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Though it's possible that you're correct on this specific issue, you've offered absolutely no support for your argument. Consider the possibility that the stro

• unethical_ban 10y ago
  Consider that unions are great in theory and in many circumstances have proven themselves corrupt to the core in practice.
  • Frondo 10y ago
    I mentally swapped "corporations" out for "unions" in your sentence and it reads just as well. I consider it a credit to the anti-union propagandists that we're all so quick to discard one of the very few tools we laborers have to better our lot in life.
    • Dylan16807 10y ago
      Criticizing is not discarding. I will happily criticize both unions and corporations, and I don't think we should get rid of either concept.
      • tombone12 10y ago
        No parent comment criticizing unions does it without the implication that they shouldn't exist. This is most easily seen by the total absence of any mention of a specific union, thus direction the objections towards the concept itself rather than any specific version of it.
        • Dylan16807 10y ago
          All unions, as a general concept, tend toward corruption. Just like corporations do. The concept itself is flawed. But flawed does not mean it shouldn't exist.
          • CPLX 10y ago
            Unions are a way of concentrating the power of labor. All power corrupts. The observation proves nothing about unions specifically. If you take away power from unions it just goes and does its corrupting somewhere else.
  • CPLX 10y ago
    Consider that [investors|police|politicians|priests|religions|banks|unions|wives|airport taxis|pets|corporations|executives] are great in theory and in many circumstances have proven themselves corrupt to the core in practice.
    • davidgay 10y ago
      I just have to ask about the corrupt pets... So?
      • CPLX 10y ago
        I think everyone knows which pets I'm talking about.
        • titanomachy 10y ago
          The fat cats.
        • InitialLastName 10y ago
          It's the turtles. You can't trust anything that lives that long and never speaks.
    • kelnos 10y ago
      What's your point? We complain about corruption in all those other things as well, and no one suggests it's "professional elitism" to do so.
  • manicdee 10y ago
    s/unions/humans/g A few unions engage in poor practices and you are happy to tar them all with the same brush. The problem is not the unions.
    • notgood 10y ago
      Saying "the problem is not the unions" is as wide-brush as saying they are the problem; unions have some good causes but the core of their existence is to keep employees employed, sometimes that means important jobs that should exist and sometimes its a cancer that stops a business from profiting or stopping the creation of new ones or the advance of technology (think taxi drivers vs self-driving cars)
      • CPLX 10y ago
        I don't know how to tell you this but there's no such thing as a car that can drive itself.
        • notgood 10y ago
          Oh my, I'm afraid they exist[0], and there are already NYC unions trying to ban them: http://readwrite.com/2017/01/17/new-york-ban-self-driving-tl4/ http://readwrite.com/2017/01/17/new-york-ban-self-driving-tl... [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHbMt6WDhQ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHbMt6WDhQ8
          • Fricken 10y ago
            Waymo is still developing the technology, they can only go 5000 miles on average without the need for human intervention. They're getting close, but they don't exist yet.
            • CPLX 10y ago
              Maybe some day they'll even be able to drive 5000 different miles instead of driving the same 5 miles 1000 times.
• hueving 10y ago
  >Though it's possible that you're correct on this specific issue, you've offered absolutely no support for your argument. The comment provided specific examples of where unions have resulted in inefficiency.
• hoorayimhelping 10y ago
  Comment offers examples (that many people in New York on his site have experienced) and you fire back with some nonsense about some kind of PR campaign? Consider the possibility that people have had awful personal experiences dealing with unions (we hired a part time guy to help out cleaning our office and the office management threatened to shut down our building access because we didn't use approved union labor) that have colored their opinions on them instead of just dismissing them as "instinctive union bashing" Youre doing exactly what you accused the comment you're responding to of, just on the other side of the coin: instinctively defending unions
  • CPLX 10y ago
    In the face of a direct quote from the agency that inspected the crane and deemed it unsafe, the comment cited some unrelated union anecdotes as the reason why this specific guy's crane was considered problematic. That's about as dispositive as me mentioning a bunch of optimistic inventors of construction equipment who had no regard for the safety of workers and killed people. Despite that I said he might well be right. He just hasn't cited anything that shows it. I'm a business owner in New York City too, stories are cheap. The reflexive statement that unions are what's getting in the way of fearless capitalist innovators is, in fact, a well financed argument that is harming our society and increasing inequality and political unrest.
  • ubernostrum 10y ago
    OK, so the comment compares to Paris, Madrid and Barcelona. Consider that in France and Spain, there are labor unions which make even the US' strongest, most ruthless and overbearing unions look like weaklings. If labor unions are the source of problems, Paris, Madrid and Barcelona would have the same problems but orders of magnitude worse. Yet the comment claims -- and note I'm not passing judgment on whether this is factual or not -- that Paris, Madrid and Barcelona do not have these problems. And it most certainly is true that labor unions in the US have been targeted by ubiquitous, well-funded, vicious attack propaganda from those who feel that people pooling a resource to wield greater power and reap greater returns than they could individually is the highest, noblest and holiest human endeavor when the resource in question is capital, but is the very worst and lowest sort of corrupt vile leeching parasitism when the resource in question is labor.
• deelowe 10y ago
  Here's an example from my world: IT technicians were kicked out of their office building when the electrical contractors saw them crimping cat 5 for a network closet. That's how bonkers unions are.
