Hacker News Reader

Comment by GartzenDeHaes | Hacker News Reader

This is also my experience dealing with unions. Management is legally required to make concessions during collective bargaining, so anything that can be considered an improvement to mandatory bargaining topics (pay, benefits, or working conditions) gets held back for the contract negotiation.

In one case, management wanted to purchase sit/stand workstations for employees, but HR pointed out that this was a change to working conditions and should be included in the collective bargaining negotiation. However management had already started taking measurements for the tables, so the union knew what management was intending. During the negotiations, the union decided to try and call HR's bluff and refused to ask for the workstations as a concession. So in the end, the whole plan was scrapped so that HR would have concessions available for future negotiations.

View on HN

if the belief is that employees using sit/stand workstations will improve productivity and output, it's a business' own choice not to do so for employees who have collective bargaining.

there is also a cost associated with maintaining different workspaces and equipment for employees of different status, and it's a company's choice to take that on.

typically when discussing working conditions, you're talking about minimum standards. it's not very smart to refuse to improve working conditions across the board.

you said in a reply further down that you were an executive level manager, you should have told HR to shove it because your individual performance would be impacted by the collective output of your employees, and the costs of improving working conditions would be returned in several multiples, some of which you might receive as a bonus.

it was, however, your choice and right not to do this. :)

> you said in a reply further down that you were an executive level manager, you should have told HR to shove it because your individual performance would be impacted by the collective output of your employees, and the costs of improving working conditions would be returned in several multiples, some of which you might receive as a bonus.

This assumes the EMgr is compensated/recognized more on performance of collective output than on politics and relationships. I dont know specifically about Apple, but plenty of orgs are imperfect enough that relationships are actually more highly rewarded/recognized than optimal collective outcomes (which are disparate and difficult to take credit for.)

This is part of the reason why "glue" workers[1] are usually overlooked and kept back. They neither please anyone, nor have a specific item to take credit for, usually simply boosting the outcomes of others who take all the credit for their work, plus some for that of the glue worker.

[1]: (ones which keep a team functioning well, but do nothing particularly stunning of their own)

I highly recommend the "glue" worker path. The catch phrase I use is "a rising tide raises all ships." When I was a young buck I took the "shooting star" path where I'd knock out user stories at 10x or more compared to the team average. Basically everyone hated me. Then I chose the "rising tide" path and most people loved me. All of my greatest $ opportunities came from people I raised up. Even little behaviors like instead of speaking up in meetings I DM people to offer suggestions/corrections to things they've said in meetings. And then they can seamlessly take credit for my ideas by incorporating them as they continue to talk. If you care about promotions, it's important to also do this for leadership.

If you measure my work by lines of code or user stories completed, etc. I will come up short for sure. But teams love having me around and I never lack for opportunity.

I appreciate you sharing your experience. Mine has been essentially the opposite, but I suspect the root cause being working for a company with a terrible culture.

Any tips out rooting out the companies that actually reward this virtuous behavior?

You do it in a way where you're helping the careers of people, not doing it because you think is abstractly best. Where having you around is good for them, and not having your around is bad for them. Where if you're gone, it's fuck, now my life is going to be harder. Some might call it 'relationships', but maybe it's more about choosing what has more effective impact?

Also a lot of glue people are missing the marketing aspect, and I think that is why it is unappreciated. If you never made a sound, do you exist? Glue people exist outside of the typical marketing machine for most employees, which in lies its power too, because the opportunity set is also richer.

The parallels to business and sales is very apt. You can't just make a product and expect adoption with no marketing, and the same applies when you're doing a job too. If you think you shouldn't do it, your essentially saying someone should do it for you, and they can, to a point, but you are your own best marketer, because you work with your work 24/7, while your manager has 5 to 25 other people to also think about.

In addition to what novok said, I would say keeping score is a detriment. Most of the people I "raised" provided absolutely nothing tangible in return and I don't feel any negative emotion about that. I'm glad they are better off in some capacity because I was in their life and that is its own reward. Keeping score is the path to bitterness and negative attitude which people will see through.

Can you speak more specifically about what you experienced that you found so terrible? That might help me offer a more useful response.

