Unions always treat their employers as adversaries. This does not make for a win-win relationship.
You unionize, when your employer fucks you over once too much.
Employers typically do all of that to extract more value than is rightfully theirs from their employers or to make their own lives easier at the expense of their employers (e.g. by ignoring safety regulations).
So unions naturally form when employers go to far. A clever employer who is after an actual win-win situation might anticipate this and skip the entire thing by providing actual countermeasures against the tendency to fuck over ones employess themselves.
Then take the high road first.
> e.g. by ignoring safety regulations
If employers do that, then the employees need to report them to the regulators. Don't need a union for that.
Good luck on thst. The regulator is in the same country club as your boss. On top of that most of the worker rights and safety rules that regulator is meant to check came to be because unions fought for them.
Read on the history of these rights and regulations in the dawn of worker movements. This is not some new unknown topic, but something people have fought for over centuries. The incentives of the regulators and governing bodies will rarely align with workers rights, hence the need for those people to organize for their own good.
Don't get me wrong here I do not suggest that employers are always evil and unions always good, this is not what history shows. Far from it. Yet historically whenever workers lives improved, there is a big chance unions were involved as a driving force.
I'd love to see a world where companies would treat their employees in such a way, unions don't need to exist. But that is not how companies operate in most cases.
The high road doesn't pay the rent. It doesn't feed your kids.
You're in an incredibly privileged position Walter, and unlike the vast majority of people you have actual bargaining power and the ability to negotiate terms. Most everything you've written in this thread is incredibly out of touch with the situation many workers, especially ones that would find themselves working at an Amazon warehouse, find themselves in.
Starbucks offers to pay full college tuition for their employees.
I suspect the salient difference with me is I see opportunity everywhere in America, where others do not. All I'm doing here is pointing out that opportunity.
Note that the millions who try to sweep over the border into America seem to see that opportunity, too.
> Starbucks offers to pay full college tuition for their employees.
No starbucks offers tuition reimbursement, for the online programs only, at one school, for some degrees, if you complete the entire degree while working at starbucks. Almost no one is actually able to take advantage of that. It's for their customers to feel better about supporting starbucks not for their workers to go to college.
This is actually a great opportunity for you to pull your head out of your ass and see how the world actually is, instead of how it was for you or how you think it should be.
Some things have indeed changed:
1. it's easy to get a loan for the full cost of college
2. pay for STEM engineers is a lot higher
3. you can start a business and reach a worldwide audience for free
4. you can start a business and hand over the logistics of shipping world wide for free (i.e. pay as you go, no upfront costs)
5. you can learn anything you want, via the internet, instantly for free
6. you can start investing in stocks for only a few bucks, with ZERO commission fees
7. you can reach collaborators for your business all over the world, for nothing
8. you can get funding via gofundme.com or kickstarter.com. Wow!
9. if you run an online business, nobody needs to know your name, background, race, religion, age, gender, whatever, unless you choose to tell them. Even then, you can just make it up, because nobody checks or cares
None of this was available in my youth.
Want a ticket from poverty to the middle class? This works:
a. stay in school
b. pay attention in school and learn the stuff
c. get a loan and go to college, selecting a lucrative major
d. don't do drugs
e. don't do crimes.
And then spend the next few decades paying it off, having it as a constant stress.
> 2. pay for STEM engineers is a lot higher
Not everyone can be a STEM engineer. Not everyone wants to be; Society would be pretty terrible if all we had was STEM engineers.
> 5. you can learn anything you want, via the internet, instantly for free
Only for some skills. Watching some youtube videos will not make you a competent woodworker.
> 9. if you run an online business, nobody needs to know your name, background, race, religion, age, gender, whatever, unless you choose to tell them. Even then, you can just make it up, because nobody checks or cares
Until a lawsuit comes your way, or the local tax man decides to come by. As soon as your business becomes mildly successful, that easy anonymity starts to disappear.
> Want a ticket from poverty to the middle class? This works:
You forgot one more point:
f. get extremely lucky to never suffer financial setbacks. Be lucky to have parents who aren't so overworked that you're forced to spend your time taking care of siblings. Be lucky to have parents that can even work into their older age. Be lucky to never suffer a major health problem that financially ruins you. Be lucky to never be injured or hurt such that you can work.
