Unions work
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Unions ironically act very conservative these days. They could take some bold steps to potentially create very worker-friendly, worker-owned shops, which would create a voluntary, non-coercive path towards the "market socialist" structure many people advocate.
Even in large industries like automobiles where this is hard, they could probably start doing something like smaller-scale parts production and sell those.
Because that requires skillsets they don't have. People with the skills to start, manage and run companies usually aren't workers so not a part of the union, and I doubt the union members would be happy if the union spent lots of money to hire managers to bet on a startup.
This is reductive, union organizers have management skills that would transfer over if needed. The reason co-ops are not more common is moreso because there aren't the same kinds of institutions that support their growth like there are for traditional companies.
In practice they have just been another layer of economically unproductive people siphoning off value.
Word.
IIRC: SEIU, or equally large org, has been funding employee co-ops.
Also IIRC: Richard Wolfe coined worker directed social enterprises (WDSE) to encompass all the democracy and co-op notions.
Having done some (very modest) workplace democracy, and seen the results, I'm very bullish. I read Wolfe's book Democracy at Work when it came out. It was a (very modest) good start. But needed a lot more work developing the ideas. Especially wrt governance and operations.
Enough time has passed, I should circle back and see how things have progressed.
> Unions ironically act very conservative these days.
In multiple ways.
In the US, the transition from representing predominately white middle class blue collar workers to representing all workers has been very bumpy.
Labor in the US would be so much further along today if unions had also abandoned their commitment to the Cold War Consensus when Capital did. Anti labor measures like NAFTA should have been wake up calls.
Edit: the other instances (much fewer) are when the company founders either start with a co-op in mind or want to transition their company to one as part of their legacy
1) Distribution is where studios' value-add really comes through: they're the ones who have contracts with the big theater chains (or, in the case of tv, often own the networks+streaming services) and are in control of the dates/weekends/IMAX exclusivities/etc.
2) Financing - Movies and TV are _expensive_. It's not just the high-profile actors or marketing budgets – indeed, many high-profile actors will take huge pay-cuts to work on passion projects – but, if you were to take away those costs, and for sake of argument let's say that everyone acting/shooting/editing the movie is working for free, there's still huge capital expenses to be outlaid: location fees, permit fees, cameras (even a single indie-film camera can be upwards of $50k), sets + construction, props, editing+vfx software, food, transport, clothing, makeup, logistics and infrastructure including things as fundamental as electricity and plumbing if you're filming anywhere that's not a backlot... It takes a huge capital upfront outlay to make a movie or tv show that looks anything like what we're used to seeing on tv and movie screens. Studios can (a) provide the upfront cash and deal structure such that financing the productions is feasible in the first place (b) re-use and cost-optimize everything from sets/space/cameras/software/support-staff across productions where it makes sense, so a show or movie isn't having to re-invent everything from the ground up each time.
The closest right now the WGA or SAG can possibly be to "creating their own movies" is working with an indie studio, like A24 or NEON, who are still very much studios, but often with a more "can-do" and "per-production" approach. These studios also settled with WGA and SAG very soon after the strikes began, and were granted strike waivers so they could continue production, while the Disneys and Netflixes were picketed.
In short, unlike software engineers where a single dedicated engineer can pretty much create an app or business mvp in a weekend, writers and actors deal with the constraints of the real-world.
I partially agree with the statement that unions work. From what I see Unions are great and the current model works in situations where there are 2 monopolies, a monopoly of a work place and monopoly of workforce.
In this case the WGA is the monopoly of workforce and the Hollywood is the monopoly of workplace.
Along the history I saw that this dynamic worked and got advancements for the workers (especially during the industrialisation phase of several countries).
However, when this dynamic is broken what happen is that the “losing side” in a negotiation will start to see alternatives to reduce the dependency of this monopoly.
One clear example is the automotive industry that invested in high amount or automation, offshoring, and in a streamlined supply chain to reduce that exposure. I do not have any number but I would bet that Tesla today can have a high operational margin in comparison with Ford or GM.
For IT I think several companies, specially in this down market, are starting to do the same thing doing offshoring or nearshoring of SWE, hiring folks abroad to avoid the risk of unionization due to the fact there’s no monopoly of SWE as a workforce.
From where I stand it’s a constant race to extract more from workers and unions and possibly legislation are some of the very few forces impeding it.
Well that's at least the spooky scary threat that companies use to get people to not join union so my bet is that it's total bullshit and if they could already offshore their workers and factories they would have done so already. Milk those higher wages and benefits while they're still here because they won't change the calculus at all when compared to workers who will work for single digit dollars a day.
