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Comment by w3ll_w3ll_w3ll | Hacker News Reader

"When I bring this up, people sometimes respond by saying that these kinds of strikes are illegal in the US. This is a true and worthwhile bit of information, but insofar as it is meant to imply that the different legal environment is what accounts for the labor radicalism, this obviously has things backwards. The laws aren’t driving the labor radicalism, but rather the labor radicalism is driving the laws."

So true. Every kind of strikes was illegal before it became legal.

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So many people (even here on HN) think that unions have lost their way and should be abolished because instead of focusing on their duties, they sometimes get involved in politics, through supporting one candidate over another, donating to a campaign, or hiring lobbyists. This example shows how necessary political action is if a union wants to bring real improvement for its members.

> they sometimes get involved in politics, through supporting one candidate over another, donating to a campaign, or hiring lobbyists.

Union political lobbying is persistent in every election, using ‘sometimes get involved’ is not an accurate description for how frequent it is.

I'll consider worrying about unions lobbying as soon as companies and their industry groups no longer lobby. Absent that, it's downright necessary.

Who would want to be a member of a union that didn't engage in political lobbying? That would indicate a very weak union.

Who would want to be forced to pay union dues to a union who's opposed to their politics?

Someone who wants to earn more money than a comparable non-union job.

Make an extra $5000 to pay $3000 in dues and $3000 in taxes you oppose that those dues lobbied for.

You could also drive an hour to save 3¢/gallon on gas.

After doing a (very) cursory search, average dues are under $500/year and unionized employees have total comp that's almost 50% higher than nonunionized employees [1]. Total comp that's largely not taxed.

This data comes to us from the BLS via an organization whose homepage lists services such as "Counter Union Campaigns", "Union Avoidance", and "THE UNION-FREE PRIVILEGE®".

[1] https://anh.com/the-cost-of-unions/

The part about dues sounds about right. doitwithoutdues.com was Amazon's anti-union propaganda, so they had every incentive (and looking at the website the shamelessness) to exaggerate union dues. Yet, the number they came up with was only $500 per year.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210329213754/https://www.doitw...

Dues tend to be about 1%. 1% of an Amazon software engineer total compensation could go to $3000.

So to break even, a union has to cause wages to be higher than the non-union situation by 1%? That seems simple enough to do. I would be very surprised if the vast majority of unions don't earn their keep tenfold.

I worked for a company with two plants, one unionized and the other one not. For the same job, the unionized plant paid approximately 20% more than the non-unionized one for the same jobs. A 1% due rate would have been a steal of a deal.

My union dues are less than $50 per month, and it's one of the bigger/more powerful unions in the US. I don't agree with everything they do, but the pay, benefits, and security (very hard to be fired) don't have a non-union comp (that I'm aware of, anyway).

Someone who's secure in the knowledge that capital massively outspends labour in lobbying and politician donations anyway

In the UK much of the benefits of Union membership is more like legal insurance. Which in this complicated world is really quite sensible if a rather more boring image.

This reminds me of something patio11 is fond of saying about Japan:

"A necessary and complete way to have nice things is to have the will to have nice things".

There are ways around US labor laws too. Unions often get away with stealthy "work slowdowns" and "everyone call in sick" actions. Typically without any repercussions for the union or employees because it's illegal, but hard to prove.

Yup, it's often a "Work To Rule" action [1], where everyone works exactly by the book. All shortcuts are eliminated, every break is taken to the exact second (instead of working through the breaks to get stuff done), etc. Everything slows down, and that is that.

And the point is that it is strictly legal - everything is being done exactly by the book. Even so, employers sometimes sue unions over "malicious compliance".

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

Another way that works in many fields is just everyone refusing any and all overtime. If everyone does that most companies (and police, fire departments, public hospitals, etc) can't cope.

The company can't really force anyone to take extra overtime. The only thing they can do is fire you (well not in the Nordics but in the US I think yes?) but that will only make their problem of not having enough workers around worse.

If you have a union job, and you're skipping or shortening breaks, you're doing it wrong.

