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Comment by theshrike79 | Hacker News Reader

Why the fuck would an union cap anyones salary? Is this an American thing?

Over here the purpose of unions is to: Provide a strong enough legal response and guidance to deter companies from trying shady shit, pay better unemployment fees than the government and provide training/networking. They also negotiate collectively with the employers on behalf of everyone for things like paid sick leave, paid vacations etc.

I pay a flat fee every month because the union I'm in has always had relatively low unemployment, for others it's usually a percentage of their monthly gross salary (usually around 10-50€).

In what scenario would capping people's salary be good for the workers?

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>Why the fuck would an union cap anyones salary? Is this an American thing?

No, it's a thing in most of Europe like France or Germany for unionized trades. All trades there have publicly documented salary bands based on education and YoE per job, where the negotiations starting point for a wage for a position must not be below the minimum threshold but also can't exceed a certain upper threshold. In some cases, the company can decide to place you outside the union agreed tariff/band range to give you a higher wage, but then you might be exempt from some strict union rules like 35h/week working hours and such.

And they cap the top end of the salary bands because the yearly budget for wage increases is a fixed pie for most companies, and so to have money left to give entry level workers the great wage increases as mandated for by unions, they need to cap the increases to the top wages to prevent bleeding/bankruptcy. Do you think all European companies have unlimited money to give all their workers X% wage increases?

This is how it works in Austria.

Same in Germany. That's why usually Max Mustermann (55) get's a better compensation for doing bare minimum than you for doing more work.

But in case of layoffs you will be kicked out first and he would be kicked out the last and with a far better severance package.

In Finland we have salary bands for some jobs, but it's usually just the minimum. Some have a maximum, but there are always "personal bonuses" the employer can give on top of that. But these are usually "old" professions like teachers, nurses, factory workers.

For IT jobs I haven't seen an official salary band anywhere and there basically is no union mandated maximum and the minimum is mostly a suggestion.

We also get universally negotiated percentage raises every now and then, but it's like 1-2%. Personal raises are on top of that and can be a LOT more.

The maximum cap sounds just stupid. When you hit the limit, why would you do anything past the absolute minimum to stay at that level?

> The maximum cap sounds just stupid.

Conceptually unions are a democracy and people are selfish. Why should I let some other worker make 10x what I do when I can instead have them make 1x and spread out the other 9x around including to me?

This "spread it around" sounds like some trickle down ecodomics madness to me =)

If the company can't pay more to a high performer they surely won't just give thast money to the average folks. It'll just go to C-staff bonuses and conference trips to exotic countries.

(Provided that the average performers are above the union minimum already)

The likely two outcomes are -- 1) the upper limit of salary band for everyone in the same role is raised high enough or 2) the high performing person is leaving to a place that pays it with a band or without.

> This "spread it around" sounds like some trickle down ecodomics madness to me =)

Trickle-down would be giving him the full 10x salary, then by his own choice he'd be doing something with it that benefited everyone else.

Forcing it by spreading it around instead of paying him is more like socialism or communism.

>Forcing it by spreading it around instead of paying him is more like socialism or communism.

THat's how a lot of companies in Austria apply wage increases per union mandates. Take a budget and spread it around so that workers bicker amongst themselves for not receiving what they think they deserve.

In here the unions negotiate a flat percentage raise for everyone, usually 0-2% "index raises" they call them.

All others are performance based and determined by the employer.

You realize this sounds like you being selfish? You’re taking merit out of the equation, looking to take from others, so that you get more.

> No, it's a thing in most of Europe like France or Germany for unionized trades.

This is how it often works even without unions. Everywhere I worked there were salary ranges you can't go out of without changing the role, and I was never in a union.

The minimum wage thing in France is true but it's so low for developers that it doesn't play any role in salary négociation.

Never seen any upper threshold except just what the company décides.

By law people with the same job and same qualification etc in a company must earn the same thing but that's theory more than practice, except maybe large companies.

Also being in an union or not does not change anything.

