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Comment by ericd | Hacker News Reader

Unions are disastrous for the competitiveness of a company on the global market. We do need worker protections of some form (perhaps greater informational transparency about working conditions would help?), we don't need the techniques that unions use to obtain unsustainably high wages for their workers.

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Just because it's hard to monetize and profit from concepts like the health and well-being of employees doesn't mean that we as a society should put that value at zero.

The "competitiveness of a company on the global market" isn't the be-all, end-all. The phrase itself belies your point: if we as a society wanted to, we could place tariffs equivalent to the cost of providing a humane workplace for packaging workers, while also requiring our own companies to do so. This would eliminate the competitive edge issue, while also allowing other countries to engage in free trade with us if they pass laws protecting their own laborers from workspace exploitation.

We simply choose not to, for certain values of we (read: members of the finance capital rentier class that dominates American political discourse).

Competitiveness is extremely important, and you highlight a way to sort of obtain that, but you can only control competitiveness in the domestic market with tariffs unless you basically oppress third worlders (how it will be viewed, anyway) by strong-arming nations to pass similar tariff laws.

The value of domestic manual labor simply isn't that high anymore except in hard-to-outsource cases, and unless we change our society to involve more wealth redistribution, those who can only perform manual labor will not enjoy a similar standard of living to those with greater leverage.

The US economy has no need to export anything into third world countries their economy's are simply to tiny accept much in the way of imports. In-fact we have long flooded most of them with cheap food which we lost money to create so balance of trade is even less valuable than you might think. http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/

Canada, is another story we really need to keep them happy: http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c1220.html

We export half as much stuff to China: http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html

And Ethiopia is next to nothing: http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c7740.html

Move to France.

You'd find their backwards, less competitive economy to your liking.

Ultimately, in a free society people need to be allowed the right to cooperate. And we also need to acknowledge that the management in a company invariably enjoys collective bargaining rights, and that basic human decency demands that we allow non-management employees to have similar rights.

Which is not to say that all unions are well-behaved. My time as a Teamster was both instructive and discouraging. They had secured a lot of provisions that I don't think should have been allowed to stand. For one, joining the union was a condition of employment. If that requirement didn't violate the principle of free labor markets, it at least cut close to the line. And they eradicated all traces of meritocracy; the only thing that could ever be rewarded was seniority. That was deeply discouraging for a new employee, and from the company's perspective it ensured that the highest-paid employees were also the least productive, by virtue of having spent the most time observing that hard work would never be met with any reward aside from itself.

However, we should not throw the baby out with the bath-water. Unions should be allowed to exist; history is rife with practical examples what happens if you don't do so.

And frankly, the potential problems posed by unions can naturally be addressed by the free market itself, if only we'd let it. If a company's compensation structure becomes unsustainable due to more efficient competition from another company, then it is absolutely OK to simply let its more efficient competitors out-compete it. That remains the case regardless of the cause of the unsustainable compensation structure.

And we also need to acknowledge that the management in a company invariably enjoys collective bargaining rights...

No, it's illegal for corporations to collectively bargain to set workers wages. On the flip side, if employees unionize, it's illegal for the employer to refuse to do business with them.

I think you may have reacted to what you thought he said here, rather than what he said.

The management within a company (considered as a class, rather than as a singular entity "the company") does indeed bargain collectively with the workers of that company. That doesn't imply they collude with the management of other companies.

I'm not sure what the consequences of that are, exactly. It does mean that it's very hard to get teams within the same company to bid on you, because they will collude to avoid that.

So I think you missed his point. I'm not sure that changes the truth of your main point, which is that the government supports employee unions and discourages corporate ones.

Though the illegality of corporations bargaining collectively doesn't mean it doesn't happen, and the illegality of suppressing unions doesn't mean that doesn't happen either. And it's pretty clear who has more leverage in the labor market: corporations. Replacing a worker is annoying but the corporation can usually afford to do without for a few months, whereas losing your job for even a short while can be devastating.

This effect leads to an effective monopsony situation for most employers.

But I've digressed from my main point, which is that while you're correct, I think what he actually said is much more interesting than the boringly wrong point you replied to. What effect DOES it have that the management of a company is united, and the workers generally divided without a union?

The management within a company (considered as a class, rather than as a singular entity "the company") does indeed bargain collectively with the workers of that company.

If that's what he meant, I have no dispute. But, like you say, I can't see how that matters.

And it's pretty clear who has more leverage in the labor market: corporations. Replacing a worker is annoying but the corporation can usually afford to do without for a few months, whereas losing your job for even a short while can be devastating.

I don't think this is clear. Losing your job for a while can be devastating if you haven't planned for it, but the same is true of an unprepared company losing a valuable employee. Some empirics are necessary.

Also, it's only an effective monopsony if workers are incapable of searching for other work while they are employed.

Individual company's management != collective bargaining by corporations.

s/management/middle management

Re-read that article and tell me you want any human being to have to work like that for more than a week in a supposedly 1st-world country.

Those people are subsidizing your low prices by taking 800mg of advil a day to be able to get a paycheck and deferring the health disaster they will have in a few years without insurance.

If you do not have unions or government regulation, big business sets the rules and you end up with that story and in the bigger picture, the criminal health care system that plagues this nation.

