7 ms·

> The real problem is the late 20th century stigma labor organization has acquired. I think the stigma is well-deserved. Indeed they are rife with corruption

> The real problem is the late 20th century stigma labor organization has acquired. I think the stigma is well-deserved. Indeed they are rife with corruption and often create very odd incentives. Unfortunately unions suffer the same fate as other "invisible" benefits: everyone takes them for granted and doesn't recognize their value. People focus on the drawbacks and it's much easier to convince them that we're all better off without unions.

tptacek 9y ago
Organized labor has most of the same problems as organized ownership and capital. Ownership and capital has some unique problems. Labor has some other unique problems. This shouldn't surprise anyone. Unless you're arguing for the elimination of the market system, "this structure in a market economy is prone to corruption" isn't a dispositive argument, or really an argument at all.
- tedunangst 9y ago
  Labor seems to have some unique "challenges" that don't affect other organizations. If I buy a Dodge, nobody from Ford is going to come slash my tires. If I hire a non-union electrician, well, maybe my house burns down. "Shoddy craftsmanship", right? Always hire union to be safe. If anybody is arguing for the elimination of the market system, I'd start by looking at the unions.
  - tptacek 9y ago
    This is approximately as rigorous an analysis as suggesting that if you hire an Italian, his mob buddies might come by later on to shake you down for protection money. How many AMA members have slashed the tires of a noncompliant doctor?
    - tedunangst 9y ago
      I think the point is that the word union has a particular stigma not shared by associations not called unions.
      - tptacek 9y ago
        You hear a lot of things about city bus drivers burning down houses, or telecom engineers slashing tires? There are a lot more unions in the US than people realize. For some reason (I can think of many), high-status workers in the US are captivated by the drama of a few particular unions, and have extrapolated wildly from it.
        tedunangst 9y ago
        Well, the local bus drivers union isn't held in such high regard either, so maybe not the best example. And I seem to recall Verizon experiencing a sudden spike in equipment failure right around the time their telecom union went on strike. (Happy to concede there are unions people like, but if that's your best effort at naming two good ones, I think the problem is worse than you're acknowledging.)
        tptacek 9y ago
        You're the one who said unions lead to tire slashings and house burnings. Obviously, no they don't, but when that's pointed out, you retreat to "unions sometimes cause strikes" as if that was your position all along. If your argument is that people have negative opinions about unions, well, respectfully, no shit. My point is that those opinions are not well-founded.
        dionidium 9y ago
        Minor point: the engineers at big telecoms aren't union members. They're "management."
        ZeroGravitas 9y ago
        How would you rank sabotage of Verizon equipment by their employees against, say, a coal company transferring all their pension and health liabilities into new company and then letting it go bust, while they retain all the profit making parts? "Some will rob you with a six-gun, And some with a fountain pen." -- Woody Guthrie "Pretty Boy Floyd"
    - arkades 9y ago
      Sadly, the AMA is not a union. At best, it's an underpowered AARP analogue.
    - aeorgnoieang 9y ago
      > How many AMA members have slashed the tires of a noncompliant doctor? Why slash their tires when you can have the police arrest them, the local prosecutor press charges, etc.? Similarly, lots of professions use police power to prevent outsiders from competing with them. Even hairstylists!
- bnolsen 9y ago
  No. The union leaders have zero interest in making any company succeed. They have a ton of interest in themselves succeeding. In fact unions work very hard against innovation and in keeping status quo.
  - tptacek 9y ago
