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Comment by butterNaN | Hacker News Reader

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

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.

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.

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.

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