Autoworkers Score Big Wins in New Contracts with Carmakers | Hacker News Reader

Autoworkers Score Big Wins in New Contracts with Carmakers

nytimes.com

29 pointspg_123441 comments

Cool. Let's repeal the chicken tax. Give workers with less privileged contracts less taxed access to the import truck market.

And the Jones act while we're at it

https://archive.ph/TKB0x

Presumably next we're going to hear about a 20 to 30% increase in the cost of vehicles.

You could always purchase from a nonunion company like Toyota.

Toyota has a lot to recommend it, but discounted prices are not one of those things.

The quality has been outstanding. Every mechanic and car person always comments about my Toyota something along the lines of "oh that's bulletproof/will last forever"

Both of those statements are true. New Toyotas aren't discount, and Toyotas have a reputation of lasting forever. This is resolved by buying a 20+ year old vehicle. You can get a 1999-2003 Toyota for a few thousand dollars.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38098224 | https://www.axios.com/2023/10/31/toyota-raises-uaw-strike-fo... ("Toyota raises factory worker wages after UAW strike settlements")

No that was last year.

And many previous years as the big auto manufacturers convinced everyone that they'd be safer if they bought a larger vehicle.

We have an old station wagon as our only car and there's not much that's comparable in the US market unless you bump up to larger crossovers and SUVs.

More likely some reduction in billions in management and shareholder profits (but importantly, simply less, not zero). This is what winning looks like. Kudos to the team negotiating for the folks doing the work.

From my previous comment [1]:

> General Motors CEO Mary Barra, the highest-paid chief executive among the Big Three, made nearly $29 million in 2022. Securities and Exchange Commission filings show that this is 362 times the median GM employee's paycheck (this pay ratio is required reporting from public companies now).

> Profits at the “Big 3” auto companies—Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis— skyrocketed 92% from 2013 to 2022, totaling $250 billion. Forecasts for 2023 expect more than $32 billion in additional profits.

Tangentially, a recent AP Marketplace piece touched on excessive CEO comp [2], and union support in the US is at all time high [3]. Its fine to hold a minority opinion (and arguably healthy in a functioning democracy), simply recognize it as such.

(Tesla and Toyota are up next to be organized is my understanding [4])

Edit: Tesla’s Fremont California car factory have formed an organizing committee with the UAW as of two hours ago.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37524493 (citations)

[2] https://www.marketplace.org/2023/10/23/is-ceo-pay-out-of-con... ("Is CEO pay out of control?")

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36617349 (citations)

[4] https://insideevs.com/news/691906/tesla-workers-are-union-me... ("Workers at Tesla, Toyota, Honda, and others are not the enemy – they're the UAW members of the future,” Shawn Fain said.")

It's been said many times before, but Tesla and Toyota are the biggest winners.

Unions are great at destroying their hosts; it's funny that they never found or invest in companies.

Unions are the democratization of work.

Worker cooperatives are conceptually not too different from union-founded companies.

As far as unions investing, not a bad idea. In a financialized age where everything from FAANG to nations have their own investment portfolios, perhaps labor unions oughta get in on that action as well.

> Worker cooperatives are conceptually not too different from union-founded companies.

But they are conceptually different from unions that aren't actual companies. Worker cooperatives and union-founded companies take on actual business risks: it's up to them to find markets for their products and services and organize themselves to make the most efficient use of the capital they own (much of which is the skills and knowledge of their workers/owners). Traditional unions do not take on business risks; they expect the corporations their workers all work for to do that. But refusing to take on business risk also means you are giving up upside; risk and reward go together. So unions that don't take the initiative to become worker cooperatives or actual corporations should not be complaining that the corporations are taking more upside.

I'm not aware of actual union-founded companies so the notion is fascinating to me. As far as unions not taking on business risk, I'd have to imagine that most unions aren't going to ask for the moon to the extent of bankrupting the business. And there are some examples where unions have the foresight to demand the company make smart market moves:

Audi's unions demand electric model for main German plant (2017)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13986889

General Electric workers launch protest, demand to make ventilators (2020)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22731087

In the tech space, one could imagine a coders' union demanding management to take technical limitations or issues more seriously. How many times have you worked somewhere where product, or simply upper management, has overruled software concerns?

Unions are made up of workers so they automatically have skin in the game. If the workers can't work, the union dies. Workers (and therefore unions) are very much interested in companies being successful. Stable employment is a nice thing for a worker to have.

Does unionization really make companies more successful? If unions have such high interest in the company stability and success I presume the evidence shows union shop companies have more success and longevity after unionizing vs like ones that dont?

And my biggest fear as a worker is not longevity but my marketability to gain new jobs. If unions make it easier for me to get hired and promoted without consideration of tenure of other union members I'd probably be interested in joining

I'd argue that workers who don't feel exploited are more productive and that more productive employees can have a positive impact on a company. I'd bet that employees who are treated well tend to stick around longer too and that also can have a positive impact a company.