Speak for yourself. While it might be harder these days, the people I've seen that followed Walter's plan above were all able to get good jobs and support their families, including people who, like the sibling says, are poor, had to take care of siblings, had overworked parents, and so on. Yes, systemic inequalities exist, but well, an individual can't do much by themselves if they use that as the yoke on which they exist, they are not going to solve their problems or their family's poverty within a few years via voting or protesting, more immediate solutions exist. One must not fall into the trap of learned helplessness, and at some point, one has to cast off the yoke of bondage and begin to solve one's problems.
I've run into a couple Afghans who I got to talk with (at different times). Both had escaped and arrived here with nothing but their skin when the US pulled out. Both had founded businesses and were thriving.
A third had arrived some years ago, and had become a deca-millionaire.
Isn't freedom great?
>Free markets have vaulted more people out of poverty, by far, than any other system yet devised. The historical record on that is pretty clear.
And unions are part of that free market. I don't know how much more free market one can get than people coming together to offer their labour in an organized fashion.
Why? When has taking the high road ever worked out for the ones with lesser power?
Oh, it's worked plenty well.
It's worked well to get a lot of: "there are more pressing issues right now, let's solve this one tomorrow", where that "tomorrow" in many cases ended up being 150 years later.
Negotiations like "The industry has moved and we are going to be out of business if we don't cut costs" lead to unions asking for concessions like voluntary redundancies (before involuntary ones to make up the difference) and on-site cross-training.
In return, the employers got buy-in from staff, which meant smoother knowledge transfer from departing employees.
Where I live, the government sets quite a few conditions on employment, but many of them can be bargained away by a union, meaning there’s meaningful incentive to negotiating with one.
You appear to be placing blame for the situation on the party with less power in the situation, the employee, rather than the one with more power, the employer. this is a bit silly!
Consider how businesses negotiate. Each side offers something in return for better terms. They come to a mutually agreeable win-win solution.
That's what I do when I've negotiated with employers. I frame it as a friendly win-win negotiation, and both parties go away pleased with the result.
You clearly have extreme anti-union bias to the point you havent noticed how incredibly employee hostile the companies that unions form around are, to an absurd extent. It's gone so far that the magnitude of a win for the employer is so much higher than for the employee that the goal posts have shifted to absurdity.
You're still putting the onus for improving the situation on the party with far, far less power. Which makes no sense.
I am not anti-union. I am anti the tactics they use.
Unions are part of the free market. A union is a business that sells labor.
One creates value for many people, the other for few. The ethics on this one is not hard.
If you believe in the LTV, which many don't. Many instead believe in the subjective (market) theory of value.
You tend not to see somebody sell a gold watch for less than the gold that's in it. Especially so if there's profit being made on the watch
That's also a reductive view of unions. The 40 hour work week, weekends off, healthcare, and banning child labor wouldn't have resulted from your characterization.
What tactics do businesses use? Can you name any that you are against?
Healthcare benefits came about in WW2 because Roosevelt instituted a wage freeze. Companies could not offer higher wages to get the best workers, so they found a workaround by offering health care benefits. It turned out to be a big win for workers because the cost of those benefits was pre-tax, rather than post-tax. So it stuck.
Children are not freely consenting adults, which is why they get special legal protection. That's irrelevant to what we're discussing here.
Please explain how you would negotiate as an individual to get better healthcare benefits from Amazon when the benefits are provided as the same exact package to all employees. You can't. It never happens. Give even one example of an employee at a large company that has an individualized healthcare benefits package.
> Children are not freely consenting adults, which is why they get special legal protection. That's irrelevant to what we're discussing here.
And yet many businesses used child labor. These are the business you are claiming negotiate in good faith and fairly.
Allow me to repeat: Children are not freely consenting adults, which is why they get special legal protection.
> unions played in the 1940s and 1950s in negotiating far better healthcare benefits
And yet Starbucks and Amazon have had generous health care benefits without unions.
You avoided the question about why businesses were fine using child labor before the laws. Your claim seems to be that businesses are nice and negotiate fairly. Why is the special legal protection needed if businesses are nice?
You also failed to explain how you as an individual would negotiate a better healthcare package with Amazon than what is offered now.
> And yet Starbucks and Amazon have had generous health care benefits without unions.
Allow me to repeat: unions negotiated that in the 1950s and now everyone benefits. Without what already happened in the 1950s you can't claim those benefits would somehow magically appear.
And Amazon and Starbucks don't exactly have "generous" healthcare benefits. They have average benefits compared to other US companies. And that aren't nearly as good as what folks in the EU get.
Not even that. If a state doesn't have a right-to-work law, then union becomes a monopoly on the labor market for particular company or even the whole industry.
But you're annoyed at other salmon trying to stop it, because they took a break from swimming upriver.
