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Comment by drno123 | Hacker News Reader

To be honest, they were asking for 35% raise, PLUS reduced working hours PLUS benefits. They were offered somewhat smaller raise which they refused, while participating in an illegal strike. From my experience, in most negotiations, you rarely get everything that you want, but you can get a good deal if you are willing to compromise. When you play hard, it can backfire.

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This was a time of the biggest inflation in US modern history. The treasury rate was >15%, double what it was five years earlier, and triple of 10 years prior.

These people were probably getting 4-5% annual raises at a time when inflation was going at over 10%. The 35% raise was probably just to bring them back up to their baseline.

For reference, using the BLS CPI calculator, $10,000 in 1975 was $17,000 in 1981. That's insane. And those are the official BLS numbers, which most of us feel undersell inflation.

I'm curious, do you also have the numbers for 1980-1990, 1990-2000, 2000-2010, 2010-2020? I can't place your number in perspective.

Yeah, good question, I should have cited these numbers:

I got the treasury yields here: http://www.fedprimerate.com/10-Year-US-Treasury-Yield-Histor...

For the inflation stats, I used the BLS Inflation calculator here: https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm

And this thread of comments here lets us know that shallow narratives still perpetuate/ripple many decades later, hiding the detailed truth - which we're all prone to.

For completeness:

10000 USD in Start was worth Result at End:

Start-End: Result

1920-1930: 8860

1930-1940: 8128

1940-1950: 16906

1950-1960: 12468

1960-1970: 12901

1970-1980: 20582

1980-1990: 16375

1990-2000: 13249

2000-2010: 12837

2010-2020: 11905

For contrast

1990-2020: 20248

Yeah, the period you mentioned wasn't fun. I guess the last 30 years weren't so bad.

Kind of strange how things feel to get so much more expensive while money doesn't devaluate that much.

I'm sure many good justifications can be made for this, or for (e.g.) the Taft-Hartley act, but at the end of the day, there is no arguing that the last 75 years of US federal policy decisively kneecapped unions, and we are by no means better off for that.

In the past, the US gave unions a bunch of special "rights" that violate the rights of others.

It would take a decisive kneecapping to go back to parity.

Unions (and corporations, for that matter!) should have the same rights as any other group of people. No more, no less.

Labor organizers don't care about that, of course. Their "job" is to increase the power of "labor," by hook or by crook.

This. If union's had less rights than any other organization then you might argue they have been "kneecapped" but that's just not the case.

Let companies fire workers for unionizing, let them refuse to negotiate with unions, and in turn let unions do what they are intended to do, serve as a way for groups of workers to jointly apply pressure for their interests alone.

"Let companies fire workers for unionizing, let them refuse to negotiate with unions" This renders unions pretty much useless. There is already an imbalance of power in favor of the companies.

Most companies can't fire everyone all at once. If you didn't need your employees, you wouldn't have them in the first place. When both sides have something to lose, then finding acceptable compromise is in everyone's interest.

That's because unions don't represent workers, they represent their members. If their members are easily replaceable, they don't have much leverage.

If you can't fire a union worker for not working (on strike), then you take away all the leverage of not just the company, but of the unemployed who may wish to work and is not represented.

I think people white knight for unions all the time but don't look at all the people who couldn't get represented at all. They saw jobs go to people based on connections rather than skills. They applied and simply couldn't get hired -- and were still expected to support the unions politically.

So you say busting unions leads to higher employment? Did that actually ever happen? We have over century of experience, why not learn from it.

I'm very sceptical that changing "not everyone is represented" into "nobody is represented" is an improvement.

If you can fire workers on strike you remove the only leverage of a union. While on strike you don't get money from your employee and the employee won't make money from his company. So both sides benefit if a strike ends. If you can just replace workers on strike the unions have no power especially today when more workers than work exist.

BTW without unions you start a race to the bottom for the wages. But for everyone, even the employees, most of them just ignore that fact.

"BTW without unions you start a race to the bottom for the wages"

Is this why software engineers make so little on the US?

For every software engineer, there are tenfold logistics, customer service, house keeping and hospitality workers. You know, the people living on food stamps because their employers are anti-union. The difference between the former and the latter isn't unions, but "market value".

