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Comment by mcv | Hacker News Reader

This is the weird thing. Americans love to complain about how stupid their unions are, and according to some anecdotes, some American unions are indeed pretty stupid. But these are the unions created by Americans.

I don't quite understand the underlying cultural issue that leads Americans to create unions they hate. It's got to be something cultural. Or is it something in US law? It seems so easy to fix, but somehow they end up creating something they hate. Why? What causes this, and why is it so hard to fix?

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I don't know USA very well, so that is just a feeling.

- a lot of what the union do/did have to be understand in the context of important fight between the unionized worker and the companies that want to undercut union influence (and often undercut workers right)

- a lot of thing union do / used to do, make sense in the past, but are less relevant now.

- Human is quite good to do stupid things, to create some bureaucracy / rules... That applied to companies (Bullshit Job being one manifestation of it), but also to union

- We tend to notice more the bad things than the good things...

- Humans tends to love power and hate change... that includes human running unions

Who said you didn't know us very well? I think you summed it up well.

I would also mention goals.

If your goal is absolute efficiency in running a convention then you end up with poorly treated and underpaid workers.

If your goal is making sure the convention doesn't poorly treat or underpay workers, you end up having to find someone to plug in your equipment (also I suspect there are legitimate safety and security concerns for a prototype electronics conference).

You can't blame convention workers for preferring the latter situation.

Hostile environments end up creating extensive legal documentation to protect parties?

The REASON that AMERICANS HATE unions is...

1. Anti-union propaganda and the union-busting efforts of American corporations and their consultants starting in the 1970's leading up through the policies of Reagan.

2. Globalization and the loss of manufacturing jobs.

SADLY, in the interim American wages have been flat since the 70's and class inequality has exploded.

"Had the fruits of the nation’s economic output been shared over the past 45 years as broadly as they were from the end of World War II until the early 1970s, a full-time worker whose taxable income is at the median would instead be making $92,000 to $102,000" instead of $50k. (RAND Corporation) Source: https://www.fastcompany.com/90550015/we-were-shocked-rand-st...

READ:

- https://www.vice.com/en/article/akwwvb/us-employers-spend-do...

- https://www.jwj.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/JohnLogan12_2...

- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/commentisfree/2018/jun/2...

- https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/starbucks-history-...

- https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/power/history_of_labor_unio...

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_th...

- https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/06/how-wal...

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