Comment by geraltofrivia | Hacker News Reader

Comment by geraltofrivia | Hacker News Reader

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I am sure your opinion is formed based on some experiences you have had in life.

I would like to disagree. Unions are a tool for the poor, the people who don’t have a lot of rights, and protects them from the whim of the rich. If you are working a minimum wage job, and you are being made to work excessive hours, what is your recourse? What is your bargaining power?

Okay, one answer may be to quit and try somewhere else since there isn’t anything to lose here.

Well, I can tell you a very real scenario. My mother was working as a bank clerk in India. Has been her whole life. In the same bank (branches changed but she never changed the bank). When she was 50, there was a fraud. There was a transaction from a local businessman to someone, worth 3x her annual salary. She approved the txn. Once discovered, the businessman took the bank to court who in turn put the blame on my mom of will full ignorance. Businessman offered to settle out of court but we couldnt afford it, of course. At this point, the union came to mum’s help. They pressured upper management to get their house in order, not shift the blame to the tellers, and do not even think about firing her.

> If you are working a minimum wage job, and you are being made to work excessive hours, what is your recourse? What is your bargaining power?

That's the question. What is your bargaining power? All you have is your ability to stop working. Which, indeed, can exert power –– But if you are poor how long can you really go without work before you starve to death?

The rich can afford to sit around and wait until the over side caves. But unless you working excessive hours is the only thing keeping a business afloat (in which case, what do you stand to gain?), most likely they can outlast poor you with ease. Once you give up, your power is gone.

If you can't go without work for weeks, months, maybe even years, the business will quickly recognize your idle threat is just that. It is not just coincidence that unions are rare in professions where there isn't a whole lot of money floating around.

> Well, I can tell you a very real scenario.

This doesn't appear to speak to bargaining power, just communication. No power was needed to be exerted. If it came to a point where power needed to be exerted, how long would your mother have actually lasted? Assuming she could have lasted long enough, perhaps she wasn't as poor as you let on?

Consider the airline union strikes a while back. They leveraged the threat of striking in fits and spurts. They would strike for a day here or a hour there. Extremely disruptive to the business. The airlines had upper managers covering for flight attendants and scabs on contract but the stress was too much after a while. Because it was unpredictable and there are real costs to training flight staff the airlines could just replace everyone or have a whole fleet of spare staff on standby.

Strikes don't need to be and shouldn't be simple affairs, they can and should be nuanced and creative because the capitalists certainly will try to be clever and creative at putting people back into abusive working conditions when it suits them.

Unions are about organization. Because organization creates options. Options are power. Money is one way to get options and therefore power, but not the only way.

> They would strike for a day here or a hour there.

Still a luxury of the rich, of course. The poor can't afford to lose a day, or even an hour.

... but its not, because the union makes this easier than doing it yourself.

Okay, just do some simple reasoning.

Who has more bargaining power? An individual or a union? A union, of course. Therefore, who can end a strike sooner? A union, of course. Therefore, who can get paid sooner? Unionized workers, of course.

If you're POOR and in a position to REQUIRE CHANGE, a union will be necessarily better for you. I don't even understand how this can be up for debate because it seems so painfully obvious.

> Who has more bargaining power? An individual or a union? A union, of course.

Depends. Whomever has the most money. Generally, a group of moderately wealthy people will have more combined money than a single very wealthy person, but statistical likelihood does not provide a guarantee. We can find all kinds of examples in history where exceptionally wealthy individuals have completely dominated over unions.

And even when unions, especially labour unions, do show some amount of strength, they often have to go crying to a rich government for additional power when they don't have enough money of their own.

But if the union members are poor (like, actually poor, not pretend poor like we keep seeing in other comments)...

> If you're POOR and in a position to REQUIRE CHANGE, a union will be necessarily better for you.

Require is an interesting word. What is actually "required"? From what I gather "require" merely means something akin to "would be really nice to have". In that vein, a poor person attaining wealth would be really nice to have. Few would argue with that.

So, why don't the poor unionize and use their power to the capture wealth they are so sorrily lacking? The answer is simple: They don't have the resources to actually do it. Unions are a rich man's sport.

> So, why don't the poor unionize and use their power to capture wealth they're lacking?

They... do. You just described a union and why a union would be good for poor workers.

> They don't have the resources

Right... which is why they unionize, to pool resources.

> Unions are a rich man's sport

You've said this, and never explained how. Rich man are, presumably, business owners. Not laborers. Why, and how, would a union be beneficial for business owners? Wouldn't it be bad for them?

