[3] was only 87% of the US value[4]. This cuts both ways, though - other EU countries should have their estimates nudged upwards.

Iceland: 92% of US GDP per capita[1]

Denmark: 91% of US GDP per capita[1]

Sweden: 86% of US GDP per capita[1]

Austria: 91% of US GDP per capita[1]

Finland: 79% of US GDP per capita[1]

UK: 75% of US GDP per capita[1]

France: 74% of US GDP per capita[1]

Italy: 68% of US GDP per capita[1]

Spain: 65% of US GDP per capita[1]

EU (all 28 countries): 71% of US GDP per capita[1]

[1] https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=PDB_LV

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement

[3] https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-gpii/geog...

[4] https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...

US population 330m gdp/capita 59k

--Higher GDP European state--

Switzerland pop: 8.5m gdp/capita: 65k -- reputation as a tax haven

Ireland pop: 6.5m gdp/capita: 69k -- reputation as a tax haven

Norway pop: 5.3m gdp/capita: 85k -- petrostate

Iceland pop: 364,260 gpd/capita: 54,753

Monaco pop: 37,497 gdp/capita: 162k -- french riviera

--Most populous Western Europe nations--

Germany pop: 82m gdp/capita: 44k

France pop: 67m gdp/capita: 38k

UK pop: 66m gdp/capita: 39k

Italy pop: 60m gdp/capita: 32k

Look I'm all for a larger welfare state, and there are plenty of things our nation could learn from Europe. But to pretend that if we made our country more European our economy would grow to resemble a tiny nation/tax haven like Ireland more than the UK, France, or Germany is unrealistic.

Thank you for pulling up the numbers. It seemed very suspicious when the comment above selected the smallest EU states.

> Ireland pop: 6.5 million

Reality: 4.8 million

Oh yeah it looks like the number I found was for the island not the country.

Yeah, the problem is you double-counted the population there due to also including the UK. I didn't check the others.

In fairness, Monaco, Norway, Switzerland, Ireland and Iceland are all tiny, distorted one-trick ponies.

Norway is all oil, Ireland is the tax haven of the Fortune 500, Ditto Switzerland, Monaco is the tax haven of the rich, and Iceland is pure tourism.

Pulling out Iceland or Monaco and comparing them to the entire US is like pulling out Palo Alto and Seattle and comparing them to all of the EU.

UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, etc are a much better representation of what larger, mores diverse European economies look like.

In fact, if you take the whole EU together (as you should, the US number also includes places like the South and the Midwest), the parent comment is correct.

And still the place that most people would prefer over the US given health care costs and lack of social safety nets.

people say this, but I have yet to see anyone I know actually move to europe, even those with dual citizenship or an easy path to get it. I do however work with many eastern european expats.

Social support networks have a cost. It's great to make more money until you go bankrupt from healthcare costs. Also, Europe enjoys lower crime and higher life expectancy.

Why does the average person care about GDP?

For the sake of Economic Piety. It's an easy number to track, but it's not all there is.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/11/emphasize-...

I lived in Germany for a couple years and now live in one of the poor(er) states. A comment above this says to jettisoning Idaho will game GDP numbers for the US. I'm currently experiencing earthquake aftershocks AND low GDP.

I honestly think for most people, Germany had a high quality of living (if you ignore AC when it's 35 degrees in summer). But in the US, we've got Mammon and, for better or worse, GDP is how we track that.

Not because of labor unions, it doesn't. In fact the developed nations of the EU tend to have the strongest unions. You're conflating lack of development due to the cold war with... worker unionization?

It's fine, that extra 1/3 is just going to healthcare anyway

Big number good.

All jokes aside, I'd make that trade any day for the relevant social safety nets.

GDP is obviously the only metric that ever matters.

Having worked with unions, is it because they tend to have better benefits and support for their employees? Having a union rep in their disciplinary activities?

I assume your comment is that Amazon would lose money if a union happened?

Having worked with unions, it is because they introduce and entirely new and superfluous bureaucratic hierarchy to a company.

I have had situations where it was not allowed to move a computer monitor from one cube to another - that had to be done by a union employee. Literally taking a unused spare monitor from one desk, and putting it on another employees desk where it was need. ...and there was a formal requisition process to get that done which took two weeks to get through approvals, assignment, and finally have it done.

I have had union workers walk off the job during a major system outage because their facility managers forced them to take their break time. The whole company was down - it was all-hands-on-deck outage due to Hurricane Sandy. The actual union workers wanted to help us get the systems back online for the company, but the union rep wouldn't let them work.