    Labor unions with professionalized management do have a short-termism problem with extracting concessions that can harm the long-term prospects of firms. That's a real problem. Similarly, ownership and capital has a tendency to view labor as a black-box machine. If the machine, when operated in Indonesia, produces comparable financial results, what's the point in running the machine in the US? And so pretty much ever job that can be outsourced is outsourced. Management can have the worst of both worlds. Most managers are hired guns. A ten-year stint at the helm of a company is a respectable tenure, but it's a short period of time compared to the life of some firms. Management in large firms routinely harms both employees and the long-term prospects of the firm by optimizing for short-term metric gains that boost their own compensation. There's no part of the system that works flawlessly, or isn't freighted with obvious problems. It's kind of a miracle that things work at all. Nevertheless, they often do. And they work better for everyone when all the stakeholders are organized and engaged.
  - s73ver_ 9y ago
    And companies have zero interest in helping any individual worker succeed, or letting them share in the company's success.
  - scarmig 9y ago
    Question: do you think German companies or American companies are better managed? There're always issues of misaligned or perverse incentives. Although I have no illusions about union leaders having a particular interest in company success, it's not worse than company management having no particular interest in company success. And, since they have less power, they have less of a negative impact on the company and society in general.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- mixmastamyk 9y ago
  I often say yes, just as there are great companies and horrible companies, there are great unions and horrible unions. If we aren't discouraging the first, why the second?
crdoconnor 9y ago
>I think the stigma is well-deserved. Indeed they are rife with corruption Are you asserting that unions are significantly more corrupt than the average corporation, government or charity or just that human institutions in general have a problem with corruption?
Animats 9y ago
Unfortunately unions suffer the same fate as other "invisible" benefits: everyone takes them for granted and doesn't recognize their value. Unions - the folks who brought you the weekend. (That's a button and bumper sticker.) Also the 8-hour day and the 40-hour week, which the US somehow lost.
- chimeracoder 9y ago
  > Unions - the folks who brought you the weekend. (That's a button and bumper sticker. "Unions - the folks who bought you immigration quotas" would be equally accurate, but I guess they don't want to remind people of that.
- unionagitprop 9y ago
  unions certainly like to rest on those century-old laurels, but the acts themselves were performed by long-dead capable individuals. crediting unions in the abstract is progressive cargo-culting
  - mulmen 9y ago
    You seem to imply that there are not capable people operating unions today but you offer no compelling evidence of such a claim. You also seem to imply that because unions were effective in the past they cannot be effective today. That's not a compelling argument.
- viridian 9y ago
  This reads like one of those really lazy appeals to things that happened forever ago to defend the modern organization. Republicans call themselves The party of Lincoln, Bell labs reminding people they invented the semiconductor, etc. Hearkening back to something you did a long time ago seems like a purposeful hand wave away from the present or recent history.
  - rtpg 9y ago
    Ok so something more recent: Unions are constantly fighting to make sure that the pilots of commercial planes are allowed to get enough sleep and not be totally exhausted while flying. And to make sure that flight attendants are only half-zombies...
s73ver_ 9y ago
I don't. I don't see organized labor being any more corrupt or bad than corporate management. So why is it ok for corporate leadership to do these things, but not labor?
lawnchair_larry 9y ago
The only difference between labor and management is that when management does all of the same things, it's somehow considered acceptable. Whenever you think about some corrupt rent-seeking union bureaucrat being a drain on an efficient system, just think about Mayer's compensation package relative to the value she created. Unionized workers just want basic needs like health care and a chance to not retire in poverty. As a taxpayer who gets the bill for the externalized costs of labor extraction by executives, you probably also want this.
mullingitover 9y ago
> I think the stigma is well-deserved. Indeed they are rife with corruption and often create very odd incentives. This is a very broad statement, which could just as easily be applied to management/capital.

