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Comment by fastball | Hacker News Reader

Isn't the entire point of a union to give you negotiating leverage?

If you need the government to effectively do the negotiating for you by levying fines and such whenever the company goes against the union, what exactly is the point of the union?

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The problem is that collective action is difficult before you have the union, and companies/executives have a lot of power to dissuade people from forming unions. In the past that's involved physical threats and actual violence. Nowadays I expect it's more posturing and economic threats, but they can still have the desired effect.

The point of these sorts of laws is to give unions a fighting chance to take hold in places where employees want them, but are afraid of retaliation if they tried to form one.

Huh?

Don't roads exist to facilitate vehicle transportation? If you need to do construction in order to make roads, what exactly is the point of them?

I don't understand what your thinking here is. You're comparing the expected results of a thing existing with possible actions to facilitate conditions for that thing to exist. Why are these supposed to be somehow equivalent or comparable?

I think their point is that the American form of unionization is bunk. If you look to Europe workers are free to choose between many associations of voluntary unions which advocate for their specific interests. They are not forced to have a single representative for negotiations with their employer and are free to abstain from of participation as well.Much like the American voting system and American Congress, unions are winner take all majority rule. If you are in the minority of a union it may not advocate for your interest and you have no option to turn to.

The term for this is "closed shop".

I've no idea why the US unions tend to be closed-shop, possibly because the high antagonism from employers makes it the only stable solution.

The Taft-Hartley Act banned closed shops in 1947:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_shop#United_States

It's literally the first line of that section.

So why are so many people in this thread complaining about "having" to join a union?

The law bans employers from requiring people to be union members before they are hired. In states without right to work laws it is still legal to require employees to join the union after being hired.

So it's still a closed shop in practice? Was the only point of passing this law to confuse the issue?

No. It's legal to require non members to pay an agency fee for the services the union is required to provide them.[1]

[1] https://fee.org/articles/the-myth-of-compulsory-union-member...

On paper, that means you don't have to join the union in order to get a job - just pay the union fees and work under the union contract (which is to say, almost all the downsides of joining but without any actual say in how the union is run). In practice, I think people who do this tend to get blacklisted by the union and have trouble getting jobs in future. I know the Hollywood unions in particular are very aggressive and public about threatening anyone who takes that option with blacklisting, and there are zero consequences for them for doing this.

As a counterpoint, in my unionized school district, both options were quite popular and you didn't need to pay the full dues, only like 70%.

I don't see how that could be their point. They said nothing about multiple unions, nor is the article in any way related to it.

American mentality embraces zero sum game as the only possibilty, so the end game is usually bad but stable results.

I guess I don't understand the bad behavior here. Tesla is allowed to not give anything they want to unionized workers.

If you want to force companies to capitulate to unions, cut out the middleman and just force companies to give things directly to workers.

The workers aren’t unionized yet. What the law is clear about, is that you’re not allowed to threaten workers for the act of trying to unionize the workplace.

“We give our workers stock options now. We do not expect to do so under a union contract.”

I don’t see that as “threatening workers”, but as a reasonable communication between employer and employees and a proper counterbalance against union claims that the workers will be better off if they unionize.

“We give our workers stock options now. No other automaker working under a union contract does so.” is something that I don't think anyone could reasonably find as threatening (even I don't think the first one is either, some may).

As an employee, I benefit from more information from both sides of the issue rather than having the union organizers be able to communicate unfettered and the company communications be restricted from pointing out any possible or foreseeable downsides.

That's real easy to say when there isn't a union yet. And the company has zero incentive to give any kind of realistic and useful information in this situation. They can say whatever they want, and it doesn't mean anything. They don't even know what the non-existent union will want or care about later, so how they can have any accurate expectations even if they are perfectly rational and honest. The only purpose these statements serve is to try to prevent unionization.

Part of why this is not a simple "both sides" issue is because we're talking about one side that exists and one side that might one day exist. The non-extant union can't weigh in on company statements or make any statements of their own.

So these rules exist to help ensure the workers are not unduly influenced by the company when they consider making that union finally exist. I don't see a problem with this.

Everything you're saying applies to union organizers though, which do exists before the union is formed.

And the entire point is that the union forming could be bad for workers in various ways, so if I was a worker I would want to be made aware of what could possibly go wrong before I joined the effort to unionize and no longer had a choice in the matter after the union is fully formed and going strong.

