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> How many programmers belong to a union? Thankfully none. One of the main reasons the car companies stumbled are unions. The whole thing has degenerated to

> How many programmers belong to a union? Thankfully none. One of the main reasons the car companies stumbled are unions. The whole thing has degenerated to insanity squared. For example, GM had a clause in their contract requiring them to not fire employees displaced by technology or automation. In other words, if you improve your workflow and process and can do the same work with 25 people instead of 100, you can't fire the people you no-longer need. All incentives to innovate in process and technology very quickly evaporate with such insanity in place. They reportedly had thousands of people show up for "work" every day drawing 95% salaries and full benefits only to go to this building, read the newspaper and drink coffee all day. Unions had their day and reason to exist. I am not proposing they need to disappear. However, they need to mutate into something that works towards a mutually beneficial and sustainable ecosystem. By pushing for, and obtaining, ridiculous grants, they create short term apparent gains and HUGE long term losses as thousands of people lose their jobs when they industry they worked in simply crumbles under the weight of onerous arrangements that cause them to lose the ability to compete and remain financially viable. In fact, if you look at Detroit, one could argue the unions went beyond costing people their jobs and companies their ability to compete, they actually succeeded at destroying a whole city. How is this, in any imaginable reality, good? A couple of articles: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB114118143005186163 http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB114118143005186163 This one covers other issues: http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/05/20/what-explains-gms-problems-with-the-uaw/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/05/20/what-explain... From the Forbes article: "A worker might be able to retire in his early 50s and collect an annual pension of $37,500, paid wholly by GM. By 2008 there were 4.6 retired GM employees for each active worker. Did anyone think this was sustainable?" It's called "killing the golden goose".

