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Comment by nataliste | Hacker News Reader

This is just "I'm not racist, but..." applied to labor.[1]

You're not pro-union. You're anti-union plus rhetoric.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27m_not_racist%2C_but...

It isn’t unless you’re an extremist. It’s one thing to shut down an industry for a few weeks while you bargain and that has alternatives and society can absorb a few weeks, it’s another one to shut off all ports and hope to set off a national recession because it gives you bargaining power. There are limits to everything.

This can be easily avoided by meeting the Union's demands.

A free labor market means laborers are free to go. If this means you have no ports, then you are not competitive on the labor market.

Corporations have gotten extremely comfortable with existing in an extremely skewed labor market. One where they do not have to pay because they don't have to be competitive - workers have zero mobility, zero visibility, and need to eat.

If the corporations cannot meet the Unions demands and that results in failure to buy or sell, that is the free market at play. They can simply pay more. Clearly, the demand for this labor is extremely high and the supply is what it is. That means pay up.

The unions demands may have been met if they didn't ask for ridiculous things like a complete ban on automation.

It's not ridiculous, it's a market force. Again, if the demand for such laborers is high enough then they will do it.

The best way to negotiate is to ask for nothing, and in turn receive everything from your enlightened, benevolent (and dare I say, handsome!) master.

Considering a series of robots can do their jobs and they have essentially held the supply chain hostage to get top % salaries, yes they should be grateful for every morsel they extract from the US populace.

I grew up in a union household. My father was a member of an airline pilots union and my mother was a member of (23 years) and president of (17 years) the teachers union in our town. Unions kept my parent's gainfully employed for decades.

As for "I'm not racist but..." I don't need a wiki link. I'm black and well aware of that kind of idiocy. This is not that. Nice try though.

>I grew up in a union household. My father was a member of an airline pilots union and my mother was a member of (23 years) and president of (17 years) the teachers union in our town. Unions kept my parent's gainfully employed for decades.

"I'm not racist, I have black friends" applied to labor.

The only reason unions exist is to protect the jobs of the union at the expense of the whole economy through collective bargaining and striking when leverage exists. If it's not doing that, it's not a union, it's a professional club.

When you say:

>I understand that automation costs jobs and a union's primary responsibility is to protect the jobs of its members but what are we really supposed to do here? Continue with antiquated processes that affect an entire economy just to protect the jobs of a relatively small number of people?

If you're pro-union, the answer is yes, categorically. You don't get to decide whether their demands are reasonable or not. It's their union and their industry. You support them if they decide to strike.

If you don't, well, that's your right, but it puts you outside the camp of labor and being pro-union.

Being pro-union between strikes is like being a pacifist between wars. Cheap, unprincipled, and contemptible.

I see the disconnect here for you. You believe that if you ever disagree with a union on a particular position that means you’re anti union. Which is obviously a stupid thing to think.

No, I believe if you claim to be pro-union except when a union is striking because it allows "[...] antiquated processes that affect an entire economy just to protect the jobs of a relatively small number of people" then guess what? You're as pro-union as the likes of Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises, and Friedrich Hayek, which is to say not at all. If you don't believe in the right to strike even when it hurts or even paralyzes the economy, then you don't believe in it at all.

> If you don't believe in the right to strike even when it hurts or even paralyzes the economy, then you don't believe in it at all.

I absolutely believe in a right to strike and made no comment suggesting that I don't believe in the idea generally or in this instance specifically. I just said that I disagreed with the idea that all automation should be banned. You keep trying to imagine that I said something that I didn't. It's a little funny tbh.

FWIW, I hope they get the pay increase that they are asking for _and_ I hope they can compromise on the automation thing. I'm not informed enough on what that compromise might look like but everyone knows a compromise can be made. That's why they're negotiating.

I understand that you support the right to strike in principle, and I’m not suggesting you’ve denied that. The point I’m making is about what being pro-union truly entails when it comes to the specifics of their demands, particularly in contentious situations like this one around automation.

When you say you disagree with banning automation, you’re not just disagreeing with one policy detail—you’re questioning the union’s core function, which is to protect jobs even when the broader economic context pushes for technological progress. Unions draw a hard line on these issues because, from their perspective, any concession on something like automation opens the door to undermining workers' rights and security long-term, which if given must have something of equal worth exchanged. Supporting unions means recognizing that sometimes their stance will be uncompromising when it comes to preserving jobs, even if it is economically inconvenient or outdated.

As for compromise, yes, negotiation is part of the process, and unions do make concessions. But at the same time, there’s a reason why they take strong positions initially—to ensure they have leverage and to protect their members' jobs to the fullest extent possible. Suggesting that there must be a compromise on automation puts you in a position of advocating for a middle ground that the union may see as fundamentally compromising its mission.

So, while you say you support the right to strike and hope for the pay increase, your stance on automation implies a conditional form of support that’s more aligned with the mainstream neoliberal economic view than with labor’s mission. That’s the core of the issue here—not whether you support striking in general, but whether you fully back the union’s approach when it’s at odds with broader economic concerns. If that’s not something you’re comfortable with, it’s worth reflecting on where your support for unions actually begins and ends.

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