Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

As unions decline, inequality rises

epi.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 479 posts

Re: As unions decline, inequality rises

#131

Post by BurningFrog »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #24
thepasswordis wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because some people take pride in their work, and being essentially forced to do a bad job hurts them psychologically. I want to get up early, set big goals, work hard on them, and then see the fruits of that hard work. I take immense pride in that, and seeing the output in some sense is a big part of the payment. Unions don’t allow for this attitude, at least none of the ones that I have ever interacted with. They’r…

Hypothesis #1: European unions aren't like American unions in this way: they are far less oppositional to the objectives of the companies. Hypothesis #2: This is a result of European unions having an origin as trade guilds whereas American unions have an origin as political organizers.

As a Swede who emigrated to the US:

# 1: Swedish unions are very different from US ones. They understand their companies and the country needs to be competitive on the world market. I have my problems with their power and policies, but they're vastly better for society than the US version.

# 2: The Swedish unions formed the Social Democratic party, that's been the main political power center of the country for a century. Don't know what relations they may have had with guilds in the 1800s.

Re: As unions decline, inequality rises

#132

Post by ponow »

dzink wrote: post #25

World War II was a much bigger reason and a cause for this. There is a problem with correlation vs causation in the article’s logic. I’d argue the unions were a bi-product of a historically rare moment in time vs cause of equality. The market bust and global world war increased taxation, demand for workers, and value of each worker in the early 40s. Much more importantly, for a few decades after WWII all other global…

This argument needs to be made more. Thanks!

Re: As unions decline, inequality rises

#133

Post by [deleted] »

otikik wrote: post #115
wallawe wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is your take, you're not being honest about the downsides of unions. Here is a list of reasons for not wanting a union[1]: - I want my underperforming colleagues to be fired quickly. It's unfair and annoying that laggards are protected and free riding off their colleagues' (my) effort, and it leads to ineffective orgs. - I don't want seniority or rank to be rewarded. It's unfair to young people (me) who are m…

> It's unfair and annoying that laggards are protected and free riding off their colleagues' (my) effort With your unionized coworkers that might be a possibility . With the business owners that’s a certainty . Do you feel differently about these two groups of people?

[deleted]

Re: As unions decline, inequality rises

#134

Post by simplotek »

Spooky23 wrote: post #110
dzink wrote: post #25

World War II was a much bigger reason and a cause for this. There is a problem with correlation vs causation in the article’s logic. I’d argue the unions were a bi-product of a historically rare moment in time vs cause of equality. The market bust and global world war increased taxation, demand for workers, and value of each worker in the early 40s. Much more importantly, for a few decades after WWII all other global…

You really need to squint at the sun to conclude that. As money interests have become more politically powerful, it’s harder and harder for employees to organize. You can get fired at Walmart if 4 people are caught talking to each other. It’s easy to rag on unions, but usually that’s a surface complaint ignoring the factors causing it. Even globalization is an example. There’s nothing etched in stone that says we nee…

> As money interests have become more politically powerful, it’s harder and harder for employees to organize. You can get fired at Walmart if 4 people are caught talking to each other.

Totally this.

We can't pretend that the likes of Amazon et al haven't been repeatedly caught being openly hostile and extremely agressive towards any semblance of a labour rights organization within their workforce, with union busting strategies being discussed, planned, and executed at the VP level. They went as far as executing smear campaigns in the media targeting labour representatives and activists.

No one can claim that unions are in decline due to some unavoidable law of nature when huge multinationals once led by the richest man in the world invest so much time and effort and money at the VP level to sabotage them.

Re: As unions decline, inequality rises

#135

Post by avereveard »

ed25519FUUU wrote: post #60
avereveard wrote: post #47

This article puts together two graphs and absolutely give no backing as to which one is the causation of the other beyond "see?" or if there's any backing model for their correlation than one could go and test. This is sensationalistic propaganda, not research.

You would honestly think that in 2022 someone would critically ask the author if they’re falling into a “correlation implies causation” fallacy.

Considering I'm being downvoted on top of that, I might have overvalued this community as well.

Re: As unions decline, inequality rises

#136

Post by jasode »

ubercore wrote: post #113
BobbyJo wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So you need to be clear where your points come from They were responding to a post specifically asking about Americans' feelings toward unions. That made it pretty clear to me where his points were coming from. If they were responding from Finland I'd be a little confused why they were responding at all.

Because Finland is a great example of unions working for the benefit of employees? Why are we constrained to only discussing how (some, not all) unions are in the US?

>Why are we constrained to only discussing how (some, not all) unions are in the US?

In general, nobody is constrained to just discussing USA unions but the particular subthread[1] that you're in which was started by gp (Zeyka) was asking specifically about America. And that's probably because this thread's article is about American unions.

That's why your clarification (to poster wallawe) was perceived as redundant and out of place.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34028480

Re: As unions decline, inequality rises

#137

Post by next_xibalba »

flanflan wrote: post #122
next_xibalba wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

oh my god https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning

You haven't presented any evidence. So I'm not sure how this is "pursuing people with relentless requests for evidence, often tangential or previously addressed".

Do you think it uncivil to ask people to justify their claims with evidence?

Re: As unions decline, inequality rises

#138

Post by throw0101c »

gfdsgfsdgfdsg wrote: post #90
throw0101c wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What does inequality mean in this context? Everything going to the top, and nothing going to those on the bottom. > The USSR, North Korea, and Cuba all have/had lower levels of inequality than the west...by making everyone poor. Seems like your examples also have things going to the people at the top. A comment from a few years ago that I saved: > If we suppose that the goal of society is to produce the greatest ut…

Why aren't poor Americans immigrating elsewhere if they have "nothing"? The poor in other countries are risking their lives to come to America.

> "nothing"

* https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/proverbial

* https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/literal

Re: As unions decline, inequality rises

#139

Post by phil21 »

goodpoint wrote: post #89
dzink wrote: post #25

World War II was a much bigger reason and a cause for this. There is a problem with correlation vs causation in the article’s logic. I’d argue the unions were a bi-product of a historically rare moment in time vs cause of equality. The market bust and global world war increased taxation, demand for workers, and value of each worker in the early 40s. Much more importantly, for a few decades after WWII all other global…

> There is a problem with correlation vs causation in the article’s logic No, there isn't. The causation is self-evident, and also unsurprising since it's the whole point of unions.

It's completely "self-evident" to me that the US can never re-achieve post-WWII prosperity largely for the reasons OP stated.

It was a moment in history that will not repeated in any of our lifetimes. Anything else against this backdrop is basically a rounding error.

I was alive during the drawdown of US industrial capacity and my entire family was blue collar mostly union workers. In my teens and 20's I worked such jobs. This narrative still rings largely true to me. The amount of outright waste and fraud in these industries at the labor level was astronomical. We were begging to be outcompeted. Combined with managerial incompetence we were doomed.

Re: As unions decline, inequality rises

#140

Post by seneca »

flanflan wrote: post #119
wallawe wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is your take, you're not being honest about the downsides of unions. Here is a list of reasons for not wanting a union[1]: - I want my underperforming colleagues to be fired quickly. It's unfair and annoying that laggards are protected and free riding off their colleagues' (my) effort, and it leads to ineffective orgs. - I don't want seniority or rank to be rewarded. It's unfair to young people (me) who are m…

Quoted post unavailable.

Please don't post lazy throw away comments like this here.
Post reply on HN