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Comment by chmod600 | Hacker News Reader

I admit I just don't understand how unions are formed or how they work. Once I saw picketing (not sure if I'm using the term properly) outside of a grocery store. When I asked what their complaint was, I found out they didn't work there and I got confused.

What does "a majority of the workers" mean? Is that a majority in a particular establishment, or employees of a company (across many locations) or an industry?

And if they vote Yes, do they then choose what kind of union to be (Teamsters, etc.) and doesn't it get kind of complicated? What happens to the people that vote No?

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It depends on the country you're in but, briefly put...

A group of workers come together. They form a collective known as a Trade Union.

They can say "pay us a better wage or we'll stop working for you". Or "stop managers from sexually harassing us or we won't do any overtime". They use collective bargaining to extract better value or conditions from their employer.

Some unions are tiny - they might just cover a single office. Others are huge - they might cover an entire industry. Because labour laws are complex it is sometimes better for people to be in a large union. There are unions which cover single companies and there are unions which cover industries. There are even "miscellaneous" unions.

Generally speaking, if a majority of workers vote to join a union then the company has to recognise that union (I'm glossing over the detail of what a majority means because different countries have different rules). Recognising a union means (again, depending on the law) that the company has to consult with the employees before making certain changes. It might also mean that the union gets to represent workers when negotiating pay.

In most countries, an individual can choose whether to join a union or not. If they don't join, they don't pay any union fees - but they also don't get the protection of the union's lawyers.

Some countries and industries allow for a "closed shop". That means you must be a member of a union in order to take a job. Normally, that means paying a monthly fee. Other industries are flexible - if you don't pay to become a member you can still do the job. You may even be able to take advantage of collective negotiation. But if you need legal advice, the union may not be able to help you. It's similar to insurance in that respect - you can't take out a policy after your house burns down.

Unions are democratically controlled and member run. They make choices based on what their membership votes for. Sometimes, the members may vote to go on strike e.g. "We will withdraw our labour until you fix this problem."

Some unions can engage in secondary action - in your example, let's say that the grocery store has been underpaying people. Union members might come and protest outside a store they don't work at in order to show support to those workers, to inform customers about the bad behaviour, and to let management know that their actions won't be tolerated.

Unions are necessary because your employer is richer, stronger, and has more lawyers than you do as an individual. In unity there is strength.

> Unions are necessary because your employer is richer, stronger, and has more lawyers than you do as an individual. In unity there is strength.

To me this is the key point, that often gets lost or forgotten. Companies inherently benefit from a power imbalance, proportional to the size of the company, and you represent a cost center to them most of the time. This places you at a huge, and permanent, disadvantage, and one of the only ways to combat it is unify with other workers and bargain. The only person or group who exists to maximize your well-being is you/your union, not your employer, so it makes sense not to trust the employer to look out for you. They're busy maximizing returns for shareholders.

I have seen many cases where senior union members, who often compose the leadership of the union, will strike deals that benefit older union members over younger union members.

See all the government employee pension plans with tier benefits where older employees in older tiers have higher benefits than younger employees. Or they will accept underfunding for a couple decades since the underfunding will not affect benefits paid during their lifetime.

Yes, unions can be inefficient, ineffective, and even corrupt. They are democratic control over the workplace, with all the problems that brings with it. We elect plenty of shitty politicians after all. But the alternative is no chance of any power in the employment relationship. It is like saying "yeah we elected that president and they were garbage, we should really just let richest ten people in the country get together and decide who is president moving forward."

Benevolent megacorps aren't really real. When WalMart was found to be systematically underpaying and underpromoting women in their stores through rigorous statistical analysis, the CEO did interviews saying that the company needed to do better and then turned around and argued in front of the Supreme Court that all of the underpaid women couldn't count as a class for a class action suit and had their claims dismissed.

>It is like saying "yeah we elected that president and they were garbage, we should really just let richest ten people in the country get together and decide who is president moving forward."

I did not intend to make an anti union statement, just wanted to show how a “union” might not have the best interest of all union members in mind. Similar to how older taxpayers punt costs into future taxpayers.

