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Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

> Structural unemployment happens when the perceived skills of the workforce don't match the perceived needs of employers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons : when "buyers" cannot distinguish between good and bad due to informational issues, even the good products (or in this case employees) cannot find buyers. Market failure.

It might be improvable by the relevant parties getting together and agreeing on a curriculum and exams so people only have to take a test once, for example. But I think that's a long way off.

Of course, ChatGPT makes this a lot worse since it reduces the cost of fakes on both sides: fake applications and fake job adverts.

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Unions have historically solved this problem. Non-union accreditation programs don’t seem to have the same effect, though in some industries they do have a positive effect on salary.

People have fixated on the word "union", but when a group of white collar people get together to set standards and gatekeep them it's called a profession. In the UK, this is usually structured as "chartered". It covers other types of engineers (see the repeated discussion of whether software engineering is engineering; iron rings in Canada; etc) as well as accountants and surveyors.

Older craft professions had guilds. Lawyers go back still further in history and have their "bar" exams.

But in all cases it requires imposing a costly barrier to entry in exchange for not having to prove yourself over and over again to potential employers. Nobody makes a lawyer do fizzbuzz before hiring them.

...because the state Bar Association has required them to pass a test just to show up. In most states the same organization requires a degree from an accredited law school just to sit the test (though I think there are like 2 states that let anyone sit the Bar Exam).

Put another way, everyone has to do the fizzbuzz leetcode test just to be in the industry. But you only have to do it once.

to qualify, unions may have solved this problem in the US. in europe, which has a stronger apprentice culture, unions don't have any role here.

(i am not saying this to criticize the comment but just to point out one of the many differences between unions in the US and europe)

the problem with apprentice programs is that they lag behind the changes in the industry. when i was in school there were none for software developers for example. there are now, but the second problem is that apprentice programs are considered of lower status compared to studying at a university. think blue-collar programmers vs white-collar software developers. the pay is also different.

i don't know anything about union accreditation programs, but i can imagine that they would be targeted at the available jobs, and with unions in the US having more influence at who gets hired, they probably can make sure that an accreditation actually leads to a job.

apprentice programs traditionally also promised that you'd get hired at the company where you learned, but this is no longer certain. together with the status and pay differences it is no surprise then that the number of people starting apprentice programs is declining.

on the other side university studies are not targeted at the industry. which only adds to the perception of candidates not matching employers needs. as an employer it is difficult to tell whether a candidate with a diploma is actually capable of doing the job.

unions are long established in europe, at least in western europe, and are a cornerstone of the social system. even white collar jobs have unions. this is in contrast to the US where unions are almost entirely non existent for white collar jobs like software engineering.

Union Law in a lot of "Europe" (a broad term so very dependent country to country) is much less adversarial with businesses than in the US.

At least in Western Europe, the big Unions won't fight tooth and nail over mass layoffs (eg. Volvo in 2009-12 Sweden versus GM in 2009-12 US) and make it a major political issue, as the Union Leadership has larger ambitions beyond their Union.

A lot of this seems to stem from the influence National Syndicalism had on most European unions in the 20th century compared to traditional Syndicalism in the US+UK in the 20th century.

>Union Law in a lot of “Europe” […] is much less adversarial with businesses than in the US.

US labor law was designed to be adversarial at the firm level because that gives individual firms greater power to crush unions and prevents sectoral bargaining and sympathy strikes. One can see the vestiges of “European” labor organizing in the film industry, which has an exemption to this that was grandfathered in.

can you elaborate on that please?

i don't see how US law wants companies to crush unions. and what is that film industry exemption about? any references?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taft%E2%80%93Hartley_Act

from where I am in europe, I have different memories... unions were pretty aggressive when it came to companies like Volvo

You didn't understand the context. Unions in Europe are usually not involved at all in accrediting professionals in their fields. Thats what the conversation is about.

The 'guilds' seem to have a similar purpose here in Britain, namely that of providing legally-required accreditation programmes. However, these are only for certain trades, and I put guilds in scarequotes because they aren't as exclusive as the mediaeval form.

Re. universities, it was widely quoted a few years ago that more people graduated with a bachelors in photography during that year than there were practising photographers!

It would only make it harder for new grads, as unions aim to help their constituents increase salaries, which means paying non-union hires waaaaaay less.

Look at the Automotive Engineering industry in Ohio/Penn/Mich for example - a union contract engineer will earn a decent amount, but the majority of new hiring is non-union.

I'm relatively uninformed here, but isn't part of the union's job to propagate itself and ensure that there aren't non-union hires in the same industry and location?

> there aren't non-union hires in the same industry and location

We live in a globalized world where location doesn't matter as much.

Automotive Unions are good at demanding fairly competitive wages for their members, but this pushed margins significantly down, leading to vendors and even manufacturers in the Automotive industry to leave union-friendly states like MI, Ohio, and Pennsylvania for those that are right-to-work (eg. South Carolina).

A major reason companies like GM and Stellaris fell behind on the EV trend was because battery technology and automation doesn't fall under the UAW, so there were constant protests and strikes against EV manufacturing (eg. the UAW strikes a couple months ago).

Meanwhile, the Teslas, Hyundais, DaimlerBenzes, and Fords pivoted manufacturing to right-to-work states like Alabama, Kentucky, and Texas.

Imo, a big reason for the PHEV push recently in the US is because of UAW negotiations to protect legacy ICE builds which can be modified into PHEVs as they use most of the same parts excluding the battery portion [0].

[0] - https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/16/business/electric-vehicle...

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