Here is a list of reasons for not wanting a union[1]:
- I want my underperforming colleagues to be fired quickly. It's unfair and annoying that laggards are protected and free riding off their colleagues' (my) effort, and it leads to ineffective orgs.
- I don't want seniority or rank to be rewarded. It's unfair to young people (me) who are more competent and ambitious, and it leads to ineffective orgs.
- I want to negotiate individually because I believe I will make more money as an outperformer. I don't want a centralized handicapper to blunt my compensation.
- I don't like that unions are rent seeking in nature.
- I don't like that unions often are exploited by organized crime.
- I don't like that unions interfere in the broader political process and democracy via activism and political pressure (e.g look at the fact that the new EV subsidies will be going to everyone except Tesla, it's a perversion).
- I think people should be free to organize, but I don't like that the state grants special asymmetric powers to unions.
- I don't like especially public sector unions that I believe are doing significant damage to society broadly. For example police unions that shielded Chauvin after a large number of complaints.
They were responding to a post specifically asking about Americans' feelings toward unions. That made it pretty clear to me where his points were coming from.
If they were responding from Finland I'd be a little confused why they were responding at all.
In general, nobody is constrained to just discussing USA unions but the particular subthread[1] that you're in which was started by gp (Zeyka) was asking specifically about America. And that's probably because this thread's article is about American unions.
That's why your clarification (to poster wallawe) was perceived as redundant and out of place.
With your unionized coworkers that might be a possibility. With the business owners that’s a certainty. Do you feel differently about these two groups of people?
Something I don't like whenever these discussions come up is the condescending tone, from white collar workers. "Don't these poor people know what's good for them????"
Working class people are capable of thinking for themselves and it's not that uncommon for people to move from a union shop to a non-union shop due to the reasons outlined above.
Exhibit A of poorly informed: grandparent poster seriously thinking he has more individual bargaining power against trillion dollar corporations than a collective bargaining agreement would.
Exhibit B: grandparent poster thinking collective bargaining _must_ entail many aspects like seniority based compensation that are totally optional.
Tom Brady is in the NFL players association. Tom Cruise is in the Screen Actors guild. Naive techies think being good at leetcode hard gives them bargaining power. A lot of ex Tweeps are getting a wake up call.
The only reason techies had the illusion of negotiation leverage is that they were generating such absurdly high revenue for their employer, the slice they got seemed huge compared to the rest of the country’s gutted middle class. Factor in inflation, housing, and that Wall St is now gunning hard to bring tech compensation down, and you’ll realize techies are the last gasp of Americas dying middle class, and that really pisses off activist hedge funds . See Elliott Managements recent takeover of Pinterest so they could “re-level” employees.
Read the emails between Steve Jobs and Sergey Brin w.r.t high tech class action lawsuit. Read about Google hiring union busting consultant firms.
If unions didn’t work, tech execs wouldn’t be so terrified of them.
Yes, poor people should also unionize. And yes, unfortunately a lot of their options are as broken and corrupt as their employers.
That doesn’t change the fundamental fact that collective bargaining is the _only_ answer .
Worse still is that these firms have been caught collectively bargaining against workers through illegal secretive non-compete clauses. Wage suppression has been going on for years, even while these companies have been at the very top of thriving businesses.
It’s simply not a question of affordability. These companies did it because they could.
I’d also like to point out that much of the union activity of a hundred years ago was also about poor working conditions, and not just compensation. Much of that was quelled by increasing government regulations that protected workers against exploitation. Is the government adequately performing this job?
You think that has anything to do with their compensation? Tom Brady has won how many Super Bowls? Tom Cruise has had how many blockbuster movies?
The opposite should be true if unions were the great equalizers, no single actor/athlete would be making hundreds of millions a year and all of them would be making enough to buy a house in Beverly Hills.
This makes no sense. Two people that are in unions are doing the thing you say they can't. What in the world?
-in most cases, the employer is able to fire with cause. The union keeps the employer from using layoffs as a weapon.
- pay scales reward loyalty and keeps the workplace stable.
- without the union, you have almost no bargaining power. The union usually gets a better rate for everyone than any one person could have negotiated. This is in fact the point of collective bargaining. Even the presence of a union job site can lift wages across industries. I see this in Oshawa, where the CAW jobs making car bits helps waitresses and sales associates draw higher wages.
-the employer is rent-seeking on their capital. The union balances this.