UAW is a large union that is, right now, trying to make their employers get rid of such a system. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/i-have-a-pension-they-dont...

Some unions are better than others, but all unions are democratic (at least to some degree) and engaged members can improve them.

You missed the part that in some countries, even if they don't join, depending on the union structure, they would still get the benefits from the industry agreements made between the union, government and industrial partners.

This is a key component of the Nordic model. The legislatures in the Nordics choose to not legislate a minimum salary and make a number of labor laws conditional to collective agreements.

The theory is that the threat of legislation is sufficient to prevent imbalance between the parties. The state takes on the role as antagonist, making the unions and employers (somewhat uneasy) partners in trying to self-regulate. If they fail, parliament legislates, which is generally speaking perceived as an undesired outcome by everyone (crucially including most political parties).

From my Swedish point of view the model seems to work for private local employers, but struggles with the globalized tech workforce and for some public sector employees. It also seems to complicate work visa compliance by hiding away some of the terms.

Yes, in many countries in Europe, the industry wide unions negotiate with representatives of the industry employers, and government can declare the deal binding for all companies of a certain size in the industry.

Also if workers go on strike they don't get paid by their job, the union can pay them something instead from fees they received in the past.

>Some unions can engage in secondary action

Note:

Taft-Hartley Act outlawed secondary striking as an "unfair business practice" in the United States, so if a secondary strike does happen, union organizers need to tread carefully; as claiming 're striking in support of another shop' without there being anything to strike over with their current employer is basically admitting to engaging in verboten behavior.

I leave it as an exercise to the reader to decide for themselves whether it is a good thing, or a bad one.

Very cogent explanation, thank you. I hope very much that workers in Amazon warehouses are able to get unions happening on a large scale.

What if I’m just better than the rest? What if I can assemble 45 amplifiers a day when my coworkers can only manage 17? (This actually happened to me, long ago.) it is my impression that a union would not allow me to negotiate better terms for myself. Or am I incorrect?

In the US, you are correct. By default, it is illegal for a company to negotiate terms with any individual covered by a union, even if that individual is not a dues paying member of the union.

Technically, you are allowed negotiate, but it is illegal for the company to accept and it is not legally binding, so it is functionally equivalent to it being illegal to negotiate terms for yourself (assuming you want to negotiate, it is obviously better at preventing unilateral corporate abuse as the corporation would be on the hook for tricking you).

I believe you can negotiate if the union lets you, but by default you can not. Also, you can not unilaterally waive union representation either, even if you are not a member, so if the union does not allow it you would need to convince 50% of the covered individuals to change the rules or dissolve the union.

You are incorrect.

That being said, it is dependent on two things.

Some jurisdictions may only allow for a single contract. I don't know where you live, but in my part of the world there's nothing stopping you from negotiating a personal deal. But it can't undercut the union minimum.

The second is the more important part - does the company want to negotiate with an individual? Most places don't. It costs time, money, and effort to do salary negotiations. Companies don't want to set individual contracts for 500 different workers.

In those worst cases, workers are almost always still better off with the union deal.

"Union" does not automatically mean "everyone doing job X gets $Y/hr, no matter what."

Many unions allow for performance-based pay increases. Furthermore, if you're actually doing better (in a situation like you describe, it should be trivial to prove this), it is likely that the union would help you negotiate a better performance-based pay increase than you would be able to negotiate on your own.

How many amplifier companies actually enable their factory workers to negotiate individually effectively in ways that they couldn't with a union? Why couldn't a union negotiate terms that guarantee pay for performance in the way you want? In software, people often complain about doing the work of a certain level but not being able to be paid at that level. Union contracts could mean a seat at the table on promotion decisions.

And sure, there will probably be some people who are in unusual positions where they can negotiate more effectively by themselves. Similarly, there are people who would improve their status in the United States if we had a Putin-esque autocracy. Even if someone personally benefits from this scheme, I consider it to be pretty bad for uber wealthy individuals to sabotage our democracy so that they maximally increase their wealth.

> Union contracts could mean a seat at the table on promotion decisions.

That sounds like a nightmare to me.

Some people think that, I guess. I'd rather have somebody who is explicitly advocating for me in the room rather than a faceless committee that is almost completely unaccountable.

