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Comment by dcgudeman | Hacker News Reader

It really amazes me what some people think qualifies for a “human right”. If you are paying someone and they are doing something you told them not to do isn’t it your “human right” to stop paying them? Where do you draw the line with what a “human right” is?

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Think about it this way: both sides have the right to freely negotiate a contract, and then decide whether or not to enter into it. The CEO can't prevent the workers from talking to each other and figuring out what they think a fair contract would be, and the workers can't prevent the CEO from talking to other CEOs for the same reason.

The specific human right is usually referred to as "freedom of association". You can read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_association

Sure but if both sides have the human right to freely associate, then the employer should surely have the right to reject associating with the union at all. But that's not afforded to them under US law, per my understanding.

"Associate" has a specific definition here that's a little narrower than normal conversation. It refers to being a member of a group, not just being connected to it in some way. The CEO is free to not join the union if they don't want to. They can also quit if they don't want to deal with it at all.

By the same token, the company’s management is free to fight union creation, by sharing anti-union messages. Freedom of speech and assembly on both sides.

I think this is legally the case in most places, but IMO it is extremely unfair to give ownership acting through the corporate entity the same rights as employees, which are actual people.

Agreed, but in the American context, "fighting" union creation usually means a little more than just sharing informative messages.

"I heard Donny got both kneecaps busted after he passed out a union flyer last year" said the manager conveniently holding a baseball bat from the "baseball club" he just so happened to be involved in.

Sure. the complaint here is not that Amazon shared anti-union messages. (and gets murky when it tries to force employees to consume said messages)

As you observe, workers talking to each other to agree on prices for labor is the flip side of the coin from CEOs talking to each other to agree on prices for labor. But the latter is in fact illegal. CEOs can't talk to each other and agree to pay $10/hour for warehouse workers. Coordinating with others to set prices for labor or goods isn't viewed as within the scope of freedom of association. Union activities are in fact specifically exempted from anti-trust laws because otherwise they would fall within the scope of them. Workers can agree with each other not to accept less than $15/hour for warehouse workers.

You need something more than freedom of association to justify unions, rooted in the recognition of bargaining disparities between employers and employees.

You don't see any power disparity here?

I do. But power disparity doesn’t have anything to do with freedom of association. It’s a different basis for allowing unionization.

But we have to realise that the common situation here is a corporation against a single individual. How is it comparable to a cartel of corporations?

You've got it the wrong way round. You start by assuming everything is permitted and then you selectively (and ideally reluctantly) bring the weight of law to bear when you discover that it's a net benefit to society. It's a correction for gross inequalities of power.

That's something the libertarian left and libertarian right surely agree on - minimising the application of the monopoly of force and all that.

So you assume both employers and employees can freely organize and associate. That's your starting point.

Now - we've decided that the right to join a union should be protected (it evens out an existing power imbalance) and that collusion to force down wages should be illegal (because it amplifies an existing power imbalance to the detriment of society at large)

The way I'm thinking about it, you don't need anything extra to justify unions, but you do need something extra to prohibit wage fixing. I agree that freedom of association, when considered alone, would allow wage fixing and price fixing and all sorts of anti-competitive behavior.

We're moving away from areas where I'm confident I know what I'm talking about, but I think as a society we've decided that while anti-competitive laws do infringe on the rights of business leaders, we're trying to balance their rights with those of everyone else, and the laws are necessary to prevent a permanent class divide between business leaders who cannot be challenged, and workers under them. In the long run, allowing complete free association among CEOs would limit the freedoms of the rest of society.

Society is a constant project of balancing various conflicting rights, and this is one of many cases where we limit the rights of a few to defend the rights of many.

You are paying someone to work 18 hours a day, every day. They would like to not work 18 hours a day anymore, and stop working at a mere 12 hours; they are even willing to accept less pay. You fire them, because you clearly told them not to do that. They organize with other workers and demand the right for a 12 hour day, with this right enshrined in law and with penalties for employers who do not comply. You say “they are free to work for someone else or quit if they don’t like it!”

Fast forward many decades later. This is a right you and I both enjoy. (This is also why we both have time to shitpost on HN.) If there was a serious proposal to take it away, you and I would probably be standing side by side on the street demanding our rights back.

It’s easy to talk a big game about human rights when your rights aren’t on the line.

* Where do you draw the line with what a “human right” is?*

By looking into the declaration of human rights: https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/

Which is even more unenforceable than the 4th amendment.

It still has value even if enforcement is imperfect and selective.

In the real world, "rights" are not inalienable. I mean, who among the lower classes wrote the US constitution? Not a single one. That's because it was written by the bourgeoisie who were protecting their interests.

Who do these people, the "United Nations", writing their "Universal Declaration of Human Rights," think they are with declaring union organizing a human right? (https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ - article 23)

FWIW, You can pick out any other number of declarations of human rights and the right to form and join trade unions is in them. It's very widely considered to be a human right, not some fringe thing.

> If you are paying someone and they are doing something you told them not to do isn’t it your “human right” to stop paying them?

Obviously not. Real-world cases in point:

* Firing people for being queer

* Firing people for objecting to sexual harassment

* Firing people for going to the bathroom

Just to add, most of the bathroom related ones are other employees complaining, not management. Management has to respond to that. This is because US culture insists on separate gender bathrooms.

In the context of Amazon, though, performance quotas are inhumane, warehouses are huge, bathrooms are sparse, so employees aren't able to use the bathroom without taking performance demerits. So you get people passing out due to dehydration because they don't want to need the bathroom.

If Mr. Bezos wants to operate a business in a country, he needs to follow its laws. If he doesn't like them, he can take his business somewhere else.

Easier just to change the law.

Its in the UN declaration of human rights and also if you think about it, in the Declaration of Independence.

"Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"

> Its in the UN declaration of human rights

This is, legally speaking, a meaningless document.

So is the Declaration of Independence. So is Matthew 5. What's your point?

His point is it doesn't matter what you are "guaranteed" simply because if the real world was so black and white in regards to how laws were interpreted and followed, we wouldn't be having these arguments.

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