Organized labor has most of the same problems as organized ownership and capital. Ownership and capital has some unique problems. Labor has some other unique problems. This shouldn't surprise anyone. Unless you're arguing for the elimination of the market system, "this structure in a market economy is prone to corruption" isn't a dispositive argument, or really an argument at all.
No. The union leaders have zero interest in making any company succeed. They have a ton of interest in themselves succeeding. In fact unions work very hard against innovation and in keeping status quo.
And companies have zero interest in helping any individual worker succeed, or letting them share in the company's success.
> An unregulated market has never existed in the history of modern civilization for more than 5 minutes. Ironically for your statement, the most unregulated markets are the most violent as they only occur after one government falls before institutions create themselves to deal with the chaotic state of unorganized and fearful humans. It will be interesting to see if the digital economy brings with it any self-created…
You are mixing up capitalism with anarchy and chaos. Capitalism requires the rule of law and property rights. An unregulated market is one where any voluntary transaction can take place and no involuntary transaction takes place. It is not a voluntary transaction if I put a gun to your head and tell you to hand over your wallet, and a "market" in which that is allowed is not even a market. It is illegal for me to pay…
Except that's not true in the least. You say "no involuntary transaction takes place" because in that system, if the transaction takes place, then by definition it must be "voluntary", despite the existence of any coercion that may have occurred. In your unregulated system, you could have me work 20 hours a day, and consider it "voluntary" as long as I did it, ignoring the fact that I and my family would be out on the street starving if I didn't, which would make that transaction far from voluntary.
Question for the HN crowd: do you think tech-workers will begin to unionize? It seems to me that (in general) they've got such a nice position in the economy there's probably a bit of an "if it ain't broke don't fix it" mentality. Is that correct?
I would hope they'd start. And there's no reason it has to be anything like a auto worker's union or anything like that. The Screen Actors Guild, the Director's Guild, and the Writer's Guild are all unions, and no one is complaining that SAG is hurting the ability of a "rockstar ninja actor/actress" from making huge amounts of money, which is the main complaint I hear about unions here.
Question for the HN crowd: do you think tech-workers will begin to unionize? It seems to me that (in general) they've got such a nice position in the economy there's probably a bit of an "if it ain't broke don't fix it" mentality. Is that correct?
Working in a union would be terrible. Can you imagine having to deal with seniority rules?
A lot of places already have these, but informally.
Also, why on earth do you think we'd have to? If no one wants them, why would we have them?
A union is whatever the members want it to be. Just because traditional unions operate a certain way does not mean a union for tech workers has to operate the same way.
> Just because traditional unions operate a certain way does not mean a union for tech workers has to operate the same way. Unions have all converged on operating the same way because the NLRA is very rigid, and over the decades, they've found a stable way of operating. Other operating structures have been tried over the last century, and all have failed except the current one. If anybody believes that a tech union u…
> The NLRA broadly protects any concerted action involving two or more employees to improve any workplace condition or term of employment. You do not have to be in a "union" with "shop rules" and collective wage bargaining to take advantage of it. I'm aware - but again, that wasn't the original question of this thread.
It seems silly to confine the question to Teamster-style unions. You want the answer to that? No, tech workers are not going to create the Tech Teamsters. That's not the important question. The important question is, will tech workers organize, and, when they do, what will that organization look like? That's a question we can speculate productively about.
Hm well the answer is yes, we can't get less organized :)
What will it look like? I think the first big issue that most could get behind would be nationally organizing against non-compete agreements.
A union is whatever the members want it to be. Just because traditional unions operate a certain way does not mean a union for tech workers has to operate the same way.
How would a union help me at all?
Legal backing if, say, you worked for Equifax, and refused to certify that their systems were secure, and they wanted to terminate you to shut you up.
Question for the HN crowd: do you think tech-workers will begin to unionize? It seems to me that (in general) they've got such a nice position in the economy there's probably a bit of an "if it ain't broke don't fix it" mentality. Is that correct?
I would hope not. I see tech-workers as professionals not as laborers. I think the great battle to be fought by tech workers is to stop having them treated as common laborers that perform some kind of rote process. Some times we call software development engineering, and if thats the case I would press anyone to show me an engineering discipline that parallels software engineering in terms of working conditions and r…
Do you see Directors and Screenwriters as professionals? They belong to a union (the Director's Guild and the Writer's Guild, respectively).
It seems silly to confine the question to Teamster-style unions. You want the answer to that? No, tech workers are not going to create the Tech Teamsters. That's not the important question. The important question is, will tech workers organize, and, when they do, what will that organization look like? That's a question we can speculate productively about.
Hm well the answer is yes, we can't get less organized :) What will it look like? I think the first big issue that most could get behind would be nationally organizing against non-compete agreements.
Noncompetes would be a great issue to organize around, especially outside of SFBA.
It seems silly to confine the question to Teamster-style unions. You want the answer to that? No, tech workers are not going to create the Tech Teamsters. That's not the important question. The important question is, will tech workers organize, and, when they do, what will that organization look like? That's a question we can speculate productively about.
> It seems silly to confine the question to Teamster-style unions. You want the answer to that? No, tech workers are not going to create the Tech Teamsters. That's not the important question. The important question is, will tech workers organize, and, when they do, what will that organization look like? That's a question we can speculate productively about. Any union that derives its authority from the NLRA and is ov…
"We have decades of experimentation done by other unions with other organizational structures - all of which have failed - testifying to that."
You'll have to provide some backing examples for this. And also an explanation for why you believe the Screen Actors Guild, for one, has failed.