In some countries it goes even further. There's a thing called sympathy strikes where workers in the same "federation" of unions join in. So if you as an employer screw over your employees, your business will come to a halt. Everybody working within that same "federation" will refuse to service you. So no mail, no trash pickup, no goods delivered, no maintenance work etc. You are essentially shut down until you play ball.

This is all good in theory so here is my question: since unions are essentially a power structure at its core what happens when they try to abuse their positions? What is the check/balance or counter to that?

Members can vote against those changes. They can vote in new leadership. Or they can stop paying dues and / or join a different union.

In my last workplace, there were a choice of 3 different unions I could have joined. I picked the one which aligned best with my needs, took part in how it was run, and could have stopped if I thought they weren't acting in my best interests.

No I am asking for a situation when the unions have an agenda of extracting maximum benefits out of the company while actively encouraging its members to put in the absolute bare minimum of effort. This will in a few years time will make the company's products prohibitevly expensive due to the associated cost inflation. As a result of which the company's products are no longer competitive in the free market unless heavily subsidized by tax payer dollars (think UAW and its role in gutting American car mannufacturing. These days except for states in rural US, cars made by American car companies: GM, Ford, Chrysler are mostly considered as jokes all over the world).

I mean the very simple question is: who pays? What protects the shareholders, management and the employees?

I'm not from the USA - so I don't know about that specific case.

But let's take your premise and reword it.

What happens if shareholders have an agenda of extracting maximum benefits out of the company while actively encouraging its demise?

We see that all the time with private equity groups loading up on debt so they can make a huge profit and then letting the company go bust.

What happens if senior managers have an agenda of extracting maximum benefits for minimum effort?

Again, how many CEOs get golden parachutes after wrecking a company?

Who protects the workers in those situations?

You'll find (in some cases) unions do take a long term view. They want to secure long term benefits rather than a short term bump. That's because they're working for people who need a regular pay cheque. So you'll see compromises being made in order to secure longer term employment.

So you have basically decided not to answer the relevant question but to parrot an idiotic left wing garbage narrative.

Okay! in that case, I rest my case that unions can actually be very harmful due to it being a power structure and particularly if they are not subjected to any check and balances.

Sorry, I had to reply to both…

> So you decided not to answer the relevant question but to parrot and idiotic left wing garbage narrative.

No, he had answered your first question and then you came up with an absurd hypothetical as a rebuttal, so he responded with an extension of your hypothetical which demonstrates its absurdity.

> I rest my case that unions can actually be very harmful due to it being a power structure and particularly if they are not subjected to any check and balances.

Sure, but the topic was if having unions was better than not… anything can be harmful given some abnormal premises, so you’ve made no valid point.

As a side question, is your objective to ‘win’ the argument, or be correct? To me, it sounds like the former.

> As a side question, is your objective to ‘win’ the argument, or be correct? To me, it sounds like the former.

My objective here is to get to the truth - nothing more and nothing less. Unions can be "every bit harmful" since they are a power structure and power corrupts. Unrestrained, unfettered, corrupt unions can do more harm than good. They are not a cure all remedy for all problems a modern "evil" corporation might have [1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBudiVNsW2E

> What protects the shareholders, management, and the employees?

When you say protect these entities, what risk does each of these entities endure by being part of the company?

The employees usually put their entire livelihood with the company, and, at least in the US, an employee is dependent upon the employer for pretty much all sources of income and healthcare.

The managers could be classified into two groups: one who is also beholden to their employer, much like an employee and has little to no agency in their job (low/mid level management), and the other who has an ownership-stake or large compensation which prevents a loss-of-livelihood style coercion from their employer.

Often, the second class of management blends into the shareholder group, and their will dictates the policies and objectives of the company. A rapid change in this group (e.g., through a buyout, key member dying), results in rapid changes to the livelihoods of its employees.

The shareholders risk one thing: capital. While capital is important, and can affect one’s life significantly, the shareholder has no other risk.

Personally, I’d rather protect the employees at the risk of the shareholders.

> No I am asking for a situation when the unions have an agenda of extracting maximum benefits out of the company while actively encouraging its members to put in the absolute bare minimum of effort.

