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Comment by rumanator | Hacker News Reader

> The core of a union is bad for workers that excel

You should really let go of that folclore because it makes absolutely no sense at all and has absolutely zero connection to the real world.

First of all, it's widely known that Amazon already has a rigid employee structure that pays according to the internal pay scale. This alone shuts dispels the "omg unions keep top performers down", because internally your only shot at a pay increase is to run through their promotion obstacle course.

Unions are about employee representation and negotiating power. They are the only way to create change such as limiting working hours and demand safe working conditions and cut down on arbitrarily firing people for no reason. Without unions you have zero power. With an underperforming union you have some power. Sounds like even a bad union is progress.

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And, coincidentally, should you ask a person making such statements I am confident that they will place themselves firmly in the "excel" category. Ignoring, of course, that self-categorization does little good when Jobs is calling up Schmidt (wait, calling would be the smart move; they documented it in email instead) to say, "hey, you don't hire our workers, and we won't hire yours. Win, win!" Where's your meritocracy now? I'm not going to say a union would have prevented that particular incident, but a union would carry more weight saying, "remember that shit you and $OTHER_COMPANY pulled last year? Yeah, well, to prevent such things in the future..." than some IC in her manager's office where the manager holds all of the cards.

Great point—every company I've worked at, people have complained about lack of transparency about who gets promoted. HR and company leaders always respond "oh we're trying, it's hard, trust us", etc. But with a union workers would have a seat at the table to change the process.

"You should really let go of that folclore because it makes absolutely no sense at all and has absolutely zero connection to the real world."

You mean the 3 decades I dealt with unions?

"Unions are about employee representation and negotiating power."

In theory, they were there to help employees. In practice, they are just as corrupt as any large organization and only hurt companies that have to deal with them.

"They are the only way to create change such as limiting working hours and demand safe working conditions and cut down on arbitrarily firing people for no reason."

The only way? Please. We have federal and state employment laws that protect all works. No unions required.

"Without unions you have zero power. With an underperforming union you have some power. Sounds like even a bad union is progress."

If you are a good employee, you have plenty of power. If you are bad and under performing, you need the protection by the unions.

In countries that have really string unions, it's getting to the point where you won't get hired at all without experience because firing an employee involves a court case and lots of red tape. This resulted in protests/riots in Sweden about 5 or 6 years ago.

It also makes a company less competitive in the international marketplace. Now that the Internet has opened up commerce internationally, companies that pay unskilled workers 4x what they are actually worth don't do so well.

It's difficult for me to change my views on this when I've seen the rampant corruption first-hand and the cancerous like effect unions have on a company over time.

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