Hacker News Reader

People usually believes union has only positives. And that is why CEOs try to squashed it. Everything has pros and cons. Unfortunately if the crowd is predominantly pro-union, minority like yours will be construe as hostile and suspected as management disguised to spread lies. I usually told my unionized colleagues just upgrade yourself constantly and change jobs often. More than 20 of my ex-collegues did this and fare incredibly well compare to those stuck to union protection mentality.

I've been in three different unions and posted similar about my experiences in the past and am usually downvoted to hell for it because of peoples' ideological alignment not allowing them to consider opposing experiences/viewpoints as reasonable.

My amateur take here is, saying that something is a possibility, however remote, is different from "if you vote this way, this will happen to you" said by people with the power and motivation to make it happen to you if you vote that way.

Would we expect the same deference given to a mob boss issuing thinly-veiled threats to witnesses? After all, it's not impossible that an accident will totally randomly happen to the witness or their loved ones that prevents them from testifying. The boss is just sayin' there's data that shows accidents sometimes happen to people who testify, that's all.

Yeah that's fair. CEOs being human, it seems unreasonable to expect them to never have opinions, but given the power dynamics/differential they absolutely must be held to a very high standard. This comment didn't feel at all like a threat to me given my personal experience (it felt like a blatant statement of fact), so while I don't agree that this broke the law, I do agree it isn't something he should have said and he needs to do better.

Though personally, I'd much rather know my CEOs real opinion on things, because whether they say it out loud or not they still believe it. I'd rather know where people stand than have to guess/assume.

I wouldn't have minded if he had issued an opinion that the union _might_ do something to members, rather than the leader of the company saying bad stuff will definitely happen to people who side against the company. After all, he has more motivation and opportunity than anyone else to follow through on that credible threat.

Otherwise, is the mob boss in my example just expressing an opinion, too?

>I worked as an auto parts delivery driver, and one day I delivered some parts to a machine shop. As I started opening the front door, I could hear a blaring high-pitch wining noise coming from the shop area. I got to the office and there were 4 guys just sitting with earplugs in. I asked the what was going on, and they told me that one of the machines had broken but they weren't allowed to turn off the power switch because of union rules. They had to wait until the proper union guy showed up to turn off the switch. And no, this wasn't some super special switch, it was just a 50 amp breaker. I think it's pretty clear they lost some empowerment.

And yet with that few details, it's just as likely you completely fabricated the story as not. Exactly what machine in this machine shop was powered on and off every day with nothing but a breaker? They had to bring in a specific guy every day to turn on the machine in the morning and off at night with this breaker, but he's not there all the time? They just left it unattended for lunch breaks or had none? And there's only one guy? There was no other power switch? That passed code how? Or you're claiming the machine shop operated 24/7?

That's ignoring the part that in the average datacenter, you also can't "just flip a breaker" - it needs to be done by a licensed electrician for liability reasons, and absolutely nothing to do with unions.

>So yeah, if you're going to say that he "lied" then I think you need to explain what evidence you have that he knew what he said was not true. If he has any experience with unions, there's a good chance he has specific situations in mind.

That's not how that works, sorry. As an officer of a public company he's not allowed to make vague, generalized statements to dissuade workers from unionizing. I'm under absolutely no obligation to explain what he meant for him, I didn't say it.

Which, again, is why he got smacked down by a judge.

Oh, and yes I have worked in a union. I made about 4x minimum wage and had guaranteed leave while in college. I can say that non-union jobs at the time provided nothing close to it for a job that required little pre-existing experience.

If you've worked in environments dominated by unions you most certainly know that that story wasn't fabricated. I had a friend that worked show sites, comic con and stuff like that. She told me that in some states, when they set up a kiosk they weren't allowed to plug plugs into wall sockets because it required someone in the electricians union.

I'm glad you made a lot of money. Were you worth that kind of money? The guy walking around plugging plugs into the wall in my example was most certainly not. I'd rather just not do business than do business in environments where bureaucracies create pointless busy work to keep people paid.

> Exactly what machine in this machine shop was powered on and off every day with nothing but a breaker? They had to bring in a specific guy every day to turn on the machine in the morning and off at night with this breaker, but he's not there all the time? They just left it unattended for lunch breaks or had none? And there's only one guy? There was no other power switch? That passed code how? Or you're claiming the machine shop operated 24/7?

I was an auto parts guy, I didn't work for the machine shop. Also this was over 20 years ago. I have no idea exactly what machine it was. Also I specifically mentioned that the machine had broken, which most people understand to be an unusual state of operation that isn't a typical (especially daily) occurence that happens on a schedule. This is an abnormality in operation. It doesn't need this breaker flipped normally, so you could have answered several of your questions just by reading a little closer what I had already posted. I doubt it was "one guy" in total who could flip the switch (I've never heard of a union of only one person, and I specifically mentioned that it was a union who controlled ability to flip this switch, but given your question I'm guessing you have heard of one-person unions), but that day they were waiting for "one guy." Usually you don't have to send out a whole team to flip a breaker, so "one guy" is usually sufficient. Overall, I trusted that they weren't lying to me. Sure they could have been. I don't see why they would, and I saw those guys often since they ordered parts multiple times per day, so we had a somewhat friendly relationship, but if you want to believe everybody is just lying everywhere then you are free to do so. That would help keep your ideology in tact. The unfortunate side-effect that your blanket support includes defending utter absurdity need not bother you, so carry on.