-unions are not criminal organizations. The teamsters have done some things in the past. If we didn't have so much union busting, there would be more unions competing for workplaces, and this would drive bad unions out of business.
-unions are political, and need legal protections for workers. Tesla will eventually have to deal with a union or treat their workers better than the UAW.
-I don't like that the state grants asymmetric privileges to the employer class, like never prosecuting white collar crimes, and not clawing back exec severances during bankruptcy, and giving them a lower tax rate than their employees.
-there are many things wrong with policing in the us, but all could be fixed with fedral legislation. The unions are aligned with their membership, and doing great work. The wider outcomes are horrible, but that's a good union doing good work.
The tech industry has arguably developed quickly because people move around a lot, taking best practices with them. Workplace stability might appear locally great, but it hurts the industry as a whole.
/s
You absolutely do. The most powerful bargaining power of all: the power of the alternative. It's also called "pay me, or I leave" (most often accompanied by "I have an outside offer"). I exercised this power a few times in my career. I did not need any union to bargain for me.
Why would you want a less powerful version of the same thing? Even if you don't involve your union, you can still do what you're describing.
You've gained nothing unique by avoiding the union.
I doubt you can. Your boss will tell you he can't pay you more than what's on the grid negotiated with the union. My wife works in a place with a union (and is a member of it), and there is such a grid. Nobody even thinks individual bargaining is a possibility.
If you are in a union shop, you can't get paid more than what's on the grid. If you want more, you need to resign and get somewhere else. But don't pretend you have a choice to do "individual bargaining".
Unions eliminate the individual bargaining power of people.
Except, of course, if we choose to use your definition, and call resigning and moving to another job "bargaining".
You not liking their choice doesn't mean there was no choice.
Just join the union, you'll get paid more anyways.
You don't.
If you were to come to my company and try to convince me to start a union, I'd say "thanks, but no thanks".
Just now, you are trying to convince me that I'd be retaining my individual bargaining power, if I accept to use a different definition.
Well, I was born in a Communist country, where they were fond of changing definitions. We were free to vote for whomever we wanted, as long as it was someone on the list presented to us. We had no say in who was on that list. Of course, we were free to not vote at all, right? Boys had to do mandatory military service. You know how they were called when they were conscripted? "Volunteers". That was the official name.
So, yes, I'm used to the tactic of changing definitions. But if you are serious about presenting an argument, you should no use this tactic.
- I don't want free speech because it is unfair to award lazy thinking free riding off established publications.
- I don't want free speech because it is often exploited by terrorists.
- I think people should be free to say things but I don't think it should grant them special protection from the government.
etc.
It isn't an exact comparison but that also isn't the point.
You’ve proven the point about inequality.
If you mean the federal tax credit, it was the OLD one that stopped going to Tesla (due to the per-model caps in place; caps that any competitor could also reach after enough sales, mind you). The new credit that was signed into law this year does not exclude Tesla (instead, it excludes cars manufactured overseas).
Fortunately for your ability to empathize with the plebeians in the regular world, Musk has shown that software companies are probably employing at least twice as many programmers as they need, so this job market should be turning south soon.
After ten-twenty years of being employed half the time and your salary going down with every new job I'm sure you'll be mentally broken down enough to empathize with the blue collar pro-union perspective.
No, he hasn’t; he hasn’t even shown that Twitter was doing that.
America unions are structured differently from Europe and some can become as distrusted by the workers as the corporation.
Your viewpoint is common but it's based on the mental model of "Unions are good. Period end of story."
But for voters like your proverbial Jerry against unions, the mental model is more about tradeoffs like this, "the proposed union by these particular set of organizers has made some promises and wants to charge me $$$ per year to negotiate with the company. Things may turn out better -- or they may turn out worse (e.g. no job)."
As an example, the Amazon union vote in Alabama failed and many blamed Amazon propaganda. No doubt that Amazon crafted many negative messages about unions. But outsiders forget that many voters had older relatives from Alabama coal mines telling them that "the union just took our dues money and didn't do shit for us".
How can pro-union advocates counter those disillusioned union coal miners spreading negative information like that? These are the kinds of scenarios Europeans are unfamiliar with.