+1 on this. If someone is as smart as they think they are, building up the team is always the best option. If you’re always going to be ahead of the curve hours out how you can make everyone perform better as a force multiplier rather than just your own performance.

I will say, I think this is a negative aspect of performance culture though: if you’re average are you going to help someone who is going to be pipped instead of you? Probably not.

I helped one of the worst programmers I've ever known become an average programmer and he was so thankful that a few years later when a crazy opportunity came along to make a few million bucks he called me up because there was no one else he trusted with what would become his life's work. Now we hire abuse victims and other people who had a rough time but are amazing and get them set up on an accelerated path to six figure income careers as PMs, sysadmins, and developers. And we make great money in the process. I'm an above average programmer it would be a disservice to deny it, but you don't have to be the best programmer in the room to help the worst programmer in the room.

I worked with another guy and a few years after we had been working together he called me up and asked me if I would mind if he named me in his will. He had started a solo company and made good money and if he died he wanted me to help make sure his wife didn't get taken in by vultures. Of course I offered to do it without hesitation.

Fuck performance culture. Make your own culture. Be the kind of person that others want to trust their life's work and fortunes with.

Same here, always thrived for the team and stick with the motto to make yourself replaceable. In this way i felt always free that i can move on if needed, had cheerful mates around me, and was the most appreciated person around as well. Even at amazon where people competing even with teammates, we have competed together helping each other. It was an amazing experience compared with what i saw in other teams.

I'm aiming at trying to make myself useless by automating everything I can and teaching others to do what I do so I don't have to. One day I may succeed but so far when I've been on the brink of success I've been offered more and more interesting work and I don't think the world will run out of work to be done anytime soon :-)

So the HR would rather impose authority than make workers' lives easier?

no, the point is maybe the union wants a 9% raise. if you put new desks in you now pay a 9% raise and new desks. if you keep it for bargaining then maybe you pay an 8% raise and include some other benefits like new desks.

Why should employees pay for desks? Sounds like a strategy to make the work environment suck so that people are willing to spend their own money on work supplies, traditional corporate welfare.

Which reminds me, all those jobs I brought my own monitors … I should have just resigned.

This is all easily answered and resolved by paying equity. Then we can dispense with this silly back-and-forth. Right now it's like a toddler trying to get other toddlers to work for them while they try to grub all the profit. Make the profit spread over all stakeholders...no more arguments and we can all continue on, making money.

Close.

It's not about pay equity, it's about a small minority (employers/directors/shareholders) currently deciding what happens with the profits made from the labor of all the WORKERS. (And about that same small minority also deciding whether to burden society with a newly unemployed person by firing any worker.)

Those decisions should instead be made by the workers, democratically, in the same manner we pretend to glorify for civil society's governance: one person one vote.

This is how worker-owned co-op's operate.

Worker-owned co-ops were always allowed. Nothing stopping workers from starting them instead of working for traditional companies.

they're not. the point is in a traditional setup the company springs for standing desks as a perk. in a unionized setup it's better to hold stuff back for negotiations. this is the flip side to collective bargaining, you kinda gotta go through "The Process" for everything. there's also the considerations that 1. unions sometimes don't like the workplace just adding perks bc it's perceived as "undermining" the union and 2. unions will always push for more even if you add a perk like new standing desks (bc that's their job) so the workplace kinda has to always push for less so they come to a middle ground compromise.

No, the point is you get to make demands and make the company meet your way. That means once the deal is done, that's the deal. It's literally fair. You made a deal, now that is the deal. Your deal is different from other employees deal. There are upsides and downsides to both. Upside for the union employees, they got all the benefits they demanded with the downside of no new benefits. Upside for non-union employees is they get all the new benefits with the downsides they don't have all the benefits the union employees demanded and got because they thought they were that important.

Except there is no singular "other employees' deal" — each non-union employee has their own contract.

Do you think Apple made everyone individually negotiate for these perks? Or did they just give the perks to all non-union employees because they think it'll prevent other stores from unionizing?

They are acting in bad faith. Just like Starbucks, which is doing the same thing to cause problems for thier current employee unions.

