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Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

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Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

#171

Post by mixmastamyk »

tptacek wrote: post #75
wyldfire wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The real problem is the late 20th century stigma labor organization has acquired. I think the stigma is well-deserved. Indeed they are rife with corruption and often create very odd incentives. Unfortunately unions suffer the same fate as other "invisible" benefits: everyone takes them for granted and doesn't recognize their value. People focus on the drawbacks and it's much easier to convince them that we're all b…

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.

I often say yes, just as there are great companies and horrible companies, there are great unions and horrible unions.

If we aren't discouraging the first, why the second?

Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

#172

Post by s73ver_ »

jules wrote: post #161
s73ver_ wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

The transaction of you working for me is still voluntary. No person forced you to work for me. I did not cause you to starve. If I disappeared off the face of the planet you would still starve. That I offer you a job improves your options relative to what you would otherwise have had. I can only "force" you to work 20 hours a day if all your other options are even worse, and I am the one who improves your options the…

"The transaction of you working for me is still voluntary."

Only in the most extreme interpretation of the word.

"No person forced you to work for me. "

Maybe not, but the idea that I will be fired if I don't do what you say means that it's not entirely voluntary.

"I can only "force" you to work 20 hours a day if all your other options are even worse, and I am the one who improves your options the most."

Again, that's not voluntary. That's exploitation.

"If however I put a gun to your head and tell you to work 20 hours a day I actively make your options worse by force."

Guns are not the only way to exercise force. Company towns were full of force. Just not physical.

"such as systems in which I am allowed to put a gun to your head."

Guns are not the only expression of force. Failure to see that is a huge fallacy.

Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

#173

Post by chimeracoder »

s73ver_ wrote: post #160
chimeracoder wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> 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.

SAG-AFTRA largely does operate this way, but aside from that, it also has received a number of special exemptions enshrined in law (both at the state and the federal level).

Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

#174

Post by jules »

s73ver_ wrote: post #172
jules wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The transaction of you working for me is still voluntary. No person forced you to work for me. I did not cause you to starve. If I disappeared off the face of the planet you would still starve. That I offer you a job improves your options relative to what you would otherwise have had. I can only "force" you to work 20 hours a day if all your other options are even worse, and I am the one who improves your options the…

"The transaction of you working for me is still voluntary." Only in the most extreme interpretation of the word. "No person forced you to work for me. " Maybe not, but the idea that I will be fired if I don't do what you say means that it's not entirely voluntary. "I can only "force" you to work 20 hours a day if all your other options are even worse, and I am the one who improves your options the most." Again, that'…

If you disagree with this definition of voluntary, that's fine. Let's choose another string of letters to denote what I wrote in the previous comment, and change my other comment and replace the string "voluntary" with that new string of letters.

> Maybe not, but the idea that I will be fired if I don't do what you say means that it's not entirely voluntary.

Being fired is simply no longer engaging in the transaction where one party trades their money for the labour of the other party.

> Guns are not the only expression of force. Failure to see that is a huge fallacy.

I did not say that they were.

Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

#175

Post by fsloth »

bnolsen wrote: post #117
tptacek wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

See for example how the workforce of Volkswagen is organized in germany. While I would not call it the most innovative company there is very little evidence that the political leverage employees have would have stifled innovation that much.

Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

#176

Post by Sevii »

tptacek wrote: post #39
kevmo wrote: post #30

If there is one thing I've learned from two decades of reading about labor history, it's: Every gain labor has ever made has been taken. Every gain the working class (i.e. the overwhelming majority of people) has achieved has come from organizing their majority of low-power workers and then standing strongly against the empowered minority at the top. Good for these people. They are essentially moving our society forw…

Since the capital and ownership sectors of our economy are all trained to operate businesses rationally and to not leave value on the table, it seems pretty clear that anything that labor doesn't take will be traded away. To me, in that light, neither the "depredations" of owners and investors nor the "coercion" of labor unions is really a problem; it's just the natural give and take of the market at work. The real p…

Organized labor has a stigma in the US because it is the reason you own a Japanese car. The unions killed a huge part of american life and that stigma is not going away.

Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

#177

Post by mixmastamyk »

bnolsen wrote: post #117
tptacek wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That can be true in extreme circumstances, but I'm sure you can see there is already a natural remedy to that problem.

The problem is when the company is a monopoly, which should be carefully monitored.

Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

#178

Post by chimeracoder »

s73ver_ wrote: post #155
chimeracoder wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Screen Actor's Guild doesn't work that way.

> The Screen Actor's Guild doesn't work that way.

SAG-AFTRA has been specially exempted from key provisions in labor law.

Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

#179

Post by TheCoelacanth »

jules wrote: post #131
thephyber wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

But if I put a gun to your head and tell you to get off "my" land that is voluntary?

Property rights don't exist without some form of regulation.

Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

#180

Post by CryptoPunk »

jeremysalwen wrote: post #148
CryptoPunk wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any wage gains that are derived by unionisation are zero sum. They are economic rent extracted by reducing the competitiveness of labour markets, and advantaging unionized workers working for big employers at the expense of those without such jobs. In the long run, the reduced profit margins caused by wages that are artificially high (above the rate that would be established by the free market) results in less invest…

Why do you assume that the current wages are the "natural" rate established by the "free market"? Don't we have evidence that employers are already abusing their market power to extract rents? ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L... for an example close to home) In fact, corporate profits are record-high, and wages have been stagnant for decades, suggesting very strongly that the "unnatural"…

>>Don't we have evidence that employers are already abusing their market power to extract rents? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L.... for an example close to home)

Very few firms can engage in such behavior. A pact like this can only be maintained by a small number of very large firms, and only the firms party to the pact will abide by it, leaving the entire rest of the employer market in a competitive state.

Even had the antitrust action not stopped this behavior, it's questionable how much of an impact this behavior had in restraining wage growth in Silicon Valley's tech sector, and how long the pact would have lasted given its informal nature, and the temptation to cheat due to the intense completion between those party to it.

If wages being below the natural, market rate, due to collusion between large firms is your concern, then the right solution is antitrust action. Unionisation in the current legal environment (where unions can affectively hold their firm hostage, and thus reduce labour market freedom) creates numerous unintended consequences that adversely affect industries.

>>In fact, corporate profits are record-high, and wages have been stagnant for decades, suggesting very strongly that the "unnatural" market power

Corporate earning growth is at historically low rates. Wages have stagnated because economic output growth has stagnated. See this comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15244901

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