With a highly trained management team and an HR department that is the friendly face to a highly trained legal department.
You're either naive or full of hubris to think you're actually ending up with a win-win situation. Try getting the wording of a contract changed for example. Try proposing using your contract instead of theirs. Any contract you sign is in the company's favor to the full extent allowed by local law.
The only thing that has ever changed that is labor negotiating as a team and with their own highly trained legal team.
The reason you think things are win-win is because you've never had to go to court up against the contracts you've signed.
> They offer nothing in return.
They offer their labor in return. That's extremely valuable.
I've gotten the wording of employment contracts changed. BTW, you're far more likely to get what you want by being nice than by threats.
> you've never had to go to court up against the contracts you've signed
Yeah, I have. And I won.
You may have gotten contract wording changed with a small company, but the Amazons of the world will not do that. And these are exactly the companies where labor needs unions so they can collectively bargain against a powerful and organized management and legal team. You simply don't have the resources as an individual.
Being polite is always a good strategy but being nice would mean working for free. That would be very nice. Is that your approach?
It's also not nice to take your employer to court. What happened to your be nice strategy there? Why did you threaten with legal action? It sounds like you can't even follow your own advice.
I'm told time and again that lil' ol' me cannot negotiate. Yet I do it with department stores, doctors, dentists, car dealers, all sorts of "non-negotiable" contracts. Try it some time.
I helped a friend recently negotiate a new car. The dealer started with a non-negotiable price. He settled for about 10% less. It was all very nice and polite and friendly, with lots of joking back and forth. We just made it clear the price had to come down or no deal.
What kind of long term employment contract do you have with your doctor, dentist, department store, or car dealer?
You seem to have lost focus on the topic.
I've gotten the wording of employment contracts changed.
At which companies? Amazon? Google? Target? UPS?
It's the massive employers with huge legal teams where you need a union so you can fairly negotiate with their massive legal team. The subject that started this is unions at Amazon. Not negotiating with your local restaurant about how much they will pay you to wait on tables.
What was the nature of the change? Did you get additional healthcare benefits? The kinds of things that unions negotiate about? Or was it something trivial? The details matter.
If workers can effectively negotiate as individuals then why have wealth gaps skyrocketed in the USA as unions have weakened? The lowest wealth gaps in US history were when unions were the strongest. Wealth gaps in Germany are much lower and unions are much stronger. All evidence points to you being wrong about individuals being good negotiators at getting a bigger share of the pie. And it's just common sense. The idea that most of us are qualified to go up against a big and highly trained legal team is laughable.
Every company I've worked for.
> If workers can effectively negotiate as individuals then why have wealth gaps skyrocketed in the USA as unions have weakened?
Let's say I work for a company with big server farms as an engineer. I find a way to make the server software run 1% faster. This saves the company 1% on server costs. Server costs run into the $hundreds of millions. What's that worth to the company? I know software engineers who got pay packages worth a million bucks. None of them used a lawyer to negotiate their compensation.
The WSJ ran an article recently about how Barnes & Noble was going down the tubes, mainly because of competition from Amazon. There was much handwringing about it, and their stock was in the dumpster. B&N was headed for failure. Then, a couple years ago, B&N replaced the CEO. The CEO revamped the way their stores operated, from top to bottom. B&N has surged in profits and value.
That new CEO created $billions in wealth for the company and shareholders. It saved the workers from being tossed out in the street.
How much would you say that CEO was worth paying?
In a free market, people get paid according to the value they produce. Not the value other people produce.
To get more pay, think about how to improve the value you provide. Always be thinking about that.
Pay packages are not a change to the wording of an employment contract. What I'm talking about is a change to the contract that would have legal implications. You failed to give an example of an employee that has succeeded in doing that with a large employer.
Your example of highly in demand software engineers does not apply to the average worker - the topic is Amazon warehouse employees forming a union.
Your example of a CEO does not apply to the hundreds of millions of average workers.
In the free market labor can organize to get paid according to their collective value.
To get more pay think about being as organized and as powerful as management and the legal team of the company you are negotiating with. Always be thinking about that.
The making-demands-phase typically happens after employees and unions argued for a certain thing for years without any changes.
You don't need to demand something if you just asked for it and they said "Yes, but it would be best for the company to do it that way" and you go like "alright, fair enough". If the thing you want is that agreeable, you'd be silly to put in the energy to protest.
Companies are not the victims here, for that you just have to compare the groth of profits to the groth of median salary over the past years.