A place I worked at previously had some warehouse locations that were unionized. Regional leadership was very concerned that if the Union locations interacted freely with the non-union locations that it might spread. Besides trying to have management employees be the only bridge between sites wherever possible, that also included treating the non-union employees to more perks like company provided drinks, snacks, more breaks, better pay, and better staffing levels. In some cases our non-union warehouse employees were paid more than the union employees for the same position. They also made sure to play up incidents like when there were accidents due to say a forklift operator being intoxicated at work having their job saved by the union. In many ways the non-union employees benefited from the union existence, however many of the perks given to the non-union employees continued even after the union warehouses closed - and when evaluating locations to shut down union places were always at the top of the evaluation list.

> that also included treating the non-union employees to more perks like company provided drinks, snacks, more breaks, better pay, and better staffing levels. In some cases our non-union warehouse employees were paid more than the union employees for the same position.

This just goes to show that unions improve working conditions and employee outcomes for everyone. If it takes fear that a union might spread to make a company treat their employees better that's still a win for unions, even if it puts unionized employees in a position where they now have to bargain for those same improvements.

The company is an origination whose goal is to extract as much out of their employees as possible for as little compensation as possible and when employees organize to prevent being exploited that way everyone wins, including the companies themselves.

Well, the point of a union is that management actually has a very bad sense for what employees want, so employees can't rely on management to meet their needs.

Like in this metaphor, sit/stand desks are a visible 'we care about you' move that cost $500/head one time. Meanwhile, the dental plan sucks and management ignores it because only a small subset of the employees notice and even then, it's only periodically.

So from that point of view, HR probably just said "well, based on the union negotiations, they don't seem to care about the desks, might as well shelve it and put the money to use elsewhere."

OP is the one adding the color about 'saving it for the next negotiation'

The point of a union is that management don't care what the employees want/need.

>don't care what the employees want/need.

Do you really think it's malice and not ignorance? Like, sure there's some bad apples, but you really think management thinks 'there's no marginal benefit whatsoever to having better working conditions than our peers?'

Keep in mind, this article is about retail workers at Apple

Not malice, rather sacrificing employee wellbeing in the name of profit and growth. There is a reason we needed unions to fight for us to have weekends off, a minimum wage, paid holidays, maternity and paternity rights, sickness provision, and more.

Firstly: I support unions...

Playing devil's advocate though:

HR's hands might be tied.

I don't know the language of the collective bargin contract, but I've heard of unions making it difficult to replace carpeting due to the wording on contracts...

Even assuming a good-faith employer, there's an additional legal burden to make sure you DONT violate the contract, which can slow things down weeks or months... Unfortunately this article is behind a paywall so I can't get the details, but from the glimpse, "money for school" likely is considered a salary-like benefit (it's taxed as such), so it likely has contract wording considering it.

Where have you heard this? In general things not specifically discussed in a CBA default to management ("management rights") so this would seem to require a carpeting clause in the CBA.

>Management is legally required to make concession

This is false. The NLRB explicitly says so:

> It is an unfair labor practice for either party to refuse to bargain collectively with the other, but parties are not compelled to reach agreement or make concessions.[0]

They are only required to bargain 'in good faith.' Withholding benefits they would normally give is an intimidation tactic and an attempt to maintain leverage.

[0]https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/your-right...

That the benefits are new, and specific to the workplaces without the extra overhead/limits of a unionized workforce, suggest that weren't "normally given".

no, apple is currently conducting negotiations with the unionized store and there is no contract so presumably they are working on getting that into the contract as part of the bargaining process. which is literally the way unions are set up to work.

messing with existing benefits could be construed as an intimidation tactic but delaying new ones due to going through the union workers just voted in is not, since the union has already been elected this isn't interfering with a vote or sm.

That sounds like a win for the union and it’s members.

Union members would presumably much rather pocket the money than have it go to standing desks. Sacrificing stuff they don’t want in a negotiation is negotiation 101.

I’ve worked in several union shops. You can as an employer easily choose to address these via a side letter or other mechanism.

