Labor unions are pushing hard for better pay and hours – and winning | Hacker News Reader

Labor unions are pushing hard for better pay and hours – and winning

cnbc.com

81 pointspg_1234166 comments

The real break will come when Amazon, WalMart, or McDonalds goes union nationally.

That became more likely with the new NLRB rule that employer violations of labor law during union organization forces either a quick election or the recognition of the union. Here's the view from a union-busting law firm.[1][2] They're worried.

[1] https://www.morganlewis.com/pubs/2023/08/new-nlrb-rules-favo...

[2] https://www.postal-reporter.com/blog/the-postal-services-uni...

There are many right to work states that don't force union membership.

Yeah, makes the union slightly weaker, while still keeping it a good deal. Better than refusing the union.

Companies can just relocate to right to work states which they have been doing.

Perpetual labor shortages due to structural demographics and the decline of conservatism due to the 55+ death rate means this will only work so long [1] [2].

[1] https://www.axios.com/2023/08/27/labor-shortages-air-traffic...

[2] https://www.businessinsider.com/baby-boomer-retirement-surge...

Then they'll move their factories overseas. Unions do not have a monopoly on workers.

Tariffs are an option as demographics tilt to the Left politically to encourage domestic workforce investment [1]. Capital and economic systems should serve humans, not make it straightforward exploitation for a few folks with big numbers in rows in a database [2].

China is rapidly decelerating economically because it got old so fast [3], and most of the world outside of India and Africa isn't far behind [4] [5]. TLDR Capitalism is running out of young productivity to squeeze for profits.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37052550

[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/18/the-wealthiest-10percent-of-...

[3] https://www.axios.com/2023/08/26/chinas-slow-moving-economic...

[4] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ageing-and-...

[5] https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/Series/Anal...

It's quite ironic that you say that "economic systems should serve humans" but then support "tariffs" which will significantly increase the cost of living for the aforementioned humans.

Those are two different groups of humans we are talking about.

Cheap labor benefits consumers - primarily older people who are using savings (workers get higher prices as well, but they also get higher wages, so they're likely to win on net). Tariffs benefit domestic industries at the expense [primarily] of the people on savings/fixed incomes.

How exactly are they getting higher wages if their union factory jobs are moved overseas?

The tariff is there to stop the factory from wanting to move overseas.

companies have been touting outsourcing across all industries as a solution and fear for decades. What makes it different this time?

Walmart is the largest employer in 21 states[0]. How would they exit operations in a state and still earn income from their brick and mortar stores in that state? Sure, they could move some centralized distribution centers if they're already kind of close to a convenient border, but for the most part they need the employees they have in each state because they're fundamentally a last-mile organization.

That said, NLRB/FTC/FCC/CFPB/etc regulatory rules are typically quickly reversed after presidents from opposing political parties take office. They are extremely weak on moderate timescales, compared to statutory legislation, which tends to stick around more often between shifts in power between parties.

0: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/walmart-nation-largest-empl...

> How would they exit operations in a state and still earn income from their brick and mortar stores in that state?

Sell a store to an independent operator who in turn hires workers, then sell goods to the independent operator, something like that.

In this hypothetical, communities would see the same effects as if Walmart chose not to exit. They would just shop and work at "Not-Walmart", same as the old Walmart.

Some might argue prices might increase due to an additional corporate layer, but then the question I would have is why wouldn't Walmart just raise the prices themselves and take those extra available profits for themselves? I'd assume Walmart is already doing what they can to maximize net profit.

> In this hypothetical, communities would see the same effects as if Walmart chose not to exit. They would just shop and work at "Not-Walmart", same as the old Walmart.

Not-Walmart is a different company that doesn't have a union, and if they should get one, actual Walmart can start selling goods to some different Not-Walmart who doesn't. Then Not-Walmart #2 drives Not-Walmart #1 out of business by offering lower prices if the union manages to increase Not-Walmart #1's labor costs.

After people have seen this happen they realize the union can't actually secure them more than the wages available in the free market without causing them to lose their jobs, so when they take a job at Not-Walmart #2 they wonder why they would want to spend time organizing another union and paying dues.

> Some might argue prices might increase due to an additional corporate layer, but then the question I would have is why wouldn't Walmart just raise the prices themselves and take those extra available profits for themselves?

These kinds of operations often have minimal overhead. Existing Walmart pays a salary to a store manager. Not-Walmart is owned by the person who would have been the store manager and makes "profit" equal to what Walmart would have had to pay in salary.

> Sell a store to an independent operator who in turn hires workers, then sell goods to the independent operator, something like that.

NLRB has recently ruled that in these cases you're still _employee of the parent company_ when it comes to companies using this as an anti-union tactic. It's very obvious to anyone when a company is actively using this as an anti-union tactic.

Is it obvious though?

Maybe it is when they turn the store they're "closing" into an "independent" store "owned" by the previous store manager who then enters into an exclusive purchasing contracts with the previous owner. But then they'll do the nearest thing which is less obvious.

How does a rule like that even work? If an independent store makes wholesale purchases from both Walmart and Target, are its employees supposed to be employees of Walmart or employees of Target?

When Walmart does it, as they're getting unionized, its obvious.

This is why ideally, this is supposed to have a few judges look at the realities of the case and the various (yes, including circumstantial) evidence to make a determination here.

The rules are don't try to get out of having a unionized employee base using _business tactics_. The example you gave is obvious that its not anti-union.

> When Walmart does it, as they're getting unionized, its obvious.

Does what? Make any change to their operations whatsoever?

Suppose they want to close the store while this is happening. Then they no longer have a local store, but they still have a logistics operation capable of supplying a store, so they solicit some other local store that wants to be supplied. That's exactly what you'd expect anyone to do who has a regional warehouse and no longer has a local store, regardless of anything happening with a union.

Is "it" supposed to be closing the store? Their underlying business model is to operate with low margins to keep prices down and make it up on volume. If their costs increase as a result of a union it could easily make the store unprofitable, or less profitable than the market value of the real estate (currently quite high), because then a competitor could undercut them on price. Are they obligated to keep operating an underperforming store forever?

I honestly don't get it. There is a prevailing local wage for retail workers, and customers are price sensitive. A union that only secures the prevailing wage is collecting dues and accomplishing nothing. A union that tries to non-trivially increase the labor costs at that store makes the store uncompetitive, so either the company finds a way to avoid that or they close the store. Neither of those is the union doing the workers any good.

For walmart it would be easy

1. Automation.. More Self Checkouts, more Kiosks, etc

2. Reduce local services. Many of them would become unprofitable anyway. This would be Deli, Custom Meat cutting, Fresh Meals, etc etc. This would be either outsourced or replaced with Regional Service servicing many stores to reduce head count

3. More Outsourcing. Manufacturers will stock their products on the shelfs not Walmart employees, Contractors will clean the stores not Walmart employee's, etc etc. Walmart will quickly become not the largest employer, and 100's of new small businesses that are likely under the threashold to be covered under these new laws will popup up to supply walmart with labor.

Some of this is already happening today as labor costs raise in the market, increase unionization will accelerate this.

A lot of the online chatter in the trades revolves around pay and working conditions. Right to work states pay way less (that’s the point) and have worse conditions.

Politics are rarely mentioned, but everyone knows there’s better work “up north”.

How is there "better" work when almost all of the new factories are opening in (or relocating to) right to work states? TSMC is opening the chip factories in Phoenix in a state that has right to work laws. Intel is opening one in Ohio, another right to work state. Samsung is opening their factory in Texas.