  • sargun 10y ago
    At Equinix, and other datacenters, you can't plug in certain electrical equipment without a Union worker. Often times this can be done significantly cheaper by an independent electrician (or an intern with a little bit of courage).
    • greglindahl 10y ago
      I've been an Equinix customer (50 racks for 4 years.) I'm OK with Equinix having to plug in my PDUs for me. That wiring is their responsibility. All I care about is how much it costs, and I really don't care about that either because I only pay it once. That makes the cost about zero relative to what I pay for space and power. So, the reason I should care if their worker is union or not is... ?
      • jjeaff 10y ago
        That's nothing. Try setting up a booth at a union staffed convention center. You can pay for electricity, but there is a separate fee for "plugging in" your device. It must be done by a licensed union electrician. No, I don't mean some special equipment with some wiring involved. I mean if you plug in your phone charger with a union electrician, he will still come out, unplug, replug it in, then charge you $65. Gotta round up to the nearest hour of course.
        • greglindahl 10y ago
          I've also set up booths at several union-staffed convention centers. In all cases I got a power strip that I could plug stuff into myself. Yes, the fees for everything sucked. The fees at non-union convention centers suck a little less, but they still suck. I'm not sure what you point is?
• specialp 10y ago
  I live in NY and have lived here my entire life. I am very pro union but not pro NYC construction unions. If you have ever been on a job site, there are arcane rules that pad their pockets. Want to plug in a computer in a finished room? Sorry you are going to need an electrician for that. If you do it anyway they will bill you for the electrician coming over anyway. Need to get in the building? Well the elevator operator that gets paid $40 hr is off for an hour for lunch. He sits on a cooler and eats and drinks all day and occasionally there is an elevator operator apprentice with him. These are elevators that are not construction elevators, but ones that work just fine automatically once the construction guys are out. The teamster guys sit at the loading dock on lawn chairs also getting paid huge rates for doing absolutely nothing. They will not help you unload anything. They sit there hanging out. Sounds like a racket? Well it is. And for a really long time it was a racket with the Mafia enforcing using union labor. If you didn't go union they would hurt you or somehow sabotage you, and conversely the union would walk off the job if you didn't take care of the Mafia. Now the modern racket is with very low level politicians and regulatory boards. The only way you get in these unions too is by knowing someone. These people make a bad name for unions, and drive costs way up for anything in NYC area.
  • battlebot 10y ago
    They should all be shot, hung from their toes, and left to rot in the sun so that nobody else get any ideas, just like they used to do to buccaneers.
  • icantdrive55 10y ago
    The mobs are not affiliated with New York unions anymore. Yes--for a time it was a big embarrassment. There are some arcane rules. The nepotism in getting into these unions has been greatly reduced. (This guys crane looks like it needs more development time. On any big job site, you get to know your Crance Operator. They are lifting huge loads right over you heads. They take their jobs seriously. If this guys crane is better; it will eventually see job sites. Maybe--if it's safe. Yes--unions are slow to move, but for good reason on many cases. People get killed. I don't know all the ins-outs of this guy's crane. I would rather have a trained Crane Operator operating loads over my head. That just might change, but regulatory agencies/unions are not going to run to one guy's contraption.) Back to union membership. The test is very important. The union test is not usually a hard test, but you need to get every question right. Usually, the other 1/2 of getting into the union is the oral exam. On those boards are union delegates, contractors(many whom would run to non-union labor if feasible.), and in many unions, members of the community. They are trying to make getting into a union fair. There are many unions in NYC. There are many unions in SF. Both are union towns. I have not crossed picket lines because maids/painters were on strike. I have drove to San Francisco and drove right home. Those old unions do pay their members a very fair wage. Such a wage that brings a blue collar worker into the middle class. There's police unions all the way to Window Washer unions. The average owner/contractor/city would love to get rid of unions. They hate paying those wages. They would happily hire minimum wage workers. I have worked a few blue collar jobs that didn't gave unions. It's basically comes down to minimum wage, or a bit above, and at the end of the week; you wonder why you even show up. It all seems crazy until you're in a union. There's a reason most developers are very rich. They like to pay the least amount they can legally get away with. Tech is still relatively new. Wait until the barriers to enter become easier than they are today. Watch what happens to those generous pay packages.
• unit91 10y ago
  > Consider the possibility that the strong streak of instinctive union bashing that you see in typical professional class culture in the U.S. is very much the creation of decades of aggressive PR effort by those who consider unions threatening. This is a perfect example of the genetic fallacy. How or why a person came to hold a view tells us nothing about the truth of the view. Even if it did, possibility shouldn't be taken as (or a as defeater for) plausibility. It's possible that unknown to you, your parents are aliens and you were hatched on another planet. It's plausible that you're a human and so are your parents. Similarly, even if it's possible we're all duped by aggressive PR, until I see a very compelling plausibility argument my current experience of observing unreasonable union interference grounds my belief that unions often engage in crude, counterproductive behavior.
  • ythn 10y ago
    > unreasonable union interference grounds my belief that unions often engage in crude, counterproductive behavior. They definitely do. It's like what attorneys do with their clients. They try to sweep their clients' faults under the run and play to their strengths. "Unions are great! They empower and protect the common workers against greedy selfish corporations seeking to exploit them!" Yet a lot of people on HN are business owners, and they see the other side of the coin - that unions are not always cooperative and sometimes can have a parasitic relationship with the business that borderlines and indeed passes the "unreasonable" threshold.