I find it absurd that the answer for the USA is to pull us down to the lowest level of workforce conditions elsewhere in the world to remain "competitive". The only people who win in a race to the bottom are the ones on top enjoying their 2nd vacation home purchase while everyone else working for them rents.

Read past the first couple of words of my comment and you'll see that I agree that worker protections are important, I'm just saying that unions have historically created a whole host of hard to solve problems and are not a good way to deal with this. No job availability is still generally the worst possible outcome in a country without strong social safety nets like the US, so don't underestimate the importance of competitiveness.

There wouldn't be worker protections if unions did not exist.

They pushed for paid holidays, medical leave, safety, etc.

In the european country where I live, unions made all of this possible until the 1970s. Since then, unionization got less and less prevalent and now that the economy is gloomy at best, corporations are lobbying hard to relax worker protections. Unions are nowhere to be seen and workers are left alone to suffer.

Unions exist in other countries that have highly successful industries, take Germany for example.

There's unions and unions. I don't have a problem with such organizations as representatives of working people's collective interests, but the relationship between unions and business in the US can be terribly adversarial such that 'collective bargaining' often ends up looking more like mutual attrition.

It might be that historically the diversity of the US is partly responsible; where there is wide social and cultural variation among both employers and employees then the establishment of a consensus about what working conditions are fair and reasonable becomes more difficult. If you've grown up and started your career in an atmosphere of tough working conditions and demanding expectations, then as an employer you're going to have similar expectations of the people you hire. To someone who has grown up in a more collaborative or cooperative situation designed to insulate colleagues from external pressures, the demanding productivity goals of the former context may seem irrational or oppressive. Perhaps there is some correlation with the variety of household income situation experienced growing up - marginal (waged) or fixed (salaried) economic inputs are likely to influence perceptions of appropriate output.

Upvote for "There's unions and then there's unions." I live in Michigan and have known people who personally attest to all of the negative stereotypes about the Teamsters and the UAW. On the other hand, Germany manages to have a world-class economy based on manufacturing highly-sought factory-made goods, and they do it all with high-wage union labor.

I'm a red-blooded American, so I prefer as few regulations as necessary. But maybe -- just maybe -- we can copy a few of the things that those wacky krauts are doing.

It's an interesting system. Workers actually have votes on corporate governance; in fact, a 50/50 split with shareholders if I recall correctly.

I wouldn't be surprised if that led to a less antagonistic labor/management relationship.

I don't agree entirely with this line of thinking. The concept of protecting workers from abuses by corporations is not in and of itself undesirable. As we have seen all throughout human history those who wield power usually abuse it.

The issue with unions, as most people in America view them, is that they became to powerful themselves. This allowed them to make demands that would ultimately lead to their organizations becoming hamstrung and unable to rapidly adjust. Hence business look at them as the plague.

The issue as I see it is that business, labor, and consumers need to understand the concept of "moderation". Consumers do not need an abundance of cheap crap. Businesses shouldn't focus solely on short term profits. Unions should seek to protect their workers and not pry as much money as they possibly can out of their employer.

Unions are disastrous for many of the same reasons that much of my country's (USA) systems are failing in various ways, political corruption.

I still live in a 'union town' (Boston) so perhaps it is different elsewhere, but they certainly push their influence well beyond the scope of worker rights in this city.

It being discovered that you didn't vote on the union line or otherwise 'play ball' with their political or public stance will get you booted from the union. Which in some trades around here makes you unemployable unless you relocate. In other words, they use scare tactics to push their agenda.

Unions had a time and place. There were absolutely deplorable conditions of work in the US for a period of time and unions were a proper solution. Today they just lay the basis for overly cushy jobs and political corruption.

Or perhaps the union system has merit, but its in great need for a spring cleaning.

Not always the case. Many of the German and Japanese companies that have been kicking our asses on the global market have much more powerful unions than their respective US competitors.

I'm not a big fan of unions in general (especially with regards to years = seniority in pay & firing), but on ergonomics I'm with them. It doesn't cost much to implement the warehouse in an ergonomic way, but clearly this company and many like it aren't doing that at all. That has a really important effect on the difficulty of the job.

well... it costs them something more than it cost to have it the way it is now, and since they don't have to pay for the effect on the workers working in the non-ergonomic warehouse, what's the point? If they had to pay for the health/welfare of their workers directly, they'd have an incentive to ergonimicize the place.

If they had to pay for the health/welfare of their workers directly...

You mean if they had to pay some sort of compensation for work related injuries? Too bad only 50 US states have workers comp laws.

Nonetheless, companies would do well to remember that the first unions were formed not to demand higher pay, but to protect the worker from employer caprice and tyranny, and to lobby employers to make changes to keep workers from being mangled by the machines they worked on. Paying people a pittance may make them depressed, but destroying their dignity and their health will compel them to organize - labor laws and strike breaking tactics be damned.

Yeah, generally the people are asking for 10-30% more than they're getting now (in pay, or slower pace, or better conditions), which is a whole lot less inefficiency than converting things to union rules.

The threat of unionization, combined with PR issues with customers learning about how workers are treated, will probably cause companies to fix these issues pretty soon.

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