It would be interesting to see a breakdown of heavy industry vs. commercial vs. residential for tradespeople. Despite that I've worked extensively in manufacturing facilities for oil and gas / chemicals industries throughout the southern US, most of the electricians I know personally work in residential and commercial so I'm not sure they care where those new factories are being installed, as they won't be taking those contracts. All the ironworkers I know personally work on government contracts and commercial skyscrapers. At the same time, 100% of the union pipefitters and welders I know work in chemical plants.

I follow quite a few of the subreddits for trades (r/trades, r/electricians, etc) and I can say that GP's comment rings true there. But I work primarily in TX/Louisiana/Mississippi, and the sentiment among tradespeople here is highly variable. There's a lot keeping people where their families and friends are, and there's a great amount of distrust for any information which leads to a decision they don't want to make.

Generally in TX I've had better experiences in the Union facilities, but in Louisiana I've had better experiences in the non-union facilities. I haven't interacted with union labor at all in Mississippi.

I'm not sure relying on that will be a very effective strategy for companies in service industries. They need their labor to mostly be near where their customers are. It was effective with heavy manufacturing like automobiles, because you could move (or threaten to move) factories to right-to-work states, and supply the whole U.S from a small number of factories. But that model doesn't really apply to Starbucks.

No, Automation will Apply to starbucks...

I do not shop at starbucks but if they ever open a fully automated one I might...

"What really makes me want to spend my money with a company is when they can guarantee that no worker benefits from it" ???

If this is not what you're trying to say please clarify?

Well in stories like this I am reminded of the Viral Video of the Starbucks worker having a meltdown because they were asked to work gaaassssppp a 8hr shift, with only 5 other co-workers to help them........

I know the working conditions, and pay package offered by Starbucks, no one is suffering from systemic abuse there, they have more than enough benefits, and frankly their benefits priced Starbucks out for me, because I am not paying $7 for sugar water...

I have actually worked at starbucks and it's a far more difficult and degrading job, for far far less money, than the programming work I do now. I don't see what you gain by having contempt rather than solidarity for any workers.

Coming to think of it Starbucks is a great example to argue over since so many people have been college baristas or at least have a coffee addiction to defend.

I have also worked at a Starbucks and I disagree.

I never felt degraded. Their shift scheduling was and probably still is crazy inconsistent by default which is the only problem with them. For me it wasn’t that bad since as a student I simultaneously had lots of time on my hands, while also needed flexibility to not be at work whenever something school related comes up.

This would have been a big deal, had I a family to feed or if I required a set amount of money instead of just extra income. Starbucks isn’t really employment, it’s more like a gig like working an Uber.

If you need a flexible gig, it’s great.

The value of work is not tied to the physical effort involved in the work, this idea that if one "works harder" that means they should be paid more is naive and ignorant of modern society.

I have never contempt nor solidarity for any workers. I reject all forms of collectivism on principle and support forms of Voluntarism (philosophy), and Individualism.

I do have contempt of lazy, or entitled people that believe just because they were born they are entitled to things and should not have to work for food, housing, etc. That "necessities" should just be provided as if by magic.

Delightful, thanks.

No it isn't. If it were actually more difficult and degrading then Starbucks workers would be paid more than programmers and/or Starbucks wouldn't exist.

Working in a Starbucks is extremely easy compared to programming. You may find you enjoy programming and many of us are lucky to enjoy work that is in fact quite difficult, but take 100 people at random off the street and you will find that 100 of them can work in Starbucks given a few days training, no problem. The only ones who will be able to do any programming after a few days training are the ones who were already programmers.

> because I am not paying $7 for sugar water...

Judging by your comments upthread, you’ll be happy to pay $7 for sugar water, as long as that money stays out of the middle class. What, you though they’d lower prices when they automated?

No offense, I've had the misfortune of being inside several Starbucks in my life, yes an employee had a piercing or dyed hair or something, but you come across as the entitled person having a meltdown right now.

I go to a store for their products, not because of or in spite of the workers, and I assume most people do as well, otherwise there wouldn't be the amount of people who shop at Walmart as there are.

The current model of superconcentrating wealth among fewer and fewer individuals whilst everyone else gets screwed is not sustainable. This had to happen.

Rich people with GenAI workers: hold my beer

Now more than ever we need to fix the inequality before it spirals (more) out of control

On the contrary, this is the right time to floor the gas pedal and accelerate the process before a new norm gets established. The bigger the delta, the easier it will be to establish long-term changes that work for the 99% instead of prolonging feudalism.

What do you propose for these long term changes?

Government developed housing, improved infrastructure, ubi, universal healthcare, free tertiary and postgrad education for tax residents.

"This" isn't really happening.

You get 10% inflation and the union gets you a 7% raise (which you could have also gotten by switching jobs or threatening to in a non-union shop), and they claim to have done you a favor.

To actually fix it you need to break up concentrated industries and address the regulatory capture that enables them.

Or do something about cost disease -- the thing where work that could have been done by one person in one hour instead needs a chain of seven corporations with lawyers and administrators who each contribute overhead and take a vig, and then people can't afford anything because an hour's worth of labor only buys two minutes of "real work" from someone else.

You get 10% inflation and the union gets you a 7% raise , of which the union take 5% for "dues" if you are lucky, if you are unlucky, you get 10% inflation, the union gets you 7%, and takes 10%, so after unionized you are doing the same job for a reduction in purchasing power of 13%.

yea Unions

If the union was always taking 5% as their dues, then year over year, you still get 7%, no?

The union wasn't taking 5% as their dues before you had one, and getting a 7% raise against 10% inflation is the level of negotiating you can achieve as an individual who is not very good at it.

> the union gets you a 7% raise (which you could have also gotten by switching jobs

Fun fact: netting yourself a little associational bargaining power doesn't negate your job marketplace bargaining power! More leverage is more leverage. This becomes much clearer when we define a few terms:

> Contentions about the state of world labor are based on assumptions about the impact of contemporary globalization on workers' bargaining power. A useful starting point for differentiating types of workers' bargaining power is Erik Olin Wright's (2000: 962) distinction between associational and structural power. Associational power consists of "the various forms of power that result from the formation of collective organization of workers" (most importantly, trade unions and political parties). Structural power, in, contrast, consists of the power that accrues to workers "simply from their location... in the economic system." Wright further divides "structural" power into two subtypes. The first subtype of structural power (which we shall call marketplace bargaining power) is the power that "results directly from labor markets." The second subtype of structural power (which we shall call workplace bargaining power) is the power that results "from the strategic location of a particular group of workers within a key industrial sector."

> Marketplace bargaining power can take several forms including (1) the possession of scarce skills that are in demand by employers, (2) low levels of general unemployment, and (3) the ability of workers to pull out of the labor market entirely and survive on nonwage sources of income. Workplace bargaining power, on the other hand, accrues to workers who are enmeshed in tightly integrated production processes, where a localized work stoppage in a key node can cause disruptions on a much wider scale than the stoppage itself. Such bargaining power has been in evidence when entire assembly lines have been shut down by a stoppage in one segment of the line, and when entire corporations relying on the just-in-time delivery of parts have, been brought to a standstill by railway workers' strikes.

-- Beverly J. Silver, Forces of Labor

Do you have any data that says it's happening? I looked at wikipedia and in 2000 there was 470 billionares and now there are 2,640

I'm so happy for folks who have unions and have gained benefits. I know that in the Software Engineering space we think we're all ninja elite 100x rockstar developers and we don't want to get benefits.

