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U.S. Rules Apple Illegally Interrogated Staff and Confiscated Union Flyers

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Re: U.S. Rules Apple Illegally Interrogated Staff and Confiscated Union Flyers

#271

Post by int_19h »

lukan wrote: post #60
mytailorisrich wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously in general it makes a positive difference for employees, that was a rhetorical question... I have listed two main negative differences it makes for employers. I am hard-pressed to find any positive differences for them... on the issues this touches it's pretty much a zero-sum game so if employees gain it means employers 'lose'. If something is positive for both sides then I think the market will eventually…

"If something is positive for both sides then I think the market will eventually adopt it on its own." Due to millions of regulations already in place, the market is not really free, but very distorted. So even if the "free market" would always go for the best solution, current state is nonproof for anything. Otherwise you might argue, that europe would be a proof, because unions here are strong.

The single largest regulation in any capitalist society - the one on which literally the most policing resources are spent, by far - is abstract private property rights. Capitalism cannot exist without that, because you wouldn't be able to accumulate capital indefinitely if there aren't people with guns that are ready and willing to do violence on your behalf to protect the thing that some paper says its yours.

So, yes, the market isn't really free, and never has been, when you don't selectively exclude some kinds of regulation from consideration.

Re: U.S. Rules Apple Illegally Interrogated Staff and Confiscated Union Flyers

#272

Post by randomdata »

LargeWu wrote: post #163
baq wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

employers have HR, employees have unions. HR is corporate police. employers hate the idea of having employee police.

Most employees in the US do not in fact have unions. Only about 10% of US workers are unionized, partly because of their employers' attempts to prevent that.

To be fair, most businesses don't have HR either. Data collection isn't great here, but from what is available, it seems maybe only 20-30% of businesses with employees might have HR.

Re: U.S. Rules Apple Illegally Interrogated Staff and Confiscated Union Flyers

#273

Post by arnavpraneet »

jollofricepeas wrote: post #7

I don’t understand how so many HNers are anti-union and anti-collective bargaining. The fact that corporations and billionaires are so anti-union and engage in regular conduct like this demonstrates that unions are pro-worker and ideal for the balance needed in the US and across the globe. Balance is key between workers and owners. Without it we are left with growing wealth inequality such as… - ridiculous housing pr…

From what I gather of HN, although its possible I may be wrong, HN's demographics make union member's rare on the site. Tech companies have clearly been winning for a while against unions and the rhetoric reflects that.

Re: U.S. Rules Apple Illegally Interrogated Staff and Confiscated Union Flyers

#274

Post by arnavpraneet »

dragonwriter wrote: post #38
jollofricepeas wrote: post #7

I don’t understand how so many HNers are anti-union and anti-collective bargaining. The fact that corporations and billionaires are so anti-union and engage in regular conduct like this demonstrates that unions are pro-worker and ideal for the balance needed in the US and across the globe. Balance is key between workers and owners. Without it we are left with growing wealth inequality such as… - ridiculous housing pr…

> I don’t understand how so many HNers are anti-union and anti-collective bargaining. HN is full of the aspirational haut bourgeois , of course they want the proletariat maximally exploitable.

oh yes this basically. Very annoying, especially people finding the flaws with collective bargaining. The individualistic rhetoric is mind-numbing.

Re: U.S. Rules Apple Illegally Interrogated Staff and Confiscated Union Flyers

#275

Post by arnavpraneet »

flandish wrote: post #13
jollofricepeas wrote: post #7

I don’t understand how so many HNers are anti-union and anti-collective bargaining. The fact that corporations and billionaires are so anti-union and engage in regular conduct like this demonstrates that unions are pro-worker and ideal for the balance needed in the US and across the globe. Balance is key between workers and owners. Without it we are left with growing wealth inequality such as… - ridiculous housing pr…

It’s because HN folks seem to consider themselves above working-class or soon to be above. They’re just temporarily stuck before they find their big ceo level breaks. They often demonstrate ideals that go counter to their own interests while simping for daddy ceo’s boot and money.

> They often demonstrate ideals that go counter to their own interests This for real. The cognitive dissonance is giving me more cognitive dissonance. I highly doubt that even though this may be a VC owned and operated site, somehow everyone on the site is a vc or something similar?

Re: U.S. Rules Apple Illegally Interrogated Staff and Confiscated Union Flyers

#276

Post by int_19h »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #226
Hikikomori wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it matter if they can switch jobs or not when all jobs would exploit workers the same way in your non union ideal.