Sure, in this is specific situation a company would fail. Something to note, however, is that the objective of a union is never to stop its members from making money. Doing things which would harm the company into not being competitive would necessarily harm the union’s members.

Two key differences here between a union and the owners of a company doing this (which you scoffed at in your other reply), are:

1) if performed by the owners, the profits from this maximum-extraction would go to the owners, but if performed by the union it would be self-destructive, and

2) the decision to do so would’ve been done by an elected group and never potentially at the whims of an owner (for instance, an activist investor with a desire to strip it down for parts and make more than the purchase price).

> This will in a few years time will make the company's products prohibitevly expensive due to the associated cost inflation.

There is no evidence that this would be the case, because no union has ever acted like your hypothetical union.

> think the UAW and how in gutting American car manufacturing

This isn’t true, and you’ll need to provide some evidence for me to take this claim seriously; it is much more time consuming for me to clear up B.S. than it is for someone to make it up.

> Personally, I’d rather protect the employees at the risk of the shareholders.

Sorry, but thats not how capitalism operates. Modern corporations are created for the benefit of share holders and they operate for only one reason and one reason only i.e. "to maximize" shareholder value [1].

Honestly, you seem to be living in some alternative "la la la la" land where you perceive reality in a very different way or at least want reality to be what you want it to be than what currently it is. I am not quite sure how to argue with people who hold beliefs similar to yours. Please note, we are not arguing here as to what is fair or not (read my response carefully) as per some definition of fairness.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1970/09/13/archives/a-friedman-doctr...

> Sorry, but thats not how capitalism operates. Modern corporations are created for the benefit of share holders and they operate for only one reason and one reason only i.e. "to maximize" shareholder value [1].

Sure, but we should quote Friedman a bit more completely… “there is one and only one social responsibility of business—to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.”

The key caveats to maximizing shareholder value are that this maximization happens ‘within the rules of the game’ and when the business ‘engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.’ A market’s ‘rules of the game,’ so to speak, are set by the government which has the power to enforce those rules.

Part of those rules include what can and cannot be made into a contract, and, in particular, what types of contracts wouldn’t be enforceable because of coercion. If an employee would lose their house because of a business’s decision (and the business has no objective incentive to warn the employee of this potential), I’d argue that most parts of the employer/employee relationship are coercive. A union can mitigate that somewhat by providing a real cost the business for not negotiating in good faith.

In addition, the ‘rules of the game’ are changed by the government, which itself is affected by large market players.

Outside of that: this is a rather one-sided discussion. I’ve given rather full responses and you’ve provided nothing other than ‘no you’re wrong, here’s a partial quote,’ and ‘what about this ridiculous hypothetical?’ Do you have any rebuttal to what I said, or is the ‘personally, I’d rather protect the employees at the risk of shareholders,’ the extent of what you can argue against?

> pay us a better wage or we'll stop working for you

unfortunately it's illegal to fire a group of people who strike, so if you're wondering why companies don't just say "sure, stop working then", that's why.

Good explanation. But it should be noted that though democratic, unions have had and some still have issues with corruption. This is one reason why workers may be against a union.

> When I asked what their complaint was, I found out they didn't work there and I got confused.

Do you ever go help out a friend who needs it? Same thing, but two unions.

> And if they vote Yes, do they then choose what kind of union to be (Teamsters, etc.) and doesn't it get kind of complicated?

A union is just an organization of people, like a company in many ways. The union forms with some basic governance rules, and the union decides to join up with some bigger organization if they want to.

> What happens to the people that vote No?

I believe it depends on the state's laws, but broad strokes either basically they're in the union anyway, or they can choose to be or not.

>Do you ever go help out a friend who needs it? Same thing, but two unions.

I'd hope to understand what help my friend needs in that case. But I guess there is also something admirable about someone who is there to help without question, especially in this day and age.

What happened in your first sentence was ruled impermissable in the USA due to Taft-Hartley in 1947 as I understand it, strikers can only picket where the company they are striking against does business. So you really need to be less vague.

I think you need to be careful translating the comment.

We only know they were picketing. We do not know if they were carrying out a prohibited action under Taft-Hartley.