I’m going to go down fighting keeping unions out of software. It’s the hill i’ll gladly die on.

You’re welcome to go work at a software union shop, like Boeing.

Writing low quality software that kills people, great job security even if you are at fault for peanut pay. I’ll take my non union job any day.

This was definitely written by Jeff Bezos on a burner account

That's fine, you can want to be treated like shit if you like it. I know I'd greatly prefer not being under draconian rules and getting things like OT pay so that when I'm forced to work 80-hour weeks I actually benefit from it. You do you.

Lol ok buddy. I guess i'm 'treated like shit' since I have to work 45 hours a week for my free coffee, food, massages, and large stock comp just so I can afford my giant house and tesla.

Boss gave you two Oreos instead of one and you think you're hot shit despite them taking thousands. Makes sense bucko.

I’m comparing my job to union jobs in software. You think unions are the answer. I know they aren’t.

What does my boss’s paycheck have to do with my argument? How does your comment convince me i’m not way better off than you and other union NPCs?

Oh, you're that kind of intellectually vapid person who says "NPCs". We're done here. Enjoy life.

Nothing like beating on the airplane to make your point, otherwise known as a mode of travel statistically safer than even merely walking.

I agree with your point, but there's a nit I like to pick when the statistics of airline safety comes up.

Comparing safety by deaths/injuries per distance travelled between different modes of transport does not make sense to me.

To prove the point imagine some hypothetical mode of travel that can take us to the nearest star - alpha centauri. Now imagine that 50% of people that travel via this mode of transport die, thats obviously not a risk anybody would be willing to take right? But if you use the same statistics as we use for aircraft safety it looks amazing, better than anything else by far.

Am I saying that aircraft are unsafe? Not at all - they're still very safe relative to other modes of transport, but the statistics that we commonly calculate to compare them seem totally meaningless to me. Comparing deaths per distance travelled only makes any sense when comparing modes of travel that actually go similar distances.

I also acknowledge that this is somewhat of a regional nitpick - it makes a lot more sense to compare aircraft with e.g. cars in the United States because taking an aircraft vs taking a car to travel between different states is actually a choice that many people are making. Whereas I live in a small country where there's very little overlap between aircraft trips and car trips.

> You’re welcome to go work at a software union shop, like Boeing.

> Writing low quality software that kills people, great job security even if you are at fault for peanut pay. I’ll take my non union job any day.

Boeing primarily manufactures and designs airplanes. The odds of dying while being a passenger on an airplane is about 1 in 200,000. Compare that to being a cyclist, which is 1 in 3,500. Or a pedestrian which is 1 in 485.

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/how-safe-is-flying-heres...

Putting your stupendously bad comparison aside, I'd say most software devs/programmers don't really need to unionise, aside from video game devs. 80+ hour work weeks, constant burn out, consistently underpaid compared to most other devs who just program boring line of business apps; they just get treated very poorly.

Engineers have always walked a fine line between labor and capital because while on one hand they own nothing and do not manage anybody, they are also individually valued and work directly within (in a sense being at the core of) the planning functions of companies.

If you can get laid off, then you're not capital.

Managers generally aren't part of unions because their job is to represent the interests of capital. I didn't invent it that's just how it has been for a hundred years.

CEOs have their own union, but they're called boards of directors. :-)

They sit around deciding each other's compensation and giving each other golden parachutes.

Allowing supervisors to be fired for union activity is one of the most insidious parts of the Taft-Hartley Act.

It has been very effective in creating disunity among workers -- which most managers definitely are.

But anyone can get laid off. CEOs get fired all the time, self employed contractors get fired from contracts. So then nobody is "capital". This is correct: the distinction between workers and capital doesn't exist outside of Marxist theory. We are all workers, and when we join or form companies, we are uniting.

> But anyone can get laid off. CEOs get fired all the time, self employed contractors get fired from contracts. So then nobody is "capital".

The owners of the business, e.g., the stockholders, are capital.

There is some overlap, because employees can be compensated in stock, especially CEOs. The crucial difference is that when an employee is fired, they stop making a salary from the company, and they stop having any power in the company, whereas stockholders cannot be fired, and they continue making money from the company and having voting rights no matter what.

But then you're trying to draw a binary distinction when some (many) people are both. The CEO is neither capital nor a worker in this scheme, or they could be both.

I just explained the nuance in my previous comment, so I'm not sure what you're still confused about.

It is true that the interests of the CEO and the interests of the owners do not necessarily align. This is exactly why CEO compensation is often in stock: the theory is that if CEOs are compensated in stock, then their interests will align more closely with the interests of the stockholders.

Still, CEOs can be fired at any time, so they need to look out for themselves, and CEOs do have a kind of union, because they often sit together on the boards of directors of companies, and of course the boards of directors decide on CEO compensation (a massive conflict of interest). This is why CEOs often get massive golden parachutes: it's CEOs protecting other CEOs.

Even including the CEO, though, current employees typically own only a very small % of a corporation's total stock, which is exactly why they can be fired.

I'm struggling with this distinction between workers and capital, when it seems to me that almost always there's no actual difference. Even if we take pure shareholders who aren't also employees, in practice, basically all of those shareholders will themselves be employees of funds of various kinds, and thus fireable. People who are pure private shareholders and literally answer to no-one, is possible e.g. Bill Gates and other philanthropists, but they're an extreme edge case and indeed most of them seem to spend their time giving away money to people who otherwise might struggle to find work, like researchers, so it's hard to view this type of "capital" as exploiting the workers.

If you think there's almost always no actual difference, consider this: in the United States, the richest 10% of all households own >70% of the country's wealth. The richest 1% own 35% of the country's wealth.

The rest of the population may own some stock, but it's a pittance relative to the capitalist class. We're not running the show.

Regarding Bill Gates, he acquired his wealth by exploiting workers, not to mention everyone else, engaging in illegal monopolistic practices. Moreover, he's even wealthier now than he was before retiring from Microsoft and claiming to want to give most of his wealth away. And he's 67 years old, time's a wastin'. The problem is that wealth begets wealth. Gates doesn't even have to work to continue to accumulate wealth, so much so that he can't seem to give away money faster than he makes it.

That's the essential difference: having to work for your money vs. having your money (and also everyone else) work for you.

in classical manufacturing though, most engineers have to work together with tool and die makers to actually produce the tooling to create the product.

The guys actually physically building the tooling you designed to build a product are definitely unionized, and have been for a very long time.

Right, plus their bosses are definitely not unionized, so there's that fine line between labor and capital.

> we don't want to get benefits.

Software engineers are the most coddled bunch out there. Our benefits are so far beyond the pale it’s embarrassing.

Seriously, like big tech has like 6 month standard paternity packages now. Try getting that at any other career in the USA.

Most developers don't work for big tech. Y'all in that SV bubble.

I have a pretty awful view of this:

In the less complex jobs, they struggle to get things like paternity leave and time off. We have those. We should be looking at those ridiculous things we think we don't deserve and organizing to get them. We could be a leading example for the industries that come behind us.

Paid time off is common in softwareland. Let's make it mandatory "you must take 4 weeks off minimum a year". We know "unlimited time off" is a guilt-tripping farce.

If 1 software dev can add billions of dollars of value to a company, we should be getting these ridiculous things. These things that seem like coddling us. Maybe even a formula for "if i added x% profit, I deserve y% of that"

I think hollywood is ahead of us on compensation formulas imo.

We can't do Hollywood style compensation because we rely on actually functional computers which are obviously incapable of Hollywood math.

