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Comment by Frieren | Hacker News Reader

There is no reason for any employee to not search for unionization. It is your right and it is in your best interest. Good for them.

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> There is no reason for any employee to not search for unionization.

That's a very theoretical view. (As most absolutes are.)

Unions and rules around unions can be very different depending on locality, industry and other specifics. The power and benefits a union gives a specific employee may not outweigh the cost they impose on that specific employee.

Furthermore, unions are organizations. They have their own internal power structures that can be corrupted by self-serving individuals or special interests. A blanket "union = good" view can make that invisible to you.

In one of my previous work, I was "forced" to enter a public union. They were simply leeches sucking government money (surprise, government was paying union premiums) through workers with almost no actual benefits. Whenever somebody glorifies Unions I just chukle.

Was this in the US? In the US, anti-union action by the government and employers has been extra egregious historically. This has obviously impacted unions in the US.

There's also LOTS of anti-union misinformation spreading in the US.

No it was not in US

There is lots of pro-union misinformation as well.

Please. Share.

So your point is, you have to look for a good union? Fully agreed!

In the US, you don't really get an option to choose. At most you'll get "paying union dues to the one that controls the contract, or not paying", often you don't get that much.

Almost. My point is that you have to see if a union is good (for you).

The top level command suggested that any unionisation is good. Even with a terrible union.

What’s in the collective best interest may not match with what’s in the individual best interest. Perhaps unions are more likely to be in the self interest of the below average employees, the ones with no negotiating power. The best school teachers are almost certainly being held back by their unions and the worst ones are getting a free pass. When I worked at a unionized place I was blocked from an opportunity my employer offered me because it was better than what the standard negotiated terms were.

The rising tide lifts all boats.

Denying people agency and power in their negotiation by claiming they are "not as good as someone else" is antithetical to the struggle of labor - work deserves to be compensated fairly.

>When I worked at a unionized place I was blocked from an opportunity my employer offered me because it was better than what the standard negotiated terms were

Your union blocked this because your employer was trying to break your unions negotiating power by separating your interests from the collective workforce. If people who are sympathetic to management and accept that they will be compensated greater by acting against the interests of the labor union, the union should block these promotions. If you don't want to protect your coworkers by negotiating with them, then you must be interested in exploiting them by negotiating against them. Labor is a zero sum game.

> Your union blocked this because your employer was trying to break your unions negotiating power by separating your interests from the collective workforce.

Be that as it may, for this specific employee the union was a negative. In effect, he is asked to sacrifice for the collective. It's understandable that that's acceptable to the collective, but it's also not hard to see why the sacrifice wouldn't like that.

> The rising tide lifts all boats.

Apparently not ALL boats.

Representation under a union is voluntary, and if an employee doesn't wish to be represented by that union, they may quit. I'm sure there are some other means of avoiding union representation in unionized workplaces in the US, but I don't know the speciics of them. This is generally called strikebreaking, though the act of working with a company outside of its unionized workforce isn't strongly defined outside the terms of a labor strike. Similarly to agreeing to the employment contract, agreeing to the union contract is binding and one ought to agree to its terms, which may be vague enough to state things such as "advancement in career title and duties may be subject to discretion of the union", or other similar terms. If you don't want to be represented by a union, you should choose not to be.

The tide is a local water level; every boat on the water is lifted by the tide. A swell or wave may lift one boat, regardless of tide.

>> Representation under a union is voluntary, and if an employee doesn't wish to be represented by that union, they may quit.

Come on, that's not voluntary in any true sense - especially since the same justification could be made for not having a union in the first place!

>Denying people agency and power in their negotiation by claiming they are "not as good as someone else" is antithetical to the struggle of labor - work deserves to be compensated fairly.

Labor is not a homogenous block. A huge chunk of workers are lazy as fuck and only do the bare minimum; it's unfair for people who work hard that their compensation should be lowered just so the lazy ones can be paid more. And lowered it must be, because a company only can only afford a certain total amount of spending on wages, so if the shirkers must be paid more than the hard workers must be paid less. It's not exploitation to pay the bare minimum possible to someone who puts in the bare minimum of effort.