> They... do. You just described a union and why a union would be good for poor workers.

Okay, given that you say they have unionized, but are still poor, what are they waiting for? Why are they sitting on this mythical power that will magically appear without money that you speak of?

> Right... which is why they unionize, to pool resources.

What resources? They are poor. They don't have resources to pool. If they had such resources they wouldn't be poor.

> Rich man are, presumably, business owners.

Why would that be the presumption? The data shows that business owners tend to be quite poor themselves, if not even the poorest, statistically. Obviously there are counterexamples, but the average mom and pop trying to eke out a living at their restaurant down the street, that won't make the year before bankruptcy, are probably not rich. What makes you think that they are?

> Wouldn't it be bad for them?

Why wouldn't business owners also stand to gain bargaining power if they joined a union? It seems you're completely contradicting yourself now.

> mythical power

It's not mythical, it's logical. If you rely on me and ten other people to run your business, and I say I'll walk without a raise, then you say, "good luck". If all ten of your employees say they'll walk, you have a problem.

That's just bargaining power. It's a real thing that exists.

> what resouces?

The most valuable resource from a business perspective, labor. Without labor you don't have a company. You don't have a product. And you don't have customers. Again, a tiny drop of labor you can let go. All of it? Well, there's nothing left.

> business owners stand to gain bargaining power

Two problems. 1, businesses already have perfect bargaining power in labor relations. They can't get more because they have the most. Number 2, bargaining power against themselves? Again, why? That doesn't even make sense.

> If you rely on me and ten other people to run your business, and I say I'll walk without a raise, then you say, "good luck". If all ten of your employees say they'll walk, you have a problem.

Yet we can find all kinds of examples where the employer did say "good luck" to all ten people. In fact, it used to happen frequently enough that the government will now often step in to try and prevent the business from doing that. As before, labour unions, even when comprised of moderately wealthy people, are not always wealthy enough to hold power and have to cry to a much richer government for assistance.

> The most valuable resource from a business perspective, labor.

You can direct your labour resources towards the union, but that comes at the cost of not being able to direct it to your paid job. Opportunity cost is real. If you are poor, what supplemental resources do you plan to use to acquire things like food in the absence of the pay you gave up? There is no such thing as a free lunch.

> businesses already have perfect bargaining power in labor relations.

And...? Even if that is true (it's not, of course), unions are not limited to labour relationships. The farmer unions talked about at the top of the thread branch (which you obviously didn't bother to read) aren't about trying to embolden farmer bargaining power over their farmhands.

> bargaining power against themselves? Again, why? That doesn't even make sense.

Uh... What? Best to stop and think before replying, my friend.

I am fully convinced that you are not arguing in good faith.

Finding a few counterexamples on a gradient doesn't mean the gradient doesn't exist. Finding a few counterexamples means that strikes don't always work, but they certainly work more often than solo negotiations.

At best you are doing this thing that smart but narrowly focused people do where you try to break it down to a binary. That might be possible, but if this most charitable interpretation is correct your binary is "Are unions perfect" which they clearly aren't. Instead your binary should be "Are union usually better than solitary negotiations?" and that the answer to that is clearly yes.

I also doubt this is your actual issue, because you have introduced data and brought in hypothetical mom and pop stores that are clearly unrelated. Because of abject non-sense like this:

> You can direct your labour resources towards the union, but that comes at the cost of not being able to direct it to your paid job.

We are talking about strikes. You know and have demonstrated a knowledge that withholding labor is the power a laborer has, not directing it to a union. And in some situations (like the Kellogg's Strike over the pandemic) the union pays people on strike, this is a problem with many solutions and people get more options as they pool effort and resources.

You are ignoring repeated explanations and willfully choosing to answer the wrong questions. You are not engaging with this topically honestly.

> but they certainly work more often than solo negotiations.

Generally, least as long as the members are moderately rich and have the richest, and therefore most powerful, entity – the government – willing to hold their hand. But how successful do you think labour unions would be if the government eliminated all laws that protect labour unions? Let's be real: Most of them wouldn't stand a chance. A lot of them aren't rich enough to exert the needed power on their own.

> Instead your binary should be "Are union usually better than solitary negotiations?"

It seems the problem here is that you're doing that weird programmer thing where you think everything is binary. The first comment described four possible states on the blatant surface. It cannot be distilled down to a binary state. To try and force it into to a binary state loses everything that is being talked about. The quantization you are trying to apply is invalid.

With respect, no wonder you're so confused about the subject. Hopefully recognition of your error can get you back on track.

