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Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

Because if an employer already treats you well it just adds unneeded bureaucracy. I'm a big fan of unions, but I'm also a big fan of treating employees well. I would hope that my employees would never feel the need to unionize because I already hear their feedback and give them the benefits they want.

Unions create an adversarial relationship between labor and management. That shouldn't be necessary if labor and management are already allies.

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Regardless of how adversarial it is, all work relationships are contractual negotiations. Without a union, one side of the equation has a boatload of money and expertise, and the other side is... you. Unions are about balancing that equation.

Sometimes employers use that money and expertise for good by figuring out ways to get employees extra benefits, for example inventing the 10 year option, which costs the company more but is better for the employee.

When two people who get along negotiate a contract they don't need lawyers if they aren't trying to take advantage of the other party.

Corporations are not people.

> Sometimes employers use that money and expertise for good by figuring out ways to get employees extra benefits

A union doesn't prevent that. With a union, the employees have the power and expertise to have a say in those improvements too, instead of being at the whims of their bosses.

> When two people who get along negotiate a contract they don't need lawyers

I don't really know how to respond to this... above like five employees, every employment contract is drafted by a lawyer. My employment agreement at the big company I work for now is many dozens of pages long. I tried reading it, but it's just not my area. With a union, I would know that someone on "my side" of the table, who I pay and who works for me, has had a hand in drafting it.

Unfortunately management and labor have never really been allies. Even at companies I super, super love to work at and treat their workers well.. they still will do things like shocking layoffs directly from the board-- because the board doesn't care even if my manager and manager's manager etc. does.

And in the case of Fastmail, it’s already an employee-owned business (not sure on the AU/US split from the Fastmail/Pobox merge, but I believe that all shareholders are employees except one who is a brother of an employee). As a former employee of Fastmail (AU, 2017–2020), I’m a bit puzzled by this, and curious about it.

> Unions create an adversarial relationship between labor and management

Isn’t there still an adversarial relationship between non-union labor and management?

So the story goes: Management wants to pay as little as possible for the most work and labor wants to get paid as much as possible for the least amount of work?

> Management wants to pay as little as possible for the most work and labor wants to get paid as much as possible for the least amount of work?

Well for example, at Netflix, management specifically paid extra for good labor and offered interesting problems, and in return we did extra work because we were motivated by the interesting problems and the great co-workers.

And at Google back in the day, they gave significantly more benefits than necessary to attract great talent.

So no, I'd say it's possible to create a non-adversarial workplace. The trick is keeping it that way as it grows, which is usually when unions come in.

What about Netflix's practice of using an employee until they aren't of any use then disposing them? A practice that applied to an employee that helped draft it?

https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/inside-netflixs-n...

Or how, when the pandemic hit, people realized even with all the perks a Google/Apple campus gives you it was still preferable to stay at home, or even move to a more preferable place, and avoid the tour bus commute? Not to mention the lack of transparency in pay which will stagger individual negotiation efforts when employers apply, or attempt to apply, a WFH tax.

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