Unions form when companies take too much. And yeah, unions can be a thorn in a companies flesh after they get active. There is one simple trick to avoid unions: treat your employees in a way they don't need an union to defend their interest.
And here is Amazon the one that is treating their employees both bad and as adversaries
Who wants to partner with people who do that?
Besides, even the wealthy like to make money. The employees show them how to make more, they'll listen. If the employer won't listen, the usual thing to do is quit, start their own business, and outcompete them. There are lots of small business coffeeshops. They aren't terribly hard to get going.
After reading through all the comments in this thread, I'm of the opinion that Walter Bright isn't discussing this in good faith. Take his comment quoted above: starting a simple coffee shop requires capital anywhere from $80k - $250k (yes, I have researched this). No hourly wage worker or grouping of workers will have that kind of capital, nor access to it. Walter Bright has argued elsewhere that loans are a thing with a good business plan. Again - it's a bad faith argument because business plans do not fall from the sky - it takes time and knowledge to put one together and if we've learned one thing in America - hourly wage workers do not have time nor education to write one. And oh, Banks do not lend that kind of money simply based on a "business plan", they require collateral, which hourly wage workers do not have.
I call <cough> bee <cough> es on Walter Bright's arguments.
> hourly wage workers do not have time nor education to write one
There are endless books and online resources to help with that. Besides, as a worker in a coffee shop, you have a great opportunity right in front of you to study how the business works.
Besides, it doesn't have to be a coffee shop. There are endless businesses that need little to no capital to start. You can even start with a portable coffee cart, which doesn't cost much to lease.
> isn't discussing this in good faith
It's sad you feel that way. Opportunity in America is all around you. It's why millions of destitute people are desperate to get over the border. What do they see that you don't?
Or, to put it another way, I have a positive point of view.
Oh, and you cannot rely on public services such as social security - your only source of income for the experiment must be your wage work or assets acquired through the experiment, any medical services must be either free to indigents or through your work or work insurance or paid for through experiment income or assets, and must not be medicare and the like that you're eligible for. You can reference your previous work and life, but only in generics, and not in any manner that conveys an advantage immediately or over time. If any advantage is proffered based on your prior life, education or knowledge, you must decline. Needless to say, taking advantage of your credit history would be a no-no.
Obviously, you'll need some stuff, coffee shop workers have families too, so say 7 sets of clothes worth no more than $60 per set; a feature phone for safety and your IDs. If a smartphone is taken, it cannot be traded or sold. I'm debating whether or not you're allowed a car with current value less than $1000 and purchased where you decide to experiment. Since you said destitute people are desperate to get across the border without analyzing why, let's say not. You cannot lie or cheat, nor make promises to people based on your non-experiment assets, including your name.
Any family or friends that accompany you are subject to the same terms. The number of companions cannot exceed 1. Any travel or life during the experiment must be supported only by income from within the experiment.
How long would you like to run this experiment for?
> There are lots of small business coffeeshops. They aren't terribly hard to get going.
After pointing out capital asks of $80k - $250k and how hard it is to get loans without collateral, that Coffee Shop became:
> Besides, it doesn't have to be a coffee shop. There are endless businesses that need little to no capital to start. You can even start with a portable coffee cart, which doesn't cost much to lease.
Behold: a Coffee Cart!
Following that trend line, where will our fearless optimistic American Entrepreneur actually start? Perhaps, Sir, may I present: a Coffee Cup! or this Bag of Coffee!
I do believe there is an official term for this: "Pulling Oneself Up By The Bootstraps".
In the meantime, something was trending in the other direction: "Lots of small business coffeeshops" became "endless businesses that need little to no capital to start".
Now because I'm just curious now, how many bootstrap cups of coffee would have to be sold to get to our aspirational coffeeshop ($100k capital)? My French Roast morning coffee costs about $0.5 in material costs and electricity. Let's say our fearless optimist manages to sell it for $1 - it's no Starbucks drink, after all, and even Tim Hortons sells it for $1.5 or thereabouts, and we're hawking it from the trunk of our jalopy. That's 200k cups of coffee. If we sold a 100 cups a day, it would take 2000 days or 5.5 years.
I suppose our Bootstrapping Entrepreneur could probably get away with munching on Coffee instead of meals, and they surely have a magical coffee machine that never breaks down or needs to be replaced. See, bootstrapping is totally doable, only takes 5.5 years!!!
F***
I'm so sad hearing people believe this. Your power is the value you provide. That is worth money. Negotiating is a matter of convincing the other party that you will provide more value.