mtberatwork 11y ago
I'm having a hard time taking the links seriously. The WSJ article is behind a paywall so I am unable to read it. However, it's dated 2006 which would mean it was authored at the height of Wall Street "shenanigans" (for lack of a better term) while the Forbes article appears to be a canned editorial written by the Ayn Rand Institute.
- rebootthesystem 11y ago
  I understand your point. The beauty of it is: This is math, not opinion. If you doubt any of it, all you have to do is fire-up Excel and work the numbers. For example, try to answer the question about how GM can survive, grow and innovate when it has nearly 5 retired employees for every one current employee. And, every single one of those retirees is drawing a huge percentage of their salaries as their pension, for life, as well as enjoying tremendous paid benefits. The problem here is the divide between people who have business experience and those who do not. Any small business person understands, without having to run any calculations, that having the cost of a position multiplied by 6 (because you are paying 1 active worker and 5 retirees) is utterly unsustainable. Or that, installing a series of automated welders while not being able to lay off 50 people is a formula for bankruptcy. Do you hire a gardener, cleaning service or pool person? Imagine having to continue paying them 80% of their monthly fees after they retire. And then you have to hire a new service to do the job. Now you go out and buy a robotic lawn mower, vacuum or pool cleaner. And you can't fire them. You have to continue paying those service providers for a service they will not be performing because their contract says so. Forever. Get the point? We can engage in the fallacy of attacking the source all we want, yet, it is impossible to attack the math, which is the point here. These arrangements are mathematically predetermined to result in the destruction of companies and jobs unless Superman comes down from the skies and brings with him a supernatural solution of some sort. Or, we pretend all is well, grab some tax money to continue propping them up and shift the problem forward to another generation. Which is exactly what we've been doing with both unions and government programs.
pm24601 11y ago
Ah, yes. The unions got GM to kill electric vehicle investment. Ah, yes. The unions got GM to become lazy with quality and innovation in the 60's and 70's when GM had 60%+ market share. Ah, yes. The unions forced automobile manufacturing management to take huge pay packages. Ah, yes. The unions with their silly demands for a 40hour work , and sick leave (which the majority of Americans still don't have) Read something other than wall street journal and forbes to get better info about unions.
- rebootthesystem 11y ago
  I was in a union for almost ten years. I was young and was told I had to become a member if I wanted that job. Please spare me the empty pro-union hit points. I have seen, from the inside, just how caustic they can be. I was Union Steward for my last year. All I can say is, disgusting.
snowwrestler 11y ago
The autoworkers are not really a good analog for what a programmers' union would be. If a programmer's union formed it would probably be a trade union more similar to the NFL Players Association, or the Writers Guild of America, than a labor union for relatively unskilled workers. The NFL, Hollywood, and TV have obviously not been harmed by doing deals with these unions.
- rebootthesystem 11y ago
  I don't know anything about he NFL (rich players, high class problems). Various Hollywood associations were crumbling under the weight of their unsustainable pension obligations. The solution is always the same, financing of some sort that kicks the problem forward a few years for someone else --or the next generation-- to deal with. That is morally and ethically wrong.
nekopa 11y ago
I think I may be one of the few people who up voted you, only because I think you raise an interesting point. Yes, the auto industry unions caused a shot storm. But do you honest, y think that a modern union, (which learns from the lessons of the past) would really be a bad thing? I'm still not sure about the value of unions, but I think it is an area that should be explored with a modern mindset.
- rebootthesystem 11y ago
  Unions are important. They give voice to people within companies who have tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of employees. Most people are not adept at negotiating for anything. So, yes, conceptually, they are a good idea and they should not go away. I never proposed that they disappear. The problem is that American unions succeeded at entering into a destructive feedback loop where union management had to justify their existence (and huge salaries) by always grabbing more and more for the membership. Even to the point of the ridiculous examples I laid out from the automotive industry. This seems to be a common failure in both government and organizations such as unions: Past a certain point it is nearly impossible for management to go to their members and say something like "We need to stop asking for more on pensions, salaries and benefits because we are going to cause damage to the future viability of this company". Why? Because of pandering or populism. There's always a sick would-be leader who will step in and counter that with gifts-a-plenty while vilifying the guy who proposed moderation or, the unthinkable, cut-backs and concessions in order to ensure things remain viable for the greater good. That's the mechanism that has turned a lot of unions (not all) in to agents of destruction rather than responsible participants in an ecosystem. Union members are NOT bad people. They, like anyone else, would like to live better, earn more and retire well. They trust and follow the people they hire to represent them, the union leaders. This leadership, high on power and, yes, in cooperation with incompetent company executives ultimately fails their membership by creating situations where the company's own survival becomes mathematically impossible. You know, what's interesting about this is that down-votes fail at masking reality. We have an entire city, if not a state, to serve as evidence for the sheer destruction caused by the combination of bad union leadership when combined with incompetent corporate management. Had these companies not been bailed out to the tune of billions of dollars Detroit would have cratered under the weight of an utterly unsustainable equation.
Aloha 11y ago
You earn a union. You earn a union by not treating your employees well, if you knew the history of the labor movement in the 30's you'd better understand how things got to be the way they are, and why the relationship is adversarial, instead of cooperative. If your employees are trying to unionize its because of longstanding grievances held by a significant minority if not majority of your workforce - grievances that have either not been meaningfully addressed, or can't be aired, because there is no workable mechanism to air them. It's not just pay (though often is primarily pay - we'll put up with all sorts of shenanigans for a big paycheck) if often as much about working conditions and esprit de corps as it is pay. If you don't want a union, pay your employees well (well above market), or have a great working environment and instill a sense of pride and appreciation in your management - and make it clear you value their contributions as well - it's this balance of pay and working environment that keeps a workplace healthy and union free. The car companies stumbled because they had a high cost structure and they ziged when the market zagged - while the union contributed to the high cost structure, they had nothing do to with changing market conditions.
- rebootthesystem 11y ago
  > if you knew the history of the labor movement in the 30's News flash: We are nearly one hundred years away from the 30's. Just because things made sense then (and they absolutely did) does not mean they make sense today. What I am putting on the table is a verifiable mathematical fact. No opinions here. Fire-up Excel and do the math. Not sustainable. And that's the point. I didn't say unions need to evaporate, I said they need to mutate into something that truly works for a sustainable common goal. Today, for the most part, they do not. And we all pay for it in one way or another.
  - Aloha 11y ago
    In other countries, they do work, just not here in a bunch of cases (the auto workers are a worst case). I'm not trying to justify the adversarial relationship the UAW takes with the big three - but as the old saying goes, it takes two to tango, and for a long time, neither side was willing to change the status quo. Not all unions are the same, many have what could more be described as a partnership. I don't have much in the way of sympathy with the Big Three however, they rather than really negotiate when times were good, they agreed to absurd contract provisions - a little pain now, can save a whole lot of pain later. The reason GM as you pointed out had 4.6 pensioners for every worker, is General Motors used to be a much much larger company - in 1970, GM had 395,000 UAW workers, in 1998, 210,000 and in 2007 had around 75,000, today (February of 2015) it has around 50,300. So in, 1998, it was roughly 1/2 its 1970 size, 2007, it was around 1/5th - today its around 1/7th. 1/5th is awful close to the 1:4.6 ratio you pointed out. As far as the 20 years and you're out provisions? I have a friend who worked for GM for 20 years, he has - bad hearing, bad knees, bad ankles, bad feet - plus 15 years of exposure to chemicals in the paint booth - then another 5 of working in a stamping plant. He earned every dime of his pension, and paid for it with ill health, and a diminished quality of life for his remaining 20-30 years on the planet, because essentially he's a man in his early 40's with a body of someone 15 years his senior.
adrianN 11y ago
I'm fairly sure that most car company employees in Germany are represented by a union, the IG Metall. Germany's car industry is still doing fine.
- rebootthesystem 11y ago
  European unions don't function as US unions do. They are far, far more benign. They would never make deals that would result in the utter destruction of the company their very members work for. American unions have succeeded at delivering amazing short-term gains for their members at the cost of killing companies and industries. Ask any old-timers in the printing industry if you want to start grokking the subject.
  - sunrise21 11y ago
    But wouldn't all unions regardless of where they are from have similar goals and mechanism as you described earlier, such as their leadership wanting to stay in leadership (pandering if need be to stay there) and their members wanting to have good pay, benefits, etc.? What makes the European unions different from the U.S.?

