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US employers spend more than $1.5B a year to fight labor unions, report finds

theguardian.com

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Re: US employers spend more than $1.5B a year to fight labor unions, report finds

#131

Post by Veserv »

Jcampuzano2 wrote: post #38
aliasxneo wrote: post #18

I have pretty mixed feelings on unions. I spent most of my early career as a non-union blue collar worker embedded into mixed teams (union + non-union members). The general experience I walked away with was that unions seemed to attract the worst employees. I remember one individual in particular who, having worked with him for two years, never once actually did any work. He was actually one of my first mentors and I…

This is usually one of the arguments made against unions, and I find it an interesting phenomenon. Philosophically unions benefit the majority and are probably a net good on a social construct level. But they are likely a net loss to the top percentage of workers who are extremely motivated to move up and probably hurt innovation overall. Unions exist to benefit the median and bring up the floor, but it stifles compe…

A key problem in the US is that in a unionized job you are legally required to be represented by the union. Union membership is non-voluntary.

If you think you are part of that top percentage or even if you think that the union is not representing your interests, tough luck. It is illegal to quit or reorganize like-minded individuals to form your own that better represents you. To reform the union you need to get 50% of the members to vote for change instead of just forming a new, smaller organization that represents your interests.

This is in contrast to many European unions where you can choose to join because you think they provide worthwhile benefits. Or you can choose to not join because it does not. Unions need to compete on benefits to their members and are thus incentivized to provide better benefits.

Re: US employers spend more than $1.5B a year to fight labor unions, report finds

#132

Post by slibhb »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #127
slibhb wrote: post #99

Recently the LIRR (Long Island Rail Road workers) went on strike. The NYT has covered it, including this interesting fact: > For instance, if an engineer drives a diesel train at the start of a shift but is asked to switch to an electric train in the same day, the M.T.A. must compensate that worker with two days’ pay. If, on the same day, the engineer is also asked to switch from driving passengers to driving a train…

> must compensate that worker with two days’ pay The reason for this rule is that it forces management to schedule workers more predictably and compensates workers who invest in obtaining broader qualifications. > My view is that -- with some exceptions -- unions today are mostly bad, and worth fighting. There are literally thousands of unions just in the US. I agree that some are dysfunctional, but making a claim li…

> The reason for this rule is that it forces management to schedule workers more predictably and compensates workers who invest in obtaining broader qualifications.

No, it's just a scam, and anyone should be able to see that. It's like saying I get 2 days pay if I have to write go in addition to typescript. And 3 days pay if I have to write java.

> There are literally thousands of unions just in the US. I agree that some are dysfunctional, but making a claim like "with some exceptions -- unions today are mostly bad" needs a lot more evidence. My counter-evidence is simple: historically, there's a direct correlation with the strength of unions and the existence of a strong middle class.

Unions had a good reason to exist post industrialization when many people worked in factories under terrible conditions. But today, in the West, that's no longer the case. Today, unions are mostly bad.

Re: US employers spend more than $1.5B a year to fight labor unions, report finds

#133

Post by arh5451 »

aliasxneo wrote: post #18

I have pretty mixed feelings on unions. I spent most of my early career as a non-union blue collar worker embedded into mixed teams (union + non-union members). The general experience I walked away with was that unions seemed to attract the worst employees. I remember one individual in particular who, having worked with him for two years, never once actually did any work. He was actually one of my first mentors and I…

My first job out of college was a government union job (optional to join). I was pretty appalled by the behaviour I saw from older colleagues and the union reps. Government unions should be illegal in my opinion. Becoming the head of these unions is insane money, the union fees can run up to $50-$100 per month per member and if you look at the union salaries it mostly goes to the leadership sometimes earning $100-$200k or more on their part-time job on top of their actual job. Also the union organisers make pretty solid money setting it up. I think if you have more competition and more competing companies than wages stay competitive and employers have to be good to attract labor, it’s probably the best option. Humans are too dishonest to be trusted with such organisations. Invisible hand forces are harder to manipulate.

