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Comment by ars | Hacker News Reader

When people say they hate unions this is why. This port is not automated, and it's entirely because the unions want their money: https://www.presstelegram.com/2021/05/20/automation-war-expe...

"But the International Longshore and Warehouse Union was quick to issue a response following the meeting, saying the proposal threatens U.S. jobs and local economies." i.e. we want to make things worse, so we get more money.

When you read stuff like this, is it any wonder that Amazon and WalMart are so opposed to unions?

Are there any unions that advocate for good working conditions, without also opposing efficiency gains in the name of jobs?

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"Are there any unions that advocate for good working conditions, without also opposing efficiency gains in the name of jobs?"

It's the job of the union to advocate for workers, not for management. Workers want more pay, job security, benefits, safety, and so on. What employers want is entirely different and often directly opposed to what the workers want. And there is already a strong advocate for the employers interests - the employer. In most employment situation there is no advocate for the workers to begin with.

What you are suggesting is that in the rare cases that workers do have an advocate, that advocate should also be acting for the benefit of the employer. I don't think that adds up.

Demanding higher pay in exchange for increased efficiency is a negotiation.

Demanding higher pay in exchange for nothing is rent-seeking.

I will remember that the next time I'm at the grocery store and prices go up without negotiation. Afterall I could just not buy food.

I don't think this is useful analogy. If Kroger raises prices for milk, you can cross the street and buy your milk from Walmart or Aldi or Costco or any of the other hundreds of places that sell groceries.

If the ILWU goes on a slowdown strike, the port authority cannot simply fire them all and hire replacements. Firstly, that is outright illegal in America and secondly, there is no competition anyway. The ILWU has a monopoly on the supply of longshoremen. If all the grocers were entered into a cartel agreement to not sell milk below a certain price, then you'd have a point. There's no evidence that this is the case.

But all longshoremen are entered into an agreement not to sell labor below a given price. This agreement is their union membership with the ILWU.

Setting aside the fact that stores only sell milk and all get it from the same set of farms which usually have their own trade group, monopoly if you will, why should regulatory capture favor your preference over theirs?

There's no milk monopoly. That's ridiculous. Farmer Joe is free to sell his milk at whatever price he wants.

Not exactly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dairy_Price_Support_Program

Worked on a project a while back for pricing different qualities of milk and the amount of federal programs, guidelines, and laws regulating dairy markets is extremely substantial.

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

~22% of the market if I understand correctly. Hardly a monopsony.

There's nothing wrong with wishing for a cozy dream rentier position, the problem is that ports are not really a healthy market. It's hard to open a new port, there are only a few ones that dominate the market, and they are all operated by the local government. There's no real incentive to do better, no profit motive to enter this market, to be more efficient, etc.

So naturally this should be regulated like a public service.

That said, just as regular public service jobs pay shit it's not surprising that there are regular conflicts due to disagreements about compensation.

I don't think this dichotomy is necessary. Management are workers - they have the same goal as everyone else, making money. The distinction you intend to make is people who have a stake in the company vs. people who do not. If all employees held equity/stocks or had substantial participation in company decisions (be it through a vote, or through an elected representative), then collective bargaining would organically arise as part of the organizational structure.

In Germany you have a very different relationship between unions and management, with unions sitting on corporate boards and management being in the union as well.

But American unions are legendary in the Western world for corruption and pugnaciousness which continues up to the present[1,2], which is unfortunate, and long term hurts workers.

[1] https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/10/15/head-of-californias-l...

[2] https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/11-union-officials-char...

Managers are better thought of as "agents of capital or ownership" under this distinction. Manager compensation would typically be at least partially tied to overall company performance, even without equity (e.g. cash bonuses for a strong P+L). Employees, as a group distinct from the Managers, earn a flat wage regardless of performance.

Of course, this is industry/location/company dependent, but I believe that is the reasoning for the distinction.

> In most employment situation there is no advocate for the workers to begin with.

This is only true in employment situations with little to no scarcity in labor supply. That is not actually the case in most skilled jobs, certainly not at present. In skilled work, the employer has a clear need to keep their employees satisfied otherwise they cannot sustain their labor needs. Labor scarcity by definition creates substantial alignment between the desires of workers and the needs of the business.

I guess the issue is that if a union solely acts for the benefit of the workers, then it sets itself not only against the interests of the employer, but also against the interests of the whole of the rest of society, who would benefit from the service being more efficient.

Hence the current situation where unions have an image problem.

Nobody likes seeing an abuse of power, whether the abuse is coming from the direction of the employer, or from the employee‘s union.

Game-theoretically, a smart union should refrain from unreasonable demands, because their long-term survival (and that of its members) is imperilled by public opinion turning against them.

Unless of course more workers belonged to unions, in which case more people would be sympathetic to the plight of the worker. These people are facing devastating job losses that will upend their families’ lives. Can you really blame them for putting up a fight? I’m ok with it, even if it means I need to wait a few weeks to import my forced-labor cotton shirts from Xinjiang.

You don’t need to be a union member to be sympathetic to workers’ issues - after all, nearly everyone is a worker. But nearly everyone is a stakeholder in the economy too, and solidarity has a limit, which can be breached when an action is widely perceived as unreasonable.

I guess I shouldn't negotiate raises anymore at my job, wouldn't want to hurt the rest of society.

"In the name of jobs" seems pretty darn critical to the purpose of unions. What would be the point of a union that didn't protect the jobs of their workers?

It's pretty clear why Amazon and WalMart dislike unions. Unions make things more expensive (and less efficient) for the owners. The converse is that unions can make things better for the employees. There are a lot more people who work at Amazon and WalMart than there are who meaningfully own those companies.

I think there's an ideal balance and unions can be a part of that. On one end, inefficiency kills the company and costs everyone jobs and money. On the other companies are brutally efficient, like Amazon, and most workers live and work in poor conditions. We should try to find something in the middle rather than optimize for efficiency.

It's possible to protect the jobs of your members while looking down the road and not making decisions that cause those jobs to be eliminated entirely because you refuse to adapt.

>This port is not automated, and it's entirely because the unions want their money.

And ports cost money because ports want their money. People need money. To live.

If automation is set up with the express purpose of reducing worker leverage (and it often is for infrastructure projects) then it doesnt make sense to clutch pearls if workers then strike.

If a few days of strikes are so expensive that the automation gets called off... well, maybe it wasnt about reducing costs. Maybe it was about power.

Driverless trains are similar. They don't save passengers money.

> Driverless trains are similar. They don't save passengers money.

Gonna have to disagree with you there. If BART was driverless, we could have 2-car trains every 4 minutes instead of a 10-car train every 20 minutes. Staff shortages are main reason for lower transit frequency, especially on weekends.

Vancouver's SkyTrain is a great example of driverless trains enabling higher frequencies.

yes deutschland unions are very good for economy and workers

European unions and American unions are both called "unions", but they are not the same thing.

One huge difference is the employee picks the union, it's not a single union per employer.

Not a single union prospectus has anything remotely related to work-ethics, efficiency, how to handle mistakes and bad performance, etc.

I have never supported unions and will never in the future. I can understand the point of Unions in a brutal regime, USA has one of the most vibrant economies in the world with a rich job market.

California is digging a hole for itself it doesn’t do something drastic.

It's a wonder that according to free market fundamentalists California is constantly a mismanaged hell hole, and yet it continues to be one of the largest and most dynamic economies on Earth.

It's the residual steam from 1980-2000's tremendous liberatarian spirit of SV. Today, it is mostly debating about which pronoun to use.

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