Any company is free to hire whoever it cares at its own discretion, and in most (49/50) US states fire them without cause; perhaps due diligence is required of companies that are unionized to ensure that they are investing wisely in the labor they pay for, rather than accepting that all labor must be paid less on the argument that maybe it is of poorer quality than desired.

If you work in a unionized workplace and have complaints about a coworkers capability, your complaints should first be heard by your union because your union is the arbiter of your labor force, as per the contract you sign with said union.

Guilds were (and in some non-US places still are) a solution to this issue, in which some level of competence must be demonstrated through time spent and qualifications earned to gain acceptance to a guild. Some unions in the US still practice this measure of trial for their members, but they are generally relegated to the skilled trades, and this isn't something that common labor unions do.

> If you work in a unionized workplace and have complaints about a coworkers capability, your complaints should first be heard by your union because your union is the arbiter of your labor force, as per the contract you sign with said union.

The question obviously being, what are you supposed to do if they fail to address it?

Suppose the union leadership brought in a bunch of their own incompetent cronies and is now making a hash of things, but you can't vote them out because those same cronies keep voting them in.

if you joined a non-democratic union to begin with, that's on you. This is a rare anomaly though and most unions have democratic processes you can engage with and bring the change

It is a democratic union. There are 100 workers and 55 are the leadership's cronies who keep voting them back in. Classic democracy, two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.

Also, how do you get to pick which union to be in? One can get certified even if you voted against it, or already exist at the company where you want to work.

The reverse is true. Unionization of the UK car industry in the 1970s, more than played its part in the collapse of the UK car industry, for example:

> The company became an infamous example of the industrial turmoil that plagued the United Kingdom in the 1970s. Action by unions frequently crippled BL manufacturing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Leyland#1975%E2%80%931...

'work deserves to be compensated fairly' - are you talking about Marx's 'labour theory of value'? Even though Marx himself criticised it?

Unionisation didn't bring down British Leyland, the management did. There was no upward mobility from the unionised shop floor up to the management and design departments and it led to designs and management strategies that were completely divorced from both the realities of building cars and what consumers wanted to buy. The unions were a convenient scapegoat for Margaret Thatcher, but the reality is that Ford of Britain, Vauxhall, Nissan UK, Honda of the UK, and Toyota UK workers were all part of the same union but they didn't have relentless industrial disputes because they were managed effectively by people with actual experience in car production.

British Leyland were extremely reluctant to produce clean-sheet designs as well to save on R&D, which hampered their production capacity because production techniques were moving on from things that were complicated to assemble and maintain towards simpler assemblies which took fewer manual operations to put together. The Morris Ital and Austin Metro launched in 1980 fitted with an engine designed by Austin Motors in 1951 with the Ital inheriting a crudely widened (with deleterious effects on the handling) and very anachronistic front suspension assembly designed during World War 2 by Alec Issigonis debuting in 1948 on the Morris Minor while Vauxhall and Ford were selling cars with McPherson struts in the front and a twist beam in the back like you'd see in a modern car. The shop floor workers saw the problems, but they had no agency to correct them. The industrial disputes were a symptom of deeper rot.

Perhaps. Though if you strike endlessly, you have no product to sell. So people buy elsewhere and you go out of business. If you disagree, perhaps edit this line in wikipedia:

> These internal issues, which were never satisfactorily solved, combined with serious industrial relations problems with trade unions, the 1973 oil crisis, the three-day week, high inflation and ineffectual management meant that BL became an unmanageable and financially crippled behemoth

(emphasis, mine).

The labour theory of value is Adam Smith's, not Marx's.

Indeed. I paraphrased this line from wikipedia - "The LTV is usually associated with Marxian economics" perhaps I should have read the next bit ", although it also appears in the theories of earlier classical economists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo. "

> Denying people agency and power in their negotiation by claiming they are "not as good as someone else" is antithetical to the struggle of labor - work deserves to be compensated fairly.