One place i am familiar with this handled COVID remote work with that type of mechanism. They setup a pilot program for the duration of the pandemic that included language to not undermine future negotiations.

"This is also my experience dealing with unions."

I'm sorry this happened to you. But this sounds like your experience dealing with a low-road employer, not with "unions". If you don't mind me asking, which union were you and your coworkers affiliated with?

"In one case, management wanted to purchase sit/stand workstations for employees, but HR pointed out that this was a change to working conditions and should be included in the collective bargaining negotiation. However management had already started taking measurements for the tables, so the union knew what management was intending. During the negotiations, the union decided to try and call HR's bluff and refused to ask for the workstations as a concession. So in the end, the whole plan was scrapped so that HR would have concessions available for future negotiations."

You experienced two standard union busting techniques favored by management-side labor lawyers. First, try to divide the workers to weaken their bargaining power, with the ultimate goal of portraying the workers active in the union as an unrepresentative minority. Then, blame "the union" or "labor law" (i.e. your coworkers who are active) for negative changes that are entirely their doing.

"Management is legally required to make concessions during collective bargaining"

If this is the United States we're talking about, you were misinformed. Under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), management has a duty to bargain over certain issues with unionized workers, but there is no obligation to make "concessions" (i.e. changes the workers find favorable).

I was an executive level manager at the time. My understanding is that employers are required to "bargain in good faith" and the easiest way to demonstrate good faith is by making concessions.

This is a common misunderstanding. For example, an employer can propose a wage cut (obviously not a concession) as part of good faith bargaining.

To your point, making concessions will often prevent any worker (or the union as a body) from filing an Unfair Labor Practice charge. But employers with good counsel seldom worry about such charges, because the penalties are so weak.

Say I don't like bargaining or know how to bargain with someone in a position of power. I'd rather have a union do it for me. An organisation should have more leverage and employ people who are better negotiators and who concern themselves with employee rights. It's just like companies that are outsourcing work or hiring HR positions to hire and fire people or to negotiate pay.

>If this is the United States we're talking about, you were misinformed. Under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), management has a duty to bargain over certain issues with unionized workers, but there is no obligation to make "concessions" (i.e. changes the workers find favorable).

And just how do you think you go about proving that you engaged in good faith negotiation? All the union has to prove in a lawsuit to a preponderance of the evidence, that more likely than not, management did not negotiate in good faith. Good luck winning that as management by not budging on anything at all.

It's a purely procedural standard.

To oversimplify a bit: if the employer meets with the union's designees (e.g. workers elected by their peers, a lawyer hired by the union), exchanges proposals verbally or in writing, and goes through the motions until reaching a so-called "valid impasse", they have made good on their duty to bargain. They could propose nothing but cuts to wages and conditions, and indeed this happens often if workers don't have a credible strike threat.

See: https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-law/ba...

The model you have in mind - make concessions or have more general terms impose by a regulatory body - does exist in other countries, where parties have to go to a sectoral body, interest arbitration, etc. when impasse is reached. Interest arbitration was a proposed reform in the (now dead) PRO Act that the Biden administration favored early on.

Sounds like a pretty reasonable negotiating tactic. Everyone holds stuff back.

Sounds like they are acting in bad faith.

About the same reasons I never joined ones, when I had the option (which lets be honest in IT is not that often). Great ideas on paper, properly poor execution that ends up in entrenched folks, power games and politics

The ownership side is in a union whether employees are or not, with their own dollar-weighted democracy, legalized collusion between owners (say two restaraunts agree with each other to lower wages, that's illegal; say they both merge and become shareholders: a coordinated wage decrease across both restaraunts with the same two owners involved is now considered done by one entity).

There is nothing wrong with collusion, whether its from employees, or employers.

The state should stay out of it, and the laws forcing negotiations, or giving either the company or the employees protections should not exist.

If employees want to get together in a union and negotiate collectively, that's their right and they should not be legally barred from doing so.

If companies want to fire the employees who do so, and not deal with a union in any way, that too is their right and they should not be legally barred from doing so.

The primary purpose of labor laws should be to establish the expectations in the absence of an article in the contract establishing those expectations (ie: if the contract doesn't mention which safety procedures are to be followed in the steel foundry, the thing that's in the law prevails. If the contract outlines other procedures, then the contract prevails).