How could the organisers know what future members want then the company spend much effort on preventing workers from talking to each other?

How do companies spend so much effort preventing workers from talking to each other?

I agree that they shouldn't be unduly influenced by the company when contemplating joining a union.

But if they're paying the workers part in cash and part in options, and the union organizers are pitching that they'll raise their wages, I think it's fair for the company to point out that that is likely to result in moving some of the comp from options into cash.

The UAW and representatives can certainly make statements today. Here's one: https://uaw.org/statement-uaw-vice-president-cindy-estrada-d...

Even that is itself a weird quasi-bad-faith statement though. A potential union would not be unaware of stock options, nor how to value them. They could just as easily request higher cash pay and that stock options remain as they are. That's a valid position, and arguably a likely one.

On what possible basis could Musk be making a fully good-faith statement that he has good reason to believe it is impossible for a union to negotiate on such grounds? Obviously he is free to stick on that point in actual negotiations, but again he can't in any kind of good faith negotiate in public with an entity that doesn't exist yet.

As for UAW, that's kind of getting into the detailed specifics of this instance. Maybe there's more room to argue for looser regulations when there are extant industry unions? But that would also seem to push things more in favor of larger, more encompassing unions rather than smaller more specific ones, which I imagine most people in favor of less regulation wouldn't be fond of either.

First of all, that’s not what Elon said. He said something to the effect of “why do you want to join a union and lose stock options?” Just like someone who approaches you on a dark street and says “nice car, wouldn’t want anything to happen to it.” Of course, when you call the police, he’s going to explain that he genuinely appreciates a fine automobile and was expressing his concern given the troubles in the neighborhood.

Musk has a significant say in whether employees continue to receive options, and I can’t see why the union would ask to take that away, given that options are presumably very popular with their members.

Saying that life will get worse with a union is one thing. Saying that it will get worse because I will make it worse is another.

This isn't about any actual negotiation though. This is about a public statement aimed at discouraging even attempting to unionize. This is well before the point where the union and company would be negotiating.

I think it makes a lot of sense to regulate this kind of activity. It's not about forcing companies to 'give in' or not to unions, but about helping to protect the ability for the union to form in the first place.

We can argue forever about how much company statements might influence the ability for unions to form, but at the end of the day the actual regulation here is basically just stopping the company from setting up their own strawmen in hopes of influencing workers. Naturally, it's very easy to talk tough when you're just pretending to negotiate against yourself. Not doing this seems like a pretty mild restriction, so I don't think it's a particularly onerous regulation.

They're not allowed to threaten employees who want to unionize. They may refuse to give options.

Actually, they can’t. The judge ruled that saying so represented an illegal threat, and the NLRB concurred. It’s been decided by law.

The union doesn’t exist yet at their site. The government provides the guarantee of a fair election on whether to unionize, free of threats from either management or the union. Once the site is unionized, the union can indeed defend itself by negotiating with management.

I guess businesses don't need the government laws enforcing shareholder voting rights and minority shareholder protections then right?

No absolutely the government should enforce legal agreements via the legal system.

But that's not what this is suggesting, right? This is suggesting the government should treat unions preferentially, not equitably.

No, this is suggesting that government should enforce workers' rights to decide freely if they want to unionize. Companies routinely skirt this right by taking explicit anti-unionization efforts, and there are many firms specializing in this.

What is required for "free" decision-making?

Making sure no one is strong arming or threatening, harassing, or bribing the ones who have to make that decision, nor thought leaders among them.

Yes, I would say that is kinda a given. Don't think Elon's tweet counts as any of these things though.

> This is suggesting the government should treat unions preferentially, not equitably.

Equity is in the eye of the beholder. I don't see how this law is treating unions preferentially, and am interested in how you distinguish it with the aforementioned minority shareholder protections.

The idea here seems to be that unions can interfere with the running of a business however they want (strikes, etc), but businesses should not be allowed to "interfere" with the formation of union, where "interfere" seems to be a very low bar in terms of what is unacceptable.

When I say equitable treatment, I'm looking for symmetry, and I'm not seeing it here.

Seems like you are saying owners of small businesses can get together and collude under a combined business, with shares and voting, but individual workers must be atomized or if they do try to coordinate to bargain against the businesses, they get no similar help to do so as the shareholders get.

The governments role should be to ensure a level playing field between employers and labor. That means the government at a minimum needs to protect those who want to organize.

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