Just look at the automotive industry. They have not only been offshoring, but the unions have strangled them to the point where it nearly destroyed the industry.
I will only buy non-US cars as a result of this (mostly because of poor qualit).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Honda_Motor_Company
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Group_of_America
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyundai_Motor_America
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Motor_North_America
The fact that The Ford Dodge GM Chrysler Jeep Dr Pepper Snapple Group can't make a quality car is on them. In real dollars American workers have never cost less.
Those fat-cat union workers making… $45k/yr. Don't they understand how their greed affects our profits?
But maybe not forever since the UAW strike those unionized workers might gasp make the same amount they did pre-inflation in real dollars. The greedy bastards not taking a pay cut while the cost of the cars go up and those companies make record profits. Won't you think of the poor owners who are demanding higher returns, I think we can all sacrifice for them.
Not for this _single_ reason. The decision for offshoring/nearshoring is a multifaceted one.
Companies that have the risk to be locked in a workforce monopoly and does not have the capability to offshore/nearshore work positions, will fight with nail and tooth attempts for uniontization
We as "knowledge workers" know this in our bones.
Now that we've digitized and automated blue collar work, we're tackling white collar work.
It’s one reason we haven’t seen much advancement (until recently!) in automated food preparation (vis-a-vis industrial factories)—the labor has been very cheap.
Research and advancement in automated food preparation has never stopped. They were working on the problem in the 1970s with automatic vending machines, Fast food in particular has been salivating at thought of throwing out human workers for ages. (see for example: https://www.deseret.com/2003/8/11/19740875/mcdonald-s-flips-... and https://www.wfmynews2.com/article/news/local/mcdonalds-testi... and https://www.cnet.com/culture/mcdonalds-hires-7000-touch-scre...)
The very second that the tech is ready and reliable enough, it's a done deal. No worker will ever be as cheap as a robot slave.
My experiences dealing with unionized workforces in Canada as a customer/consumer have generally not been good at all.
Such workers often exhibit tremendous inefficiency, a lack of care, and disinterest. This results in low-quality service/work, and a bad experience for the customers/consumers involved.
This is particularly noticeable when dealing with government employees who are unionized, such as public school teachers, some public hospital staff, the police, public transit system staff, and bureaucrats.
Unionization in such cases creates an environment where there's no incentive to perform well, as there's pretty much no downside to the unionized worker for providing terrible service.
While private sector unionization can result in a similarly-bad customer/consumer experience, at least there's often some degree of competition involved, which can give customers/consumers an alternative when service is remarkably awful. The bad service isn't as unavoidable as it is in the case of the public sector.
The content out of Hollywood matches this pattern, too. I've found it to be among the least-entertaining, least-interesting, and lowest-quality content around. I've had much better results with content from small, non-unionized, independent creators.
I don’t really agree with that though as the real reason is the government has no competition. If McDonalds does a bad job at service you will go to Burger King. But if the DMV does a bad job well tough cookies what are you going to move to Sweden?
Outside of the SPD Guild, unions don't have much leverage to retain underperforming employees. Document the failure to perform a handful of times and that employee will be gone, with at most a grievance filed where you get to reiterate how they repeatedly failed to deliver at work.
You engage in the democratic processes to effect change, versus the "choice" between what other non-democratic entities are willing to give you.
My only recourse to alert anybody of this issue is to fill out a survey. I've been filling out that survey for years. There is no feedback loop to enact change. There is no other "manager" there. How would I even find a manager?
I could go to a competitor but that would not affect them and there are some services that other competitors are not allowed to perform (USPS is the only one that can perform letter mail service by law and others will just take your letter and put it in a larger parcel).
This situation sucks so much that I am reduced to trying to visit the post office at hours that I think he is not there or take a long trip to another town's post office.
Unions are not uniquely impotent wrt their "bad apples". Every organization is afflicted.
This phenomenon seems to be holding all of society back.
Ideas?
(FWIW, my main motivation for being pro-union & pro-labor is profit sharing. Corporate welfare and record high profits while most people struggle really pisses me off.)
In fact, the most likely culprit of any loss in quality is likely do to the studios and producers who have cut down on budgets, prep time, filming time frames and staffing which makes the existing workers have to constantly scramble to make a good product. And because of the staffing shortages, workers don’t have the same opportunities to learn the ropes from more experienced workers, so the ladder has effectively been broken. The unions are actively fighting the studios on these points because they care about the future of the industry. Without the union backing up these workers, the loss in quality would have likely been even worse than it is now.