My understanding is that early unions (prior to the New Deal and labor law reform) didn't have much legal protection, and instead resorted to massive strikes. Companies fought back with firings and sometimes violence. Over time labor laws were built up because having major portions of your economy at war does not lead to a stable and productive society. As we disassemble those laws, we'll probably learn why they were created.

Those laws were put in place as a sort of olive branch to unions who were holding mass general strikes where entire cities were shut down. If you get rid of any restrictions on the employers, you better believe the unions are going to go scorched earth in return. You really want that?

What rights are you referring to?

Negative rights, i.e. rights that protect you from the initiation of force by others, i.e. rights that don't create a new obligation for someone else, i.e. what freedom or liberty actually is.

I get that labor organizers don't want a free society, and frankly, I don't know how to bridge that gap to convince them otherwise. We want different things.

can you provide a specific example of what you are referring to?

I don't really understand the question.

The fundamental right is the right to not have force initiated against you. All other rights are derivative. For instance, the right to have property, freedom of speech, freedom of movement, etc.

John Locke did good thinking on this, but I suspect a lot of his ideas were already implicitly enshrined in common law (but I'm not an expert on that).

More information: http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/individual_rights.html

Public and private sector unions are very different beasts from a power point of view. The employer in the public sector case is not a profit maximizing capitalist but the workers’ fellow citizens. Moreover, it’s well known in political science that concentrated interests are more likely to have their policy preferences enacted than diffuse interests and the interests of workers in their pay and conditions are much more concentrated than those of taxpayers in general government efficiency.

> The employer in the public sector case is ... the workers’ fellow citizens.

How is a private sector employer not? Are you alluding to the difference in affluence?

In the private sector case it might be some fellow citizens, though it need not be, but that’s qualitatively different from all your follow citizens democratically represented. All the theoretical arguments for unions are predicated on the relationship between labor and capital that doesn’t exist in the public sector.

> illegal strike

It's easy to win when you can change the rules of a game as you go.

Were the rules changed mid-strike?

I think the default rule to employment is that if you refuse to work, your employer can fire you and hire someone else to do the job, especially in a critical industry like air-traffic control

> illegal strike

I genuinely can't tell if you're being sarcastic with your comment.

Some industries crucial to public safety have legal restrictions on the right to strike.

I imagine air traffic controllers spontaneously deciding to strike _here and now_ without prior warning would be quite dangerous.

But if an air traffic controller strike is announced, say, 24 hours beforehand, it can't be reasonably argued to be a public safety hazard.

Counterpoint: My wife has a medication that has short shelf life and isn't widely distributed so it needs to be flown via air.

Airplanes stop flying my wife no longer gets her medicine, she now dead.

That is true, but you cannot force someone to fly it regularly to her. The miracles of modern medicine allow people to live when this would not have happened 100 years ago, but cannot guarantee that. Take it as a gift, not as a given.

It sounds like quite an important job then. Maybe you should join in and pressure the bosses to give them the raise they need

Some great logic there.

Put it on the one party to give into anything the other wants, because they're said to be important.

Does it work the other way in your mind too? If we all agreed that air traffic or say, Amazon, were a critical resource and has to run efficiently and for the country's benefit, not individuals, that means that they get to put whatever conditions on labor they like?

This is the worst kind of approach to governing ever, if it can even be called that.

I can appreciate the irony of you posting this after seeing the post I was replying to. I hope you can appreciate it too!

The pilot unions are rent seeking from the man you are replying to. Why do you think he should support that?

EDIT: Just to clarify my point, my interest wasn't only in my wife, rather an anecdote about how these things can be vital to people's lives.

That being said, yes I agree we should be grateful for what we have and me an my wife regularly marvel that if she'd been born just 40 years earlier she would've been dead by the time she was 9.

Curiously, one of the things that gives pilots and airline workers such powerful bargaining leverage, is exploiting safety regulations. If an airline is playing hardball with the union, the pilots go out of their way to create flight delays based on safety double-checks or "concerns" (a form of "work-to-rule" [0] strike), which the FAA gives them wide latitude to do.

Unfortunately, this works against those who work directly for those government agencies. At the end of the day, bargaining power comes from holding value hostage; and we react differently to holding on-time flight arrivals hostage, versus holding public safety hostage. It's a wicked problem for anyone who works in service of the latter.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work-to-rule

That was part of the deal when they willingly signed up for a well paying job.