All we know is that chmod600 got confused upon learning the picketers don't work there.

You can picket a place without being employed there. For example, "Arab American leaders demonstrated Thursday outside the Walt Disney studio against two Disney films that the protesters said contain insults to Arabs." https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-08-23-fi-36982-...

Absolutely not true. They used to picket the store where I worked because we weren't union. It was so annoying.

It's called "recognitional picketing". Quoting https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-law/re...

> Recognitional picketing (Section 8(b)(7))

> Picketing to force an employer to recognize - or employees to select - a union is permitted under certain circumstances. As with secondary boycotts, the law here is a bit complex.

> Section 8(b)(7) of the Act makes it unlawful for a labor organization or its agents "to picket or cause to be picketed, or threaten to picket or cause to be picketed, any employer where an object thereof is forcing or requiring an employer to recognize or bargain with a labor organization as the representative of his employees, or forcing or requiring the employees of an employer to accept or select such labor organization as their collective-bargaining representative, unless such labor organization is currently certified as the representative of such employees: (A) where the employer has lawfully recognized any other labor organization and a question concerning representation may not appropriately be raised under Section 9(c); (B) where within the preceding 12 months a valid election under Section 9(c) has been conducted; or (C) where such picketing has been conducted without a petition under Section 9(c) being filed within a reasonable period of time not to exceed 30 days from the commencement of such picketing: ...

The point of picketing is to be annoying.

There are three different things. Creating a new union where there was none before. Having a workplace's workforce represented by that union. An individual joining a union.

We can safely ignore the first of the three for your question (no one wants to talk about how the Teamsters union was formed) and the last one (a trucker fills out paperwork).

For the second part, some employees work with an existing union to fill out cards indicating they want to join and be represented by that existing union. Once enough workers (by percentage) have filled out such cards, a vote is held among the affected workforce. (For instance, just the janitorial staff may have to fill out cards and vote to unionize the janitorial staff, or an entire Starbucks may unionize). The government sets regulations on the vote and/or oversees it, but both the company and the union get to make their cases in the time before the vote. Then, majority wins. (The company can just agree and start working with the union without the vote)

Specific to your question about what a majority means, it certainly isn't by industry. I've heard of individual stores holding votes for Starbucks or Walmart, but also company wide votes for less retail oriented businesses. I'm not sure if that's because each location is a separate llc or because it can be by location.

Everyone, regardless of vote, can then join the union or not. Some states prevent unions from negotiating an "only union employees" clause in their contracts, others do not. Note that even if it's "only union employees", that just means all employees must join the union for the term of their employment, not that they have to be a member to get hired at all.

Unions are form of collusion/price fixing where employees attempt to gain a monopoly on labor and raise wages/rents above market rate. However, this form of antitrust is not illegal because corporations, were they people, would be psychopaths that actually behave even more badly. And, all things being equal, groups of people deserve wealth more than corporations do.

Your use of "collusion" reveals more about your personal views than anything else.

Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collusion_(disambiguation) : "Collusion is an agreement, usually secretive, which occurs between two or more persons to deceive, mislead, or defraud others of legal rights."

Quoting https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/collusion "A secret agreement for an illegal purpose; conspiracy."

Unions, in general, do not fit this definition.

Perhaps there is a technical use I'm not aware of, but this is not a specialized forum where that would be clear.

The word is spot on for a union, see https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/collusion.asp: "Collusion occurs when entities or individuals work together to influence a market or pricing for their own advantage."

"Collusion is a non-competitive, secret, and sometimes illegal agreement between rivals which attempts to disrupt the market's equilibrium. The act of collusion involves people or companies which would typically compete against one another, but who conspire to work together to gain an unfair market advantage. The colluding parties may collectively choose to influence the market supply of a good or agree to a specific pricing level which will help the partners maximize their profits at the detriment of other competitors. It is common among duopolies."

Normally, workers are rivals who are competing to sell labor to the market. A union occurs when these workers agree not to compete and "work together to influence a market or pricing for their own advantage."

What is secret about a union? Also the word carries a context, hence the mention of duopoly. So no, not spot on.