Because coal mining is in no way the same as Amazon’s retail business? Now, I will say, some of these folks are beyond hope. In an energy transition documentary done by one of the HGTV property brothers, they interview a coal miner dying of black lung in Appalachia, and they believe that’s the job their kids and grandkids should do versus renewables or “new tech” even when considering there are other options available. [1] Belief systems are deeply ingrained and have defense mechanisms. Persuade the open minded whenever possible, of course, but ignore those who aren’t. The effort is better spent elsewhere. As Max Planck said, “a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” Same deal.
I'd rather work in the warehouse, personally, but I can certainly see how the positions are analogous to the level we could compare expected results of a union.
I mean, the intended purpose of unions is to serve their members, at the expense of non members.
Is it new/unique curriculum? Something else?
I want to get up early, set big goals, work hard on them, and then see the fruits of that hard work. I take immense pride in that, and seeing the output in some sense is a big part of the payment.
Unions don’t allow for this attitude, at least none of the ones that I have ever interacted with. They’re not pro worker, they’re anti work. These people seem to believe that work is bad for workers.
So some people don’t like unions. I don’t like unions.
Hypothesis #2: This is a result of European unions having an origin as trade guilds whereas American unions have an origin as political organizers.
American unions evolved in another direction. Because there was no serious risk of a communist revolution, the employers had no need to comromise. Both the employers and the unions remain more confrontational than in Europe.
# 1: Swedish unions are very different from US ones. They understand their companies and the country needs to be competitive on the world market. I have my problems with their power and policies, but they're vastly better for society than the US version.
# 2: The Swedish unions formed the Social Democratic party, that's been the main political power center of the country for a century. Don't know what relations they may have had with guilds in the 1800s.
We have a union at my company and it’s for our creative writing and video production folks. We’re in the media space. These are some of the most effective and driven people I’ve met or had the privilege of working for.
People being lazy (or not) and wanting to do a good job (or not) is mutually exclusive of whether they are in a union (or not).
I do see why you would think this. Many media outlets and corporations spend lots of time making sure everyone thinks unions are just for lazy people. That’s not true, but after decades, many people think this now.
You might see the fruits of your hard work, but it's your boss who reaps them.
Perhaps you could serve as an example and role model that could inspire union members like Michael Jordan and Tom Brady to work harder.
I've wondered if this is because unions in the U.S. are considerably different than unions in other places?
This was an interesting article [0] I bumped into titled "Europe could have the secret to saving America’s unions".
It said that in the U.S. unionization happens at the enterprise level, leaving unionized companies at a disadvantage relative to their competitors, so individual companies are very much incentivized to fight against unionization. In other countries when a certain amount of workers call for unionization negotiations happen between the union and a federation representing all employers in the sector, and the entire sector unionizes at once, not individual companies.
The article also talked about employees receiving benefits from their unions in some (fewer) countries, like unemployment insurance, instead of from the government. This incentives workers to join the union and pay union dues, instead of forcing them to do so. The idea was thrown out there that things like health care and retirement plans could also be included with union dues for people in gig-work jobs that would otherwise not receive these benefits.
I'd add that the article didn't address a concern many in the U.S. have about unions protecting under-performing workers, to the detriment of others. I've heard that this is different in other countries, at least to a point, but the article did not get into this. Also in the U.S. there have been a lot of corrupt unions, and public employee unions that receive (expensive) preferential treatment by law, I don't know if these problems exist in other countries.
[0] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/17/15290674/u...
Opposing unions is just going to lead to no changes on the union side and it's going to let the companies be as harsh on workers as they want, even on the "hard workers", because in the end, companies just care about the value that you are producing, not what you once produced. If you aren't valuable now, they'll just throw you out.
All the comments on here that say "well i don't want my lazy coworker to get paid more" highlight how well the "hustle"/"grind" and meritocracy propaganda worked on US workers. The other type of comments that talk about the bad side of unions just seem like bad faith arguments, It's just like the police violence in the US, there are a lot of bad actors and the system is ultimately flawed, but does that mean that there should be no police? No, of course not, so why is that in this context, they are actively against unions and against workers right? It quite literally makes no sense, but then again we're talking about the USA here so the notion of logic just goes out of the window.
I'm an American and I admit to having a very negative view of modern unions. When the word union comes up I immediately think of:
1) The Teamsters and their ties to organized crime 2) Police unions that shield officers from consequences 3) Teacher unions that prevent awful teachers from being fired 4) Ridiculous rules around duties on film/theater sets 5) The UAW is seen by many former workers as letting them down. Many other people feel the UAW bears some responsibilities for plant closures. 6) As supermarkets in my area started to unionize the service noticeably suffered. 7) Several friends were Verizon workers and felt that they were screwed by their union. 8) It is common for unions to fund candidates that many workers do not like.
