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Comment by falcolas | Hacker News Reader

Why pay your employees when you can pay a consultant to show how to keep your employee costs low?

IF your company thinks spending $X on keeping you from unionizing is worth it then the benefit to you is at least ($X+1)/$num_workers to unionize.

do you have any idea how big the num_workers number is? I'd wager for the average employee the benefit will be neagative, as in paycheck - union dues. The real benefit goes to the union bosses as num_workers * union_dues.

Now, I am not very up to date on statistics, but unionised workers have traditionally earned about 10% more than non-uniomized ones in the US since at least the 80s. The article mentions 11%, which seems in line with what I know since before.

I doubt any union would charge anywhere near that much.

Amazon's own literature says "almost $500" in dues[1]. If they get a 10% pay increase, then everyone making more than $5k comes out ahead. Everyone making $10k or more comes out more ahead than the union. The union bosses probably come out the most ahead because that $500 * (a lot of workers) goes to (a small number of union management types).

It's hopefully obvious that the union makes it better for at least the lower 50% of performers. It seems likely to me that it makes things better for more like the bottom 90% of performers or more. A lot of anti-union literature is based upon the fact that most people think they are above average.

1: https://www.doitwithoutdues.com/

$500 in dues per year is around $20 per paycheck if you're paid twice a month or every two weeks. The increase in benefits and working conditions might well be worth that, depending on the job.

My father used to work at a facility that actually paid non-union employees more than union employees. It was at a remote location, so any sort of strike would have cost tons of money with no way to get replacements in. Any time the union negotiated a raise, the company gave the non-union employees a bigger raise, because the extra cost was worth not having to worry about a strike shutting everything down.

So in other words, all workers at the company still benefitted from having a union.

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