Also you failed to mention that capital works to actively disrupt market equilibrium for wages. So by “colluding” the union is merely attempting to counteract that.

Union relationships are always secret? News to me. Taft-Hartley even has:

> Sec. 211. (a) For the guidance and information of interested representatives of employers, employees, and the general public, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the Department of Labor shall maintain a file of copies of all available collective bargaining agreements and other available agreements and actions thereunder settling or adjusting labor disputes. Such file shall be open to inspection under appropriate conditions prescribed by the Secretary of Labor, except that no specific information submitted in confidence shall be disclosed. - https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/COMPS-8190/uslm/COMPS-81...

These are generally available from https://www.dol.gov/agencies/olms/regs/compliance/cba . Here's one such so-called "secret" agreement for "General Motors Corporation and International Union, United Automobile Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW) (2003)" at https://ecommons.cornell.edu/handle/1813/81116

So by your definition, the members of that union are not colluding.

Labor providers and labor consumers are not rivals, and they do not compete with each other.

You need to demonstrate how it is an "unfair market advantage". Simply saying it is so it not enough. It could be a fair market advantage.

"workers are rivals who are competing to sell labor to the market"

Ohh, that a funny one. You've just claimed that all trade associations are a form of collusion too.

The Orange Growers of Florida - made of rivals! - get together to promote Florida Oranges so are colluding to take market away from Californian orange growers. Well clutch my pearls!

You also think Microsoft is colluding with HCL, Accenture, TCS, and Chinasoft because Microsoft has negotiated a preferred status with them to find contract workers, rather than be open to the entire market of possible contract workers.

If it makes you feel better, think of the union as a co-op owned labor provider who made a multi-year contract with a company as the exclusive provider of a certain type of labor. Would that be "collusion"?

> when these workers agree not to compete

You've confused two different issues. 1) "workers are rivals who are competing to sell labor to the market" refers to all people who could be hired. Most of these people are not in a union, as we clearly see when the company hires scabs.

2) "A union occurs when these workers agree not to compete" generally refers to the people already working for a company. At least, I have not heard of a union started by people who were not employed and decided to use collective action to improve the market salary rate. Thus, they are not in the same market as #1.

The union for #2 acts as a single economic actor, just like you interpret the company as a single economic actor even though many managers may be involved ("collude") in setting new salary levels.

Unions are cartels for workers. They are anticompetitive in the same way that cartels are.

I already pointed out how the definition "collusion" doesn't fit most union agreements. You have not shown there is collusion. Instead, you double down and say it's a cartel.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartel

> A cartel is a group of independent market participants who collude with each other in order to improve their profits and dominate the market.

If there is no collusion, there is no cartel.

Where is the collusion?

If 7-11 and Coca-Cola reach an agreement for Coca-Cola be the sole cola supplier to 7-11 in exchange for a reduced price, that is not collusion, that is not a cartel, that is not anti-competitive.

Yet if 7-11 and labor organization reach an agreement that the labor organization be the sole supplier of a certain type of labor, that is collusion, a cartel, and anti-competitive?

Where is the collusion?

Argument from dictionary definition is cringe.

If employers refuse to negotiate with employees individually, and set a fixed maximum price for labour, that is clearly unlawful, collusive, cartel behaviour. If they enforced this by refusing to honour their contracts and refusing to pay employees or give them work, this would also be unlawful.

If employees do the same then the left pretends it is normal.

Note that unions had to be made legal by legislative fiat. At common law, unions were illegal associations in restraint of trade.

Words - what do they mean? Maybe your comments are a collusive act. Maybe you and I have formed a cartel together. I don't know. If only there were some way to learn what how words are commonly used. Words? Words? What are words?

> If employers refuse to negotiate with employees individually, and set a fixed maximum price for labour, that is clearly unlawful, collusive, cartel behaviour.

Even if we accept your (cringe?) example, you must surely notice that you are using "employer" here to mean a collective, abstract economic entity, and not the people in the company who can make decisions about the employees in the company.

If the managers at the same company set a fixed maximum price for labor, and refuse to negotiate with employees individually, that's considered standard practice.