Isn't that kind of the point? If you're good at your job and the company knows it, you could threaten to take a job somewhere else if they don't give you a raise. When there is a union, you can't do that, and the leadership uses your negotiating power to demand the things they want, which there is no guarantee has any overlap with what you want. Unions frequently demand things like seniority rules or retirement benefits (because the most senior people and those closest to retirement control the union), and compromise your interests for theirs if you're a new hire.

> Your union blocked this because your employer was trying to break your unions negotiating power by separating your interests from the collective workforce.

The trouble is that your interests are separate from the collective workforce. The company is selling its products for as much as it can. If it's in a competitive industry then its profit margins are thin and most of its revenue is already going to suppliers and employees. For someone else to get a bigger piece, yours has to get smaller. That's the consequence of your own logic:

> If you don't want to protect your coworkers by negotiating with them, then you must be interested in exploiting them by negotiating against them. Labor is a zero sum game.

If the union leadership doesn't want you to get the opportunity then they must be interested in exploiting you by negotiating against you.

Unions tend to use otherwise arbitrary criteria to determine a members value. Not all people with the same number of years of experience, the same job title or the same degree provide equal value to the company.

As a school board member, I had to deal with the situation of a nationally recognized(awarded) teacher who got paid the same as every other teacher with the same degree and years in district. When asked why we wouldn't pay him what he is worth, the answer was simple, your union won't let us. Not every job type/environment make sense to have a union.

What’s wrong with everyone with same degree and years in district being paid equally? Per the very definition of such a competition, not everyone can pursue and finish number one in national fame machines.

If they don't contribute equally, why should they be paid equally, especially when the individuals desire to be paid per their contribution. Some rest on their years and degree while others go above and beyond to deliver a difference. The union doesn't allow the employer to recognize that.

I think there are jobs where those distinctions don't matter as much, but creative jobs and other areas where the ability of an employee to deliver quality is very personal don't seem to work well with unions in my view.

I would have loved to pay that teacher more because he did so much more and had a huge positive influence on his students, but the union would never have allowed that.

> If they don't contribute equally, why should they be paid equally

I prefer to be paid 150 than be paid 130 and my colleague 110. It is stupid to have as a goal to earn more than you colleagues. Your goal should be to maximize your own pay.

Maybe because the union role is not to encourage anyone to burn themself down in relentless efforts? Maybe in the union eye, trying to protect people in the working class includes to dodge the traps of the exploiting class and the meritocratic myth?

Divide and rule is nothing new, and playing on the extra individual effort rewards is a very cheap trick to lower the working condition of everyone, possibly even the one doing the extra efforts. It doesn’t take a Nobel price in economy and a certificate of adhesion to Marxism to fathom this basic power dynamic leveraging on sociological imbalance, does it?

> What’s in the collective best interest may not match with what’s in the individual best interest.

The alternative isn't what is in your best interest, but what is in your boss's best interest

The mutual interest of me + 'my boss' might very well outweight my fraction of the collective interest. It certainly depends.

Also, if you are in ESOP that might change the equation as well.

that's certainly one alternative, but can we stop looking at everything as a bipartisan scenario with binary outcomes? Maybe there's lots of aspects with mutually aligned interests? Perhaps every single thing in life is not a "us" vs. "them"?

Sure, that's exactly what a union is for.

For me, the only one who has ever used the standard terms as a floor has been the employer. The union has always backed me up when I wanted higher pay.

I'll give an example. I've had managers switched on me, and they've then said my salary has to be reduced because it's higher than the median. The organisation I work for also has a salary policy where every level you advance, your "personal additional percentage" is cut. This eventually reduces everyone to the same, lower level. This is the employer, not the union.

The union, otoh, backed me up when I wanted to keep my existing extra percentage.

You can fall ill or need working accommodations regardless of whether you are above or below average.

And you can more easily take care of those needs yourself if you aren't required to subsidize your below average colleagues.

I mean, this is likely factually wrong even in a US context, because presumably the collective bargaining power of a union extends beyond salary to functioning as a buyers group things like health insurance, being loud enough to gain visibility, etc.