More seriously, we need to make sure the entire team is getting the goodies. Even your fairy-tale 1000x developers depend on good ops/infrastructure, support and QA and clever management; if they can only hire on McStaff warm bodies, they're massively hobbling those "ridiculously compensated" devs.

> We know "unlimited time off" is a guilt-tripping farce

Alternately, treat minimum time off like accountants. One cannot cook the books alone indefinitely if there's a week you're not there and somebody else has to do your job. Similarly, only having one guy that can fix specific issues that nobody else can touch means your sprawling Fortune 500 has a bus factor of 1 - which even executives can see is not smart business.

>One cannot cook the books alone indefinitely if there's a week you're not there and somebody else has to do your job.

Oh well, they deal with that when they layoff people to get 2% lower expenses for earning's call. Why should I care about a bus factor if the company doesn't?

You are not selling unions very well: why would I want mandatory time off? If I want time off I will take it, my coworkers taking or not taking it does not concern me a single bit. More so, being forced to take time off is not a benefit for me, at my current work there is no PTO accrual so I feel forced to take time off and it's not ideal, other benefits are good enough to outweigh this but with everything equal I'd choose some place where I could cash out time off over the one where I can accumulate multiple months of time off over the one where I have to use-it-or-lose-it.

There are many such policies in a union, ask anybody who is a member of one and nobody is happy with all the policies of the union. Not to mention people who want to start a career and cannot even join the union (hello SAG) and cannot get a job because they are not in the union.

>why would I want mandatory time off?

because even with "unlimited time off" it is a herculean task to get a long vacation approved. And without those plans, accrued time off is lucky to hit 2 weeks a year. So I have to not be sick or have emergencies for 2 years straight to get what is normal in the EU?

It's easier to force mandatory vacation than go through all that. US as a whole has horrible days off policies and I'd happily take some mandatory vacation. You are even free to use it to research stuff if you really want to get ahead or whatever.

> I'd choose some place where I could cash out time off over the one where I can accumulate multiple months of time off over the one where I have to use-it-or-lose-it.

Where are you where you can accumulate "months of time off"? Every plan I've had had max accruals of anywhere from 14-28 days. You literally hit a point where you have to use it, and this is after multiple years of accrual, not a single year.

There are alternatives I listed, the choice is not between "unlimited time off" and "mandatory". "Unlimited time off" would probably stand beneath "use-it-or-lose-it" in my evaluation because with the latter I'd be able to collect my PTO balance upon resignation.

>And without those plans, accrued time off is lucky to hit 2 weeks a year.

I never had less than 20 days (4 weeks) PTO, not counting holidays and Christmas lockdown and since I did not bother to negotiate any special PTO, I believe thousands upon thousands of my coworkers had the same luck.

>So I have to not be sick or have emergencies for 2 years straight to get what is normal in the EU?

I believe if you took a SWE job for what the normal in EU you could have also negotiated 10 weeks of PTO on top of that.

>It's easier to force mandatory vacation than go through all that.

It might be easier that that, whatever that is, but it's not desirable for me.

>Where are you where you can accumulate "months of time off"?

In the last TNC where I worked, I cashed out over two months of PTO (it capped over 40 days, 380 hours or some strange number like that) when I resigned.

>Every plan I've had had max accruals of anywhere from 14-28 days

So? If PTO is so important to you just make it a condition of your employment, it's just money for the employer, take more PTO, take less other comp. It's as same as if it had been made mandatory except people who are not interested in long vacations can have cash instead.

>I never had less than 20 days (4 weeks) PTO, not counting holidays and Christmas lockdown and since I did not bother to negotiate any special PTO, I believe thousands upon thousands of my coworkers had the same luck.

I guess it's simply a problem of my industry if that's the case (you can probably guess it at this point). Or you found some extraordinary workforce, perhaps ones not based in the US.

>If PTO is so important to you just make it a condition of your employment,

I'd love for a $400k salary to be a condition too, but life is full of compromises. I simply haven't seen such deals in my industry, except for ones not based in the US, of course. I still have growth/networking plans for long term goals, so I'd rather not leave my industry just yet.

however, my industry also has horrible work conditions in general, so even if I do have a long term exit plan, I'd love for others to not go through my cruddy benefits. So I'm still all for a union.

I am talking about my employment as a SWE in various private and public businesses in the US since it's the topic of this HN post.

>I'd love for a $400k salary to be a condition too, but life is full of compromises. I simply haven't seen such deals in my industry,

I am not sure what your industry is, but in this particular thread the discussion is about programmers, and why they need a union to force mandatory 4 weeks off on everyone. If your industry is so bad that you cannot even trade PTO for your cash compensation then you might be better with unions, I don't know what industry that is and, obviously, I am not employed there.

I'm viewing software engineers like FAA pilots, where they must have a certain minimum amount of time between shifts so they can't [necessarily] be exhausted. But that's pertaining to long shifts. In softwareland I'm used to seeing folks who are poor at recognizing their own fatigue. I understand there are some that do not want time away, but I'd say considering the impact of our work it'd be important to mandate time away. Maybe that's reaching, but I'm looking at it from a safety aspect and the potential to do harm if you're not careful/cognizant due to long hours and extended months of work to beat deadlines. Depends on the area you're working in, I'm sure - but it's a ridiculous thing I'd love to be commonplace. Paid time away: 4 weeks minimum that you must exercise. Doesn't have to be contiguous.

You're saying your work doesn't have PTO accrual: There's another thing we should lobby for.

How many times has productivity doubled since the industrial revolution? I would love the tech world to stand still for a time so we can demand these things that seem ridiculous, because we've been succumbed to wage slavery. Even that sounds odd: Software wage slavery - puh-lease, right? Except few things have expanded the economy of several nations in the world like software, like tech. We should be much more demanding.

</harp>

And this is exactly why people fight with unions. It's not just they don't give benefits, they enable people who think they know better than oneself what one needs. In the USSR they had mandatory daily calisthenics for workers, so they would "stay healthy". With the current level of busybodies arrogance I won't be completely surprised if unions will do that too. Or ban parking lots so programmers "exercise" by biking to work, also a popular trope on HN etc. etc.

To get people on-board union organizers would need to come up with some real benefits that people would want from unions, not with what organizers themselves want.

>There's another thing we should lobby for.

Your mandatory 4 weeks off is mutually exclusive with PTO accrual, you do understand that?

I think very much you're an outlier. Rampant fatigue in the tech sector is a huge problem.

I do not see how mandatory 4 weeks off (paid) are mutually exclusive with PTO accrual. In my own corner, I've been elected to a board to represent other employees. Something we're lobbying for is a certain minimum of mandatory paid leave - as well as circumstances where being overworked would accrue additional time. Am I mixing up terms?

Something we're trying to cut down on is 7 days a week, 14-hour days. We've attacked this from a cost point of view if we can't get leadership to understand the humanitarian need. We're now putting it in policy that working lengthy hours will accrue paid (admin) leave. So the supervisor ultimately hurts themselves authorizing so much overtime. They will have to settle the books, and lose that person for their minimum and accrued time.

PTO accrual: you have a PTO balance, which you can spend as you wish and which is filled by a certain number of PTO hours each pay period.

Mandatory 4 weeks: you have to take 4 weeks off each year. You cannot spend your PTO as you wish.

In my case I don't have accrual, my PTO balance is reset every 1st of January, if I have any days left, they are "gone". I get the same balance of Jan 1st if I had 30 days of PTO on Dec 31st and if I had 0 days. It's not ideal but still is better than mandatory time off as I still have a choice to let the PTO "burn".

