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Unions Did Great Things for the American Working Class

bloomberg.com

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Re: Unions Did Great Things for the American Working Class

#101

Post by moorhosj »

1999 wrote: post #13

I haven't read the paper and I probably won't, but it seems suspicious to me that the 1940 to 1970 timeframe mentioned just happens to coincide with WW2 and the aftermath and recovery. If you aren't prepared to systematically destroy foreign cities and industry I don't think you can recreate those conditions.

US GDP growth continued after 1970 and reached pretty high levels in the 90s. You seem to be dismissing that because you already made up your mind without reading the article (or the multiple studies it mentions).

To put it a different way, which year are we allowed to start measuring without it being tainted by WWII?

Re: Unions Did Great Things for the American Working Class

#102

Post by ykevinator »

gibsonf1 wrote: post #18

Unions were great at stifling innovation and destroying some of our former industries such as Steel and Automotive - see what's left of former very wealthy Detroit. The classic example is the unions not allowing the Toyota Lean Production system in, as then you would need fewer workers. So in not allowing innovation, the unions were key factors in destroying entire industries which have now been built elsewhere. If t…

The golden age of unions brought profits to companies and home ownership to single income families. There has to be balance it else we devolve to a two class society like Saudi Arabia.

Re: Unions Did Great Things for the American Working Class

#103

Post by dang »

chimeracoder wrote: post #86
NoGravitas wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

Could you please stop posting in the flamewar style to HN? It damages the container here, regardless of how right you are or how wrong someone else is.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Unions Did Great Things for the American Working Class

#104

Post by jshen »

gibsonf1 wrote: post #100
jshen wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s fair. But the countries he’s talking about aren’t freer by any reasonable definition of freedom. Edit: and the countries he’s talking about didn’t take manufacturing by being more innovative, they did it through cheap brutal labor practices and environmental destruction of their ecosystems.

My point is simply that places that embrace innovation will outperform places that don't. The Unions in the US do not embrace innovation. Look at what the Teacher's union in California has done to education here. If the US did not have the Unions destroy innovation in the car industry, perhaps the US would have the best and most reliable cars in the world. Japan embraced innovation as part of the DNA of how they work…

I’d argue that executive incentives focused on short term stock price and golden parachutes is a greater hindrance to innovation. Another data point, there has been no correlation between exploding executive pay and company performance. The obsession with unions seems misplaced to me.

Re: Unions Did Great Things for the American Working Class

#105

Post by prolikewh0a »

gibsonf1 wrote: post #18

Unions were great at stifling innovation and destroying some of our former industries such as Steel and Automotive - see what's left of former very wealthy Detroit. The classic example is the unions not allowing the Toyota Lean Production system in, as then you would need fewer workers. So in not allowing innovation, the unions were key factors in destroying entire industries which have now been built elsewhere. If t…

[dead]

Re: Unions Did Great Things for the American Working Class

#106

Post by chimeracoder »

dang wrote: post #103
chimeracoder wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Could you please stop posting in the flamewar style to HN? It damages the container here, regardless of how right you are or how wrong someone else is. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I'm not sure I understand - what do you mean by flamewar-style in this case?

If you're referring to my tone, I understand that this might sound frustrated. At the same time, I was pointing out and explaining why the HN title specifically (not the article title, as they were different) is offensive to people of several ethnic backgrounds, including my own. And in response, I was met with one person accusing me of speaking in bad faith (with no further comment on what they meant) and another accusing me of being racist and disingenuous for explaining why the submitted title was offensive. So if I sound frustrated by the end and deflect the personal attacks levied at me, please understand it's not a reaction that comes out of nowhere.

Re: Unions Did Great Things for the American Working Class

#107

Post by dang »

chimeracoder wrote: post #106
dang wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you please stop posting in the flamewar style to HN? It damages the container here, regardless of how right you are or how wrong someone else is. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I'm not sure I understand - what do you mean by flamewar-style in this case? If you're referring to my tone, I understand that this might sound frustrated. At the same time, I was pointing out and explaining why the HN title specifically (not the article title, as they were different) is offensive to people of several ethnic backgrounds, including my own. And in response, I was met with one person accusing me of spea…

It's more than tone. I'm talking about snark, aggression, and using the threads for smiting enemies instead of good conversation. This old quote of pg's expresses it: Comments should be written in the spirit of colleagues cooperating in good faith to figure out the truth about something, not politicians trying to ridicule and misrepresent the other side. Sure there are things to be frustrated about, but making an internet forum more acidic does no good about any of those, and it damages the container here considerably. People are mimetic. Others start to react in the same way and soon we end up in a Hobbesian hell. So could you please follow the site guidelines, even when frustrated? I know it's not easy, but it's no more than we ask of anyone.

As for the title, it matched the Bloomberg article when I saw it and still does, though they took out the word "American" for some reason. It's still in the URL though.

Re: Unions Did Great Things for the American Working Class

#108

Post by masonic »

elchief wrote: post #53
gibsonf1 wrote: post #18

Unions were great at stifling innovation and destroying some of our former industries such as Steel and Automotive - see what's left of former very wealthy Detroit. The classic example is the unions not allowing the Toyota Lean Production system in, as then you would need fewer workers. So in not allowing innovation, the unions were key factors in destroying entire industries which have now been built elsewhere. If t…

Ya, look how they destroyed the steel industry in Germany. Oh wait, it's thriving 1950 = 1000 thousand tonnes, 2018 = 4000 thousand tonnes

1950 still faced massive WW2 damage and limited transport for materials. I would have expected a much bigger jump.

Re: Unions Did Great Things for the American Working Class

#110

Post by mattdeboard »

scarmig wrote: post #14
mattdeboard wrote: post #4

This may not be the venue to get good answers but what are the likely costs of unionization in software? How would management respond to organized tech labor? What would be the economic impacts? Not looking for pro- or anti-union sloganeering, but real impacts. The economics of the tech sector would change dramatically with organized labor in computing, and I'm interested in how those changes would manifest.

Tricky to say, as software engineering is a somewhat unique profession. Going by what happens in other industries, you'd reasonably expect a flattening of wages (both inter and intra firm) and an increase in the average wage. You'd also expect entry into the field to become harder, and exit from the field (both voluntary and involuntary) to become rarer. Fewer workers would be employed overall, though per capita prod…

Hopefully you circle back to your comments and see this some day.

This was a great answer I've read several times as I consider organized labor in software development regularly. Thanks for giving me targets for research.

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