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Comment by pyuser583 | Hacker News Reader

I’ve never seen (or heard of) a toxic workplace becoming less toxic by unionization.

Better pay? Yes. Better benefits? Yea. Less chaos? Yes.

Less toxicity? Unions give the workers a bigger say. That’s it.

How toxic are your coworkers? If they’re toxic … unionizing won’t help. If they’re not toxic … unionizing still probably won’t help.

Unions are about pooling together for a better negotiating position.

That doesn’t make anything less toxic.

For example, will the union support using H1B visa workers? Amazon had a lot of H1B tech workers. That could get very toxic very fast.

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> How toxic are your coworkers? If they’re toxic … unionizing won’t help. If they’re not toxic … unionizing still probably won’t help.

This isn't really true. Unions typically negotiate for baseline working conditions, which can include protection from abuse and such things. "Toxicity" could easily fall under that and does in many (if not most?) workplaces in Sweden.

If the person making your work life toxic is also a union member (and denies it), it puts the union in an awkward position.

In practice, the union can negotiate disciplinary rules. However they tend to focus on protecting workers from discipline.

There are some practices they can’t/won’t give much protection to, like misusing company funds.

Some unions have offered less protection when accusations of racism and sexism are involved, but employers have learned to abuse that.

Read about the firing of Donald McNeil by the New York Times to get an idea of how cowardly, social-justice focused unions can majorly screw up by not defending their members.

So if the person making your life miserable is a coworker who constantly denigrates you, unions might be more focused on helping them than you.

> If the person making your work life toxic is also a union member (and denies it), it puts the union in an awkward position.

No, it doesn't because the rules are agreed to before the events, just like the rule of law in society in general. They don't negotiate rules during a conflict...

In Sweden, everything you're saying is irrelevant because it's neither the company nor the union which evaluates the contract and the specific case in question. There are special courts and authorities to handle this which are independent of both parties. The only way that unions and companies are involved are negotiating the contracts that are evaluated.

Even if what you said applied, which it doesn't, my response would be "perfect is the enemy of good." That system would be better for most people than one of total subjugation.

My dads experience at Boeing. Unions equal cut brake lines. He was terrified of crossing theme

Unions can't hope to eliminate thugs.

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