As far as me being an outlier I think you just get industry experience from reddit and have not worked much. Wherever I worked managers sent emails with dozens of names on the cc: regarding PTO balance reaching cap, there were always giant threads whenever HR posted about PTO cash out or cap change polices etc. If people starved for PTO that would not have been happening.

UPS drivers just negotiated $150k TC by the end of five years. That's for unskilled labor.

Think about how much additional profit highly skilled engineers could capture from company owners if we negotiated as team against the organized team that company owners pay for.

Negotiating as an individual against a full time team seems nuts.

Why leave so much profit on the table? For what good reason?

In 2022 only about 12% of those employed in the US were part of a union...so you are pretty far off from being the only one not 'gaining benefits'.

I never claimed exclusivity in being treated poorly as labor.

The part I've been trying to explain to coworkers is that the union isn't just for software engineers at the company, but for the support staff as well. We have it good but I have seen support and sales staff get bullied pretty hard.

Sure you might not even get a raise with a union, but perhaps those same benefits of remote work when needed, unlimited vacation, and an hour lunch can be extended to every worker at the company.

The most expensive workers teaming up with the least expensive to give them more power is a good thing, I think.

Funny enough, that's probably the worst way to convince engineers due to the belief that is rooted in this field which is both rockstar qualities and a false sense of security due to companies (so far) overpaying to reduce talent pools. So bringing up support staff and sales usually results in the mindset that they should just switch fields.

Instead talk about sports unions, like the NFL Player Association, and that usually gets them re-evaluating all they've been previously understanding about unions.

Funny how proponents have to talk about sports or actors' unions to sell developer unionization because we aren't sports players or screen actors. Try talking about what actual engineering unions do instead, like the SPEEA.

(Frankly, I can't think of any unions of engineering professions aside from the SPEEA in the US and I couldn't find any in a casual Google search. Anyone know of any? And if there aren't any, well, people might want to think really hard about why.)

> And if there aren't any, well, people might want to think really hard about why.

The Conservative's demonization of unions for the last several decades seems to have worked quite well.

And I've seen support and sales staff bully software engineers, often for being too white or male for their liking. So they should unionize on our behalf, for fairness and justice?

Software engineers often have a strange attitude, thinking they don't need unions, when pro athletes who make $millions per year all have unions. There's a myth that with unions, everyone will make the same compensation, but that's not even remotely true in pro sports.

The reason to have a union is that no matter how much money you make, the owners of the business have more money and power. Collective bargaining is a counterweight to the power of ownership.

And it's not just about money, it's about working conditions. For example, labor unions could fight back against back-to-the-office demands, whereas without a union, employees are forced to individually consent or lose their job.

A union turns into a guild fast. I don't want programming to be monopoly of people with a degree, slave to the cartel's rule, programming is a human right and it must remain absolutely free!

A programmers union is too dangerous in this world, especially in these times

What evidence is there that unions turn into guilds? There were more guilds in preindustrial times and modern unions haven't become guilds.

I view unions like i view government. It's possible, sometimes likely, that a government becomes a horrid entity for control over people.

However. Governments, and perhaps Unions, are by definition (correct me if i'm wrong?) an entity that is by the people and for the people. Some for-profit company or individual has no ethical obligation to treat workers correctly, fairly, etc. So if we remove unions and government, what power do individual people have?

To that idea then, people need a gov/union to have a voice - but govs and unions also need to be built with an extreme attention to oversight. Which we usually fail to implement correctly. Nevertheless it's the only tool we have - to give individuals power by distributing agreement. So to me the question isn't for or against gov/union, but rather how we can build them to scale and last. Especially in the face of pressure to corrupt.

Happy to hear opinions on where this is wrong, though.

> Governments, and perhaps Unions, are by definition (correct me if i'm wrong?) an entity that is by the people and for the people

I never heard of this definition for unions! Unions definitely aren't for or by "the people", that would mean everyone. Unions are - by definition - a group of arbitrarily defined "workers" lined up to fight the "management", another somewhat arbitrary group. They are inherently exclusionary and divisive.

Unless you're a communist, in which case you think managers, company founders, shopkeepers, farmers etc aren't really people.

Not sure i follow.

> a group of arbitrarily defined "workers" lined up to fight the "management", another somewhat arbitrary group. They are inherently exclusionary and divisive.

So is _any_ group but "all". "For the people" doesn't literally mean "all people". Government would also not be "for the people" by your definition, given that we have no (real) global government.

If we get together and form a union, ie our joint effort towards a common goal, have we not formed an entity for the people (us), by the people (us)?

Your argument seems odd. "But it's not for everyone" is.. well, yea - nothing is. Literally. What can you say that is "everyone"?

> programming is a human right and it must remain absolutely free!

Weird statement. No one is trying to stop you from programming. They are talking about credentials to be employed professionally.

Nobody is forced to buy work from someone, but with a State sanctioned cartel you are forced to buy from the cartel instead than from whomever you want.

The weird statement is yours when you say they don't stop me from programming. They do!

Well us software engineers can look at some of the ways that unions are run, and decide for ourselves if we like those "benefits".

For example, seniority requirements and enforced degree or qualification requirements don't sound like something I would want, nor would the many other software engineers like myself who didn't go through the "proper" path of getting a CS degree.

Degrees are not a requirement for unions, and most unions try and foster apprenticeship models. Additionally, seniority benefits/protections would be huge for our industry as there is a lot of rampant ageism and young, naive workaholics.

> and most unions try and foster apprenticeship models

This is exactly the problem I am talking about. This is a barrier to entry. Instead of being allowed to just apply for a job, and accepting it, you have to "do you time" in a low paid apprenticeship, due to contract requirements that are setup or lobbied for by these unions or guilds.

This puts up a barrier to entry to new people wanting to join, because union members want to reduce competition.

I am not just talking about degree requirements. Instead, I am talking about any barrier to entry. Unions have a very real and logical reason to put up barriers to entry. It reduces the supply of labor and increases prices for existing members, at the expense of people trying to break into the industry.

There's a lot of stuff you will learn in an apprenticeship that a lot of folks in our industry miss or skip, like soft skills, teamwork, risk/reward, effort/value, etc. I personally think everyone should be required to spend a year or two in tech support hell, or understand why a senior person thinks and researches before they start writing code, for instance.

You say barriers to entry, I say putting in the time to ensure you're someone I want to work with in the future.

> I personally think everyone should be required to spend a year

Ok fine. You are free to say that you want barriers to entry and want to prevent people from getting jobs, by making them do all this other stuff.

But other people like me do not want that. We do not want to be forced by a union to do all these things, and instead want to be able to negotiate on our own to get a job.

Unions should not get in this way of this.

And there are a whole lot of other people, just like me, who would never have been able to get into the industry if we were forced to jump through all these hoops and we will not support organizations that pull up the ladder behind us.

> You say barriers to entry, I say putting in the time to ensure you're someone I want to work with in the future.

Its funny how you are almost directly contradicting your previous statements here.

Previously, you tried to argue that degree requirements, or other barriers to entry are not a thing. And now you are giving reason why you actually support those requirements?

Do you not see the direct contradiction that you made in like 2 posts?

Instead of that, you should have started off by saying "Yes I want there to be requirements, enforced by a union. I want you to be required to get a degree or do an apprenticeship, or a number of other things/ insert random thing X".

But you didn't do that. Instead, you disagreed with my factual claim that there are requirements, which you have immediately now backed off from without admitting that your original statement was wrong.