No one is exploiting anyone. As a free individual you agree or not to be paid a certain amount of money for a unit of work - an hour in the majority of cases. The only reason unions exist is so they can extort business owners into paying more than the market is willing to pay for that unit of work. And the fact that as a business owner you can't easily fire a unionized employee is the worst thing possible. You can do…

What do you mean by "extort", exactly? Refusing to perform work for a pay that is too low is pretty much the essence of free market. Why are you okay when individuals do it separately, but suddenly not okay when they band together?

Re: U.S. Rules Apple Illegally Interrogated Staff and Confiscated Union Flyers

#277

Post by randomdata »

diffeomorphism wrote: post #56
ein0p wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the mechanism under which houses would be more affordable if employees had more money thanks to the unions? Real estate (and by extension rents) will take up any available slack on income.

Housing prices rose much, much faster than inflation or rises in wages. So they are obviously not driven by income. Try again.

If people normally paid cash for houses, that might be an interesting point. But most people rent money to buy a house (even while ironically trumpeting "renting is throwing money away"). Like the previous commenter pointed out, real estate-related rents will expand to take up any available slack in income.

Now, save recently, the cost to rent money for real estate was in steady decline. That means even a constant income could afford to rent an increasing amount of money. As a result, the price of housing was able to rise disproportionally to income, but proportionally to rent.

Re: U.S. Rules Apple Illegally Interrogated Staff and Confiscated Union Flyers

#278

Post by novariation »

sensanaty wrote: post #242
whamlastxmas wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a popular view of anti union propaganda. No one wants to work with lazy people and unions don’t especially want them either

I'd rather work with a million "lazy slackers" than kiss the ass of some soulless corporate stooge who'd kill his own family if it made him 0.01% more profit YoY.

Given that I've worked in consulting for years I've seen a good amount of soulless corporate types, but they're usually not that far from the average human being in most respects.

Your understanding of the world isn't workable when you think tens of thousands of people are acting as unhinged mass murderers and society just accepts it.

Re: U.S. Rules Apple Illegally Interrogated Staff and Confiscated Union Flyers

#279

Post by brookst »

bogwog wrote: post #233
brookst wrote: post #209

I’m in the HN minority that actually likes Apple’s products and business model. I like the consistency the closed ecosystem brings, I like the product design, I like the vertical integration. But this union stuff pisses me off to no end. Apple has high margins and is generally ahead of competitors in things like sustainability and supplier responsibility (yes yes not perfect, I just said ahead). It would be 100% in l…

I don't think you're in the minority at all. Just look at the massive number of comments any time some new iToy gets announced. But putting aside the tech jihad for a moment, I'm curious: > It would be 100% in line with the company’s ethos to embrace unions What gives you that impression? I admit I'm a hater of all big tech, but I think an objective view of Apple shows that they're a brutally self-interested megacorp…

> What gives you that impression?

IMO Apple is ahead of the industry in supply chain ethics. They investigate their supply chain and produce reports[1] that are PR, sure, but also pretty transparent. Apple hired independent companies to interview employees of suppliers and a pretty decent scale. It's really worth reading the report, even if it's likely to confirm biases. I'm not aware of similar efforts from other consumer electronics manufacturers. Things like:

> Each year, the independent, third-party auditing firms we work with to conduct supplier assessments interview tens of thousands of supplier employees in their local languages — and without their managers or cameras present — to determine whether their experiences on the job align with our observations during assessments. Interview participation is completely voluntary, and we keep responses confidential. In 2023, we interviewed over 65,000 people as part of supplier assessments.

You can wave it away as all a big PR campaign, and I'm mostly onboard with the myth of altruism point of view, but I'm not saying that Apple "should" support unions out of altruism, but rather because it aligns with their other activities, regardless of whether those are altruistic or cynical psyops or whatever.

1. https://www.supplychainreports.apple/files/doc_downloads/202...

Re: U.S. Rules Apple Illegally Interrogated Staff and Confiscated Union Flyers

#280

Post by 93po »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #251
alistairSH wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, LV and NYC convention sites are probably the worst/most-obvious examples. Plenty of stories of presenters being disallowed from plugging in their own equipment without a union employee there to assist and other things like that.

The worst I heard, was one of our sales reps (a woman) came in, with a "weekender" purse (big purse). She was stopped at the door, and wasn't allowed to enter the main hall, for about five minutes, until someone was called over, with one of those huge, hydraulic skateboards they use for moving big furniture. They put her purse onto the center of the cart, and escorted her to the booth. Then, they got upset she only t…

I think the problem is that the fast majority of workers in the US would probably have better work conditions, job security, or compensation if they were in a good union. So on one hand we have an extremely niche union that sucks, but also however many hundreds of millions of Americans as the other example of why unions are needed.
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