But it's a thought process that depends on the idea that you're always in control of staying on the better side of the average in whatever metric a company chooses to judge employees. Which is a bold position to stake out without the anti-discrimination and working time safety measures achieved by unions that are at obvious risk of falling away without them.

Many of the freedoms to individually negotiate with an employer about rights and payment are underwritten by safety nets that are negotiated by unions, and everyone thinks themselves better than average until they aren't.

I'm not sure how it can be "likely factually wrong" that you are better off without paying a third party who does very little for you as an individual who is above average in your field than you would be if you didn't have that money. Concessions in indirect benefits often come at the cost of higher wages and the portability of earnings, the latter being one of the major downsides for skilled professionals.

All above average employees I know don't need to worry about staying on the better of average for some arbitrary metric. If the company makes a mistake and fires them, they can quickly get a job elsewhere. It's the people who have no better alternative than their current job who need the protection provided by a union contract, and they have no better alternative because the company made a mistake in the other direction when agreeing to employ them, and the union's job is to bar the employer from correcting that mistake.

And yes, unions successfully fought for improved work conditions 100+ years ago. What have they done to earn their keep during the careers of anyone posting on this site? Why should I as a non-unionized worker today join one? It's certainly not going to improve my total compensation, and the people who did the hard work you mentioned are long gone so it's no benefit to them for me to pay dues into an organization they were affiliated with at some point.

> I'm not sure how it can be "likely factually wrong" that you are better off without paying a third party who does very little for you as an individual who is above average in your field than you would be if you didn't have that money.

Do you not purchase insurance? Same principle. Collective bargaining and buying power unlocks things even you, a wealthy above average human, might wish to have affordable.

> Why should I as a non-unionized worker today join one?

So they continue to exist and rules don't slide back further.

I mean if you are old and rich enough enough not to care about the next decade of working life then good for you, I guess. But society could very well be ripped apart by the very things that the tech industry is rolling out, and unions are one of the few things that stand in the way of absolutely massive regressions in the way humans who have the temerity to want to eat will have to tolerate being treated.

Personally I want to see them survive, and non-union workers joining them when they can is one of those ways that can happen.

(As an IT freelancer I cannot, meaningfully; I assure you that when my work pattern changes I will)

So it's insurance against some nebulous, unspecified catastrophe that if it comes to fruition, unions will be effectively powerless to stop anyway.

If that's the best case you can make, they're even more useless to skilled workers than I thought.

Would you like to buy some insurance against aliens destroying the earth as well?

This comment is much more revealing about you than I think you realise, but it's good to know at least that there's no point in wasting time on arguing things on the merits.

I mean I think it's exactly as revealing as I realize, in that I have again explicitly stated that unions are not beneficial to above average workers because they don't need external protections against job loss or substandard working conditions in modern society. To use your terms, they are best off self-insuring against these issues, as is the case with insurance against most forms of loss.

Fearmongering and/or hand wringing about what could get worse in the future doesn't change that reality today.

The big risk to a worker is that they overestimate their skill level, which absolutely does happen, but those people are not in the above average pool I'm talking about in the first place and would in fact benefit from a union.

The only real reason for me in the UK to join a union would be for legal representation, otherwise I can represent my own interests.

At least here in the UK our unions are heavily involved in politics - which is a massive issue. Currently, the leadership of the unions and the people in them are literally opposite sides of the political spectrum.

At any moment some change outside my control could occur and my place in society would change. Right now I'm pretty self sufficient and don't really need the support of others in day to day life, but that can change, and there's nothing I can do about it. Seems like a good idea to use this opportunity to try and improve things for everyone, even if you don't care about others, just in case your place in society changes. (I actually think it's neat if we try to improve things for everyone for everyone's sake tbh but I get there are people that do not have such empathy)

It depends on the job and country.

In Western Europe workers are very protected so unless you are in a low end job or specific public sector job and might gain from collective wage bargaining there is often little actual benefits in being in a union, taking into account that membership isn't free.

I wonder why workers in Western Europe are so protected.

The fact that unions played a big role in the past does not imply that they are as important now because of the changes in legal protection, types of jobs, and society.

