191–200 of 203 posts
Good for them. As for the tech workers, they need something like a guild with membership fees and staff lawyers that would sue the state for allowing binding arbitration and non compete agreements (i.e. do what California did).
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A union is a group of people saying pay us more it give us better benefits, otherwise we will go elsewhere. Most of the power is in the employer. A single individual didn't have much power. And it isn't quite the same as choosing to purchase a loaf of bread from a different store. You keep claiming that a union extracts rents above those the market would ordinarily best. But I don't think you've given any evidence th…
> A union is a group of people saying pay us more it give us better benefits, otherwise we will go elsewhere. No. A union is a group of people saying "pay us more or we'll shut down your business ". That's why unions have traditionally had picket lines and why they've historically used violence against "scabs".
You should really stop talking about things you know literally nothing about.
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why thou?
We are all workers in the end
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Are you suggesting that employee cartels squeezing money from consumers is justified? Want worker protections ask for that, no need to burden businesses any further.
I live in a free market and a free society. Why can't I democratically decide to associate with and democratically negotiate in a group and freely enter a contract with a third party? Isn't that what a free market is all about?
And unions should be free to go to the negotiating table. But it should be just that. A negotiation. They should offer something of value in exchange for more compensation other than "give us X or we shut down the business".
That's a cartel. Imagine if businesses organized themselves into employers unions and refused to hire anyone above a certain wage?
Cartels are bad. They are anti-free market
The only reason labor unions are legal is that certain unions have outsized political clout, in a perfect world labor unions would be illegal under antitrust laws as forcing companies to pay workers more than what a free market dictates inevitably increases prices.
"forcing companies to pay workers more than what a free market dictates inevitable increases prices" Does it inevitably increase prices, or could its millionaire/billionaire execs just maybe own a few less private jets and McMansions? Anyway, even if prices were increased, what's wrong with a market in which all participants earned a living wage? Or are the absolute minimum prices that markets can bear something we s…
Because if prices increase, what you thought would be a "living wage" is no longer a living wage
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I asked a millennial why she cared so much about the free coffee, and she told me that it symbolizes the employer's 'caring' about the staff.. Personally, I'd rather earn an extra $25k and buy a few cups of coffee with it than get "free coffee".
Simple perks like free coffee are a canary for the corporate coal mine. When you look at the cost of coffee or soda, providing it free may cost the company in the ballpark of $500 a year per employee (though often less) which is minuscule in the total annual cost of an employee. Taken in a vacuum however, the number looks big. We spent how much on Coffee last quarter! When companies get to the mostly investor owned s…
https://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-ear...
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A majority of tech workers are on visas? I find that hard to believe.
GP has a habit of exaggerating claims that have some basis in fact when looked at through your eyelashes but that fall apart on closer inspection: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21899843 I don't think this will be any different.
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A majority of tech workers are on visas? I find that hard to believe.
GP has a habit of exaggerating claims that have some basis in fact when looked at through your eyelashes but that fall apart on closer inspection: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21899843 I don't think this will be any different.
As I said before you wrote this comment, i meant to use sizable here not sizable majority.
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I'm much more concerned about executive accountability than I am about individual employee accountability at a company with as much political power as, say, Google. Unions are a way of balancing executive power. (I don't think they're a panacea though! All I hope for in this case is that it is able to improve the lives and working conditions of Google's cafeteria workers)
There are at least 10x the number of employees to executives who have access to your email contents and browsing history. Using the worst %3 of individuals as a baseline, the executives are the people you have the very least to worry about.
You must understand that even a single employee doing this is such a breech of brand trust that Google would deal with it swiftly.
OTOH, it is quite clear to me that Google executives are allowed to make virtually unchecked and wide-reaching decisions that impact many and have negative consequences. A simple, unambiguous example is "the YouTube recommendation algorithm is bad for kids and seems to cause their exploitation" [1]
To be very clear: executives have the power to change the recommendation engine. To demonetize children's YouTube videos. They choose to be wreckless specifically out of greed.
[1] https://medium.com/@jamesbridle/something-is-wrong-on-the-in...
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> In a perfect world labor unions would be illegal is not a market-based opposition. Why not? It's perfectly reasonable to say in a perfect world, X would be illegal if you think that X is harmful enough for the state to act. I bet there are things you wish the state would ban. You don't have to agree with the OP, but he's not expressing anything wacky or bizarre. He just doesn't see unionization as some kind of unqu…
Your appealing to the big bad state to solve some problem is anything but market-based. If you don't like unions, compete against them with a better idea.