Re: US employers spend more than $1.5B a year to fight labor unions, report finds

#134

Post by thedevilslawyer »

This will not work until unions deal with the reality of globalization, and push to form a worldwide union, which ensures compensation has no more than 2x difference based on one's country. This is the multiplier where people will not want to transfer work for cost vs skill level.

This is unpalatable to HCOL engineers, because their pay will significantly compress in this union to support the growth of compensation of similarly skilled LCOL regions/countries.

QED: Unions will not happen.

Re: US employers spend more than $1.5B a year to fight labor unions, report finds

#135

Post by zackmorris »

I live in a Right-to-Work (for less) state:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law

Loosely that just means that if you work somewhere with a lot of employees, you'll hear that the same job in a neighboring state pays 1.5-2 times as much. And that they have a harder time firing you. And that you'll be more likely to get compensated if you get hurt or whatever. Etc etc etc because unions.

It was pitched as a way to avoid paying union dues and possibly make it easier to move around the job market. And especially avoid working with "those" people.

If you sensed the ick factor there, that's why I think it's hard to have a rational debate around unions. It's become a divisive word like liberal due to deep-rooted disagreements going back to the founding of the (cough) union.

I prefer to use a term like representation. Do we want an advocate between us and the bosses when the next round of layoffs comes? Of course. Do we want our own form of human resources (HR) that has real teeth when something violent or inappropriate happens to a coworker? Of course. Do we want to have our voices heard when it comes to the quality of our work environment? Of course.

When people agree on principles but not on the umbrella term that covers them, it makes them vulnerable to political manipulation so that they can be divided and convinced to vote against their own interests.

I understand that a free market where people can switch jobs easily might be seen as more ideal than unions. But do we live in that market really? How many cities in America have a handful of large companies propping up the local economy? How many of those companies would take us in if we got fired from the other companies? How often do we hear about people moving to another city because they can't find a job?

There seems to be quite a discrepancy between the ideal and the actual. Another way to make people vulnerable to political manipulation.

I think maybe it comes down to how we see ourselves as blue collar or white collar. I understand how unions might be against the interests of white collar workers who tell blue collar workers what to do. What I can't understand is why blue collar workers would be against unions. What is the rationale there, really?

Without logic, we're left with bad faith arguments. Unions don't exist much these days for the same reasons that people on food stamps vote for billionaires. There's an irony there that their hope for opportunity gets used against them in a negative reinforcement loop. It's plain to see, and yet no help is coming.

If companies decide who gets hired instead of the people doing the work, that would seem to open the door to corruption and prejudice. So it's interesting that we might associate unions with mob activity, but not the existing corporate status quo. Why is that?

Re: US employers spend more than $1.5B a year to fight labor unions, report finds

#136

Post by HardlyCognizant »

WarmWash wrote: post #104
Muromec wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A healthy organisation can reflect on this tendency and purge some free riders to preserve itself. The fact that it doesn't, to me personally, just means it's not under external pressure.

If there is one thing free riders are generally skilled at, it's hiding the fact they are free riding. There is then an internal decay where as others learn the tricks, they realize that they can start coasting too, and they should, because why would you do extra work if you don't have to. To defeat this you need intense oversight, but then you yourself become the man with an iron fist. This is a super common theme w…

It's the prisoner's dilemma. I believe any self-preservation optimized intelligence is going to suffer from these problems until those behaviors are countered in interaction by design (e.g. process, societal/cultural pressures, etc.) or removed from the baseline (i.e. evolved out.)

Our desires make us our own worst enemies, and until we acknowledge and openly plan to counter these tendencies, any social structure at some scale is going to fail to them. Unfortunately, the problems we face as a species are increasingly at larger and larger scales.

I'm not sure if we can remain what we would recognize as "human," and solve for this without surrendering some level of executive function to an entity not afflicted by it. Government and regulation are already expressions of this, while retaining our intrinsic nature, but history has demonstrated this is inherently unstable.

