321–330 of 335 posts
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Competition usually turns into collusion and consolidation.
Indeed, even in our beloved tech industry, the biggest employers have absolutely colluded to keep workers' wages down: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/24/apple-goo... And still people trust management...
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Competition usually turns into collusion and consolidation.
I find it weird that nobody is seeing this in tech. The automovotive market used to have garage based startups a long time ago. It used to have fierce competition and workers could get pay raises without unions. Then gradually everything fell under 3 big companies, workers fought the concentration of market power by unionizing (and lost) and for decades there was just the big 3. It's not even a question of if or even…
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Insurance is a broad term. I agree that is some forms of insurance are useful. Eg catastrophic health insurance at a good price. But that doesn't mean I need to insure my phone. Or buy health insurance that covers glasses.
I do agree with that much. But having a manager attempt to fire me under false pretences was, subjectively, the worst and most stressful experience of my life; I've had scary medical incidents but those are something everyone is on your side for, a human actively trying to wreck your life is so much worse. YMMV I guess.
If someone doesn't want to work with you anymore, they should be allowed to just fire you. Instead of having to come up with false pretenses.
See also how Orange in France ended up bullying their own employees in order to entice them to quit; mostly because they weren't allowed to just fire them. (Some of the victims were even driven into suicide.)
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If the company isn’t competitive and can’t pay their negotiated rates - they file for bankruptcy. When has a union ever protected workers when a company was in distress? The auto industry? The airline industry? Flight controllers in the 80s?
> If the company isn’t competitive and can’t pay their negotiated rates - they file for bankruptcy. That's hardly the only scenario. Sometimes they're chasing more profits. > When has a union ever protected workers when a company was in distress? The auto industry? The airline industry? Flight controllers in the 80s? Auto is a good example. In the last recession, UAW made significant compromises to keep the industry…
> Investment bank William Blair & Company estimated that the strike likely reduced Deere's output by between 10 and 15% for the fourth quarter of 2021 and the first quarter of 2022.[29]
The strike led to an increase in the already-inflated auction prices of used Deere equipment such as tractors and other used agricultural machines.[30]
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What’s “reasonable” is the same as the market demands for their skillset. If the companies could pick up and move to another state or a cheaper country, what does that tell you?
It tells me that they don't care about anything but their profits and, as a society, we need to stop being okay with that. Employees are not just an inconvenient cost that should be minimized in any way possible. They're human beings who have a right to decent quality of life. They have a right to be paid a living wage for their work. It's sick that there are people out there that believe otherwise. The unions didn't…
The general resistance in this thread is something. Every day on here we all find issues with the industry as a whole, have complaints, identify negative patterns grounded in investment goals or profit. A huge majority of people on here agree: there are problems and things as a whole need to change. Its not "what use is a union to me ", it is that there is an ethical imperative to try and fight against the destructiv…
Unions are a particularly good example. The incentives in the way unions, especially major ones and/or public ones, are set up are the worst one can possibly imagine - they combine the monopolistic power of a giant corporation with incentives for fiefdom building/CYA/lack of incentives to improve of a government bureaucracy, plus the vetocratic incentives of the local NIMBYs. The practice of unions - from US auto industry, to teacher unions, to police unions - bears this out.
I usually joke that I lost all respect for them when I learned that mafia were associating with the unions... all respect for mafia, I mean ;)
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This also describes an environment where the union doesn't seem to be offering any significant benefits to developers. If unionizing doesn't improve your working conditions, what's the point of the union?
At the bare minimum: unions increase job security and provide a formal disinterested (or even positively interested) recourse mechanism against your employer. They also decrease your employer's ability to leverage the collective pressure of other employees against you.
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I find it weird that nobody is seeing this in tech. The automovotive market used to have garage based startups a long time ago. It used to have fierce competition and workers could get pay raises without unions. Then gradually everything fell under 3 big companies, workers fought the concentration of market power by unionizing (and lost) and for decades there was just the big 3. It's not even a question of if or even…
You are saying that unions don't actually help?
The general resistance in this thread is something. Every day on here we all find issues with the industry as a whole, have complaints, identify negative patterns grounded in investment goals or profit. A huge majority of people on here agree: there are problems and things as a whole need to change. Its not "what use is a union to me ", it is that there is an ethical imperative to try and fight against the destructiv…
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I don't think the union contract should cover people who don't want it. If the company consents and an employee comments consents, why is the union when relevant? Why should they be able to barge in and mandate their terms?
It's a contract that the company has agreed to -- if they violate that contract, the consequences apply. Or should they be able to violate contracts negotiated between private parties?
Why do you only make this exception for suppliers of labor?