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Comment by tomp | Hacker News Reader

I somewhat support unions for private corporations (except when membership is obligatory),

but unions for public employment just don't make sense!

For private corporations, there's an obvious balance - if the union strikes too much, the whole company goes under (because all production stops).

But for public jobs (e.g. cops, or notoriously, London tube workers), the union can literally demand anything, and the employees can't be fired, and the employer (the government) can't go bankrupt... it's just the population that suffers.

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> but unions for public employment just don't make sense!

Seriously? You think it makes no sense for firemen, teachers, nurses, paramedics and waste collectors to act collectively to protect their pay and working conditions? Do you really think that the only bad employers are private employers?

The police are an arm of the state, and have virtually unlimited power to dispense violence, even in seemingly illegal circumstances. There is no power theoretically greater than state power in the USA; the enforcement arm of the state does not need or deserve a union.

They should, and since they work for a government agency, they do regardless of the union. If they don't like how their department is run, the can work to elect politicians who support their department.

The true issue with public unions is that they can elect their own bosses. There can't be good-faith negotiation if the position of the "boss" is dependent on supporting the union.

Yes. I think that if they wanted better pay or working conditions, they should pick and choose private employers.

If they’re employed in public jobs, just their increase job & pension security strongly outweigh most other considerations.

Oh good. The “they should have picked better jobs“ argument. Hopefully, we all agree that we need public employees for these jobs.

I have no idea why we think that they are less deserving of good conditions and good pay if we can acknowledge we need them to do their jobs.

Job security doesn’t outweigh the need to have a living wage and decent benefits and decent conditions. Neither does a pension that some people won’t even live to enjoy.

Everybody deserves livable wages and good benefits, not just private employees. Everybody. I don’t care if your job is teaching, garbage collector, fry cook, reporter, city collections clerk, any job under the sun that needs to be done, and a human being has to do it, requires a living wage and decent benefits.

This is especially true of public jobs that we need people to do for society to function. We need teachers. We need janitors. We need people in all of these public roles. In fact, in North Carolina it’s a royal pain in the ass to get your drivers license renewed if you actually have to go to the DMV because they don’t have enough staff, because the pay sucks. That affects everybody.

Maybe private employers should have to pay more than public jobs to offset the perceived security of public jobs. But that’s not the same thing as what you were arguing here.

If I understand your argument correctly, you’re saying that the quality of public services would be improved by paying people more, not by giving unions more power?

If so, I agree 100%.

Another viable alternative is to reject socialism (central planning) and embrace markets (e.g. I see no reason why janitors, garbage collectors and even teachers (giving parents actual school choice) couldn’t be employed by private corporations that compete to perform a public service.

I'm saying that people deserve a living wage, etc. If that can happen organically without unions, great. Unions / collective bargaining is a path to achieving good wages and working conditions, because employers (public and otherwise) tend to worsen those things over time without workers having a closer to equal bargaining position.

"Markets" have aggressively sought every way possible to get labor as cheaply as possible. The idea that privatizing public services is going to make things better for anyone other than the shareholders / owners of those companies is not only ridiculous in theory, it's proven to be false in practice.

One only need look at private prisons, private hospitals, private healthcare, and (as I referenced before) the NC DMV for evidence of this. Many of the license plate agencies and such are privately run, and they're worse for it.

Socialism !== central planning. Perhaps you were thinking of communism.

Sure, you can simply privatize everything, and use taxpayers money to line the pockets of private shareholders. Taxpayers don't like that much, so in that kind of system people tend to oppose public services in general. And it involves the government handing out contracts for everything, which inevitably leads to corruption.

Public jobs have good pensions and job security because of the unions... Even then, teachers don't make much. Come o..

If that were true, all unionised jobs would have good security and pensions.

Teachers are paid starvation wages. Jobs that require bachelor's degrees and often extended education and certification post grad that pays $50k. Once you are in the role you are essentially forced into 60-80 hour work weeks with no OT. Plus you get to dodge bullets...

If you want to know why the quality of education in America has dipped look no further than paying teacher barely above retail workers. No knock on the folks who work retail but there is a drastic difference in level of responsibility both to the individuals in their care and society as a whole.

If your presumptions were actually true, then why do we see public unions at all?

Because game theory? They know they have nothing to lose while having lots to gain (better pay & benefits).

Which is kind-of the point. Tragedy of the commons. The individuals (union members) gain while the public loses (more strikes, worse service, higher tax-financed salaries)

I don't find game theory to be a convincing explanation. If public workers were forming unions for game theoretic reasons why didn't essential workers form unions during the pandemic. Most of those essential workers were part-time and had no benefits to speak of. If game theory were taking place, then we'd see a lot more grocery store unions.

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