mtberatwork 11y ago

I'm having a hard time taking the links seriously. The WSJ article is behind a paywall so I am unable to read it. However, it's dated 2006 which would mean it was authored at the height of Wall Street "shenanigans" (for lack of a better term) while the Forbes article appears to be a canned editorial written by the Ayn Rand Institute.

rebootthesystem 11y ago
I understand your point. The beauty of it is: This is math, not opinion. If you doubt any of it, all you have to do is fire-up Excel and work the numbers. For example, try to answer the question about how GM can survive, grow and innovate when it has nearly 5 retired employees for every one current employee. And, every single one of those retirees is drawing a huge percentage of their salaries as their pension, for life, as well as enjoying tremendous paid benefits. The problem here is the divide between people who have business experience and those who do not. Any small business person understands, without having to run any calculations, that having the cost of a position multiplied by 6 (because you are paying 1 active worker and 5 retirees) is utterly unsustainable. Or that, installing a series of automated welders while not being able to lay off 50 people is a formula for bankruptcy. Do you hire a gardener, cleaning service or pool person? Imagine having to continue paying them 80% of their monthly fees after they retire. And then you have to hire a new service to do the job. Now you go out and buy a robotic lawn mower, vacuum or pool cleaner. And you can't fire them. You have to continue paying those service providers for a service they will not be performing because their contract says so. Forever. Get the point? We can engage in the fallacy of attacking the source all we want, yet, it is impossible to attack the math, which is the point here. These arrangements are mathematically predetermined to result in the destruction of companies and jobs unless Superman comes down from the skies and brings with him a supernatural solution of some sort. Or, we pretend all is well, grab some tax money to continue propping them up and shift the problem forward to another generation. Which is exactly what we've been doing with both unions and government programs.

pm24601 11y ago

Ah, yes. The unions got GM to kill electric vehicle investment. Ah, yes. The unions got GM to become lazy with quality and innovation in the 60's and 70's when GM had 60%+ market share. Ah, yes. The unions forced automobile manufacturing management to take huge pay packages. Ah, yes. The unions with their silly demands for a 40hour work , and sick leave (which the majority of Americans still don't have) Read something other than wall street journal and forbes to get better info about unions.

rebootthesystem 11y ago
I was in a union for almost ten years. I was young and was told I had to become a member if I wanted that job. Please spare me the empty pro-union hit points. I have seen, from the inside, just how caustic they can be. I was Union Steward for my last year. All I can say is, disgusting.

snowwrestler 11y ago

The autoworkers are not really a good analog for what a programmers' union would be. If a programmer's union formed it would probably be a trade union more similar to the NFL Players Association, or the Writers Guild of America, than a labor union for relatively unskilled workers. The NFL, Hollywood, and TV have obviously not been harmed by doing deals with these unions.

rebootthesystem 11y ago
I don't know anything about he NFL (rich players, high class problems). Various Hollywood associations were crumbling under the weight of their unsustainable pension obligations. The solution is always the same, financing of some sort that kicks the problem forward a few years for someone else --or the next generation-- to deal with. That is morally and ethically wrong.

nekopa 11y ago

I think I may be one of the few people who up voted you, only because I think you raise an interesting point. Yes, the auto industry unions caused a shot storm. But do you honest, y think that a modern union, (which learns from the lessons of the past) would really be a bad thing? I'm still not sure about the value of unions, but I think it is an area that should be explored with a modern mindset.