A secondary purpose of the labor law is to enforce the contract. (Ie: if an employee doesn't get paid for hours worked, the courts should be therefore to enforce the payment)

Anything else the state should stay out of.

That sounds like a quick path to having people sell them into slavery the first time the economy goes south and people get desperate

why is it only people that get desperate? why doesnt the companies, in these scenarios?

why do we always assume its the "slave-minded plebs" that blinks first?

if companies really are so greedy, surely they could see the benefit in paying more than they would prefer(which would naturally always be 0), and get to earn decent, rather than employees saying "too bad, wont work" and they get to earn nothing?

this kind of thing strikes me as very elitist, how can someone listening to the argument interpret it as anything other than "those regular working joes are so stupid they will just offer themselves up as slaves the second a company talks sternly or the price of food increases!!!!" ?

is it really that much to expect, that people individually take some responsibility, say no to conditions that are, by THEIR judgement, poor, and save up a decent enough buffer that they wont have to say "well it was a good run, im a slave now" the instant a company might not immediately cave to a demand or meet at a reasonable spot?

> why is it only people that get desperate? why doesnt the companies, in these scenarios? why do we always assume its the "slave-minded plebs" that blinks first?

Because companies are a legal fiction that dissolve if things get that bad? If they didn’t provide legal protection for liability than most would just be privately owned assets with direct, as in legally direct not that they necessarily speak, negotiations between the owner and employees

> if companies really are so greedy, surely they could see the benefit in paying more than they would prefer(which would naturally always be 0), and get to earn decent, rather than employees saying "too bad, wont work" and they get to earn nothing?

Observed behavior? Are you unfamiliar with the small businesses complaining about how “nobody wants to work” while offering minimum wage? Or in the tech industry how the majority of firms have settled on providing below market yearly salary increases and eating the replacement cost for employees rather than pay a few percent more to keep people from looking for new jobs. To the point that it’s commonly accepted for jobs to be 2-3 year stints instead of the lifelong careers of the past?

> this kind of thing strikes me as very elitist, how can someone listening to the argument interpret it as anything other than "those regular working joes are so stupid they will just offer themselves up as slaves the second a company talks sternly or the price of food increases!!!!" ?

You’re reading into it if you think I’m referring to just “working joes”. It’s what desperate people do in the rule set you propose. It’s how we had indentured servants in the American colonies. It’s how there were literally people who sold themselves into slavery to pay off bets in the Roman Empire.

> is it really that much to expect, that people individually take some responsibility, say no to conditions that are, by THEIR judgement, poor, and save up a decent enough buffer that they wont have to say "well it was a good run, im a slave now" the instant a company might not immediately cave to a demand or meet at a reasonable spot?

If someone is in a desperate enough situation to consider selling themselves into slavery, how pray tell, do they save up a decent enough buffer?

> Because companies are a legal fiction that dissolve if things get that bad? If they didn’t provide legal protection for liability than most would just be privately owned assets with direct, as in legally direct not that they necessarily speak, negotiations between the owner and employees

I legitimately do not understand what you are saying. I am a business owner, are you seriously saying I would rather dissolve my business than pay what it costs for labour (assuming i could still make money after paying that much for labour) ? Are you saying that if all software engineers tomorrow simply had an epiphany, and demanded 50% more money, google would say "we had a good run, time to simply END google" ?

And clearly those companies still do reasonably fine, and isnt THAT much in lack of employees, or they are in a low margin market where paying more would not really result in sufficient profit to incur the risk?

> You’re reading into it if you think I’m referring to just “working joes”. It’s what desperate people do in the rule set you propose. It’s how we had indentured servants in the American colonies. It’s how there were literally people who sold themselves into slavery to pay off bets in the Roman Empire.

I am not saying any one solution fits ALL scenarios, but WHY are they desperate? if they have skills that are useful enough to a company that it could ever sustain hiring them for a pay we would both agree is decent, then what is the reason?