Not every union is the same. Hollywood union members are incredibly hardworking, regularly working 60-90 hours a week in very physical and stressful jobs. Many of these workers are highly skilled and take their job very seriously. And they would be much worse off without the union advocating for them.
Bad customer experiences happen in all type of businesses regardless of union status. That shouldn’t distract us from the fact that many people that would otherwise be exploited would be far worse off if they didn’t have a union to represent them.
The rigidness also extends to other factors. For instance, working at a bank we were not allowed to move our monitor to another desk. That was a union job. You had to put in a work order have someone show up eventually and move the monitor for you and get paid some fee. It introduces rigidity and inefficiency and there are constant turf wars. Person A can unplug the monitor but person B has to move it, etc. Or they may have to mandate things like "moving is dangerous so you need a supervisor watching as the person move the monitor.
Finally even if they do succeed at paying above market salaries, that introduces a new question: who gets the job? Paying above a market salary will necessarily result in a lot more workers than available positions. So you have gatekeeping. That leads to cronyism as above market jobs are dolled out to friends and family.
A clear example of how destructive unions can be, take a look at police unions that regularly protect bad police. You see that across the board. I've known teachers in the teachers union that obviously phone it in every chance they get (i.e. showing educational videos during class time). This wouldn't fly in a normal work environment, but due to the over-formalization of hiring, you can't just let someone go for being incompetent or just not very good at their job. You have to jump through hoops
The beauty of a free market system is that if you feel that way, that the union bring mediocrity, you're not forced to deal with them. Start your own company that does not deal with the unions and bring in talent however you see fit. If unions really make things worse then congratulations, you've just created a more agile company that will certainly dominate in the marketplace.
> Finally even if they do succeed at paying above market salaries, that introduces a new question: who gets the job? Paying above a market salary will necessarily result in a lot more workers than available positions. So you have gatekeeping. That leads to cronyism as above market jobs are dolled out to friends and family.
This is not inherent to unions - this happens every day in non-union gigs. Not sure why you think non-union jobs are immune to cronyism and gatekeeping.
> A clear example of how destructive unions can be, take a look at police unions that regularly protect bad police.
Do you honestly think that the situation would be any different if police were non-union? This is a serious question - I really want to know if you think that the non-union police department would shoot fewer people than an all-union force.
The reasons cops are allowed to beat and murder with impunity extends beyond a singular entity.
This explains the decline of unions in general. Its also tough when the president of the US is on the picket line and your industry depends on a federal bailout every decade or so. But that's a while different story...
> Not sure why you think non-union jobs are immune to cronyism and gatekeeping.
Other places are not immune and if someone wants to hire their family member at an above market rate, he is free to do so. But it may raise a few eyebrows from greedy business owners. But paying above market rates is not by design. I would still like to know what to do if you have 100 equally qualified people trying to get the same over paid position. How do you decide?
> Do you honestly think that the situation would be any different if police were non-union?
Absolutely. You don't see non unionized industries protecting workers to an extreme degree. Why would they? The whole premise behind unions is that management is not always aligned with workers interests. But now you're telling me managers would protect literal murderers just because? It's not consistent
this works until your workers start asking questions like others in the comments here like "any pointers on how to turn an existing company into a worker co-op or employee owned company?", as though for some reason you're not entitled to the rewards that came from the risk and resources you put into starting your own company and growing its success. somehow enthusiastically pro-union people don't see any problem with this line of thinking. somehow the idea of them starting a business themselves, as a co-op, is Literally Impossible, even though it's 2023 and everyone has the Internet in their pockets at all times, so connecting and organizing people who share a common purpose or ideal is easier than it ever has been in human history. somehow it's considered perfectly fine and just to do nothing like that on your own, but, instead, reap the rewards of others' risk and resources by pretending, after the fact, that they had never had any value to begin with—that it's the workers and workers alone who provide the Real Value to the company, and always have, and always will.
Nobody is saying that the owner of a business is not entitled to profits. That's a strawman. What is actually being said is that the owner of a business couldn't make those profits _without_ the workers, which means that the workers, the people actually doing the work, share some of the credit for the success they bring to the owner and that they too should be entitled to at least some of share of profits.
> enthusiastically pro-union people don't see any problem with this line of thinking
Yes, workers talking to each other about forming a union is a right they have by virtue of being a human being. Why does nobody flip this around and ask _what is the business owner doing wrong that their employees feel they need the protection of a union_?
> somehow the idea of them starting a business themselves, as a co-op, is Literally Impossible
For some workers it actually is. The primary thing that distinguishes the owners of the business and the workers of the business is access to capital. It is asinine to assume that someone who has worked all of their life necessarily has access to the capital to start a business. There is a power imbalance here, and you have not addressed it here.