Economic pressures didn't inform any of that, you think?

Most people (presumably you as well) have undergone at least one experience where they were forced to sign paperwork that they would not normally agree to, except under those specific circumstances (kid/family/rent/gadget etc.) Signing a piece of paper under such duress does not sign one's rights away exclusively.

It was an illegal strike so I am pretty sure he is not being sarcastic. They had "civil service" clauses in their contract that made them "Federal employees" and Federal employees could not strike (not sure if that is true today).

It absolutely is. The courts have their take on it, as expected, but the spirit of a strike remains consistent despite laws against it. A strike, by definition, cannot be illegal. That includes armed forces and every federal employee.

Whether existing legislation recognizes certain types of strikes as legal or not is irrelevant. Civil disobedience has deep roots in American history. This is an analogue to that, given that their rights to strike have been struck. (pun intended)

Could you explain how a strike cannot, by definition, be illegal?

Civil disobedience can be illegal.

All civil disobedience is illegal, yet you seem to adjust for some of it vs. others.

Extend that to all employment. Nothing illegal about not being forced to work. A contract is not a prison sentence, or I should hope so.

I will grant you certain conditions apply to armed forces that wouldn't otherwise apply to civilian employment, as that does actively put other's lives at risk. This isn't a conversation about desertion of duty, merely protesting or quitting. Even then there are laws that protect conscientious objectors .

>A strike, by definition, cannot be illegal. That includes armed forces and every federal employee.

Wrong. A strike, by definition, as actually defined in federal law, can indeed be illegal. That includes armed forces and every federal employee.

A strike, by definition, cannot be illegal. It's an established form of protest which may or may not lead to firing. Despite the results of the strike, the protest itself is not illegal, nor is walking out of a job. At least from both a moral standpoint.

*At least from a moral standpoint.

>A strike, by definition, cannot be illegal.

Wrong. A strike, by definition, as actually defined in federal law, can indeed be illegal.

>It's an established form of protest which may or may not lead to firing.

Wrong. It's an established form of protest which may or may not result in criminal fillings because it is illegal federally for federal employees.

>Despite the results of the strike, the protest itself is not illegal, nor is walking out of a job.

Despite the results of the strike, the protest itself is illegal, as is walking out of federal jobs (in a strike).

You literally can't be any more wrong.

Whether existing legislating recognizes a certain type of strike as legal is very relevant to whether or not it is an illegal strike.

I would argue that from a moral stand point, every strike is legal.

It's not clear from your comment, but I'm assuming you deem the term "illegal strike" oxymoronic. It isn't.

De facto or de jure

My wife is a member of a non-striking teachers union..

I've always wondered what their ultimate collective bargaining power is if the single thing that grants them their leverage (to strike) is off the table from day 1. Shes never been able to answer.

Its not shocking that they rarely even settle for a fraction of what is asked and are just "thankful" when the government and politicians are so kind to budget them raises.

Best part....Due to the policies put in place during the 08 crash, salaries and raises were severely restricted. The government last year decided to "make up for it" by changing the base salaries for NEW teachers. So now a brand new teacher just out of college makes about as much (within a couple thousand) as much as my wife, who has a masters and has been teaching for about a decade.

Thats the issue with people that are passionate about something. It happens in IT as well. Many will work for peanuts because they like it and "experience". And my companies have been put off that I describe myself as a mercenary. I work for money and have absolutely no emotional ties to team, company or organization.

Depending on how it's structured, she may be able to bounce to a different city/county/state (depending on logistics) for a year or two. Much like in industry, how leaving (and potentially coming back) can get you far more of a raise than staying.

> I've always wondered what their ultimate collective bargaining power

To be fair, unions don't exist solely as threats to employers. The ability to bargain collectively still results in better/fairer outcomes in most situations. Most of the time, employers want to compensate their employees in good faith. Most of the time, employees want to work for a team who get rewarded more or less fairly and not compete in a cutthroat arena where everyone has to bargain for themselves.

But yes: non-striking unions are absolutely not going to have the kind of corrective power in the face of genuine imbalance that real organized labor does.

"I've always wondered what their ultimate collective bargaining power is if the single thing that grants them their leverage (to strike) is off the table from day 1."