> A union being an unrelated 3rd party should have no say in that kind of business arrangement.

A union is, in fact, a related second party. It is comprised of employees of that employer. You seem to be under a grave misunderstanding of what a union is. I recommend learning about what they are and put the koolaid down.

There is already a loose, undefined apprenticeship system in technology with the intern/junior roles. With a union, the pathway would be more defined, not required a college degree, and folks would get paid fairly and not have to job hop to get a raise. We'd also open access/be more inclusive by formally removing the need for college degrees and the HR "must have 15 years of rust experience" shenanigans.

We might even get real engineer licensing programs and become an accountable part of society...!

> With a union, the pathway would be more defined

By defined you mean requires as per the contract or even the law.

Yeah, no. We do not want to be forced into your requirements.

And we will fight and sabotage all of these efforts, because we know what it is that you are advocating for, and we will not pull up the ladder behind us.

Fortunately, the anti union side is winning in the tech industry, and those who want enforced barriers to entry are losing so much that none of this is even a real conversation in the industry right now.

> We might even get real engineer licensing programs

So literal legal requirements. Yes this is what us anti union people want to prevent.

This is why you will never has us on board. Because when your mask comes off, and people are actually honest about what they want implemented, it becomes clear that it was always exactly the stuff that we were trying to prevent.

Everything you say here, I agree with the sibling. I would not want to be in a field that has the requirements you're talking about. It is precisely why I joined a computer science major and job and not a computer engineering one.

> "...seniority benefits/protections would be huge for our industry as there is a lot of rampant ageism and young naive work alcoholics."

Already trying to lock out the young, energetic, and ambitious using seniority systems? At least you're honest about it.

If you're young and you're considering supporting unionization for developers, keep in mind that people like the parent poster are your future seniors. They're marketing unionization to you to secure their own jobs (which developers who are at least average shouldn't even need to worry about) and then maybe yours as a secondary consideration.

[EDIT] I came across an example of the layoff selection process for SPEEA, a union of aerospace engineers, from https://m.kuow.org/stories/boeing-layoffs

"At SPEEA, the process is different. Engineers are assigned a ranking by their managers based on their perception of their ability.

One is the top rank, 3 is the lowest: new workers are a 3. When there are layoffs, 3s go first. An engineer must work 20 years before they are at least partially shielded from the ranking system. At 20 years, an engineer ranked a 3 gets bumped to a 2. As cuts get deeper they push into the higher ranks."

Can't say I'm too enthused about long-termers getting partially shielded from ranking since some of them are likely to be deadwood.

I don't know what causes folks like you to be so selfish and short sighted. You're going to be a long-termer someday (or you'll be in management and work towards exploiting union folks). Your life shouldn't revolve around work. Having the peace of mind of being shielded from layoffs because you've been working for 20+ years is huge. Hot shot developers and the rugged individualism doesn't jive with human life--most of us want to work to live not live to work.

But you're not preventing layoffs, you're guaranteeing that they happen to recent employees, who rightly do not prefer this.

The same also makes it more expensive for you to switch jobs (you lose your seniority), which reduces your negotiating leverage.

> enforced degree or qualification requirements don't sound like something I would want, nor would the many other software engineers like myself who didn't go through the "proper" path of getting a CS degree.

I don't have a CS degree either, and I'm not sure why you think labor unions would impose them? Degree requirements come from the company, not from the employees.

> I don't have a CS degree either, and I'm not sure why you think labor unions would impose them?

Labor organizations lobby for qualifications because it helps people who have them of course.

Additional requirements lower the supply of labor, and therefore increase wages for people who have those qualifications.

An example of a similar union where this is done is in the screen actors guild. They don't just let anyone in. Instead, they require you to do a certain amount of work before you are allowed to join.

The catch-22 of course, is that the union screen actors guild contracts prevent all but a minimal amount of non-union jobs on a certain production, therefore putting up barriers to entry for new people wanting to join the industry.

You need to be in the actors guild to be able to work in the industry, and you can't get into the actors guild unless you've already worked as an actor! Catch 22.

It all makes perfect sense for the goal of a union to be to decrease the labor supply, thereby helping the existing members.

I'm sure other people can come up with similar examples.

I believe that you are misinformed. Non-members of the union can audition for and get union jobs, and they can work union jobs for up to 30 days before having to join the union. Eligibility to join the union comes after 3 days as a background actor in a union job or 1 day in a speaking role in a union job.

> I'm not sure why you think labor unions would impose them

Because unions have often in the past imposed various credentialling requirements, followed by quotas on the credentials given, as a way to push up wages.

For example the UK health system is wrecked by this. Medical unions insist on very low numbers of school places, too low to meet demand, so the government is forced to rely on immigration to fill the gaps. The unions love this because they're all overtly left wing organizations and want mass migration, also they see immigrants as free Labour voters. But being unable to actually train sufficient doctors is a bad place for the country to be in.

As a US citizen, I have no knowledge of UK medical unions. However, if the only example you can cite is from the UK, then it shows the practice is not common. Moreover, the UK health system is socialized, so it isn't a free market in the first place.

I think most software engineers are a little uncomfortable with the whole arrangement of employment to begin with, and any backlash against unions is the backlash from having to face this somewhat subservient reality. The origin story of getting a computer, some library books, and spending 10,000 hours alone with your computer seems pretty common. With that mental model, why would you want someone who isn't a software engineer interfering with your career? You built it yourself, and you don't need any help. I think that's where the attitude comes from, and it's probably something worth talking yourself out of. (Nobody is discounting their hard work, but the more BS other people deal with, the more time you can spend alone with your text editor.)

The other thing that people probably worry about are protecting the net negative members on the team. Those that make more work for the team, derail meetings, block things from being submitted, etc. Nobody wants to hear "well our contract doesn't allow us to fire them".

Like all engineering, there isn't a solution with no downsides.

I think unions deserve serious consideration. Our working conditions are not perfect (know any software engineers with wrist problems, back problems, or sleep apnea?). Our benefits are not perfect (love being forced to take a mandatory vacation every year paid out of my personal vacation balance). And, we have pretty much zero sway among the government. (Do you think that if attorneys were paid in illiquid shares that every time you received them, you'd have to send a hand-signed letter to the IRS?) There is certainly something to be gained; software prints money, and the people that make it deserve their fair share.

Even on HN, commenters are shocked by the FAANG salaries, but you know lots of people are making way more money. Someone just paid $7M for the two story house behind my apartment. I'm guessing they're not a couple of software engineers. Why is that? Is it because we self-sabotage? Is there not that much money in software after all?

Someone should look into all of this, but as long as we see ourselves as individuals and not a group, we will be easy to ignore.

(Uh oh, now I sound like a communist.)

> Our working conditions are not perfect (know any software engineers with wrist problems, back problems, or sleep apnea?). Our benefits are not perfect (love being forced to take a mandatory vacation every year paid out of my personal vacation balance).

Are these not things you would expect to be able to negotiate on your own? Who are you working for that would rather lose you as an employee than provide you with an ergonomic keyboard?

> And, we have pretty much zero sway among the government. (Do you think that if attorneys were paid in illiquid shares that every time you received them, you'd have to send a hand-signed letter to the IRS?)

This is the most significant thing that unions actually do, but it seems weird to bring them in for the things they're "supposed to do" (negotiating with employers), when you don't really want that (they protect bad team members), because what you really want is something else.