If you believe the legal protections in place as a direct result of the labour movement (of which Unions are just one part) will remain in place in the face of constant well funded opposition by Capital then I have a case study for you in the UK, we call them Zero Hours Contracts.

Zero hours contracts were never banned in the UK and in fact have been restricted over the years and debate is still ongoing on whether to ban them altogether.

We have diverged significantly from my original point...

Another UK example, you effectively have very limited rights until you’ve worked for a company for 2 years. Before then they can fire you for any reason they care to.

I think that is changing though: https://www.business.gov.uk/campaign/employment-changes/

who knows what's going to happens with yet another leadership change though.

Those legal protections are easily eroded without unions.

Just look at Finland. Here, the current government first made it illegal for unions to strike when the government takes action to weaken employment law, and then they significantly weakened employment law.

The only protection left is collective bargaining agreements, which can still uphold some of the old legal protections through contract law.

This was also only possible after decades of work by industry lobby groups to significantly weaken unions by targeting them with tax code changes, splitting up unemployment funds from unions (with the employers then founding their own unemployment fund, so that union membership is drained).

Unions are the only defense that workers have. If there are no unions, the employer can have their pick among desperate job seekers, and give them the lowest wage they can live on.

> Unions are the only defense that workers have. If there are no unions, the employer can have their pick among desperate job seekers, and give them the lowest wage they can live on.

The major other defense is competition. If there were infinitely many workers then unions would be useless to begin with, because employers would just let them walk out and hire someone else.

Individuals can likewise use the fact that labor is finite to make employers offer more by credibly threatening to work somewhere else. This is trivially shown by all the people who make an above-median wage despite not being in a union.

You do, however, need competition for that, and in turn to not have laws that prop up incumbents and create barriers to entry to new companies (i.e. new prospective employers).

>The major other defense is competition.

Yes. As sure as the casino fear the competition among players in games on which they unilaterally set the rules.

The key is to make sure it remains practical for players who feel slighted to open their own casino.

> Those legal protections are easily eroded without unions.

That's very clearly not true based on the situation in Western Europe, in fact legal rights tend to keep increasing even when union membership is decreasing (e.g. UK, France).

As said, jobs and society as a whole have evolved and noone can be elected in government by promising to take away important protections, what they can be elected on is promising to curb union power but that the unions' fault when they abuse striking action.

My understanding is that workers are extremely well protected in Finland and what's happened is only some restrictions on political and solidarity strikes.

Edit: Unions are not the only defense that workers have. We have democracy with all sides represented and nowadays (in Europe at least) more is done through elections than through unions. That's why I said that society had changed compared to the early days of the labour movement.

I just gave you an example. How can you say it is "very clearly not true".

You would have to somehow disprove the reality of what has already happened in order to make that statement

Facts-aren't-True people make up a truth they like and then any inconvenient facts can be disregarded because facts-aren't-true.

It's a really popular ideology - it doesn't have any actual successes but since its followers don't believe facts are true the fact it's a dead end doesn't matter to them.

Paying into the legal pot makes sense, as does paying into a medical pot. But its not clear to me that mixing politics and unions is a good idea, especially as their typical support base have politically drifted from them.

The Labour party was founded by unions, so it's no surprise they're still completely beholden to them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Labour_Party_(U...

I understand why there is that relationship, but it appears the people that make the main membership and the leadership in the unions/Labour party have drifted apart. So now you have this weird situation where the unions and the Labour party are funded by people that are largely ideologically opposed.

That's UK politics in general, which I suppose is microcosm of the UK. Everything is now a career. We have many, many, sitting MPs, that have only ever studied topics like politics with the sole aim of becoming a politician. Or never worked in private industry, or even worked in the public sector in parts that aren't necessarily unionized. In the past many MPs had 'life experience' outside of politics.

They are therefore naturally detached from unions, and more worryingly, the every day reality of the electorate.

For some of these MPs, losing their seat at a General Election is the first time in their entire lives they've ever lost a job, unlike the general public that have to put up with routine dismissals, via redundancy, company bankruptcy and so on.

