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Comment by thadt | Hacker News Reader

As a Fastmail customer (and software developer who is unfamiliar with how unions would/will work in this space), why would I not already be concerned? My first impression is "man, they must not be treating their employees that well if they decided they needed to bring in a third party to help them negotiate."

However - I'm not well versed in this area and willing to learn - why is this a 'good' sign?

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The best time to form a union is when things are going well at a company. It’s easier to use your union to solidify existing benefits than to ask for new ones.

You unionize in the good times so you’re protected in the bad times.

(Not saying that’s what happened here, just saying you cannot really judge what unionization means from the outside)

As for why that’s a good thing in general, that depends on how you feel about unions. If I have the choice between union made goods and non-union made goods, I buy the union made goods. So I’m always happy to see a company unionize.

Unions don't always indicate there is a problem in need of solving. It's just a group of employees agreeing to bargain collectively with their employer, which helps balance out the negotiation power between employees and the employer and creates a stable, well-defined employment relationship.

I struggle to imagine a scenario where employees would unionize despite already feeling like they are treated fairly.

The union/employer relationship is inherently hostile. The whole idea is that unionized employees can threaten production/profits as negotiation leverage.

Choosing that path means the employees have already given up on cooperation based on goodwill. It must take a very sour relationship to reach that point.

This is wrong. This is like saying that the whole relationship of employer/employee is inherently hostile because the employer can threaten wages/livelihood as negotiation leverage. Unions are kind of like HR that serves the employees

Unions almost never negotiate in the long-term interest of a business, they're collectively overly-short-term-focused cash/productivity drags on a business. If unions were truly long-term focused they'd be negotiating things like employee equity, but you almost never see that. Ceteris paribus non union shops are more long-term focused and trend towards better long-term outcomes.

> Ceteris paribus non union shops are more long-term focused and trend towards better long-term outcomes.

Do you have any source for this? It seems hard to believe but I haven't been able to find any studies yet. The best I've found so far says unionization has no impact on business survival: https://www.princeton.edu/~davidlee/wp/unionbf.pdf.

I'm also skeptical that you could really study this effectively, since non-unionized employees tend to benefit when unions are formed elsewhere in their industry. You'd need to compare a group of companies that unionized against a group of similar companies in the same time and place that didn't unionize and also were completely unaffected by the mass unionization of the first population.

That’s a lot of hand waving around an assertion conspicuously missing any supporting logic or data. Do you have any citations? Say, for example, a study comparing the actions of unions versus senior management over time? It’s not hard to find examples of unions accepting cuts to help the future of a business during a bad economic downturn, or executives focused on juicing the share price before they sell, so I think something rigorous would be better than trading vague generalities.

Sure, here's a 40 year survey paper published in a top three economics journal which supports this with data: https://www.princeton.edu/~davidlee/wp/Longrununion.pdf

Also I'm not sure what "supporting logic" is, I presented my logic and you can disagree with it if you want (usually using different logic, which you haven't presented), but there's no such thing as "supporting logic".

That’s paywalled but the abstract is talking about stock market pricing, not the health of the company. Lower equity would make intuitive sense if workers have better compensation, but that doesn’t mean the business is less competitive or likely to survive.

Changed to link the actual PDF of the study.

I don't think you understand what the price of a stock means ...

> I don't think you understand what the price of a stock means ...

Well, the context here was your assertion that unions don’t act in the “long-term interest of a business”. Now, most people understand that share prices are bets on the future value, but also that it’s not a direct relationship because there’s an inherent tension between long-term and short-term interests. That plays out in questions about how much or whether to pay dividends (which has seen a big multigenerational shift in investor preferences), and whether a move which raises share prices is a long-term detriment.

We’ve seen a lot of the latter discussed here lately with tech companies doing broad layoffs to satisfy activist investors, despite research suggesting that companies making unforced layoffs tend to underperform over the long term.

> The union/employer relationship is inherently hostile.

Definitely not how it works in Europe. Unions make it easier for companies to have predictable relationships with their workers, and sector-wide unions mean that a company doesn't have to worry about a labor agreement putting it at a competitive disadvantage.

Right, Unions work differently in different countries. Unions in the US spread the management is always evil message, and treats all negations as a hostile encounter. As a result many of us in the US have a bad impression of unions. However in Europe they tend to be less hostile and so make more sense both for the company and the workers. Different contexts mean different results from what looks like the same thing.

The relationship you're describing is balanced, as opposed to non-unionized employment, where management can threaten employment and healthcare as negotiation leverage and employees can't threaten anything.

One more reason health care should not be employer subsidized. You want insurance (and you should), go buy it: same as you get car and house/apartment insurance.

I agree that healthcare should not be employer subsidized, but I don't think there is any country in the world where you just go out and buy it like car insurance. Almost everywhere in the world it is a baseline government service, and in some rare cases it is a private service but heavily subsidized by the government when necessary. If I could replace the US system with something I would choose one of those options.

You can just go out an buy health insurance in the US, but it is typically a horrible deal. If you have a job odds are your company is putting in thousands of dollars if you go with their plan, get any other plan and you lose all the money. Self employed people do this all the time (generally via the exchanges), as do people who don't work enough hours to get employer health care (the later often get low income subsidies not available to most people).

Yeah, me and my partner were both freelancing for a time, and shopping for health insurance was terrible. Health insurance wasn't the only reason I shifted from freelance to employee work, but it was definitely a very large reason. Now my whole family is covered under my employer's health insurance (and my partner still freelances).