By your logic then, if employees at the same company set a fixed maximum price for labor, and refuse to negotiate with employers individually, that should also be fine.

So your complaint isn't about unions per se, but about multi-corporation unions.

In any case, if unions are "clearly unlawful", what law do they break?

While we can point to the law Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe broke in their illegal non-compete collusion.

If you can't point to a law being broken, it's not unlawful. (That's one of those cringe definition things, I know.)

> "The left pretends it is normal"

How do you know they are pretending? Do you pretend that women suffrage is normal?

How long does it take for something to become normal? Recognized, legal unions in the US have been around for longer than the nationwide right for women to vote.

What does left/right have to do with it? When President Reagan, famed for not being on the left, declare:

"By outlawing Solidarity, a free trade organization to which an overwhelming majority of Polish workers and farmers belong, they have made it clear that they never had any intention of restoring one of the most elemental human rights — the right to belong to a free trade union."

was he pretending too? If he meant it, when did the right start pretending?

> Note that unions had to be made legal by legislative fiat.

Let's examine this proposition, and set aside for now the cringe question of what "fiat" means.

Corporations were made legal by legislative fiat. You don't seem to have a problem with incorporated corporations, or with limited liability, so why would you have a problem with unions?

What legislative fiat do you refer to? In the US, the intrinsic legality of unions under the Constitution was established by Commonwealth v. Hunt (1842), which would be from the judicial system, not legislative.

That case directly addresses common law, and points out how earlier cases usually involved a union doing something illegal, like The King v. Journeymen Tailors of Cambridge, 8 Mod. 10 where the tailors wanted to raise "wages above the rate fixed by a general act of parliament. It was therefore a conspiracy to violate a general statute law".

It give a working definition of conspiracy (how cringe!)

"Without attempting to review and reconcile all the cases, we are of opinion, that as a general description, though perhaps not a precise and accurate definition, a conspiracy must be a combination of two or more persons, by some concerted action, to accomplish some criminal or unlawful purpose, or to accomplish some purpose, not in itself criminal or unlawful, by criminal or unlawful means. We use the terms criminal or unlawful, because it is manifest that many acts are unlawful, which are not punishable by indictment or other public prosecution; and yet there is no doubt, we think, that a combination by numbers to do them would be an unlawful conspiracy, and punishable by indictment."

and later concludes that unions are legal, so long as they use legal methods:

"We think, therefore, that associations may be entered into, the object of which is to adopt measures that may have a tendency to impoverish another, that is, to diminish his gains and profits, and yet so far from being criminal or unlawful, the object may be highly meritorious and public spirited. The legality of such an association will therefore depend upon the means to be used for its accomplishment. If it is to be carried into effect by fair or honorable and lawful means, it is, to say the least, innocent; if by falsehood or force, it may be stamped with the character of conspiracy."

You'll note the strong contrast between that legal decision and the viewpoint you espouse.

I imagine you might now claim that unions were made legal through judicial fiat. Shrug. Then your issue is with how laws are created, not unions. You like laws which protect capital, but not ones which protect labor. Got it.

None of your bizarre rant has anything to do with what we were discussing. As always, people like you drag out discussions on minor asides and random disputes about word choices rather than focusing on the actual issue being discussed.

If you cannot see that unions are price-fixing conspiracies then you can only be described as wilfully blind. Where you claim that it is just the same as multiple hiring managers working for the same firm.. It just boggles the mind.

Maybe it needs to be spelt out really simply for you: a union is not a firm. You don't hire a union. You hire employees. Unions do not want you to hire non-union employees and would make doing so illegal if they could. Unions want to "represent" an entire industry. They do not want competition.

So don't go round claiming it is just like a firm with multiple employees. That is nonsense.

We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines. Please don't do that!

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

What the hell? No warning, nothing. Never been moderated before then wham I am banned. Sad.

Usually we warn people before banning them, and often many times, but sometimes an account has been breaking the site guidelines so badly and so frequently that we just ban them. When I scrolled through your comment history I saw so many cases of this that you fell into the latter category.

Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37210786 - you can't post like that here, no matter how wrong someone is or you feel they are, and even a quick glance at the rules (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) ought to have made that clear.