I don't believe a union would be to my best interest. Unions generally operate by encoding rules that purport to be fair and transparent. This includes things like determining how much someone gets paid based on things like tenure and education.

That sounds good in theory but as soon as you enter the workforce you'll realize that there is a huge range of capabilities thats difficult to capture but obvious to people in the weeds.

You'll also realize that strong workers want to work with other strong workers. Unions don't care where their unions fees come from so they protect all equally. This means they make it difficult to fire. Just look at police unions where they went to great lengths to "protect their own"

There are some benefits but I believe that accrue to the most mediocre or incompetent. Sure it sounds great that it's difficult to fire me and I know my salary for the next twenty years. But this is not what I'm trying to optimize for

Strong disagree that there is no other side of the question from the employee's perspective. Personally, I don't want to be collectively represented in my work by any group other than myself.

What do you mean by that? A union represents you as a worker and not your work.

Baseball players, for example, are represented by the MLBPA. Collectively they get a say in things like setting the rules of the game and negotiating healthcare, but the union isn't taking credit when a player hits a home run.

It may or may not be in any individual's best interest.

For example, look at "bumping rights". If a company needs to eliminate a union position, and this is occupied by someone with say 20 years seniority, that person can "bump" some other union member out of their position who has a lower seniority. So, that person whose role was eliminated can push a person with only 5 years seniority out of their position. And then that person with 5 years seniority can bump a person with only one year seniority out of their position. And the person with 1 year seniority has no one newer than them so they get laid off.

Was it in the best interest of that newish employee to be part of a union? So they can act as a meat shield for someone much further in their career who would theoretically be much more employable in the general market?

The wikipedia atricle only cites american sources so that may be something unique to how US unions operate.

Cousins of American style bumping is definitely in employment law in the UK(where it is done by the employer instead of the employees and union). It also exists at least in Germany(sozialauswahl) where employees theoretically who could get chopped are given points to determine who to chop, where seniority is one of the ways to gain points, as well as age, as well as having children.

I don't think so in UK.

In UK to make someone redundant (ie fired not for cause) then the job has to be removed and only the holder of that job can be fired and not any other person.

Of course HR departments and consultants are paid to work around this

The rule is called transferred redundancy and it goes like this in the UK: the company can't eliminate a high level position if some argument can be made that they only needed to eliminate a lower level position. So if a company feels it doesn't need a certain VP position, it can't actually get rid of that VP position if there is some argument that the company would only need to get rid of a lower director position. And the director position can't be eliminated if there's some argument that only a lower senior position could be eliminated. And the senior position cannot be eliminated if there's some argument that only a junior position would need to be eliminated.

In a jobs market place of wide choice, unionization is unnecessary. The tech job pool spans multiple industries, so if your employer is treating you poorly, leave.

In a jobs market where there are few employers, maybe unionize, because those employers are essentially a monopsony. Hence, in the UK, the NHS, teaching, and public transport, where the employer is the Government, they're heavily unionized.

Until fairly recently, the general public used to be very suspicious of government employees unionising. Because it was unionising against them, the general public.

In which country, the USA? In the UK, all Government bodies are unionized.

The US was one of the countries I had in mind. Government workers are some of the most unionised of all industries there these days, but eg president FDR was staunchly against the practice.

You didn't provide any argument, so you could have said the exact opposite and it would have been the same comment.

Here, I'll do it for you:

No, you are wrong it's the other way around

I work in a 2 man company, for sure a Union will have many advantages for me x)

Yes, a union is a way to gather forces, not only in your company, but also in broader spaces. It's easier for a union (even of two) to ask to meet your local elected officials, to seek legal support, advices from other union.

It also has a tendency to yield corruption. Some would call it lobbying but in the end it's a counter political force because forces on the other sides exist already.

Not sure fighting fire with fire is the solution, a last resort.

It’s true. The best approach is to stand alone against the fire and try to put it out yourself. Maybe the fire will be nice to you if you beg.

A union isn't the only structure to stand organized.

The reasons fire is there? A system designed to allow it.

I'm a director of my small company, and a member of UTAW. The union doesn't just help with employment disputes but also campaigns generally on improving working conditions for all, through things like health and safety and setting reasonable expectations for how work will be done.

