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Comment by lamontcg | Hacker News Reader

Its very on brand that the first response to this on HN is more or less:

"Okay, hear me out, but what if Unions in America are really _too strong_?".

Very counterintuitive thinking.

I've seen what large unions can do (just search for some of the largest Mexican unions, like the PEMEX one). Any organization of a certain scale and power gets corrupt, including private companies and unions.

I strongly believe in unions, but I agree with OP that keeping them small and focused is better for both the interests of the company and the employees. Extreme power imbalances are seldom (and I'd dare say never) good. I've seen unions effectively bankrupt business during tough times. I've also seen what unchecked corporate power can do. The right mixture of regulation and collective bargaining is a good thing, but like always, too much of a good thing can quickly turn bad. As an example, you can end up overprotecting unproductive or counter productive employees, reducing bonuses and pay for the other hard working employees because of reduced profitability.

> Extreme power imbalances are seldom (and I'd dare say never) good. I've seen unions effectively bankrupt business during tough times.

Please be specific.

Interstate Bakeries. They opened their books to multiple unions and (IIRC), all but one agreed/realized that the money wasn’t there for the demands being made. That one holdout was the coup de grace and IB went bankrupt only to be bought out by some Mexican conglomerate.

The question was directed to fgonzag and about what they had seen. Have you actually seen this happen to Interstate Bakeries or have you read about it in a paper?

> Any organization of a certain scale and power gets corrupt

That's the problem. And why you need the four pillars of human organization: Corporations, Government, Religion and Unions to be setup to be opposed to each other.

Instead in the United States Corporations own the Government, Religions are all tax sheltered Corporations and Unions are decimated.

Counterintuitive to what? Do you have stories or facts you want to share that argue unions in US are actually comparatively weaker than their European counterparts?

The only thing you illustrated was that you were personally astonished by OP's comment, but I don't think that carries as much weight as you think it does.

One of my favorite unionization stories comes from Denmark when unions in various industry sectors joined together to force McDonalds to adhere to union rules.[1] The US has so few weak and disparate unions that that story could never play out there - even up here in Canada we're pretty anti-union in general.

1. https://mattbruenig.com/2021/09/20/when-mcdonalds-came-to-de...

Thanks for the article; it was a fun read. I actually had the privilege of working for a start up that was spun up in Denmark before it packed up everything and moved to the US. Because the CEO and a bunch of senior folks were Danish, they adopted what we called the Danish benefits: 6 weeks of vacation + multiple personal holidays. I miss it sorely, despite my current workplace offering "unlimited PTO" ugh.

Reading the article really reinforced how Denmark (most Scandinavian nations, actually) has a strong worker-first culture. I agree with you in that I don't ever see this scenario playing out in the US, for various reasons.

The comment seemed like an honest question in that they're asking if it's accurate.

I mean, if you prefer to err on the side of groupthink I'm sure there are plenty of decent online spaces to do so.

the point is that HN has groupthink though.

I think there is a point there. Looking back at the 60s-80s we see a clear concentration in corporate power as antitrust enforcement waned, followed by a similar consolidation in labor power. Unions certainly are not too strong relative to corporate power, but I don't think it's wrong to assert that unions failed at their height because they became large and corrupt - Jimmy Hoffa is a pop culture reference specifically because of it.

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