rebootthesystem 11y ago
Unions are important. They give voice to people within companies who have tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of employees. Most people are not adept at negotiating for anything. So, yes, conceptually, they are a good idea and they should not go away. I never proposed that they disappear. The problem is that American unions succeeded at entering into a destructive feedback loop where union management had to justify their existence (and huge salaries) by always grabbing more and more for the membership. Even to the point of the ridiculous examples I laid out from the automotive industry. This seems to be a common failure in both government and organizations such as unions: Past a certain point it is nearly impossible for management to go to their members and say something like "We need to stop asking for more on pensions, salaries and benefits because we are going to cause damage to the future viability of this company". Why? Because of pandering or populism. There's always a sick would-be leader who will step in and counter that with gifts-a-plenty while vilifying the guy who proposed moderation or, the unthinkable, cut-backs and concessions in order to ensure things remain viable for the greater good. That's the mechanism that has turned a lot of unions (not all) in to agents of destruction rather than responsible participants in an ecosystem. Union members are NOT bad people. They, like anyone else, would like to live better, earn more and retire well. They trust and follow the people they hire to represent them, the union leaders. This leadership, high on power and, yes, in cooperation with incompetent company executives ultimately fails their membership by creating situations where the company's own survival becomes mathematically impossible. You know, what's interesting about this is that down-votes fail at masking reality. We have an entire city, if not a state, to serve as evidence for the sheer destruction caused by the combination of bad union leadership when combined with incompetent corporate management. Had these companies not been bailed out to the tune of billions of dollars Detroit would have cratered under the weight of an utterly unsustainable equation.

Aloha 11y ago

You earn a union. You earn a union by not treating your employees well, if you knew the history of the labor movement in the 30's you'd better understand how things got to be the way they are, and why the relationship is adversarial, instead of cooperative. If your employees are trying to unionize its because of longstanding grievances held by a significant minority if not majority of your workforce - grievances that have either not been meaningfully addressed, or can't be aired, because there is no workable mechanism to air them. It's not just pay (though often is primarily pay - we'll put up with all sorts of shenanigans for a big paycheck) if often as much about working conditions and esprit de corps as it is pay. If you don't want a union, pay your employees well (well above market), or have a great working environment and instill a sense of pride and appreciation in your management - and make it clear you value their contributions as well - it's this balance of pay and working environment that keeps a workplace healthy and union free. The car companies stumbled because they had a high cost structure and they ziged when the market zagged - while the union contributed to the high cost structure, they had nothing do to with changing market conditions.

rebootthesystem 11y ago
> if you knew the history of the labor movement in the 30's News flash: We are nearly one hundred years away from the 30's. Just because things made sense then (and they absolutely did) does not mean they make sense today. What I am putting on the table is a verifiable mathematical fact. No opinions here. Fire-up Excel and do the math. Not sustainable. And that's the point. I didn't say unions need to evaporate, I said they need to mutate into something that truly works for a sustainable common goal. Today, for the most part, they do not. And we all pay for it in one way or another.
- Aloha 11y ago
  In other countries, they do work, just not here in a bunch of cases (the auto workers are a worst case). I'm not trying to justify the adversarial relationship the UAW takes with the big three - but as the old saying goes, it takes two to tango, and for a long time, neither side was willing to change the status quo. Not all unions are the same, many have what could more be described as a partnership. I don't have much in the way of sympathy with the Big Three however, they rather than really negotiate when times were good, they agreed to absurd contract provisions - a little pain now, can save a whole lot of pain later. The reason GM as you pointed out had 4.6 pensioners for every worker, is General Motors used to be a much much larger company - in 1970, GM had 395,000 UAW workers, in 1998, 210,000 and in 2007 had around 75,000, today (February of 2015) it has around 50,300. So in, 1998, it was roughly 1/2 its 1970 size, 2007, it was around 1/5th - today its around 1/7th. 1/5th is awful close to the 1:4.6 ratio you pointed out. As far as the 20 years and you're out provisions? I have a friend who worked for GM for 20 years, he has - bad hearing, bad knees, bad ankles, bad feet - plus 15 years of exposure to chemicals in the paint booth - then another 5 of working in a stamping plant. He earned every dime of his pension, and paid for it with ill health, and a diminished quality of life for his remaining 20-30 years on the planet, because essentially he's a man in his early 40's with a body of someone 15 years his senior.

adrianN 11y ago

I'm fairly sure that most car company employees in Germany are represented by a union, the IG Metall. Germany's car industry is still doing fine.

rebootthesystem 11y ago
European unions don't function as US unions do. They are far, far more benign. They would never make deals that would result in the utter destruction of the company their very members work for. American unions have succeeded at delivering amazing short-term gains for their members at the cost of killing companies and industries. Ask any old-timers in the printing industry if you want to start grokking the subject.
- sunrise21 11y ago
  But wouldn't all unions regardless of where they are from have similar goals and mechanism as you described earlier, such as their leadership wanting to stay in leadership (pandering if need be to stay there) and their members wanting to have good pay, benefits, etc.? What makes the European unions different from the U.S.?