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Comment by 0des | Hacker News Reader

Is it mandatory for employees to join the union?

No, and even worse, it is mandatory for the union to negotiate for employees who don't join. That's one of the many ways in which unions are sabotaged in the US. If unions could negotiate for exclusive benefits for their own members, they wouldn't have any trouble recruiting. Instead Taft-Hartley made it illegal for them to manage insurance/pensions that the employer contributes to.

Unions are weak because the deck was stacked, the same way it is in every kleptocracy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Members-only_unionism is allowed, but most unions impose the same rules about non-members to prevent competition.

Depends on the contract, but when I worked for Kroger years ago, if I opted out of the union, I got like 2 more $ an hour but at the cost of some other benefits. I was 15 so of course I opted out for that extra cash.

Holy crap those are some insane dues! I had a similar experience working for a grocery store at that age. I am pro-union since I have seen the good it does for trades, but it seemed scummy trying to convince me to join the union as a kid who was on his parents insurance at the time and didn't need benefits.

Funny enough, the person who replied to you was wrong. I didn't get health insurance. They were dues. The benefits I mentioned were guaranteed raises that I knew I wouldn't get because I didn't plan to work there for more than a summer.

It's not dues, it's health insurance.

And it's not really "scummy" of the union that health insurance had weird loopholes for kids.

Then why try to convince me to join if I'm paying into insurance and strike funds that I will never see any benefit from? I understand collective bargaining but it seems like they just wanted to trick high school kids into giving away 15% of their paychecks. Also even though the store had high union membership, my managers still pulled crap like calling me to the register during my legally mandated 15 minute break.

In Canada, it is not. If you don’t join the union, you may still benefit from the union’s bargaining power so you will pay some dues to the union. I would presume this varies per region.

It depends.

In many industries it's a requirement of the bargaining agreement. But many states have passed 'right to work' laws which state you can't be forced.

And still, I know of positions where there are 'union' and 'non-union' people basically doing the same job at companies. Non-union usually comes with a pay bump to offset not having the union benefits.

When I helped run a union we had to carefully track paid time and expenses. Only time spent negotiating and enforcing the contract could be collected from non members.

So it is mandatory...

I doubt that would be legal. The unions in Sweden tried it, but it was against rights enshrined in the constitution (freedom of association), so didn’t fly even here.

Or course not. You can work somewhere else if you don’t want collective representation. Can’t have your cake and eat it too, getting benefits of a union without joining it is freeloading.

When I worked at a place with UAW representation, you had the option to not become a UAW member and still work there, but you had to pay some portion of the union dues anyway. They were not called dues in that case, but something else. The argument was that UAW had negotiated certain benefits that you enjoyed whether you were a member or not, so you should still pay something.

The union isn't my employer, why would I need their permission to work?

Because your employer wants the union to be happy. You also need the customer's permission to work; because if customers ask your employer to fire you, your employer will think that it's a good idea to fire you. edit: TBH, you need my permission to work, too, if I know enough of the customers or have enough followers on my twitter account.

I can assure you my employer would like the union to fuck off.

In a world where it isn't illegal to fire everyone who even thinks of joining the union, you might have some (ethically wrong) point. That's not in this world.

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