It is wacky that my ability to see a doctor is depends on my job. Losing my job and experiencing a medical emergency is a scarier proposition than losing a month or two of pay for me, tbh.

The union/management relationship is maybe inherently adversarial in the sense that they represent different interests, but this doesn’t need to be hostile. The idea is that the unionized employees have the ability to threaten collective action, if they need to.

Maybe neither side is planning on doing anything hostile, and they are all happy to have things clearly defined.

You struggle to imagine anyone understanding current fair treatment does not guarantee future fair treatment?

It is hard for me to imagine a situation where I feel like I am being treated well at a company and then decide that I want to add another level of bureaucracy and additional fees by joining a union.

Edit: to add, I am not at all opposed to unions. They provide a valuable service in many industries.

Is it hard to imagine collective bargaining improving pay and working conditions above minimum satisfaction? Is it hard to imagine anyone purchasing any type of insurance?

It is hard to imagine those things if I feel like I'm being treated very well already, including above market pay, excellent working conditions, and 100% of insurance premiums being covered by the company.

I can absolutely see the benefits of a union if I felt I was being paid below my worth, if I was dealing with poor work conditions, or had no company provided insurance.

Which is the point of this conversation, when things are bad, you REALLY want a union. When things are good, it's hard to see the value of a union.

Unions also mistreat their members at times. That isn't to say unions are bad, but they are not a perfect answer and you need to watch the union.

No one said unions are perfect or work without participation.

Unions and there members often act like that, though they don't say it.

That’s a very US centric view. It’s quite common to join unions in most European countries. It does not indicate mistreatment at all. In the US, unionisation happens when all else has failed.

And in Europe, being able to unionize is considered a human right, meaning companies aren't legally allowed to try to oppose it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Convention_on_Human_R...

> The union/employer relationship is inherently hostile. The whole idea is that unionized employees can threaten production/profits as negotiation leverage.

The boss/employer relationship is inherently hostile. The whole idea is that bosses can threaten employment/wages as negotiation leverage.

I'd bet a lot of money that it's around a new on-call requirement with no pay increase that no one will put their name on promoting but managers are seeing appear on their all-manager meeting agenda.

The decision to unionize isn't about a "third party." It's a decision to negotiate collectively versus individually. Collectively you have more bargaining power, it's a pretty straightforward and obvious calculation.

That is also why you might not want to join a union. If you can show you are better than someone else (or at least think you can show), the union is likely to force you to get the same pay anyway. Unions often have promotion rules that harm anyone seeking to move up. Of course if you are content this doesn't matter.

Which is why unions work well for assembly line workers: the line moves at the speed of the slowest person on the line, so there is no way to be better than average. (the company/union can fire someone enough slower than average)

You might in fact be as incredible as you think you are.

Even then, the lift from collectively bargaining probably outweighs your individual competitive abilities.

Also, the union doesn't have "promotion rules." The members themselves at those unions decided that's what they wanted to negotiate with their employer into a contract. There's no union rule that says that's what members on the bargaining team have to prioritize. The bargaining team can even prioritize performance pay! I will, however, grant that the very nature of democracy (in this case, workplace democracy) means some people will disagree about what to prioritize.

It is potentially a good sign if Fastmail management voluntarily recognizes the union - that would imply that management and employees are on relatively good terms and the union is not asking for enormous changes.

Even if you love your company, love how you're treated, and don't want anything to change, forming a union still gives you two big advantages. First, it gives employees more influence and voice over the future of the organization, and second it protects the current conditions you love so much and makes it much more difficult for management (which can change at any time) to take them away in the future.

Here's one illustrative example: the staff of Politico and E&E News announce they are unionizing (https://newsguild.org/staff-of-politico-ee-news-are-unionizi...). Why?

> “We want to establish certainty and codify all of the things that we like about E&E into this new world order,” said reporter Emma Dumain. “E&E News is the most family-friendly newsroom I’ve ever worked in,” she said. “I feel supported by my editors as a working parent and that support helps me be a better journalist.” She wants to make sure everyone has the same support, no matter who their editors are or who owns the company.

> Leah Nylen, who has been involved in four company sales over 15 years, said that each one led to changes in benefits, bosses and sometimes layoffs. The day the Politico sale to Axel Springer closed, management informed workers that because of an oversight their 401K would be frozen for the rest of 2021. “If employees had had a seat at the table, I doubt something as important as our retirement and healthcare savings would have been missed,” Nylen said.

Less than two weeks later, management voluntarily recognizes the union: https://newsguild.org/politico-ee-staffers-win-union-recogni.... Everyone seems pretty happy.

> With union recognition nailed down, Organizing Committee members immediately began informing coworkers about the new rights that brings. A legal protection known as “status quo” requires management to maintain the same wages, hours and working conditions that existed when the union was formed, unless they negotiate an agreement with the union or reach a final contract. “Just a week-and-a-half after going public, we have all of these new protections,” Snyder said.

How's it going two years later? Well, not great honestly, they still haven't agreed on a contract, but Politico is still going strong and I imagine most people there are still happy with their decision to unionize.

Here's an article about voluntary union recognition: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/voluntary-recogniti.... This is not an unbiased source, but you can ignore the framing if you want and just use it as a big collection of links to voluntary union recognition examples.

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