I have had great workers quit or refuse jobs with our company because they knew and loathed the union - not the company, but the UNION.

I don't have any problem with unions at companies that protect the SAFETY of workers, as they are needed in various industrial jobs. ...but at a TECH companies where workers are making six figures, have matched 401k plans, and safe and comfortable desk jobs? ...it just screams "ridiculous" to me.

Superfluous might not be the right word.

The union is not superfluous to the employees- it is the only thing negotiating on their behalf in a power-imbalanced, often exploitative situation.

The union is not superfluous to the employer- it is actually a hostile counterparty in terms of wages and exploitation.

Thats not to say the added bureaucracy is always welcomed- it sucks.

> I have had situations where it was not allowed to move a computer monitor from one cube to another - that had to be done by a union employee

Can you explain to me where this is a union thing? Like I'd honestly like you to point out and explain your logic why this is specifically because of a union.

The reason why I bring this up is because I have encountered the same issues at my prior jobs which were non-union. Literally the exact same issue, where I was not allowed to move a computer monitor because it had to be done by another department after submitting a formal request.

I feel like people tend to blame unions for everything and yet I see the exact same shit people blame unions for at my non-union jobs. Is that because of an invisible union? Is there something I'm missing?

I experienced this "move a monitor" scenario myself whilst I was working at a DoD contractor company. I had to move cubicles and moved my stuff myself. My boss noticed and told me I couldn't move my monitor or docking station... but everything else I could. So I had to move my monitor and docking station back down to my old cubicle so that a few days later the "correct people" could move the items back up for me.

Why is this a union thing? No idea. Is it real? Yes.

Perhaps somebody is enjoying some popcorn watching an unending battle between "the invisible hand of the free market" and "an invisible union".

Absolutely. Had exactly this issue with wanting to move monitors just 3 weeks ago in a company where a previous union drive failed and had a lot of people spouting this sort of hoary, old cliche.

You can use asterisks around a word for emphasis, it reads less like you are yelling.

Some reasons to have unions at tech companies:

IP restrictions, unpaid oncall/overtime, crunch, getting a larger cut of the wealth they produce, better parental/health/timeoff benefits, having a representative in disciplinary hearings, requiring clear salary and performance processes, and about a half dozen other ideas.

You can disagree that these are real concerns at tech companies, but they are not ridiculous.

How does overtime / unpaid time work with salary workers? How much will the union take from my pay? Any amount is unacceptable given the current tax climate. Honestly it sounds like you just need a better company if you have these concerns. I work for the exact company in this article and we have all of these things you listed.

I've seen the same thing. Most recently at a trade show.

That said unions help more than they hurt, in my opinion. It's also pointless to paint all unions with the same brush like that, you worked with a group of people that had bad management. That's can happen in any organization, not just unions.

Not they're not all great all the time but I think the Hollywood unions are something we as tech workers could model ourselves after. You still negotiate your own salary and such but certain benefits like pension/retirement/healthcare (which are great at scale but hurt employers and employees at smaller businesses) can be amalgamated across the membership.

Like for example just a couple years ago the writers unions got into a spat with their agents over double dipping with production companies and not representing the interests of their clients. That kind of bargaining power can be wielded to fix institutional problems across an industry, but it doesn't have to come at the cost of individual gains - the writers still negotiate their own compensation and sign their own deals.

Unions can be a great way for industries to self regulate imo.

They're also a great way to keep out competition - see hollywood union requirements for membership. They limit the competition.

>> Hollywood unions are something we as tech workers could model ourselves after

That's a guild, not a union. And sure, it's good. As long as you don't care about people that aren't in it right now. SAG does their very best to keep new entrants out.

I'm sorry, but this is incorrect. SAG-AFTRA is a labor union and a member of the AFL-CIO.

And they don't work to keep new entrants out. Union workplaces do prefer to hire union members, but if they can't then they'll work to get someone enrolled in the union.

We could change our labor law to organize new unions on the Japanese or German models where nobody questions their legitimacy but instead we have this late 19th century model and the corporations act the part. Well I suppose they can’t call in mercenaries in a strike.

I think we're talking about amazon warehouse workers. I absolutely agree and I would loathe having to work in such an environment but when your job is put the package on the truck as fast as you can a union is a very nice thing to have.

But how do you temper managements abuses for lower waged work though?

If only there was some sort of system to enforce laws. Oh wait, that only exists in a perfect world where a government actually cares about your rights...