> If someone is in a desperate enough situation to consider selling themselves into slavery, how pray tell, do they save up a decent enough buffer?

by saving up before they become that desperate. I am not saying this covers for absolutely everyone, but I will dare say the vast majority, and I would double down and say that a large part of those where it doesnt, its because they have been held back by these authoritarian nanny-state laws and customs. A very large amount of people who are living paycheck to paycheck very regularly does very stupid shit, like buy fancy clothes, go to restaurants instead of cooking themselves, prioritize a fairly new iphone, have a few streaming subscriptions etc. They would consider it 100% impossible to live without that, and would rather go into extreme debt and be "desperate" when the bill comes due.

Again, not everyone, some people legitimately have all odds against them from the beginning. Some have emergencies happen that they realistically couldnt have prepared for even if they did everything. This is the edge cases, the outliers. NOT the bulk of people. The bulk of people who subscribe to nanny state things considers it more apropriate to have a netflix subscription than set that money aside in an emergency fund, assuming they are paycheck-to-paycheck

I don’t think there’s much more to talk about here if you read my posts and come away with this question

> I am a business owner, are you seriously saying I would rather dissolve my business than pay what it costs for labour (assuming i could still make money after paying that much for labour)

Having to pay more for labor as a business when you can is not comparable to being so destitute that selling yourself into slavery is a better idea. It is equivalent to being bankrupt as a company.

> by saving up before they become that desperate.

That’s just hand waving away that it happens, and has happened in the past at greater frequency without government limitations on what rights people have. You started this off with advocating that the government should only set defaults and everything else is on the table and you’re response to asking what we do for people who hit the failure mode is to say “don’t fail”. It’s not an edge case, it’s not outliers. You might think so only because you are a century into heavy government intervention into business/employee relationships and to suggest that this is the natural state and would continue without government intervention is frankly, ridiculous

> The bulk of people who subscribe to nanny state things considers it more apropriate to have a netflix subscription than set that money aside in an emergency fund, assuming they are paycheck-to-paycheck

I felt like I might be a little too hot with my previous section and then I read this line. It’s obvious you subscribe to some equivalent of Calvinist theory where the poor deserve it and you are hand waving away the idea of failure.

This is an ideological position and I hold the opposite ideological position so I think we’ve reached an impasse

> It’s obvious you subscribe to some equivalent of Calvinist theory where the poor deserve it and you are hand waving away the idea of failure.

that is simply not true. I said very clearly the default way things work shouldnt happen to outliers. What exactly are you saying here? that most people are simply not able to handle themselves throughout their lives without the nanny state handling salary requirements to the evil companies? I would say this is PARTIALLY correct, but only because people have been lulled into relinquishing all sense of personal responsibility. its like helicopter parenting adults, by the nanny state.

and your argument makes no logical sense anyway, how can someone that has marketable skills, WANTED by companies, then be not expected to be able to handle their life themselves?

there will then of course be edge cases, those that through disease, low skill (and low ability, low intelligence etc) not be able to really earn a living. That does not make them worse people, and a different mechanism should help them have a decent life.

When you characterize wanting worker protections as wanting a “nanny state” and then claim that the people who support that think it’s a better idea “to have a Netflix subscription than set that money aside in an emergency fund”, am I supposed to infer that you have a high opinion of people in this situation or that you think they deserve it?

> and your argument makes no logical sense anyway, how can someone that has marketable skills, WANTED by companies, then be not expected to be able to handle their life themselves?

Perhaps if I had started this chain off by talking about people with in demand skills, this would be an appropriate critique. However, I was speaking about when people are in a desperate situation which usually implies they don’t have some sort of leverage like in demand skills.

Your suggestion of letting the government be the default but allowing employees and employees to negotiate whatever deal they want is already the case for people with leverage. People with in demand skills aren’t trying to negotiate a $2/hr wage but the “nanny state” is getting in their way. You’re proposed change to removing government minimums that cannot be negotiated away will only change the situation for people in desperate situations and you are continually hand waving that away as an outlier case despite that both A) not being an outlier, and B) being the vast majority of peoples whose personal situations would be affected by your proposal

> why is it only people that get desperate? why doesnt the companies, in these scenarios?

