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Comment by johnsimer | Hacker News Reader

If I decide to improve my skills and negotiate a 2x raise with my employer or another employer I don’t want to have to be limited by some additional bureaucracy trying to tell me what my employment contract should be

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Not once in my life have I heard or seen unions imterfering in any way or form with negotiations with an employer for better than union conditions. Unions negotiate global basics and of course allow better individual contracts.

Is it actually common for high-performing union members to have better deals? In my (limited) experience, the unions tend to advocate for the long-term membership, who are often below-average performers.

Yes. Usually wage ranges are negotiated. Negotiate before you join the company and make sure you understand your contract. If you are not sure, ask your union's representative or, of course, a lawyer specialized in labour law. Labour law is complex and you definitely want a specialist to answer your questions.

Don't trust the first google hits, especially if you are in the US. Disinformation by union busters is very common around here.

I wonder if the National Basketball Players Association limits Lebron’s ability to negotiate his upcoming $122mm contract.

Yes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBA_salary_cap#Individual_cont...

"The maximum player salary is based on the number of years that player has played and the total of the salary cap. The maximum salary of a player with 6 or fewer years of experience is either $25,500,000 or 25% of the total salary cap (projected for 2017–18), whichever is greater. For a player with 7–9 years of experience, the maximum is $30,600,000 or 30% of the cap, and for a player with 10+ years of experience, the maximum is $35,700,000 or 35% of the cap.[19][33] There is an exception to this rule: a player is able to sign a contract for 105% of his previous contract, even if the new contract is higher than the league limit.[34]"

Does this happen frequently in reality, where unions prevent exceptional employees from negotiating better pay?

Aren't unions overwhelmingly the driving force behind senority-based pay? Honest question. Like, I think teacher's unions are strongly against pay-for-performance.

You don't have to unionize in a set way, just like there's no one way to write an employment contract.

If anything, the tech industry should be leading the world in new ideas and methods (and dare I say it...technology) to organize labor.

I’m just responding to the question about how unions have often operated in the past.

I'd never heard of this before (but I'm also not any sort of expert in unionization).

I'm coming into it more from the other side, unionization as a way buffer against (and maybe negotiate something other than) sudden mass layoffs.

At the exon 101 level, that sounds much more like a job for insurance, savings, or gov’t. (There are generally much lower deadweight losses from transfers compared to keeping people working jobs that are no longer economically net positive.) The better pro-union arguments I know are about balancing negotiating leverage due to many fewer employers than workers.

Unions are what their membership makes them, omnia praeter.

Do you also believe we get the government policies we voted for?

I don’t want seniority based pay. I want value based pay.

If I join a company and day one I’m the top performer I’d want to negotiate a better package for myself and I don’t want other people meddling in my negotiation unless I explicitly hire them to

In a system that is hyper focused in growth like US and even more Silicon Valley, unions don’t seem to make a lot of sense for neither party. And the proof is there, huge businesses and astronomical salaries.

I would say though this only benefits part of the society and comes with huge drawbacks too.

open office floor plans are universally reviled and a union could force those to go away.

You should read the article. He talks about how worker leverage has dissipated, making it not-so-easy to negotiate that 2X raise versus in the past. It's kind of the point.

See also, the surge in recent tech layoffs (which he cites in the article).

If worker leverage has dissipated then IMO that’s because they’re providing less relative value. If you can provide your employer more value they will pay you more

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