While they can't strike, they can do the absolute bare minimum, which is what happens in a lot of professions (police, fire) where they can't legally strike. I'm not saying it's as effective as an actual strike, obviously, but with how much extra time teacher give beyond normal working hours, cutting it down to just working during business hours makes a school noticeably worse.

I don't know the particulars of your wife's union contract but in my union (college faculty union) we can't go on strike while under contract. Our contracts are up for renewal every two years and when the old contract expires we can go on strike and we have in the past.

> non-striking teachers union..

These sorts of unions happen in health, nursing in particular. And then the members end up overworked, underpaid and exploited.

My profession has a strident and aggressive union which I have not always agreed with, but they have improved pay and conditions (and have organised strikes).

Air traffic controllers, like the army and certain other “essential to public safety” vocations, are not allowed to strike.

No one is allowed to strike. LOL

It's war, where all is fair.

I suppose in that sense, the question is whether the government is taking sides.

> Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act states in part, “Employees shall have the right. . . to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection.” Strikes are included among the concerted activities protected for employees by this section.

From https://www.nlrb.gov/strikes

Does that supercede this?

> An individual may not accept or hold a position in the Government of the United States or the government of the District of Columbia if he— > (3)participates in a strike, or asserts the right to strike, against the Government of the United States or the government of the District of Columbia; or

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/7311

I'm guessing no since the firing wasn't challenged.

Federal employees are not regulated by the NLRA but rather the FSLMRS. The FSLMRS explicitly denies the right of all federal employees from striking or even discussing a strike.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Service_Labor-Manageme...

You can have a contract that makes striking illegal and that you have to do arbitration instead when disputes arise.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. A good arbitration setup can be less combative and feel fairer than a setup where the threat of strike is the motivating factor.

A wildcat strike is what it is called when workers strike when their contract says they can't.

Air Traffic Control. It’s a matter of public safety. Strikes are not allowed.

Do you really expect us to believe that you don't know the concept of an "illegal strike"?

Then again, your profile picture is a soyboy face, and you're constantly spewing braindead leftist dribble, so, no one should be surprised by your glaring ignorance and naivety.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.

HN does not value personal attacks like the kind you made.

Please consider that you could have elevated the conversation by actually addressing the idea of an illegal strike (what differentiates a legal one from an illegal one, for example).

We've banned this account. Creating accounts to break HN's guidelines will eventually get your main account banned, so please don't.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

"illegal strike"

- For My Friends, Anything. For My Enemies, the Law

not working is illegal.

This comment is basically, "How dare they ?"

the way I understand it was they govt actually agreed to a pretty healthy pay raise before the strike (inflation was high then and salaries did not go up). PATCO thought they could get more and Reagan went nuclear on them.

this seems like a good write up (dunno the accuracy) https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2796do/what_...

Genuine question...Can you have an illegal strike without slavery?

I didn't think a strike was a legal (having to do with the law) action?

These demands are hard to evaluate without the prior status quo. How much did they earn before, how long were the working hours?

Clever lying by omission. This is the kind of dirty tricks FOX plays. They leave of crucial information to twist the truth. By not mentioning the sky high inflation existing at the time, you give the impression that the was completely unreasonable raise.

You count on the fact that people today are used to very low inflation, and will immediately be disgusted by the demands of these workers.

This sort of manipulation, is something conservatives have perfected over many years. Also classic conservative backstabbing. Reagan got these people to support him. He even had a past as a union representative. Yet when push came to shove, he didn't have their back. No, he stabbed them in the back instead, and reduced them to poverty.

Denying them employment in the future was classic vengeful pettiness which would have made Donald Trump proud.

> Denying them employment in the future was classic vengeful pettiness which would have made Donald Trump proud.

https://www.ft.com/content/d73b9541-f91c-4423-9353-1f6606f31...

But the consolidation, even expansion, of Mr Trump’s base rests on a more concrete achievement. For the first three years of his presidency, he produced steady growth (which a number of presidents have managed) in which a disproportionate share of the gains went to low-income workers (a rarer feat). Workers in the lowest quarter of incomes saw their wages rise almost 5 per cent. This was the first sustained downward redistribution of income and wealth since the last century, a vindication for voters in the forgotten parts of the country who voted for Mr Trump in 2016. It may account for the shock of this election: the gravitation of young Latinos and black men to Mr Trump’s candidacy.

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