Hacker News Reader

Comment by blobbers | Hacker News Reader

“now it’s a union shop in the same state as Wizards”

- regarding unions is it considered a good thing? I still think of it as a crony workplace where only age is promoted and not merit. Am I wrong? Only did union job at a grocery store (UFCW)

View on HN

There's only one unionized TTRPG shop and it's Paizo, so it's uncharted waters for that industry. That said, several people now at Hasbro (F. Wesley Schneider, Amanda Hamon, Judy Bauer) jumped ship from Paizo before the unionization effort. I haven't seen any of those names in the layoff lists, but the company they left is very different now, and I don't know if that makes it more or less attractive to them.

I worked at a unionized job as a teenager at an industrial plant and I asked how to get hired for real instead of temping and he explained how unions worked there and other plants in town. He said it's extremely neoptistic, they'd usually hire a kid of one of the workers or a friend and the odds of an outsider getting in was thin. They dealt out jobs like a mafia family.

I have a few friends in the trades, all part of a union, and none of them would echo this sentiment.

It's also funny because this is the exact same sentiment people complain about with the corporate world, where it's more about who you know than what you know.

Trade unions and Employment unions are very different.

That said, i suspect the parent story was from years ago, most likely late 90's or early 00's when that type of thing was common

Today most unions are very very very hard up to find anyone willing to work everyone that wants a job, and can actually follow instructions, and show up on time (harder than it sounds it seems) gets a job right now...

It was early 2000s in Southern Ontario Canada

I worked at a unionized job. It was not that way for us at all. Perhaps a different industry? It was mostly just protection from shenanigans. Once, for instance, the owner of the company tried not to give us a contracted wage increase - a wage increase he agreed to - and he got slammed by the civil judge. We were paid 3 times the wages that he had tried to steal.

Unions tends to reward credentials and years of experience over performance or capability.

For most people it lowers downside risk and lowers upside opportunity.

Unions prioritize whatever it is the members want prioritized.

Unions like government prioritize what ever the vocal, loudest, and most organized minority of the group wants prioritized, this will not align with all members, and rarely even aligns with what the majority of members desire

I don't think that's generally true.

A recent example: the WGA just ended a strike against the movie and television studios and from what I've read about it, the resolution was not determined by the loudest minority. A deal was worked out, the membership voted, and 99% voted to accept the agreement. That seems like a success.

Lets survey the membership, what is left of them, in a year or less and see if they still feel it was a "success"...

I have a feeling a large % of them will not be in WGA jobs in 18 mos

So you’re just making things up and expecting people to pretend that it’s some kind of serious analysis?

That’s true of corporations too. In practice there are patterns.

Indeed. And members tend to want to put up barriers to entry and engage in credentialism to prevent competition from new comers.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com