> connecting and organizing people who share a common purpose or ideal is easier than it ever has been in human history
This is what a push to unionize _is_. The owners have the ability to respond to this - it's a growing industry of anti-union consultants and had made a few companies obscenely wealthy providing those services.
> somehow it's considered perfectly fine and just to do nothing like that on your own, but, instead, reap the rewards of others' risk and resources by pretending, after the fact, that they had never had any value to begin with—that it's the workers and workers alone who provide the Real Value to the company, and always have, and always will
See my point above about this being a strawman. Nobody is saying that the person that starts the company has ZERO value. Far from it. All they are asking is fair compensation for their work that has enriched the owner, which they are not getting. Employee productivity has almost doubled but their wages have been stagnant. Far from workers acting like owners have no value, it's the owners that are treating the workers as not having value.
anytime enthusiastically pro-union people want to try to start a business on their own, together, by pooling their resources to collectively take on risk—if for no reason but to prove that unions don't exist more or less solely to tear down existing things that weren't built by the union themselves—they're more than welcome to give it a shot. but, since this doesn't really seem to happen, it's really easy to continue to perceive enthusiastically pro-union people as outwardly appearing entitled to rewards for risks and resources that were not theirs.
anyone can destroy—it takes considerably more effort to create.
So if the company is doing badly then the workers that are actually doing the work share some of the blame of that failure and need to pay at least some of the losses?
Workers prefer fixed salaries instead of revenue share to avoid risk. This is a normal way to do things, workers don't want to share profits and losses, they want a fixed salary. Moving to a profit share model would not make workers happy at all.
If we're going to acknowledge risk (and we should), then we need to acknowledge that risk as well.
In a situation where there is an actual competitive market and people can leverage their skills and experience towards better salaries on their own, the effectiveness of a union is much lower, though there is still industry wide benefits such as normalization of health insurance standards, anti-cartel advocacy, general working condition standards, etc.
I think the police union example is a bit of a bad faith example - there is more to that one than just "union bad, mmmmkay" - it's institutionalized power and would NEVER be a market driven situation.
Teachers, generally speaking, work in a single employer market, meaning the power dynamic is again tilted towards the employer. Without a union, teachers would likely have even worse conditions than they currently "enjoy" in the USA (and frankly Canada). Hell even now they basically work overtime for free due to expected "extra curricular" workloads outside of school hours and in many cases have to supply their own materials just to be able to do their own job.
Yes, there are disadvantages (as there is in all things). But these do not mean that unions are fundamentally broken.
But I think the counter argument here would be that for every bad cop/teacher that get away with something due to some shenanigans of a Union, there’s cases also that the same Union provides a platform for someone innocent to not get fired.
Let me place another perspective regarding why some unions are necessary that is for airline pilots.
This is a classic case where you have a monopoly of workforce (qualified pilots with specific knowledge with low job transitivity) and workplace (exists in some specific location just a few airlines).
In a hypothetical situation where the airlines start to enforce increase in working hours, reducing rest, and place strain on the workforce; the Unions has the organisation and power to balance that relationship and in some of the cases to help to shape the minimum regulation for the work conditions.
In those situations with dual-monopoly and low job transitivity of the workforce I think make sense to have Unions.
this is a very US specific problem. i don't believe any other country in the world allows unions to get away with such nonsense.
Police unions are basically the worst example of a union. Cops are not "workers". They are on the side of capital, policing its boundaries (literally) that's why they are so rotten!
Of course they can, and we know where that margin comes from:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/18/tesla-wor...
Ambulances have been called more than 100 times since 2014 for workers experiencing fainting spells, dizziness, seizures, abnormal breathing and chest pains, according to incident reports obtained by the Guardian. Hundreds more were called for injuries and other medical issues. “I’ve seen people pass out, hit the floor like a pancake and smash their face open,” said Jonathan Galescu, a production technician at Tesla. “They just send us to work around him while he’s still lying on the floor.”Really, it's that you can't hold back the invisible hand forever. If the deal was actually too good for workers, it leaves room for a foreign competitor to move in.
It's fine that the use of AI will be limited in TV and movies, but once it's good enough to actually write shows, a new AI-driven studio will do that, and Hollywood doesn't control distribution well enough to stop them.
Reminds me of how elevators originally had operators, until everyone realized how wasteful and silly it is to have someone whose sole job is to press elevator buttons. As AI improves, we will come to feel the same about writers.