Re: US employers spend more than $1.5B a year to fight labor unions, report finds

#137

Post by hgs3 »

nisegami wrote: post #21
JKCalhoun wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the alternative (no unions) like?

Probably a UBI-like approach? At least insofar as it changes the power dynamic in the employer/employee relationship.

How about forcing businesses to be owned by their employees [1]? Instead of taxing the owning class and being paid UBI peanuts, you become the owning class and reap the rewards directly.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative

Re: US employers spend more than $1.5B a year to fight labor unions, report finds

#138

Post by virgildotcodes »

WarmWash wrote: post #128
virgildotcodes wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn’t seem to be a universal rule at all, but smells more of a boogeyman promulgated within US society. The nordics are anywhere from 50% - 90% of all labor unionized and they absolutely destroy the US on every standard of living metric. It seems to me a case that echoes “better to let 99 guilty men go free than to execute an innocent man”. Of course, in this case, the ratios are actually reversed. Should we e…

>It seems to me a case that echoes “better to let 9 guilty men go free than to execute an innocent man”. Of course, in this case, the ratios are actually reversed. Should we execute 9 innocent men to make sure that 1 guilty guy gets punished? We don't have to do an echo. We can just do it as it is. 9 men hunt and 1 man eats free, so the 9 men are carrying the weight of the 1. This system is inherently unstable and un…

> 9 men hunt and 1 man eats free, so the 9 men are carrying the weight of the 1.

Updated the quote to the historically accurate 99 vs 1.

> This system is inherently unstable and unsustainable.

The countries cited are extremely stable. Arguably far more stable than the US.

That said, we can bring in the rest of Western Europe if 5 countries aren't enough of an example. They have union participation rates between 10% and 50%, median around 20%. The thing is, they have much larger proportions of their workforces covered by collective bargaining agreements - France for example is at 10% union participation yet 98% of labor covered by bargaining agreements.

Western Europe and the Nordics combined = ~400 million people, bigger population than the US, and far more diverse, so the common refrain of "small homogenous population" doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

Of course, all societies so far have eventually been unstable.

We can just choose whether our unstable society will be a vindictive one that prioritizes punishing wrongdoers over the wellbeing of the whole, or a pragmatic and (as a nice bonus) compassionate one which prioritizes the wellbeing of the whole over a puritanical urge to purge the unworthy.

Re: US employers spend more than $1.5B a year to fight labor unions, report finds

#139

Post by keybored »

aliasxneo wrote: post #18

I have pretty mixed feelings on unions. I spent most of my early career as a non-union blue collar worker embedded into mixed teams (union + non-union members). The general experience I walked away with was that unions seemed to attract the worst employees. I remember one individual in particular who, having worked with him for two years, never once actually did any work. He was actually one of my first mentors and I…

Typical HN war story about how one’s coworkers are incompetent or chronically lazy. I guess this is the HN version of hard-hatters being vehemently against immigrant labor.

Meanwhile the concern for being abused by people with actual power is just an emotionless throwaway scare quote. “The man”.

Re: US employers spend more than $1.5B a year to fight labor unions, report finds

#140

Post by robocat »

Balvarez wrote: post #57
aliasxneo wrote: post #18

I have pretty mixed feelings on unions. I spent most of my early career as a non-union blue collar worker embedded into mixed teams (union + non-union members). The general experience I walked away with was that unions seemed to attract the worst employees. I remember one individual in particular who, having worked with him for two years, never once actually did any work. He was actually one of my first mentors and I…

Your probably a normal guy making a comment in good faith, but I can't help but think this is the exact sort of dark marketing that I would do if I was an anti union commenter/marketer. Attack the vague made up values of union members because you can't attack the fact that large companies have been anti-worker for awhile and most people believe that. I'll also add onto here that if this comment gets down voted into t…

A worldview where you see manipulation in everything seems sad.

I suspect the guidelines explain voting behaviour: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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