And in that role a union doesn't really fit here, because you have interests shared with people who wouldn't be in it. Even if you have the same legislative goals as every other software developer, what sense does it make to unionize your own tiny startup or small business, or some entity which is already majority-owned by the employees?

Maybe what software developers need is not a union, but a PAC?

>employees are forced to individually consent or lose their job.

that's the thing, software workers are used to just walking away, because their skills are versatile and demand is high. A national level athlete can also simply retire on a few year's funds (or hell, sell themselves as an influencer. You don't think a youtube channel alone of LeBron wouldn't generate a 6k income from weekly "advice"?), but they tend to have a competitive drive to stay in the game, literally. You don't grind your entire childhood's physique away because you're gambling on the chance you retire at 30 (even if that is the most likely thing to happen due to injuries).

To be frank, the vibe I get from the internet seems to be that a lot of SWE's are indeed minmaxing to get out of the workforce ASAP.

> that's the thing, software workers are used to just walking away, because their skills are versatile and demand is high.

But walking away voluntarily is different from having to walk away because your employer gives you an ultimatum. Especially when you're facing a market that has been hit by mass layoffs by many tech companies, and especially if you're looking specifically for a WFH job when many companies are demanding return to the office, precisely reason you'd be walking away in the first place.

>But walking away voluntarily is different from having to walk away because your employer gives you an ultimatum.

Is there a real difference between walking away due to an ultimatum and walking away due to the prospect of better pay or work conditions? Especially in the case where you started pre-pandemic and technically WFH was never indefinitely promised?

Either way, you are voluntarily choosing to seek a better job with better work conditions. The only difference is that you may not be able to be as covert in the ultimatum situation.

> the prospect of better pay or work conditions

> to seek a better job with better work conditions

> The only difference is that you may not be able to be as covert in the ultimatum situation.

The words you use here are interesting: "the prospect", "to seek".

The only difference is that you may not be able to find a better job with better work conditions if you're operating under the gun of unemployment and in a significantly worse job market.

When you leave voluntarily, it's because you've already found a new job. You're operating from a position of strength and proactivity, not weakness and reactivity.

> technically WFH was never indefinitely promised

It some cases it was indefinitely promised, and then employers broke the promise.

Low wages result in economic stagnation. Just compare California to Germany for an example. Here in Germany, we have unions that put job security above all else including wages. And employers that offer job security as a perk rather than offering higher wages. Result: an over burdened middle class, little innovation and a stagnant economy.

One can even just look at California itself to make this example as there are very high levels of inequality there. You certainly see compensation rise astronomically in some industries in California and an overall increase of state GDP, but at the same time, other industries do not see such rises in lock step with inflation brought on by more fortunate groups, and as a result the working class are severely rent burdened and lack a means to save or pay down debt. Its like there are two economies. There is the economy about large numbers, GDPs, market caps, stock option compensation packages, increasing real estate returns. Then there is the real world economy. People selling elote on the street. People working in convenience stores. People driving pickup trucks full of tools. People looking for the cheapest rent they can find. People going to night school at a community college. It seems that the former is only able to grow so much at the expense of keeping it out of the hands of the latter.

16% of Germans[0] and 16% of Californians[1] are in a union. 7% of Mississippians[2] are in a union.

Mississippi vs. California is also interesting. Mississippi has far less participation in unions (7% vs 16%) and much less regulation for employers to follow. Overall Mississippi looks like one of the best places in the USA for employers in terms of an accommodating regulatory environment. However, personal outcomes in Mississippi are languishing compared to even Germany! Let alone compared to California.

You chose an interesting two geographies to compare/contrast. It looks like 16-17% of Californians are in a union. It also looks like 16-17% of Germans are in a union. Perhaps it’s not the degree of union participation which drives differences in economic opportunity between these regions!

0: https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=TUD

1: https://www.bls.gov/regions/west/news-release/unionmembershi....

2: https://stacker.com/mississippi/see-how-much-mississippis-wo...

Mississippi, being the poorest state in the union, is as rich as Germany (GDP/capita).

Median income in Germany was $32,133 the most recent year for which OECD has data (2019)[0]. Median income in Mississippi was $24,509 in 2019[1]. Mississippi uses an unusual amount of slave labor (legally, of course) to generate that GDP with fully 1% of their population in prisons.

Personally, having spent time in both Mississippi and Germany, I think quality of life is higher is Mississippi for some people, and it is higher in Germany for other people. If you are wealthy enough to own land, get medical care out of state, and enjoy semi-rural living (it has some decent city life but if you like that there are better places to live), Mississippi offers a lot. If you like great schools and walkable cities, Germany can be pretty great, though it helps greatly to learn the language.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income#cite_note-3

1: https://datacommons.org/place/geoId/28/?utm_medium=explore&m...

GDP/capita typically measures economic wealth and is typically used to compared economies. "Median income" does not account for cost of living which can explain how Mississippi can have a higher quality of life despite a lower median income.

> GDP/capita typically measures economic wealth and is typically used to compared economies.

I believed that the top level comment of 'mustafa_pasi was more focused on the effects of unions on employee outcomes, rather than on national-level outcomes. So I chose to continue that. Perhaps I was wrong. If we're asking the question: "Should I, as a selfish individual, support increasing unionization?" we can come to a different conclusion than "Should I, as a massively powerful national leader entrusted with the perpetuation of my nation and its ability to deal with existential threats, support increasing unionization?"

> "Median income" does not account for cost of living.

In this case it does, as the numbers I gave been adjusted for purchasing power parity.

It wasn't meant to be snarky and I apologize if it came off that way. Median income doesn't account for federal and state benefits and other non-income compensation like food stamps, housing assistance, medicare, medicaid and child tax credits. GDP/capita (PPP) is what economists use to compare wealth.

> GDP/capita (PPP) is what economists use to compare wealth.

I agree this makes sense if you're comparing "What could a nation do with its wealth?", which is a question that economists are often tasked with. But it makes less sense to use GDP if you're comparing "What is the economic outcome of a typical individual in that society?"

GDP (total, possibly adjusted for PPP) makes sense if you'd like to know roughly how much a nation could contribute in war materiel to an existential crisis.

GDP (per capita, usually adjusted for PPP) makes sense if you'd like to know roughly how much infrastructure (schools/healthcare/etc) a nation could choose to build out for its citizens.

For me though if I'm asking the question "how comfortable are hypothetical young adults going to be in a nation?" (how comfortable would my children be?) I still feel like median income, adjusted for purchasing power parity, makes a lot of sense towards answering that question. Otherwise, to "economists", is median income just a useless metric which offers no insight at all? Why do they spend so much effort tracking it for so many different geographies? This could be interpreted as an "appeal to authority" fallacy but I'd like to know -- if I'm using the metric wrong, how should I be using it?

Median income only makes sense if cost of living is the same but it's not. The median house price in Germany is $410,000 and the median one in Mississippi is $254,900. It would be easier to afford a home in Mississippi with a $24.5k income than one in Germany with a $32.1k income. This is not accounting for other subsidies too like I mentioned.

Meanwhile the average rent in Germany is roughly $900/month while it's over $1,000/month in Mississippi. Personally I thought that Purchasing Power Parity attempted to adjust for regional differences in costs - obviously it heavily depends on your "personal" basket which is why I'm focused on "the typical citizen growing up in this area".

What am I supposed to be using median income for? If "GDP/capita (PPP) is what economists use to compare wealth", as you say, then what do those same economists that you're talking about use median income metrics for? I accept that I might be using median income wrong, but I'm curious what using it "right" looks like.

Good catch. You're right that rent is cheaper in Germany than Mississippi, which I did not know.

