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Comment by brightball | Hacker News Reader

This was similar to the Boeing situation in Charleston, SC.

Boeing came in and brought great jobs with them. Then the union reps came in and started acting like everybody was being wronged somehow.

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Why can't it be both ?

Once the workers organize as a union, the company is forced to treat everything as a negotiation with the union instead of the employees. The union views their job as to always ask for more and push back on the employer, so the employer is incentivized to hold back raises, benefits, and concessions until it's time for negotiations. Giving away all of your bargaining chips before negotiations start is not a good strategy.

When you see headlines about unions negotiating certain benefits or raises from employers, it's often framed as a victory that wouldn't have happened without the union. The reality is more nuanced, as the union's existence forces the company to play hardball during negotiations so they have something to negotiate when it comes time to do the negotiations.

> the employer is incentivized to hold back raises, benefits, and concessions until it's time for negotiations

The employer is incentivized to hold these back in any case, absent some countervailing pressure (e.g. retention against competing offers, if they exist, etc.). This is why the largest raises (in tech, at least) typically come when jumping companies.

> The employer is incentivized to hold these back in any case, absent some countervailing pressure

The countervailing pressure is that non-unionized employees are more likely to leave.

Most unions in the US place a high value on seniority. The more seniority you have, the more benefits you get from a union. Good for people who have been there for 10 years, bad for new employees looking to get jobs. This makes unionized employees less incentivized to leave and more incentivized to stay and strike. Leaving (even if for higher pay) would sacrifice that union seniority that many members value.

It's a very different negotiating dynamic.

The problem with Boeing is that there are not many aerospace employers to got to. An aerospace engineer can probably only work for 2 or 3 aerospace companies in their career. Not to mention they may have to completely uproot their life on each change of employer.

this isn't really true. To change companies you might need to move cities, but there are a ton of different companies that require aerospace engineers:

SpaceX Blue Origin Space Systems Loral JPL Boeing Embraer Airbus Cessna Northrup Grumman Lockheed Martin General Electric Raytheon Boom Rolls Royce, Honeywell Eurocopter Bombardier

not to mention the adjacent fields of Green tech (wind turbines) Drones/UAVs

There are a lot of options out there

And all the vendors and suppliers that supply to these companies. The number of suppliers very well would exceed into thousands of small and midsized companies scattered around US.

> Once the workers organize as a union, the company is forced to treat everything as a negotiation with the union instead of the employees

That’s literally the point of unions. To turn the employees into a monolithic block for the purposes of negotiation.

Because crying victimhood over every perceived slight becomes the boy who cried wolf - sooner or later everyone realizes that the only way a union can justify itself is by creating problems where none existed. Otherwise, why waste money on union dues for something that isn't needed?

It CAN be both... but generally it isn't.

I have no knowledge of Boeing's internal state, so tried to get a proxy of their general attitude [0].

Every company big enough will have its share of shitty issues, but even taking it with a grain of salt it doesn't look to me like a company that needs no employee representation to counter-balance the management.

[0] https://violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org/prog.php?parent=b...

That Charleston plant has terrible quality control compared to the more mature, unionized group in Everett. Some airlines have refused shipments from south Carolina in preference to the Washington group.

https://leehamnews.com/2020/09/14/pontifications-boeing-sc-m...

For what it’s worth, I noticed a correlation between bad company news and union disputes that started about 10 years ago with Boeing. I remember visiting Seattle as you drive by the Boeing facility on the way in, my cab driver was telling me how Boeing was going to shut down the plant and move everything to South Carolina.

On that same trip, I was staying at a hotel with a view of city hall from my window (The Artic Club). I heard a bunch of horns blowing and looked out the window to see a line of cabs parked out front honking for about 1 minute before they drove off. News crews were there so I watched the local news that night.

That clip was there but the news made it sound like the drivers had been there all day blockading and honking. It was nothing more than enough time for a news clip (protesting Uber).

At that point, it became very clear to me how unions operate.

What does that have to do with Boeing?

Sorry. I noticed a significant uptick in negative Boeing press coverage the moment the union dispute started. It went from nonexistent to constant.

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