That doesn't seem like the right cause, since it's the people who seem most concerned with seriousness and economic efficiency who still have elevator operators today.
“Stores trying to make their customers feel like a wealthy person” are a special case. It might be economically efficient (i.e. profitable) for them to spend money on things associated with extravagance and wealth, in order to more effectively create an image in their customers’ minds and thus attract more customers. But those circumstances don’t apply to the vast majority of elevator owners.
So what exactly is your point?
But at this very moment, AI generating anything suitable for something other than SEO blogspam isn't possible anyway. It might be right around the corner, or it might be "right around the corner" like self-driving cars were in 2015.
LLM's spit out derivative nonsense. Highly convincing nonsense, but derivative nonetheless. Any true originality in the output still comes from the human engineering the prompt.
Basically, LLM's know how to follow the rules, color within the lines. A real artist understands those rules well enough to break them and create something novel.
Attempts to rigorously study the relative creativity of LLMs have already found them more creative than average humans: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-40858-3
They're only getting better, fast.
If you're not convinced, what GPT4-level (text or multimodal) or Midjourney-level (imagery) models have you tried, and how much?
I think filmmakers like Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (Swiss Army Man, Everything Everywhere All at Once) are where Hollywood should be focusing their attention, and their sweep at the Oscars this year has me cautiously hopeful that at least a few people in power are paying attention.
This is what I see as the problem. Hollywood needs to stop relying so heavily on derivative goop and give actual creatives more leeway in creating something original.
You can only ride old IPs for so long before people lose interest and stop buying tickets, as Hollywood has been learning recently. You need people coming up with fresh novel ideas if you ever want to come up with the next big thing.
Some executive asking Chat-GPT to spit out a new Marvel movie script isn't going to do that.
This idea that AI cannot be creative but humans can is something that begs for a test; and that test needs to be applied against humans, as well. If AI can pass it at least as often as humans can, then AI is at least as creative as humans; within the bounds of that test.
As it happens, an AI has recently passed such a test[0].
0: https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/09/14/1079465/ai-just-...
I don't see why you couldn't have an AI do the same, by training it towards a particular aberration in output until that became something it understood well.
Elevator operators were replaced by very complex computers with many redundant censors.
You had elevator operators for safety not convenience...
Similarly you seem to have the common misconception that the purpose of a writer is to churn out random text which can be replaced with LLM vs building a coherent story and guiding it through the creative process in support of the other people involved.
The writers strike was primarily about streaming having terrible residuals and while they were striking they took back the inputs into AI from studios which makes sense given writing has always been for a particular project.
In the future, script production and revision will still occur via committee, but the actual writing will not be done by humans.
If you can't get started doing grunt work writing you have to get started somewhere.
There's no purpose to many forms of media if it doesn't have a human author (besides making money, of course). You're describing content "grey goo" here. I'm not sure why anyone should feel positively about such a development.
He was trying to get the job finished and get home to his family, so he was working late one night double checking the fit on all the nuts, bolts, anything he could check to ensure the job was successful. He did this all the time, I learned how to successfully deliver product from seeing him do it.
A gang of union guys came up to him and threatened to beat him if he continued to work because he was taking a union job away from "the pipe guy", call him Frank.
My dad says "that's fine, can frank come help?"
"Frank's out sick"
And that was that. He either stopped getting the job done or they would visit violence upon him.
I'll never side with people that think this is acceptable behaviour.
Businesses, governments, churches, sports teams and probably even Girl Scout troops all have a history of committing violence when it serves their aims.
I don't see much of a distinction. I suspect a significant portion of workplace or work-related crime involves the criminal being motivated by work-related incentives.
For unions, it has only ever been a means to an end (with that end being things like having days off, and safe working conditions) Corporations on the other hand throw human lives away because it makes them money, and making money is all they care about. That's why the bodies of children were being mangled in the machinery of the industrial revolution and it's why children are still dying in garment factory disasters today.
For unions in the vacuum though... if we assume no other workers exist and no innovation is possible, unions (at least, US-style unions) would have no reason to exist - company cannot replace workers, or between multiple companies it can only replace workers in a game of musical chairs, so all the workers individually would have great bargaining power.
An approximation: tech 5 years ago, maybe even now, I haven't interviewed recently.