I think research might be a little difficult since there are a lot of things that can impact a company's longevity and success (however that's being defined) that have nothing to do with employees (unionized or otherwise), but I imagine a good study might be able to account for that to some extent.

NBER research suggests unions correlate with lower relative employment for certain more vulnerable populations such as young and old.

There's also the risk the union basically exploits the young and old by driving their wage from shitty to zero (by setting them too high to bear for anything but the most able bodied middle age). This pretty much mimics my experience younger working construction; union gigs set my wage at '0' by making me the outgroup. Being exploited by middle age union workers is bad for longevity imo.

I can understand that if the pay is high enough companies will want the most skilled/effective workers, but you'd hope for some kind of apprentice program to get younger workers trained up. I think older workers will always suffer in industries like construction or physically demanding work through.

Yeah. For the record I'm not against unions. It's just as a worker it's always been way too exploitive / exclusionary to be practical. I don't doubt it's great if you're a chosen apprentice due to connections with the union boss or whatever, or one of the guys that can use their card to shut out more vulnerable workers from the job.

> Does unionization really make companies more successful?

In the US auto industry (which is the relevant industry for the article under discussion), it hasn't. Companies like Toyota that employ non-union workers in the US are doing at least as well as (and have arguably done better than over time) the Big Three.

I think the answer to your first question depends on the definition of success. The metrics for financial performance and better pay and conditions for workers are hard to compare, and the people that benefit (shareholders/investors vs employees) are different.

> Workers (and therefore unions) are very much interested in companies being successful.

For some definition of "successful", yes. But their definition won't necessarily be the same as the definition used by the company's owners or management.

Well, Tesla has lost 20%+ of its value during these negotiations, so it sounds like you have some knowledge here that other investers don't.

FYI Having a company founded by a union member and having it be a union shop from the start is exceedingly common among the trades (where most unions are). There are also various similar processes such as co-ops, or granting shared equity among founders who also have voting rights which are very similar concepts to unions.

Imagine how well companies would do if we would do away with these pesky workplace safety regulations and the five day workweek the unions fought for.

Why would that happen if unions actually took ownership of companies? If the unions' claims are correct, then them becoming actual corporations, owned by the workers, selling the service of organized labor to industries like the auto industry, should be more efficient than the current system, without having to sacrifice anything. Things like workplace safety regulations and the five day work week would simply be non-negotiable contract terms that the worker companies require in order to sell their services.

Because of the sarcasm dripping from your post I have no idea what you're actually trying to say.

What I'm trying to say is simple: the unions' basic position is that corporations don't treat workers the way they deserve to be treated. If that is really true, unions should be able to increase productivity and efficiency by putting their money where their mouth is and forming their own corporations that treat workers better, and selling the services of the workers to other corporations. Then negotiations like the ones described in the article would be straightforward contract negotiations between corporations with roughly equal bargaining power. That's what the unions claim to want. And yet it doesn't happen: the UAW, for example, has never even considered becoming the United Auto Workers Corporation and selling services to GM and Ford.

What makes you think a corporatised union would be able to access the kind of money required to do something like that, as opposed to the 'C' suite types that currently run the show?

What money would be required? Forming a corporation is cheap. The workers already own the capital required--their own skills and knowledge. If they sell organized labor as a service, they don't need to buy the equipment--that's still owned by the automakers (or other companies) that they sell their services to.

If that was possible, they would've done it already.

If consumers would tolerate a 20 to 30% increase in prices, any company with half a brain would have already been charging that much. My guess is that jacking up the prices would negatively impact sales. If it doesn't, more power to the car companies I guess?

Trucks went from 40k to 70k in recent memory.

Truck sales have been in freefall for a while too. https://www.motorbiscuit.com/trucks-tanking-americas-appetit...

In general, consumers have been extraordinarily willing to spend more than they would otherwise. Consumers were especially forgiving during the early days of the pandemic. People were highly stressed and desperate for familiar comforts. They were even willing to go into debt to get them. Companies weren't blamed for supply chain issues that caused higher prices.

More recently "inflation" has been the excuse companies use to drive up prices while deflecting blame, but with so many companies making record profits and consumers getting squeezed from all directions I think people are starting to rightly feel like they're being screwed over. I don't expect consumer's acceptance of higher prices to last.

You wouldn’t know around here.. mega trucks everywhere. But maybe they are all 2020 or later models.

If a company were to raise prices like that for no reason, their competitors would just undercut them and steal all of their sales. But with UAW sticking its fingers in, now they'll all raise prices at once, like collusion except without it being possible to defect.

If the workers at non-union carmakers get inspired to unionize there may not be competitors willing to undercut the Big Three, but for now I'm guessing they'd jump at the chance.

> If consumers would tolerate a 20 to 30% increase in prices, any company with half a brain would have already been charging that much

That would be Tesla?

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