In Austria, salary is absolutely NOT capped by collective agreements. At a certain cap salaries are just not valorized anymore, that's all.

We here live in an eco-social free-market economy, where a company can pay an employee however much they want. In union terms, the collective agreements only regulates the minimum an employer has to do.

Most unions in the US seem to have pretty strict rules about titles, who does what, and how much each role gets paid. It's not unreasonable to expect it'd happen with software developers, too.

That said, I always point to the NFL Players Association as one that seems to be able to provide value to highly and diversely paid talent apparently without kneecapping their high performers. Though it's not something I've researched deeply.

Seeing the wage difference in Europe and the UK even for enterprise developers let alone those who work for major (mostly American based ) tech companies, is not a rousing endorsement for unions for developers

When your fascists get done with you, if there's anything left, you'll deeply wish you had spent that wage difference to get rid of them. Inequality is very corrosive to society. Europe had to learn that lesson the hard way too.

While I support mostly liberal causes - I consider myself a liberal not a leftists - like an increased social safety net, universal healthcare etc, unions are just a bridge too far.

But me personally, at 51, I have said before that I plan to go by the Ben Kenobi strategy. When things get too bad, my wife and I will just become hermits somewhere and when the evil empire comes looking for us just give up and die.

We are seriously looking at “Plan B” countries to live in after retirement and are planning to spend 6 weeks in one of those countries starting next month. I work remotely.

lol good luck. Both of those are way harder than paying union dues.

And there's no guarantee the empire won't find you wherever you go. War is an excellent counter to inequality, it works much better than progressive taxation or collective bargaining.

It’s a lot easier when you make 3x the comp of the average developer in the EU and I am not even in BigTech (anymore).

I can absolutely guarantee you that the average enterprise CRUD developer living in a 2nd tier US city is better off than a developer in the EU. Let alone the top 10-20% working in BigTech or equivalent.

The empire will find you wherever you go. https://www.brusselstimes.com/1916422/us-tech-giants-allying...

Have you factored in healthcare costs, welfare (if you ever need that), childcare/kindergarten costs, benefit of living in a safe society, sick leave, holiday, worker protection, better work/life balance etc when you say better off?

Yes my “if I lose my job” budget includes $1000 month for health insurance on the open market or my wife still has her CDL. She doesn’t with now. But she could easily get a job as a school bus driver and get insurance. That was basically why she worked for the first 8 years of our marriage.

Every professional company gives sick leave (usually 10 days), holidays (usually 10 days), paid vacation (usually 15-20 days), I have never had a job where I was expected to work for more than 40 hours a week in 30 years across 10 jobs. If it did, I would get another job .

If you make three times the wages, it pays for a lot of stuff - including self funding your emergency fund, child care cost etc.

How is an increased social safety net a liberal policy? Most liberal parties in Europe want to lower taxes / social-security payments. (see FDP, NEOS, etc.)

Those are considered left policies in the US.

Thats an extremely simplistic view of things? All else is equal? Why do you think that is a product of unions?

So tell me how would I union improve my life as a worker in tech?

I don’t make the eye popping BigTech salaries (been there done that). I spent my entire long career until 2020 as an enterprise Dev in a second tier city.

>Why the fuck would an union cap anyones salary? Is this an American thing?

Huh? If you have a collective agreement, all the compensation ranges are written down there. You get level 11 comp contract and your manager puts you at 85% of the scale, then the union decides the scale goes from say 85k to 95k. The next time the agreement is renegotiated, the scale gets bumped to 90k to 100k and you can't get past 100k until you promoted to the next function with a different comp level in a contract.

That's excluding pager duty hazard pay, may the God allmerciful steer your path away from it.

Unions are more about making the job conditions better than about maximizing the comp. Want to grind, go full 996 and sleep at work to afford that fancy house in Las Vegas.

Employers already have salary caps and comp ranges. They're called the "pay band" at most companies. You can head over to levels.fyi to look at most of them.

So it is an american thing. It seems like your unions do a lot of weird stuff, and then you just accept it as its an universal rule.

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