So, the only/main reason unions need to exist is to protect the jobs of their members against (1) other workers, including immigrants (2) being obsoleted by innovation. That is not incidental to their goals, that is their whole goal. I find both of these incentives to be inherently evil (I am also self aware enough to know that while e.g. banning AI coding innovations, any further immigration of developers and outsourcing to boot would be amazing for my compensation, it's still evil)
Of course they would, because corporations exploit workers all the time. If workers aren't being paid the backpay they're owed, the union will handle that. If workers want to be able to take the time to walk to a bathroom instead of having to wear diapers or piss in plastic bottles while working, the union will handle that. Same with being forced to work excessive hours, having unpaid overtime, being locked in overnight, being forced to continue working under hazardous conditions, being forced to submit to strip searches by management, etc.
These are the types of abuses that happen in the US, and even if every employee were part of a union, companies would continue to do those types of things for as long as they could get away with it. The difference is that workers with unions can pressure the company to stop abusing workers for example, like when employees are being forced to share underwear with their co-workers (https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-jun-08-fi-7876-...)
unions protect workers against a hell of a lot more than just being replaced by slave labor, or robot slave labor.
1) The reason corporations can do these things is because there's competition for jobs. If there wasn't, they wouldn't be able to get away with it - see tech industry pay and perks, and the fact that people just leave and find another job for a reason as normal as having to work at an office. If there's competition for labor, unions have value - by excluding other labor. That is their only goal.
2) What's wrong with "robot slave labor"? My point exactly, again. Unions protect a subset of workers from innovation. Good for a few newly-useless workers, terrible for society.
What would happen if I began installing or moving pipes at my company that management and ownership told me not to? A "gang" of security guards or policemen would visit violence on me to stop.
You are aghast at the people actually doing the work and creating the wealth enforcing their rights, but make no mention of the heirs who own Siemens and their "gangs" working to expropriate surplus labor time and profit.
Adding value deserves to be met with threats. This is a stunning argument against unions you're making.
The workers create all the wealth and do all the work. The heirs who own the controlling stake in a big company like Siemens do not work, but expropriate surplus labor time doing work.
You have the workers who do all the work and create all the wealth on one end, and the heirs who parasitically expropriate the worker's surplus time on the other. It's obvious to those of us who work who the "argument" is against.
If the Union does the same thing it's wrong - because threatening people is wrong - but not actually against their interests because as you say a Union isn't interested in the company doing well. All the company does is exploit them and the customers. The Union just wants to make sure they get a pound of flesh out of the company (and presumably the customers too).
exceedingly terrible analogy, because the hypothetical firefighter hypothetically committing a hypothetical murder, wholly unrelated to firefighting, is a completely different situation than union guys threatening violence on a worker for union-related reasons, in the pursuit of union-related ideals.
It's not some huge gotcha that the union workers who committed assault did it in pursuit of their own goals. Most people do most things in pursuit of their own goals.
For instance, when a company
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain
>By August 29 the battle was fully underway. Chafin's men, though outnumbered, had the advantage of higher positions and better weaponry. Private planes were hired to drop homemade bombs on the miners. A combination of poison gas and explosive bombs left over from World War I were dropped in several locations near the towns of Jeffery, Sharples and Blair. At least one did not explode and was recovered by the miners; it was used months later to great effect as evidence for the defense during treason and murder trials.
Or the anti union assassinations in Columbia:
https://prospect.org/features/coca-cola-killings/
>After the leader of their union was shot down at their plant gate in late 1996, Edgar Paéz and his co-workers at the Coca-Cola bottling factory in Carepa, Colombia, tried for more than four years to get their government to take action against the responsible parties. Instead, some of the workers themselves wound up behind bars, while the murderers went free.
>I'll never side with people that think this is acceptable behaviour.
It sounds like you are implying that you would never side with any union ever. Not even these.
Is that accurate?
" In the early 2000s the AFL-CIO Department for Professional Employees started conducting survey of tech workers across the country found. In 2004, the survey showed that just 33% supported unionizing their workplace. By 2016, that had grown to 59%."
The only "survey" that counts is the actual election for union recognition.
People who don't support the campaigns tend to just not vote, but there's also a significant number of people who just don't find out.
A better "survey" would be the number who actually sign union cards in workplaces with mandatory union orientations (meaning every employee is necessarily "surveyed"). This also means agreeing to pay dues so there's a "money where your mouth is" component.
(Source: I've helped with running a few.)
In this meaning, when the headline says "unions work", it is being 100% honest.
My point is there exist many things that workers might want for their immediate benefit but shouldn't want because ultimately it will be bad for them via an unhealthy business and/or economy.
It's a non-sensical argument. If a 4 day work week is more productive than a 5 day work week it means the 5th days is producing negative work. You could literally do nothing every Friday and you would not be less productive than a 4 day work week.
Or it could mean that increasing weekly time off by 50% improves people's happiness and productivity, or that a 5 day work week results in days of work that are less productive than in a 4 day work week.