If someone like myself has a negative view of unions it is up to people like yourself to change that perception if you want unions to gain traction in the US. Distrust of unions in the US are not always (usually?) driven by ignorance or propaganda. Unions themselves have done a very good job of alienating workers.
Maybe urs are just shit :)
Basically the american idea that deserving people (aka myself) will magically prevail.
> meritocracy isn't a thing
So now that we've established that meritocracy is obviously a real thing, we have to ask what evidence you have that a meritocracy wouldn't exist in other fields, like programming for instance.
We have? Because… a football match was played? What did it prove exactly?
Well you define "better players" as "those making more money"… so in the end you are proving your statement via tautology. Which is meaningless.
In any case, even admitting that meritocracy in football works (it probably doesn't)… so what? Most workers aren't professional football players.
"Better players" are defined by production on the field. That better play on the field then results in higher contracts for the better players. I'm not defining better players by the size of their contracts. Players who never perform well won't get the biggest contracts. Which is meritocratic, by definition.
> Most workers aren't professional football players.
Shouldn't the better players qualify for tournaments then? Are you being obtuse on purpose?
You know that, and I know that, but the right wing has been pushing anti-union, anti-worker, pro-corporate propaganda for several decades now. That propaganda also dovetails with the preexisting Protestant work ethic and labor theory of value that have been pretty solidly in the American consciousness since...well, basically before its founding as a country.
All that combined means that for people who aren't raised in a progressive, pro-union environment, and who don't encounter such an environment until their belief systems are fairly well-established, the default background noise is pretty much "Unions? Why would you need that, you pansy? Real Men are islands unto themselves, work hard, and are paid exactly what they're worth for that work. That's how you know the poor deserve to be poor!"
You are free to disagree, of course, but being smug about it is rude.
I was referring to this comment.
https://www.npr.org/2013/02/05/171175054/how-the-labor-movem...
No, no immigrants in tech are going to want to vote for a union because a lot of its members think immigrants are part of the playing field that needs to be "leveled".
That is one structure, and it probably was predominant in the past because unions were historically in factories where workers were more interchangeable and had set tasks at a production line station.
Another is more 'guild-like': Jane Smith who is Waitress #2, and Tom Cruise who plays Ethan Hunt in Mission Impossible, are both part of the same union/guild, but one is able to negotiate a much higher salary. But they have the same 'base' level of protection with regards to working conditions, pension, health care, etc.
Certainly Tom Cruise can go above and beyond those 'base' levels, but the union/guild simply provides a floor which everyone is entitled to.
There's no reason why a union contract could not negotiate things like working conditions, health/child care, pensions/retirement funds, etc, but leave salaries out of the collective agreement. Or perhaps have pay bands, with retention/performance bonuses that are out side of the scope of the agreement, and are 100% discretionary to the company: everyone gets a floor, but there's no ceiling.
Managed just fine.
Thankfully.
For example Tesla has a market value greater than every European carmaker combined, having gone from approximately 0 annual car deliveries to over a million in just a few years while revolutionizing electric travel. Or with space x developing reusable rockets that have utterly transformed the industry. These companies will contribute to economic dynamism and wealth creation for years and decades.
Macron said of American space companies, “Unfortunately they’re not European, but they took a bet”. Perhaps at a certain level you need people with lots of money who are willing to risk it
I prefer not being subject to their whims.
Spotify, SAP, Skype, Unity, Sitecore, OutSystems, Vodafone, ...
Plus, naming 6 random European tech companies doesn't prove anything. Every country has tech companies. How many exactly doesn't really matter in this comparison, what matters is revenues and market cap.
Consider that the US tech sector is worth significantly more than the tech sectors of EU + UK + Switzerland + Norway combined. It blows the entire EEA out of the water. To put it simply, the US hosts most of the largest tech companies by market cap and revenues.
If you take the top 50 tech companies in the world by market cap[1], the only European companies on the list are ASML, Booking, SAP, Schneider Electric and Dassault Systemes. 6 out of 50 for Europe, while the US has about 40 out of 50, while also claiming the highest six spots at the top.