> GDP/capita typically measures economic wealth and is typically used to compared economies.

It measures total output, not quality of life for most people. Median income (when adjusted for PPP) is a better indicator of the latter.

> "Median income" does not account for cost of living

Using real median income accounts for that across time (for inflation), and using purchasing power parity (PPP) accounts for it across space (addressing different regional cost levels.)

Median income is not an objective measure to compare wealth. Again as I said below, it does not take into account non-income based compensation like food stamps, housing assistance or child tax credits. For example, Medicaid compensation for example is 3x of than the equivalent in Germany.

> Median income is not an objective measure to compare wealth.

It is an objective measure, it is not (and neither is GDP/capita) a measure of wealth. Both are income measures, not wealth measures.

> it does not take into account non-income based compensation like food stamps, housing assistance or child tax credits

It can, when it is net of taxes and transfers, which is a fairly common stat (OECD uses it for comparisons, specifically becuase tax and benefit distribution varies considerably among OECD members.) But whether it is or isn’t is orthogonal to whether it is an objective measure, though it is releavnt to how good of a measure it is for various purposes (but for comparing common lifestyle, its better than GDP/capita, which doesn’t capture any aspect of distribution, in any case.)

> For example, Medicaid compensation for example is 3x of than the equivalent in Germany.

The US having ludicrously higher medical costs than Germany without better outcomes doesn't make government medical coverage for the indigent in the US better than for those covered than similar coverage in Germany. Might make it somewhat better for the healthcare providers receiving the compensation, I guess.

But unions are not all the same. And I was not trying to make a point about union membership at all. I was rather lamenting economic policy. Some economists and some industrialists believe in keeping wages low to remain competitive. This thinking is present in Germany but (it seems to me) that it is less present in California. In my opinion, the long term economic effect of low wages is economic stagnation, even if you might remain economically competitive on the world stage. Eventually the rest of the world would move on and whatever role you were filling would disappear anyway.

This seems like a reasonable take on the situation. I've personally always wondered about the relative cost of "under-employment" (allowing wages to go much lower) vs. "partial re-employment" (time and effort needed for retraining to other high-paying jobs, moving to those jobs, and some % of people who are physically/mentally unable to make that transition).

It's also an easy way to get caught by brain drain. Germany is already somewhat suffering from this for highly skilled workers.

Didn't you just provide the Grand Parents point?

The unions are not the solution? That in fact unions make no difference at all in many situations and it is rather under underlying economic conditions that matter more.

Unions may be able to curb some systemic abuse for a limited time, in limited circumstances, but market forces will always win the war.

As such it best to look for foundational economics not magical unions to solve economic inequality.

Germany's innovation issues stem from its ingrained love for growing bureaucracies more so than unions IMO

I can't help but wonder how much of this is "better" and how much is wage stickiness in action (inflation has a slower effect on pay than on prices because pay increases involve long, drawn-out disputes. Economists call this effect "stickiness.").

Yes, that is an issue. My union (mostly non-tech workers) was negotiating for a new contract when the old when had expired 18 months prior and had been negotiated two or three years before that. It was such a long wait that a lot of good people were lost in the process, particularly since inflation has been abnormally high. It sounds like many other unions in my neck of the woods are in a similar situation.

I’m generally pretty happy to see people be successful with private sector unions where there is a built-in give and take (take to much and put your company out of business and yourself out of a job) - but public sector unions need to be illegalized

Public sector unions do seem problematic. How do you suggest public employees negotiate the highest possible wages for themselves?

I see the as problem actually just the opposite - the public sector unions are unaccountable and have already figured out how to extract overly generous benefits at the expense of the populace.

What I'm asking is how would people employed in the public sector negotiate a fair wage if the unions didn't exist? What would the mechanism be?

What's your definition of "overly generous"? Based on what criteria?

I’d describe overly generous as being being unsustainable/bankrupting the very communities they serve. (Or for a qualitative example take police officers in Suffolk county NY earning $200k-$700k/yr in addition to generous pension and health benefits (worth millions on top of that))

You raise a reasonable point that I admittedly don’t have a satisfactory response for, regarding an alternative negotiating framework, but it seems to me the pendulum has swung way too far in one direction, and their is no effective check on capture by public sector unions.

Hiring based on a sustainable budget makes sense. That doesn't tell us if we should hire a few people at a high salary or lots of folks at much lower salaries.

I don't have an answer either. It's one of the few economics questions that I've never seen a good answer to. The best I can come up with is to allow some market competition to government services and then to match market salaries. That's still not ideal because labor supply and demand is distorted. I've been asking this question for decades. It's a challenging problem.

> police officers in Suffolk county NY earning $200k-$700k/yr in addition to generous pension and health benefits (worth millions on top of that)

The police aren't the greatest example, because everyone wants to "support" the police no matter what. For example, when Wisconsin Republicans eliminated collective bargaining rights for public employees in 2011, leading to massive protests at the Capitol, they actually exempted police from the new law, so police still had collective bargaining rights.

Keep in mind that many leftists, who are generally very supportive of labor unions, still want to "defund the police". So the narrative is kind of flipped here.

> everyone wants to "support" the police no matter what.

> many leftists, who are generally very supportive of labor unions, still want to "defund the police"

Seems like one of these claims needs adjustment.

Also noted that defunding the police usually means replacing the police with other roles that are more in line with community needs. So there's still a need for labor unions.

"They have argued that cities should instead prioritize the programs that have been defunded over the years that would address root causes of crime and poverty, like education, healthcare and homeless services."

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/07/us-cities-de...

> Seems like one of these claims needs adjustment.

Well, yes, I didn't mean literally everyone. It was a turn of phrase, a hyperbole.

> "They have argued that cities should instead prioritize the programs that have been defunded over the years that would address root causes of crime and poverty, like education, healthcare and homeless services."

Yes. Police and prisons are actually vastly more expensive than other, nonviolent community investments to reduce crime. But efficiency and cost effectiveness aren't really the point of "law enforcement". Rather, to borrow a phrase, the cruelty is the point.

Anyway, my point is that the power of the police unions is due to the public support for the police, not simply their collective bargaining power. Few other unions have as much power.

> my point is that the power of the police unions is due to the public support for the police, not simply their collective bargaining power.

I would guess there are other factors. The NHS is hugely popular in the UK, and the workers unions are not as powerful US police unions. Like most things, there are probably a lot of small details that make it complex.

Trade a corporate boss for both a corporate boss and a union thug, near mafia boss? No thank you.

Unions have these things that you might of heard of... elections, where you can elect your leadership. How much democracy is for employees in a corporation?

this depends on the country actually.

A lot of countries have work's council[0] enshrined into law. Which actually means you have some form of democratic control over what a company wants to do.

i am still bewildered the US has nothing of the sort... in any kind of way.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_council

In the union that I was represented by you had to pay extra money to be a voting member. So for people like me that didn't like the union they still forcibly took some of my money but without any chance for me to vote on how they spent it.

What was the "forcibly" part?

No possible way to work for that employer and opt out of the fees. It was illegal for me to make an employment contract with my employer without them getting a cut.

And who forced you to work for that employer?

Unions are sticky. Once you let them in, you will have a very hard time decertifying them if you feel you are not being represented well.

https://freebeacon.com/policy/labor-leaders-say-illinois-fir...

https://www.mackinac.org/26962

https://www.americanexperiment.org/the-seiu-hopes-to-plunder...

https://leadinghomecare.com/blog/2014/05/01/michigan-home-he...

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