This would be an accurate statement for most work places. People are often creating negative value in the modern workplace in the form on tech debt, new bugs, unwanted features, meetings that drain the rest of the staff...
5 days isn't productive for knowledge and creative work, it leaves people in a state of perpetual burn out and greatly lowers the quality of output.
Your take is equally non-sensical. There is no magical constant unit of time that represents maximum productivity. It’s all relative and fluid. It’s based on many many variables. And even if such a time existed for one person in one company for one week, it wouldn’t be neatly packaged like “40 hours”. It would likely seem random like 34 hours 20 minutes and 25 seconds.
Arguing over such a universal time is as much a waste a time as arguing over the perfect diet. It’s relative.
It also sounds like you're not familiar with simple ideas like Parkinson’s Law. Listen to yourself, you don't think people are fucking off at work? It's business hours and you're on hacker news not doing work, case and point.
Absolute statements like this on this topic are invalid. It’s relative and fluid and not something you can prove scientifically and definitively.
The gray area is the point at which there are diminishing returns. Is that between 32 and 40 hours, or more? And how much do they diminish?
This is too simple. 32 hours of huge output may produce more than 40 hours of light output. If the machine/human output is a constant, then sure you’re correct. But that’s not true. And that’s my point. It’s relative and fluid. It’s relative to the work, the individual, the health of the individual, the weather that day, and on and on.
Clearly there is some cost to more hours that causes the maximum to be at strictly less than the maximum. Given that we have no reason to assume 40 hours is better than 32 hours.
By this logic, working 48 hours is more productive, working 54 hours even more productive, 62 hours even more productive. It can be cranked up even more - the English did and took meticulous records on it.
Dialecticaly it created a strong Labour party which took power in 1945 and nationalized coal, the bank of England, hospitals, telecommunications, national rail, iron and steel - the commanding heights of the economy.
Not correct for the whole Europe.
In some places in Central Europe you do not have a Union but instead Work Council that intermediates and oversees the management and acts in the interest of employees.
Personally I like the idea, but at least in some counties it became an instrument of job protection for old employees that sometimes has a different agenda than other employees.
Fundamental in what sense? In most of the world, most of the industries are not unionized. And where there are unions, they came after the line of work started. Which makes unions seem not fundamental at all.
> In Europe there isnt a single job without an union behind
Not true at all. Most professional service oriented jobs are not unionized. Even in places like Germany where unions are relatively common.
which means growth of unions is just a matter of individual choice of each employee. and there is nothing the company can to to stop it.
They are fundamental in that they blunt the threat I face if I fell out of my present line of work and had to take something that would rough up my baby soft laptop jockey hands. If they have a better bargaining position, I have a better bargaining position because it's less of a loss if I have to join their ranks.
A correct heading for this article would be "Unions also abuse market power for the benefit of their members at the cost of dead weight loss to society"
The correct counter balance to corporate power is strong antitrust law that is enforced (similar but not quite to the extreme of how it was pre Rehnquist supreme court).
In fact, there is a philosophical school of thought that shows that happiness isn't related to the environment one lives in, but the improvement that one sees through one's lifetime. Economic growth can deliver that.
What's the evidence for this?
Productivity has gone up over 200% but wages have stayed flat. Where is that economic growth for the worker?
But if you roll over and let them own 0your entire life, I guess you can have a pizza party from time to time.
[1] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/chinas-shrinking-populati...
[2] https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/15/business/jack-ma-996-china/in...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Ma#Disappearance_from_the...
Second, even policies that provide some benefit to companies may backfire for society if they increase mental health problems, lower social cohesion, prevent family formation, and/or cause their best-and-brightest to leave. At some level the best way to "compete better with China" may be to focus on maintaining sensible policies focused on maximizing an individual's "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" alongside overall national productivity and let short-sighted competitors burn themselves out. (Similar to the strategy adopted during the Cold War.)
For most people here on HN, you could probably survive on a 20% pay cut - you'd just have to have the kids share a bedroom rather than having one each and a guest room.
Downside: Those on a 4 day workweek really struggle to get promoted to senior positions.
If a 4 day week is codified into labor law and regulation, there is no game theory consideration vs some orgs with 4 day weeks competing with those with 5. Would you work 6 days a week today (for example)? Probably not, unless you're an outlier of some sort, and you don't see many orgs with a mandatory 6 day work week (because they wouldn't be able to retain talent). This is about pulling a policy ratchet to reduce the work week at scale for everyone, because the productivity already exists (it's just been funneled to the top wealthiest population, traditionally).
