Hacker News Reader

Comment by lbriner | Hacker News Reader

Agree and this depends on the union also. The RMT in the UK is famously militant. When a new General Secretary was voted in a few years ago (before the current one I think), he didn't promise to "represent his members" but instead promised "that the RMT would remain militant", which doesn't sound great.

Another railway union, the TSSA had a generally "no strike" policy but would still provide support for any disagreements with management.

I guess, as always, be careful for what you wish for, you might not be able to afford to go on strike for something you don't feel very strongly about because the union says so and if you don't strike, well, good luck continuing to work there.

View on HN

Everyone could get a better comp and work conditions but noo, that one lazy guy won't be fired, we can't have that!

There are quite a few reasons why I don't want unions:

1. I don't want pay banding based on job title, I am capable of negotiating this myself. This is especially true because I can remain at senior Dev level but based on contribution I can be compensated, not by title .

2. Historically there's evidence of damage to industry caused by unions.

3. The unionised work places I have heard about second hand, do not sound like places I want to work. For example unproductive employees not fired, promotions and internal job moves being extremely bureaucratic and check box oriented.

4. I do not want to be forced to pay union dues.

5. I do not want people telling me I must strike.

If the company's in a competitive market, it's unlikely that there's a huge pot of gold somewhere to hand to employees in operations. The whole value-add for unions lately has been pitched as better employee representation in decision making. I'm all for that - if that stops management from colluding with some hedge fund to engineer an awful reverse-buyback-privitazation scheme to load the company with unservicable debt or something like that, I think unions have a lot to add.

But I can tell you from experience - it's definitely not "one lazy guy" - it becomes endemic because the process for dismissal becomes so costly. It's extremely demoralizing working alongside people who are "working the system" and are lazy as fcuk. It's better to just leave.

>If the company's in a competitive market, it's unlikely that there's a huge pot of gold somewhere to hand to employees in operations.

Here in the US, corporations all over are making record profits! Buying back shares like never before! Unless you want to play definition games about what a "competitive market" is, plenty of companies in competitive markets have big pots of gold to hand to employees.

The average operating margin for companies on the S&P 500, the "best of the best" of US corporations, is 9.35% - and that's a figure that is inflated by all of the pharma companies that have crazy 20% margins and sell into a dysfunctional drug market in the US and don't have to compete with generic drugs. Remove them and the operating margin is even lower.

There's no pot of gold in most cases. But I still think there's a good case for unionization.

I will point out 9.35% when talking about companies that size is a lot of money.

Also worth noting; companies pay taxes on their profits, so while there's a lot of incentive to report high profits when a company is looking for investors, there's also plenty of incentive to hide profits (and thus lower operating margins) or shift them to subsidiaries in countries with lower taxes when companies that don't need to inflate their value. I am curious wether the stats you found take this into account.

> If the company's in a competitive market

This typically translates to "the company's successfully lobbied for trade agreements that allow us to force our domestic labor to compete against impoverished foreign workers in a developing nation with nonexistent environmental and safety standards," which is a race to the bottom for everyone but aristocrats.

I think the problem in the US is that the country is deeply right-wing when it comes to labor policy. The union/management relationship in the US is designed to be adversarial. In Germany, it's legally mandated for unions to be represented at the board level, and that kind of cooperative relationship's results speak for themselves. Here, that idea would be considered tantamount to bolshevism.

I wonder what most labour activists in the US would think of German worker councils, though? Works councils are basically company unions (which are loathed in US labour for some good reasons), but they are strengthened and protected through legislation. It doesn't stop at representation at the board level either - union busting is illegal and worker council reps enjoy job protection. But the flip side of this is that the union can't engineer a labour monopoly the way the UAW did in the 60's - the union and its employees are incentivized to keep the company healthy and competitive rather than just screwing over consumers by raising prices across the industry and lobbying for trade barriers.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com