> the union pays people on strike

Assuming we're still talking about a union of poor people, and not going off on wild tangents, how? Where has this money magically appeared from? Sure, rich people can fund a union and pay out dividends to workers on strike, but then you're talking about rich people. We recognized from the very beginning that unions are beneficial to the rich.

Again, where do you think these poor people are magically finding all this money out of thin air? You keep going there, but never seem to be able to answer to it. Let me be clear: Poor people, not rich people.

> What resources? They are poor. They don't have resources to pool. If they had such resources they wouldn't be poor.

This is binary thinking where a gradient is required.

Poor is a spectrum. Someone with a car and a house and a $20/hour job might be poor because they barely make ends meet but manage to save a few hundred a month, but they have more options than a renter who is otherwise financially identical because they can use their house or car as collateral to get a loan.

A group of people might be able to take out a loan an individual can't. A group of people might collect dues as a cost to be in that group and pay them back out to allow strikes.

A group of people can threaten a strike and that costs Zero dollars.

> The data shows that business owners tend to be quite poor themselves

This is bullshit. I now think you are a liar. We are clearly talking about business large enough for strikes to happen and that excludes whatever non-sense dataset you have cherry picked.

More people have more options. Options are power. Why are you arguing against this fundamental point?

> Someone with a car and a house and a $20/hour job might be poor because they barely make ends meet

And someone with a $1,000,000 per year salary and a penchant for hookers and blow might also barely make ends meet. Is there some kind of useful takeaway from this fun anecdote?

> but manage to save a few hundred a month

If we assume the average worker with 20 years under their belt, that's ~$40,000. In what world is that poor? That alone, even ignoring the house and any other assets (a car, perhaps?), is somewhere around the top 20%. This disconnect from reality is fascinating.

> A group of people might be able to take out a loan an individual can't

Just who, exactly, is going to lend to poor people, even if they come by the millions, for no reason other than to cover their living expenses? There is almost no chance the poor are going to pay you back, unless maybe they happen to win the lottery. But if you really want to "invest" in the lottery, why not put that money directly into the lottery? What value do the middlemen bring?

> A group of people might collect dues as a cost to be in that group

From who? The poor don't have resources to pay dues. Are you being tricked by rich people again?

> We are clearly talking about business large enough for strikes to happen

No, we are clearly not. What makes you think the farmers that we were talking about earlier in thread even have employees? Many farmers do not. You're clearly not talking about anything related to what the rest of us are, but anyway...

> More people have more options. Options are power. Why are you arguing against this fundamental point?

Get back to us when you've actually read the thread. As amusing as your confusion is, there is no interest in arbitrarily changing the subject for no reason. Never was, never will be. Start a new thread if you want to talk about something else. Hijacking an existing thread for a different purpose is in bad faith.

I don't believe randomdata is arguing in good faith.

> most likely they can outlast poor you with ease. Once you give up, your power is gone.

Maybe don't put forward arguments that hinge on denial of reality?

The railway strikes in Germany from beginning of this year prove that, no, the bourgeoisie cannot just sit around and wait and/or rehire their entire staff. The 2023 Hollywood labor disputes show that "the poor" can indeed last longer than "the rich".

> Maybe don't put forward arguments that hinge on denial of reality?

Ironic. If I was able to meet reality, that would imply I have a full understanding of reality, at which point for what reason would there be to talk about it? That would be a pointless waste of time.

> 2023 Hollywood labor disputes show that "the poor" can indeed last longer than "the rich".

According to the internet, these "poor" you speak of are making average incomes into the hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. These are, generally, very rich people. Perhaps you aren't aware of what poor is?

Unions in Europe originated with the poor factory workers, miners etc.

Sometimes going on strike would be tough — there'd be less to eat, if the union wasn't large enough to subsidise strikers with workers' income from elsewhere.

Unions predate the labour movement. The Royal Society is oft considered the first formalized union, originating in the 17th century, with a focus on the progression of science and not employment woes.

The early trade unions were not successful. I mean, they were successful in bringing about change, but they were not successful as power entities. They had to lean on government to exert the power. Unions are a rich man's sport.

Of course, government itself is ultimately a union, although differing in how membership is recognized. A government of only poor people wouldn't go far either, though. Government equally needs riches to wield power.

Are the railway strikes in Germany really a good example? It's a public company, no matter what happens it will be kept afloat by the taxpayers. Realistically, if DB were a private company, it would have long gone bankrupt and the strikers would be out of a job. They lost 1.3B apparently in the past 6 months, and they claim 300M were due to the strikes.