"It always seems impossible until it's done."
[1] https://www.4dayweek.com/ | https://www.4dayweek.com/research
[2] https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
[3] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/19/heres-how-labor-dynamism-aff...
Does a grocery store worker who stocks shelves stock as many cans of food and boxes of slop in 32 hours as he does in 40?
It is absurd, disingenuous, and even sinister to suggest that their productivity is equal with a reduced week. There are hundreds, probably even thousands, of distinct jobs where this is the truth.
There are relatively few jobs where equal productivity continues with the reduced work week. They are all office jobs.
It is impossible that even if companies were forced to go with a reduced work week and were unable to cheat this regulation to any meaningful degree, that they would continue to pay the same for 20% less productivity. Worst case scenario for them is that they simply allow inflation to erode pay more than it does already. Given that even many menial workers earn above minimum wage, there are very few jobs where this isn't possible (and those few jobs are likely part-time anyway, where this reform is irrelevant).
If one truly wanted to help those who are hurting the worst, this is completely ass-backwards. It seems designed to make those who are already comfortable a little more so.
> If one truly wanted to help those who are hurting the worst, this is completely ass-backwards. It seems designed to make those who are already comfortable a little more so.
Very broadly speaking, the very wealthy have enough [2], and can make due with less. Tax them more if necessary [3]. Those hurting the worst are hurting because of greed and selfishness of a minority, not workers who have been taking it on the chin for decades. But, most unfortunately, the mental model that gets you wealthy heavily discounts luck and overemphasizes individual exceptionalism [4] [5], so these folks aren't self aware enough to come to the conclusion on their own, leaving collective action and the legal/political system as the most likely path to success.
Again, the productivity already exists. Where do you think all of this accumulated wealth is coming from?
[1] https://www.epi.org/minimum-wage-tracker/ ("The federal minimum wage has not been raised since 2009. In the absence of action at the national level, many states and localities have raised their own minimum wages. Explore the map to see how these rapidly changing laws differ across the country. Values as of July 1, 2023")
[2] https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/richest-1-bag-nearly... ("2023: Richest 1% bag nearly twice as much wealth as the rest of the world put together over the past two years")
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8ijiLqfXP0 ("Rutger Bregman tells Davos to talk about tax: 'This is not rocket science'")
[4] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/the-rol... ("The Role of Luck in Life Success Is Far Greater Than We Realized")
[1] In reality less than that; see the autoworker strike in the US where they are demanding (among other things) a 40% pay increase, meanwhile those companies could really afford to pay the union members 100% more.
Where?? This has not been my experience, especially in tech. I've seen that work for "shift work" type jobs, even highly paid ones like doctors, but for "product work" type jobs like most tech, where there is essentially an infinite amount of possibile future work to do, companies are, generally, much less amenable to having people less than full time.
OTOH what passes for corruption in California, where I live now, would make an east coast politician laugh. Certainly in the trades (welding in particular, but all sorts of construction I needed) the quality of work was top notch. And why not? In construction, at least, there is no reason to use union if you don't want to and most don't, which leads to the the shitty quality of residential construction (there should be more of it but that's another issue).
Perhaps one thing is regulation. We once bought a pressure vessel that arrived with a small ding (if bad, it's an opportunity for an explosion). We called the pressure vessel unit in Oakland and someone arrived in 45 minutes which means he'd dropped anything else and and hopped into his car as soon as we hung up the phone. Even before he arrived we got an annoyed call from the mfr (as it turned out all was well...but the pressure vessel unit wanted to see for themselves). While he was there we showed him a piece done by a former contractor who had not been able to produce the union tickets. We had fired them because the work was safety critical (high pressure steam is no joke) and the contractor was suing us. One look at the piece and he yanked out his phone. Let's just say later that day the contractor's lawyer couriered over a document cancelling the lawsuit, a cashier's check for money already paid, and a request that we not countersue. Those guys are not fucking around.
Sounds like a manager lol
Or is it because it's not realistic? Ok, actually there are two digger guys, one to dig the hole and one to fill it in, pursuant to union agreement of 1953 when they were using shovels; now they have an excavator, but... jobs! So they take turns, or maybe they have two excavators pursuant to union agreement of 1979 so that they could each have their own workplace after that one guy wanted AC on and the other wanted AC off and the AC on guy had a heat stroke. Also the planter guy is not out sick, he was suspended from the job because he was putting trees in the holes upside down; he's now sitting in the "rubber room" with full pay pending 11 months of union arbitration. Also when the passer-by offers to help them put the trees in, the diggers beat him up.