If this was my blog I would have written something like the below which is entirely out of character not aimed at you and quite silly:

Republican jesus said: It would have been easier if the good Samaritan would have just taken the guys money without helping him.

I have this wild theory that civilization isn't actually about me. It means one can join a union without any direct personal benefits of any kind.

When for example my health insurance helps pay someone for their care I point first at them then at my chest and announce smugly, see? I paid for that!

No one thinks it's funny but that is not important, as long as I think it's funny it's a good joke.

The trial is over, it is now abundantly obvious that if everyone acts in their own self interest everything gets increasingly fucked up for everyone.

If you are hungry the free market gives you an advert for a sandwich you cant afford but would probably kill you slowly if you could.

Imagine retired people still being union members. Crazy right? They could have better spend their time looking at pictures of their children who never visit.

Ill let myself out

Are you just an employee or also an owner in that company? If you are an employee only, having a union to back you up could be extremely useful if things ever go bad.

Only employee. Joining an union is too expensive for me though given the reward seems pretty small. My industry does not even have a proper union (in Germany) so I'd have to join a generic one (verdi) which doesn't offer enough perks for me personally.

Ah yes we all know unions take at least 99% of your salary…

Did I ever claim that? Its 1% of my montly gross salary which is about 40€/month which is just too much given I have 2.500€/month to survive with.

Have you evaluated how much better bargaining power that €40 would get you? You might stand to make a lot more back.

He's the only employee in a 2 man company. How exactly do your think the relationship here is likely to be play out? IMO it is likely that he has a pretty good and probably rather personable relationship with the company owner. And quite likely has rather good bargaining power already given that he can double his employer's workload by walking out the door and it'd in all likelihood be a big headache to replace him.

If he can't leverage his power when he already represents 100% of the company's employees a union is unlikely to help.

That really depends on your industry and your union (and where you're based). My union doesn't negotiate my salary, I do. They do provide help with contracts, NDAs, legal advise and a bunch of other stuff and do provide salary guidance. They are also cheap at ~€475 a year.

Another larger union, which organises industrial workers, cleaning staff and generally people with less formal education, is almost twice the cost. They do negotiate at least base pay for the industries they represent. Many of the people they represent are often better off having their union do the negotiations. When handling negotiations it's obviously not only about money, but the unions do need to be able to provide at least raise in salary that can cover their dues, and sometimes they can't.

Aside from legal support, advice, and contributing to industry influence?

What have the Romans ever done for us?

My union does very little for me directly. Neither does my house or car insurance. I've never needed either.

Indirectly though my union does do stuff

I'm sure Alec Baldwin was happy he was a member of a union to represent him.

> I'm sure Alec Baldwin was happy he was a member of a union to represent him.

Why is it that so many union supporters point to entities like SAG and professional athlete unions in the US when advocating for unions, when they are a massive exception to the norm?

I would join a union like SAG. I have zero interest in being forced to make contributions to a political organization who has a passing interest in my well-being at best and is structured to benefit below-average workers.

Ehhh, the darkside is that unions often levelize workers into bins to negotiate fair wages for that bin. This is good if you are a weak player and bad if you are a strong player, because it removes the incentive to work any harder than the weakest link - there is no reward for that. So if you know how the job works and are good at it, unions kinda kill the whole thing.

Pro unionists will tell you that you are a sucker for being a good worker anyway, there is no reward, but what else would they say? Look at all the people who have independently moved up in a company or hopped jobs for better pay? Probably not.

British have no concept of unionisation and avoid conflict at all cost. Their employer tells them they must go back to five days to the office? They all obediently do it

Second part — avoiding conflict at all cost — mostly true.

First part - the British invented the modern labour union and there are still many, many examples of labour union negotiation every year that are highly visible to us.

No idea where you get that from. Most of my childhood was dominated by strikes. We still have them.

Do you think trolls should have a right to unionize? We are working really hard, but conditions are not best. For start we demand salary from local goverment (I am in EU)! Nobody should be forced to work for free!

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