If they are doing these things because it makes your job more enjoyable, it's exactly as intended.

Could you clarify? I don't follow.

To use a recent example, police have done exactly that. They're not even trying to pretend it isn't exactly what it is.

Land of the free and the home of the brave

> Every kind of strikes was illegal before it became legal.

I don't think withdrawing your labour was illegal before someone legalised it - the whole workforce was not enslaved.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_Wars

The reason why US unions are so antagonistic is that US corporations are antagonistic and destructive, any hint of collective action brings out the guns, historically literally.

This very essay talks about their approach to countries with constructive unions / labour, so does the behaviour of Amazon in Germany these days.

US unions have just been living in that environment with little support (quite the opposite) for 150 years, so anything they can get they will everything else be damned. They have no incentive to be cooperative and agreeable because corps will try to destroy them regardless.

I've only taken a recent interest in history (specifically labor), but if you look at the grand scale of either direct physical enslavement or designed econeomical indirect enslavement (surfs to their rulers), you find so much of history dating back to the Egyptian empire of kingdoms that relied their econemy in significant part with labor enforcement.

You could try to argue about the right of withdrawing label just in context to American history, but I think we'd still wind up with a compelling case that so much of history had periods of significant unjust-by-most-standards labor compulsion.

Strikes were prosecuted as illegal conspiracies before the labor rights movement. The law was generally strongly pro-employer, hence the labor rights movement.

"Every kind of strikes was illegal before it became legal. "

This is not true.

Striking was not 'illegal'. If you decided to not show up for work your company could let you go.

'Striking' with protections etc is a 'positive right', effectively a set of powers established by government, imbued on workers.

Think about it: what 'right' would someone normally have to 'not show up for work' and expect that the company couldn't let them go?

What 'right' would someone normally have to block a company from freely interacting with other groups of workers?

'Striking' is a power given to Unions by government that enables them to have some kind of leverage over their employers, and stop employers form participating in what would in any normal circumstance just be normal course of business.

Most of the things unions fought for during the era of labour uprising were enshrined into labour law and other regulatory concerns i.e. 'worker safety' whereas actual wages make up only one part of the equation.

>'Striking' with protections etc is a 'positive right', effectively a set of powers established by government, imbued on workers. Think about it: what 'right' would someone normally have to 'not show up for work' and expect that the company couldn't let them go?

The same right someone would have to fire somebody.

Rights are not god given. Nor is the ability of the employer to fire workers some physical law. It's the result of a balance of power - same as the right to strike without getting fired.

This is not true, and the rhetoric on this thread is descending into byzantine logic.

If you fail to do your duties, you can (or should) be fired, that's of course legal and reasonable by any measure.

Any arbitrary means that the government provides for beyond that is a 'positive right' (i.e. you can't be fired if the union goes on strike, even if you fail to do your duties).

My direct family member belonged to a large well known union that controlled all aspects of hiring, firing, promotion and job duties. Promotion and layoffs were based entirely on 'time in'.

>If you fail to do your duties, you can (or should) be fired, that's of course legal and reasonable by any measure.

It's legal because it was put into the legal code. It's not, again, some physical law.

For example, even if you "failed to do your duties", you still couldn't just be fired in many places, because there are extra protections and steps (and costs to the employeer).

>Any arbitrary means that the government provides for beyond that is a 'positive right'

Only if you have internalized that an automatic firing is the default.

An employment implies a contract between employer and worker. The right to strike may or may not be allowed in the contract depending on the negotiating power of the employee, just like the conditions under which the employee can be fired is agreed upon.

What you consider "reasonable by any measure" is just the contract where the worker have no rights and the employer have all the rights.

> Rights are not god given.

We revolted and started a country over this, made it into a primary declaration in our independence.

Perhaps more relevant than the source of the rights is who will enforce them and how will they be enforced. Unfortunately, even if God is the source of these rights, They do not directly enforce them. It's governments that need to do that. If it were not so, it wouldn't have been necessary to write it into the declaration of independence in the first place.

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