Honestly I get it on both sides, but I really think the union has to be a jerk. It's annoying to most small independent types or middle management areas, but the people in the union need that type of power to influence the BS corporate hierarchy of exploitation to absurd degrees. It's fine to be exploited, it's annoying when the company will drop you in a heartbeat because some minor issue thats come up. If we had laws that at least made it easier for employees to exert their rights (through agencies that the government didn't short change like they love to do) we would have no need for unions. Culturally it'd be a precedent that management can't be dicks.

Please name one Amazon Warehouse stock picker or forklift operator who is making 6 figures please. Also, where are all these tech workers making 6 figures at? BLS OES Job wage data shows about 80% of tech workers don't make 6 figures. The ones that do are in cities where $90k is the poverty line ffs.

Management can choose to share profit fairly in a keep what you catch manner so everyone's interests are aligned, and report accounting fairly, to the whole company.

Or Management can choose to do what Bezos did and ruin the retail market by selling at a loss for 2 decades while playing guile and psyop games with the public; he owns washington post BTW. Amazon is terrified of unions because that means they can't be profitable. Agriculture, Warehousing and logistics are major employers of illegal alien labor; the way Bezos makes money is by undercutting brick and morter retailers' supply chain costs because he doesn't have to hire anyone to run a store.

The reason unions form is management gets abusive; this pandemic is one such instance.

GC was talking about people that need to work with unions (and those in them), not the people actually in the unions. Saying people in unions like unions and so they can't be bad is like saying that oligarchs like being part of an oligarchy so oligarchy can't be bad.

I think unions do good, but they can also be an enemy of progress. Here is a piece about unions that I found on google.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/06/unneces...

Maybe with US unions.

It very much depends on the legal framework that organized workers and organized employers interact in.

My girlfriend worked at Macys. She was paid $14hr to do white collar admin work and was in a "union". Each month we would walk a few blocks away downtown to a small office. This is where we paid "dues". We couldn't pay online or have it deduct from her check. The person we handed our check to would just roll their eyes and throw her check into a pile of checks. She couldn't afford these dues. The best part? You were required to be in the union.

The union helped Macys layoff thousands of workers including her with no severance in a nice streamlined fashion. I am wrong, but this is what I learned: Unions are basically fat cat organizations that leach hard working people.

Poorly run unions produce bad outcomes. There are also governments and corporations that leech off hard working people. It's a human dynamics problem, not a problem specifically with unions.

Like democracies, unions will exploit the people in them if the people in them do not organize and agitate actively for their own interests.

Like democracies, unions suck, but they are not as bad as the alternative -- unless you're the boss or the generalissimo.

Are you saying that union members need to... unionize against their union?

It's all unions, all the way down.

Non-ironically, yes, and many union members in the US agree. Even before COVID-19, there were high-profile wildcat strikes this year, and it's only accelerating now.

Essentially yes. Unions have varying levels of active members which sometimes leads to a self-interested bureaucracy acting against the wishes of the membership. See for instance this recent well-known example: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nidhiprakash/bernie-san...

There is nothing magic about unions or democracy which means that they guarantee good outcomes. You have to work at it and be involved. In fact everyone has to.

Having a union is literally worse than not having one at all.

...unless people are literally dying in the factory. Unions were made for worker safety and made sense THEN - not today.

People are dying due to lack of investment of corporate profits in health care. I cannot believe you need this pointed out to you right now.

In other shocking news today's capitalists don't wear top-hats and drive around in Rolls Royces: they wear hoodies and drive modest cars.

If your girlfriend was in a union, why do you say "we paid"?

Why are you being such a dick, who cares?

I'm going to assune good faith here, maybe it's a cultural thing, who knows?

Regardless, here in the US it is typical for couples to form a partnership in which both income and expenses are shared. Possibly the reason for the recent emergence of the term 'Partner' to describe one's Significant Other.

I'm from Europe and it struck me as odd that the subject of the sentence switched from singular to plural for no good reason.

>My girlfriend worked at Macys

>She was paid

>(She) was in a "union"

>Each month we would walk

>we paid "dues"

>we couldn't pay online

>we handed our check

>throw her check

I was just wondering if there was some hidden twist behind the change of subject, so I asked bluntly.

Union members pay the union, supposedly to support costs like materials and salaries for union representatives.

Corporate lawyers are terrible at Opsec. Watch them go on a hunt to find and fire the leaker causing even worse PR. Let this be a lesson. "When you sling mud, you lose ground"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/04/02/amazon-...

It's extremely easy to understand why.

They won't be able to treat the employees like trash anymore, and profits will go down as a result.

Think about it logically, if the outcome was the opposite (profits go up) Amazon, etc. would love unions.

So it's just a question of whether you want more corporate power and profits, or you want employees to be treated well.

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