It doesn't have to be permanent, if you genuinely want to use HN as intended—that's what I tried to explain above.

> If you cannot see that unions are price-fixing conspiracies

Of course I do not. It doesn't meet the definition of conspiracy, and back in 1842 Commonwealth v. Hunt established that unions were not a conspiracy, in the context of common law, and even addressed and dismissed your "price-fixing" argument - in text I already quoted. The courts since then have never determined that unions are a conspiracy, and that's with judges from the left and right.

My "bizarre rant" contains the materials to support my answer to exactly the topic you addressed.

I don't know why you willfully ignore the last 180 years of history.

You are the one who eschews definitions, but that doesn't mean you can redefine well-understood terms without expecting general confusion.

The claim that unions couldn't exist without active government intervention is a claim I've only heard from ill-informed libertarians who view everything through a very ideological lens. Your responses are not dissuading me that you fall into that category.

You have yet to point to any external source which supports your arguments. I have pointed to primary sources demonstrating that your specific claims are invalid and your understanding suspect.

You make other claims like "the left pretends it is normal" without attempting to explain why your ideologically extreme viewpoint is correct, or meaningful, much less explain how the right - start with Reagan - is any different.

> So don't go round claiming it is just like a firm with multiple employees. That is nonsense.

I did not. Are you referring to my comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37274569 were I wrote "If it makes you feel better, think of the union as a co-op owned labor provider who made a multi-year contract with a company as the exclusive provider of a certain type of labor. Would that be "collusion"?"

That was meant to show how union "collusion" could be implemented in a corporation model, leading to similar economic results for the co-op owners, but demonstrably not seen as a collusion when done by companies like Adecco.

I did claim that you confused the abstract concept of "employer" with the concrete concept of "employee", leading to a failure in your analogy. It means you see a company as a distinct economic entity (created by government fiat) from the managers who make employer decisions. By analogy, a union is a distinct economic entity (yes, supported by government fiat) from the employees.

A union is not a firm, and claiming so would be counter to centuries of history dating back to the medieval guild era.

In theory this just lets them achieve equal power to employers who they are canonically opposed to, and is therefore a good thing.

Employers and employees are not opposed to each other, and nothing would ever get done if they were. They have a symbiotic relationship.

Employers are, contrary to what you have implied, not permitted to band together to negotiate as a group. That is called wage fixing.

> What happens to the people that vote No?

I think this is what the difference between “right to work” states and not is. In “right to work” states, unions cannot stop someone from working at an employer. In non-right to work states, unions have more power to determine that, but I don’t understand how exactly.

Personally I find it pretty hard to reason through this. On one hand, right to work seems utterly reasonable, how can a third party tell an employer and employee that they can’t conduct business to their mutual satisfaction? But at the same time, it’s clear that right to work will gut unions. So if you feel that employers have too much power over employees and unions are a good answer to that, but also think it’s absurd to allow a third party to block an employment contract, then it seems like there are no options left.

Federal law allows for arrangements where employees can be required to join the union after being hired, or can choose to not join but have to pay the union a fee for their representation.

"Right-to-work" states change this and don't allow those arrangements: employees are free to not join and not pay.

The "closed shop," where only members of the union are hired, is illegal everywhere in the US under federal law.

Right.

- Closed shop - must belong to union to be hired. Outlawed in US in 1947.

- Union shop - must join union after being hired. Not allowed in right-to-work US states.

- Open shop - can optionally join union.

- Yellow-dog contract - forbidden to join union. Outlawed in US in 1932. Violated by some US employers.

US labor law dates from an era of strong unions, and basically outlines a set of rules under which management and labor can battle it out. Management won. In 1954, about 35% of US private sector workers belonged to a union. Today, that's about 6%. In Canada, 14% of private sector workers belong to a union today. In Germany, about 50%.

Yeah good luck working a job where everyone else is union and you’re not though, you’ll find your lunch missing and people will be total jerks to you at every possible turn…

> But at the same time, it’s clear that right to work will gut unions.

Not inherently. If a union is providing clear value to the employees, they'll presumably want to be a member. If an employee doesn't want to be a member, presumably they don't feel it provides them with commensurate value.

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