>The railway strikes in Germany from beginning of this year prove

That's because national railway and other such national critical infrastructure workers like policemen, teachers, healthcare workers, etc have actual leverage. Like what are you gonna do then? You can't outsource your infrastructure maintenance, healthcare or policing to remote offshore Asian workers, but you can for other non-credentialed internet connected professions in the private sectors where the language is Englisch, which correlates to their unions being very weak in negotiation power, like IT workers for example.

The recent tanking of IT/tech jobs in some high-CoL countries has made IT workers there realized that without the low interest rates to artificially inflate the market demand, they have virtually no leverage over their employers unlike those in credentialed professions with unions.

> but you can for other internet connected professions in the private sectors

You can certainly try, but the quality will be noticeably poorer. You can get away with that for a while, especially as a big business, but I think the tide is already turning there. Everyone's tired of broken shitty tech that doesn't work properly with no one to really contact about it. Skilled IT professionals are in huge demand nowadays, it's only the fleas on the rats complaining that the ship is sinking. Rats can swim, they'll be fine as long as land isn't too far. Mechanics and firefighters that can actually keep the ship going (if you pay us well enough), are on the other hand doing quite well these days. Unions are great, especially for tech professionals. As long as you're still allowed to negotiate personally as well, there's no reason not to.

>You can certainly try, but the quality will be noticeably poorer.

I know HN loves repeating this outdated trope to feel good, but that's not always the case and not in many I saw where they offshored and product quality didn't drop because they made sure to hire qualified people and managers, and not bottom of the barrel on the cheap.

Sure, you won't find many rockstar workers abroad, but most companies don't need that many rockstar engineers especially for CRUD work which is a commodity now, and plenty of countries have upskilled their workforce in the last 20 years especially in web CRUD, that they can take on the maintenance of stable products on the cheap.

>Everyone's tired of broken shitty tech that doesn't work properly with no one to really contact about it.

You mean like the one Google, Microsoft, Crowdstrike, etc. build in he US and not by offshore workers?

>Unions are great, especially for tech professionals. As long as you're still allowed to negotiate personally as well, there's no reason not to.

That's not how unions work in France and Germany. The unions set strick salary bands so that a newcomer can't earn more than someone who's been longer in the company so your negotiation doesn't get you anything, you let your union negociate for you.

> product quality didn't drop because they made sure to hire qualified people and managers, and not bottom of the barrel on the cheap.

So they didn't save much money, they just chose not to pay their domestic talent. Much better.

>Sure, you won't find many rockstar workers abroad, but most companies don't need that many rockstar engineers especially for CRUD work which is a commodity now,

Sure, we're mostly in tech and tech is one of the "easier" factors to outsource. I think your underrating how much even Crud work needs, but that's besides my main point.

You can't outsource everything. If you need people in a physical store, or on a physical setting in a building or in government land, you'll need to negotiate with your labor or shut down the project. I guess you can immigrate aliens who you can pay under minunum wage with the promise of citizenship, but that's clearly beyond the gray area at this point.

>You mean like the one Google, Microsoft, Crowdstrike, etc. build in he US and not by offshore workers?

In the grand scheme of things, most of my CS nightmares came from financial issues, not technical. And yes, they want to make that experience painful.

Sure, Crowdstrike happens but domestic labor means it's mostly fixed (and actually fixed) in a weekend instead of a week with precarious results.

>staff. The 2023 Hollywood labor disputes show that "the poor" can indeed last longer than "the rich".

Did it? What I read from the dispute is that it only slightly delayed AI while throwing Voice actors completely under the bus.i think the only reason it even settled was due to declining movie sales, another issue self inflicted by the rich.

> All you have is your ability to stop working. Which, indeed, can exert power –– But if you are poor how long can you really go without work before you starve to death?

When union workers strike, they do so collectively, which means that the bargaining power is not that of a single individual but that of the collective workforce. Employers often can’t just wait out a strike because they lose tons of money when all its employees aren’t working. The union’s strength lies precisely in this collective bargaining power.

Also, unions raise money to support striking workers and unions emerged initially in the jobs where workers were paid the least and exploited the most (see early 19th century textile workers in the U.S., for example). The decline of unions since then is a more complicated history but the reality is that unions most benefit the most exploited workers who would otherwise have no recourse as individuals. Collective support helps maintain workers throughout a strike.

> Also, unions raise money to support striking workers

You’re still thinking of the rich. The poor don’t have money to raise. If they did, they wouldn’t be poor.

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