The state is supposed to be servants of the people, not of the companies. Human rights are important; companies are at best a means to an end, and if winding up a company leads to better outcomes for humans, few would or should shed a tear for the company.

It's a race to the bottom, and the only way to prevent that is collective organisation. There's nothing elitist about the notion that people acting together are stronger than people acting alone.

Yes, by definition. How can they save up if they're being paid starvation wages?

> It's a race to the bottom, and the only way to prevent that is collective organisation. There's nothing elitist about the notion that people acting together are stronger than people acting alone.

not true. For example, I have a minimum I would work for, if this is not met, I would not accept working for less. I would rather go eat grass and leaves from trees than that. I would rather plant carrots, chase after a rabbit, whatever it takes. I do not need a union, I do NOT want anyone else interferring in my salary negotiations, and I can deliver value to a company beyond what I am asking in salary. vast majority of employees can deliver value beyond a decent salary.

> I would not accept working for less. I would rather go eat grass and leaves from trees than that. I would rather plant carrots, chase after a rabbit, whatever it takes

Easy to say when you haven't had to do it. And if you say "whatever it takes", you've already undermined your argument - you'll reach a point where your only option is working.

> vast majority of employees can deliver value beyond a decent salary.

Sure. But employers often capture all (or indeed more than all) of that value, through monopsony situations, self-organising de-facto cartels, or just acting as an actual cartel (e.g. the famous "anti-poaching agreement").

The owners voting results are legally enforced amongst each other. In right-to-organize states employee voting results are likewise enforced amongst employees. In right-to-work it is a state protected dollar-weighted democracy with all kinds of liability limit gifts and intricate rules for protecting minority shareholds for the owners, and nothing similar for the employees.

Democracy of dollars over democarcy of people is the main concern in right to work states, except for Doctors, Lawyers, Accountants, etc. all get union like protections backed by the state and enforced results of voting within their associations, they are the "right" people with enough dollars to have a level of democracy in the workforce.

Rest assured, I believe agreements between employees should be just as enforceable as agreements between shareholders.

Indeed that fits perfectly well in that second point I mentioned.

In many right to work states the union's contract with the firm can't legally say newly hired workers are to be part of the union's democratic process, paying agreed on dues, etc., so it is an immediate coordination problem that the owner side doesn't have to suffer.

You're confused.

The only thing that right to way means is that employees cannot be forced to contract with the union if they do not want to.

It does not prevent them from doing so.

Most (all?) right to work states have a law saying the union can't voluntarily contract with the firm to put in terms say new hires would be part of the union and have to pay dues.

Alabama for instance blocks such agreements:

> Any agreement/combination between employer and labor union or organization denying nonmembers right to work is prohibited; labor organizations cannot require membership, abstention, or payment of union dues.

https://www.findlaw.com/state/alabama-law/alabama-right-to-w...

Even if the union is unanimous in agreement to require dues and make things a union shop with an agreement that new employees will be in it too (through their employment agreement), that free agreement between union and firm is outlawed, even if it is unanimous.

It is a masterstroke of "right-to-work" propaganda that even "I support all free contracts" Ayn Rand people don't know this.

Missippi:

> State "right-to-work" statutes generally prohibit employers and unions from requiring employees to be union members or pay membership dues membership in order for to get and keep a job. In addition to statutory provisions dating back to 1954, Mississippi had right-to-work guarantees added to the state constitution in 1960.

From what I can see such a free agreement between union and business is prohibited in every right-to-work state:

https://www.findlaw.com/employment/wages-and-benefits/right-...

As opposed to the entrenched folks, power games, and politics that exist currently? Those don’t appear because a union is formed, you just have less of a say at the bargaining table without one

Edit:removed an extra “don’t”

Forgive me, I'm struggling to parse that triple negative! Can I flip that to be "you have more of a say with one"? Or am I getting it wrong?

Fault was mine, had an extra “don’t” that made it a triple, rather than the intended double, negative.

Your interpretation of that last sentence was correct

The moral of the story here is that HR tried to withold something they were already planning on doing to avoid paying employees more, and you think the answer is to just accept whatever management wants?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com