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Comment by mathattack | Hacker News Reader

I appreciate your thoughts. I still think it's better to spend time and energy on education and increasing corporate creation initiatives, than strong arming companies.

Let's take your example further... Yes, unions (especially in the auto industry) had a lot of success. This was alongside efforts by Henry Ford to increase pay. But where did it lead? The unions kept winning, and look at where Detroit is now. The unions won victory after victory, only to wind up with companies so hollowed out that they can't afford their hard won pensions.

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I'm not talking about this specific case right now. The problem of lack of jobs is systemic, and applies to all professions, with a strong tendency to be even more pressing. Due to automation, software and other things the number of jobs, especially low skilled ones is shrinking. Yes, you can educate yourself, and anyone can/should, but in the end, one quarter of the people will be undereducated just because the bar is higher, and will still not be able to find a better job. We, as a mankind, have to seriously consider radical solutions to this problem, and not focus short term on any specific industry.

Should be start decreasing working hours due to productivity increase, or just invent bullshit jobs just to keep people employed? Or to progress to Star Trek economy where people will be provided with all basic needs and work only on what they would like to? I know what I would like to happen, but I also fear what would happen. Talking only about unions, Detroit or any specific industry or place is not going to "fix" the global problem, and that is that the need for jobs is decreasing, and number of people is rising. We should tackle that problem instead.

Sorry for rambling, it might only be tangentially relevant to the article and discussion, but what I see in all this cases is just this problem. Ok, I might be overgeneralizing, since I'm software engineer, but not to much.

Two paragraphs isn't rambling. I appreciate your thoughts.

I would certainly like to work 30 hours a week too. :-) And I share a concern that the middle class is getting squeezed, so that it's not a bottom 25% that struggle, it's a bottom 50-75%.

That said, I still believe the solution is creating more opportunities for potential job providers, and encouraging them to compete for talent. I think this helps everyone. When there's collusion on the part of labor or capital, everyone suffers.

To personalize the situation, as individuals in technology, we have the most job opportunities when there are many firms competing for our talent. (Like 1998, or now) The best thing we can do is encourage this for ourselves. Similarly, a pro-job-creator agenda on a country-wide basis will help pull up everyone.

"But where did it lead?" The forty hour work week? OSHA? FMLA?

In Detroit it also crippled the auto industry, leaving companies unable to afford their pensions and health care promises. It destroyed a city, that is now is unable to honor retiree obligations.

Threatening a firm at it's busiest point of the year may give you more of the pie, but it also shrinks the total size of the pie. In Detroit's case it destroyed the pie.

Maybe if the Big Three had designed cars people actually wanted to buy, history would have been different.

The automakers, airlines and schools all have had their share of managerial blunders too. That said, can you point to a heavily unionized industry in the United States that is a world leader? (Forgive the US blinders, but I don't want to wander any further into speculation - at least any further than I've already gone.)

The "world leaders" in the US rely on highly skilled labor and pay top dollar for it. There is no need for Google employees to unionize because they're doing really well.

They're not crippled because they're unionized, they're non-union because highly skilled workers are in short supply.

When our "everyone should learn to code" and "if you're not a STEM major you don't deserve to exist" initiatives gain more traction and Google/Apple/Facebook are drowning in highly qualified candidates, that could easily turn around.

The entertainment industry (film, television, and professional sports) are all heavily unionized.

Plus, it's not like the Japanese auto-workers at the companies that are Detroit's lunch weren't unionized. Wasn't the fall of the American auto industry because of competition and market forces instead of big bad unions?

This doesn't even make any sense. Unions have nothing to do with turning companies into world leaders. That's management's responsibility. You just brushed off the parent commenter's argument that management was responsible for designing shitty cars that nobody wanted to buy because it doesn't fit your narrative.

> Unions have nothing to do with turning companies into world leaders.

No, but the fact that there are no unionized companies in the U.S. that are world leaders in their market segment wiggles its eyes suggestively at the idea that the problem might have something to do with unionization.

As pointed out by another poster, Hollywood is a "world leader" in movie production and is heavily unionized. Another heavily unionized high tech industry in the US is the aerospace industry (Boeing) as is its competitor in the EU (Airbus).

I do stand corrected on movies. Even though a lot of filming now happens abroad, this does seem like the major example

I don't view Boeing and Airbus as shining examples of success. Both get large government subsidies. Both have had their share of problems over the years, perhaps more Airbus lately. And there are just 2 of them. It's not a competitive industry. When you're splitting oligopoly profits, there is more room for unions. This actually is also the instance where I do think unions have the most standing. If there's no place else to go work, you kind of need a union. In addition to "the only mine in town" I think this also applies to fire and police departments. I don't think it applies to schools - I'd much rather see more choices (charters, etc) - but that's a much longer post.

Another problem with your question is that it focuses just on the United States where most jobs aren't even unionised. BMW, Mercedes Benz, and Volvo are all unionised in their country of origin. 95% of all schools in Finland are unionised and they churn out the best students in the world.

Furthermore, nobody here knows what qualifies as a world leading company to you. That's your opinion. General Electric, UPS, all of America's major professional sports teams, Safeway, Budweiser, Coors Brewing Company, Carhartt, are unionised. You don't consider Boeing a shining example of success because they take government subsidies. But that's really besides the point because they make great planes for countries all across the world where they do have to compete. They're a world leader. Non-unionised companies have to compete with companies that are unionised when it comes to a worker's pay and benefits to get the best workers.

But like I said before, the premise of your question is ridiculous.

Union intransigence has led to situations where management is constrained by not being able to fire bad workers and reward good ones reducing competitiveness and ultimately leading to inefficiencies and bad products.

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