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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

#181

Post by jltsiren »

Veserv wrote: post #179
jltsiren wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voluntary unions have a free rider problem. You may choose to join the union because you believe it's the right thing to do, but the benefits are rarely worth the dues. Non-members also benefit from collective bargaining, but they have a bit more money to spend. Legal representation is probably the main exception. Other benefits you could just pay on your own, but unions are the easiest way to get access to lawyers s…

Voluntary unions do not have a free rider problem. That is only the case if you legally require collective bargaining to apply to non-union members (as is the case in the US). For instance, in Germany [1] collective bargaining agreements are agreements between employers and unions, and are only required to be applied to union members. Companys may voluntarily choose to extend those same benefits to non-union members.…

There are plenty of incentives, practical reasons, and even legal requirements for extending the benefits to non-members. Germany also has a mechanism for declaring a collective bargaining agreement generally binding, which means that it applies to everyone working in the field in every company.

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

#182

Post by HDThoreaun »

oblio wrote: post #50
chii wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

equality of outcome is unnecessary, only equality of opportunity is required.

So if the apples are in a 3.5m high tree and you're 2m tall and I'm 1.5m tall, it's fair if we both get 1m ladders?

The shorter person should pick root vegetables where they have an advantage over the tall person. Not all people are equally suited for all tasks

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

#183

Post by HDThoreaun »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #85
baron816 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who does? The unions definitely have lawmakers on their side.

AFAIK The USA is one of the most anti-union non-authoritarian countries for a very long time. In other countries people receive a lot more support and protections for the right to organize

Urban unions in the US often control local and state politics.

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

#184

Post by Muromec »

missedthecue wrote: post #98
Muromec wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For once, the union is one of the rare in-groups that are very easy to join and actually benefit their members

The problem is that they tend to benefit their members in a zero sum way. For example the LIRR wants a double digit raise not in exchange for hitting targets on on-time arrivals or some other metric. They want it or they strike and hold the community hostage. It bothers me that there's no value exchange it's just take take take, and ultimately at my expense.

Double digit raise in this economy and for the economic strata that does this work and is more exposed to prices more than some others, double digit sounds reasonable. The union just wants their members to not be piss poor. Is this bad?

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

#185

Post by Muromec »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #147
Muromec wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For once, the union is one of the rare in-groups that are very easy to join and actually benefit their members

>that are very easy to join That's the case for most service-sector unions, but a lot (certainly not all) of builder's unions seem to meter the amount of people that are allowed to join, making it prohibitively difficult to actually get into the union.

Now that sounds like a guild and illegal as fuck, but what do I know

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

#186

Post by archagon »

indoordin0saur wrote: post #166
JKCalhoun wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the alternative (no unions) like?

Certain markets are highly competitive for labor. A good example is software engineering. In those cases, because neither the corporation has a monopoly on their tech products nor does a union have a monopoly on labor the sector can be highly productive and everyone can get rich. In such a situation it seems pointless to have a union. Why would an employee want to be beholden to both his employer and his union? Union…

Software engineers are gonna wish they’d unionized in the coming years.

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

#187

Post by WarmWash »

georgemcbay wrote: post #149
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…

> but smells more of a boogeyman promulgated within US society. Particularly the ultra-capitalist part of US society. Do unions attract some percentage of people who want to abuse them to do less work for more pay? Sure, humans are flawed. But unfettered capitalism also attracts some percentage of people who will greedily exploit the labor of others to enrich themselves. Both extremes are why we should have rules and…

The irony in this is that the image of exploited labor is always minimum wage workers, or dead end job workers, generally the lowest rungs of the labor ladder.

However the reality is that the most economically exploited labor is generally the educated white class workers who ostensibly live pretty comfortable lives. These people are the cash cows getting the smallest cut of of their output.

What this reveals is that the inoculation against anti-capitalist rhetoric (giving people the simple comfortable upper-middle class life they dream of) is in fact the very thing that is most exploitative in a capitalist society.

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

#188

Post by halestock »

wccrawford wrote: post #7
halestock wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Always?

Always. Power begets power. Everything needs to be kept in check. The only question is where the line is.

Why don't unions seem to have that problem in pretty much all of Europe then?

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

#190

Post by anon291 »

oblio wrote: post #177
anon291 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes? Maybe the 1.5 m tall guy should find another line of work where he has a natural advantage that could be turned into profit. People are not the same. The market is the best way to allocate resources fairly to people of different ability

Unfettered markets are how we get burning rivers. I know we're on the bastion of libertarianism, but even though I work in tech, I don't feel that tech (hardware/software) is tackling the truly big problems of humanity, just the ones that bring the most money. We should at least acknowledge that and mitigate it.

Tech and the market are orthogonal issues.

Burning rivers? No failure to protect the environment is a failure of property rights enforcement. If your stuff is leaking off your property you should be forced to pay for it. That's just basic property rights. You don't have the right to put your stuff on others property

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