tptacek 9y ago

Organized labor has most of the same problems as organized ownership and capital. Ownership and capital has some unique problems. Labor has some other unique problems. This shouldn't surprise anyone. Unless you're arguing for the elimination of the market system, "this structure in a market economy is prone to corruption" isn't a dispositive argument, or really an argument at all.

tedunangst 9y ago
Labor seems to have some unique "challenges" that don't affect other organizations. If I buy a Dodge, nobody from Ford is going to come slash my tires. If I hire a non-union electrician, well, maybe my house burns down. "Shoddy craftsmanship", right? Always hire union to be safe. If anybody is arguing for the elimination of the market system, I'd start by looking at the unions.
- tptacek 9y ago
  This is approximately as rigorous an analysis as suggesting that if you hire an Italian, his mob buddies might come by later on to shake you down for protection money. How many AMA members have slashed the tires of a noncompliant doctor?
  - tedunangst 9y ago
    I think the point is that the word union has a particular stigma not shared by associations not called unions.
    - tptacek 9y ago
      You hear a lot of things about city bus drivers burning down houses, or telecom engineers slashing tires? There are a lot more unions in the US than people realize. For some reason (I can think of many), high-status workers in the US are captivated by the drama of a few particular unions, and have extrapolated wildly from it.
      - tedunangst 9y ago
        Well, the local bus drivers union isn't held in such high regard either, so maybe not the best example. And I seem to recall Verizon experiencing a sudden spike in equipment failure right around the time their telecom union went on strike. (Happy to concede there are unions people like, but if that's your best effort at naming two good ones, I think the problem is worse than you're acknowledging.)
        tptacek 9y ago
        You're the one who said unions lead to tire slashings and house burnings. Obviously, no they don't, but when that's pointed out, you retreat to "unions sometimes cause strikes" as if that was your position all along. If your argument is that people have negative opinions about unions, well, respectfully, no shit. My point is that those opinions are not well-founded.
        dionidium 9y ago
        Minor point: the engineers at big telecoms aren't union members. They're "management."
        ZeroGravitas 9y ago
        How would you rank sabotage of Verizon equipment by their employees against, say, a coal company transferring all their pension and health liabilities into new company and then letting it go bust, while they retain all the profit making parts? "Some will rob you with a six-gun, And some with a fountain pen." -- Woody Guthrie "Pretty Boy Floyd"
  - arkades 9y ago
    Sadly, the AMA is not a union. At best, it's an underpowered AARP analogue.
  - aeorgnoieang 9y ago
    > How many AMA members have slashed the tires of a noncompliant doctor? Why slash their tires when you can have the police arrest them, the local prosecutor press charges, etc.? Similarly, lots of professions use police power to prevent outsiders from competing with them. Even hairstylists!
bnolsen 9y ago
No. The union leaders have zero interest in making any company succeed. They have a ton of interest in themselves succeeding. In fact unions work very hard against innovation and in keeping status quo.
- tptacek 9y ago
  Labor unions with professionalized management do have a short-termism problem with extracting concessions that can harm the long-term prospects of firms. That's a real problem. Similarly, ownership and capital has a tendency to view labor as a black-box machine. If the machine, when operated in Indonesia, produces comparable financial results, what's the point in running the machine in the US? And so pretty much ever job that can be outsourced is outsourced. Management can have the worst of both worlds. Most managers are hired guns. A ten-year stint at the helm of a company is a respectable tenure, but it's a short period of time compared to the life of some firms. Management in large firms routinely harms both employees and the long-term prospects of the firm by optimizing for short-term metric gains that boost their own compensation. There's no part of the system that works flawlessly, or isn't freighted with obvious problems. It's kind of a miracle that things work at all. Nevertheless, they often do. And they work better for everyone when all the stakeholders are organized and engaged.
- s73ver_ 9y ago
  And companies have zero interest in helping any individual worker succeed, or letting them share in the company's success.
- scarmig 9y ago
  Question: do you think German companies or American companies are better managed? There're always issues of misaligned or perverse incentives. Although I have no illusions about union leaders having a particular interest in company success, it's not worse than company management having no particular interest in company success. And, since they have less power, they have less of a negative impact on the company and society in general.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
mixmastamyk 9y ago
I often say yes, just as there are great companies and horrible companies, there are great unions and horrible unions. If we aren't discouraging the first, why the second?

crdoconnor 9y ago

>I think the stigma is well-deserved. Indeed they are rife with corruption Are you asserting that unions are significantly more corrupt than the average corporation, government or charity or just that human institutions in general have a problem with corruption?

Animats 9y ago

Unfortunately unions suffer the same fate as other "invisible" benefits: everyone takes them for granted and doesn't recognize their value. Unions - the folks who brought you the weekend. (That's a button and bumper sticker.) Also the 8-hour day and the 40-hour week, which the US somehow lost.

chimeracoder 9y ago
> Unions - the folks who brought you the weekend. (That's a button and bumper sticker. "Unions - the folks who bought you immigration quotas" would be equally accurate, but I guess they don't want to remind people of that.
unionagitprop 9y ago
unions certainly like to rest on those century-old laurels, but the acts themselves were performed by long-dead capable individuals. crediting unions in the abstract is progressive cargo-culting
- mulmen 9y ago
  You seem to imply that there are not capable people operating unions today but you offer no compelling evidence of such a claim. You also seem to imply that because unions were effective in the past they cannot be effective today. That's not a compelling argument.
viridian 9y ago
This reads like one of those really lazy appeals to things that happened forever ago to defend the modern organization. Republicans call themselves The party of Lincoln, Bell labs reminding people they invented the semiconductor, etc. Hearkening back to something you did a long time ago seems like a purposeful hand wave away from the present or recent history.
- rtpg 9y ago
  Ok so something more recent: Unions are constantly fighting to make sure that the pilots of commercial planes are allowed to get enough sleep and not be totally exhausted while flying. And to make sure that flight attendants are only half-zombies...

s73ver_ 9y ago

I don't. I don't see organized labor being any more corrupt or bad than corporate management. So why is it ok for corporate leadership to do these things, but not labor?

lawnchair_larry 9y ago

The only difference between labor and management is that when management does all of the same things, it's somehow considered acceptable. Whenever you think about some corrupt rent-seeking union bureaucrat being a drain on an efficient system, just think about Mayer's compensation package relative to the value she created. Unionized workers just want basic needs like health care and a chance to not retire in poverty. As a taxpayer who gets the bill for the externalized costs of labor extraction by executives, you probably also want this.

mullingitover 9y ago

> I think the stigma is well-deserved. Indeed they are rife with corruption and often create very odd incentives. This is a very broad statement, which could just as easily be applied to management/capital.