Ouch! That's not even a competition. It's why American tech workers get paid so much. Not because they don't get government mandated PTO and sick leave, or can get fired more easily, or don't pay more taxes for unemployment and socialized healthcare, as is the common myth, but because the companies they work for are so obscenely rich compared to European ones and a lot more numerous.
/QED
[1] https://companiesmarketcap.com/tech/largest-tech-companies-b...
To properly weigh all of the tradeoffs, you might consider asking if those Twitter jobs would even emerge in the European system and if there's a link between European labor standards and the lack of influential European tech companies. Europe is a large market that is filled with many capable and educated technology workers, yet almost always all of the tech companies we're ever talking about are American. Why is this?
The thing I'd like to focus on isn't nerd prestige, but good jobs, as the article was about inequality as nothing fixes social alienation and inequality more than lots of people having a good income and being part of society. These big tech companies, whatever major negatives they provide to the culture in many ways, at least employ a lot of people and give them a path to being part of that comfy middle class.
If the concern is inequality, then is a pile of great paying jobs with worse labor standards better than a few ok paying jobs with great labor standards? See where I'm going with that?
These are complex issues...I don't think I have all of the answers, but I just want to point out that there might be some tradeoffs to the good sounding things like unions and much better labor protections.
oh and the Linux kernel.
Is your brain broken?
Because EU is a puppet of USA and doesn't have strong enough protections to stop USA companies to acquire every single startup that exists in EU.
Most of that amazing USA made software is not done in USA. For example some of that is made by me… a guy who has never been in USA.
What a lazy take. Unions only protect their current members. It's common for companies to hire fewer people or hire more people at only part time schedules because full time employees are required to cost exaggeratedly more or are harder to fire due to union contracts. What organization represents the people who are unemployed or underemployed because of unions? These people are much worse off than if the unions didn't exist.
* Note: I used "I", but I don't personally feel this way. If I found out a fast food worker made more than me as an engineer, I wouldn't care. In some ways they work harder. Also, I don't think CEOs bring as much worth to a company as engineers do and they make way more, so...
I see this "embarrassed millionaires" line a lot. It seems unbelievably cynical. Do you really think a meaningful fraction of workers are thinking "I'll oppose unions because even though I'm hurting workers, it'll be good for me when I'm rich"?
And there actually are bad unions. I worked in a casino and out union was a non-striking union so even if the casino gave use some shitty contract we weren't able to strike. So what was the point?
Or is this just the prevailing narrative that's been sold to us over the past 30-50 years, and there are too few actual unions and union jobs left to effectively counter it?
How did they end up not having enough cash on hand to cover minor emergencies, then? How are they going bankrupt over healthcare costs - even when insured through their job - while having to worry about not being able to take a day off?
Yea, it can be frustrating be barred from jobs, like construction, being a non-member, or being forced to pay union dues to a union you feel is doing nothing for you.
Small, company-sized unions have always been a lot more appealing to me than the huge behemoths the US currently has.
1.) A grueling apprenticeship period in which you would work very long hours for very little pay. I could be wrong but I think this was a several year long process.
2.) You could skip that process if you were vouched for by an existing union member. In practice, this often meant that membership was passed down through families.
I understand that it’s similar for firefighters.
> Reactance is an unpleasant motivational reaction to offers, persons, rules, or regulations that threaten or eliminate specific behavioral freedoms. Reactance occurs when an individual feels that an agent is attempting to limit one's choice of response and/or range of alternatives.
When I think about the people who I know who are anti-union, they all have high reactance as a trait. If I were to try to change their mind, it would be to frame their non-union environment as more freedom-limiting than the unions alternative re: workplace democracy etc.
I'm fully aware that there will be attempts to naturalize "freedom loving." That's the interesting thing about psychology and I suppose in this case sociology, particulars are often universalized into a neurosis. It's funny how this pattern holds.
Any reading of my response as judgemental is a perversion of intention and I'd encourage anyone doing so to get curious and assume positive intent rather than reading it with malicious subtext. Something is only pathological if it negatively impacts someone's life.
Edit: I can’t help but feel like I’m being trolled, so this is where the conversation ends.
1. American capitalists have waged a very effective propaganda campaign against unions and
2. American unions have had a history of corruption. (Or maybe I just think that because I've been taken in by the propaganda campaign.)
It seems as though decades of corporate puppets have done a wonderful job of convincing the blue-collar worker that unions are corrupt and exist solely to milk worker's dues.
I don't understand it either.
Unions? you should be thankful!