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You're right that I think an employer should be able to choose who to hire or not hire. So, if an employer wants to be a union shop, that's fine. But, unioniza

You're right that I think an employer should be able to choose who to hire or not hire. So, if an employer wants to be a union shop, that's fine. But, unionization is not something an employer really has a choice in currently. If people vote to form a union, the employer must deal with the union representation (to my understanding). What I'm saying is that an employer should be free to fire any employee (including for the explicit reason that they are a union member) and a group of employees should be able to strike and bargain as a unit if they like. But the union members shouldn't be able to force a non-member to strike or bargain with them. Edit: and the non-member employee shouldn't get any of the pay rates, benefits, or work rules that the union negotiates for it's members.

geofft 9y ago
> Edit: and the non-member employee shouldn't get any of the pay rates, benefits, or work rules that the union negotiates for it's members. How does this work, though? Take the lunch-break example - it is economically irrational for a company that is giving a 1-hour lunch break to the vast majority of its employees to require a couple of employees to work through lunch, when you have no guarantee that you'll have a complete set of workers. It's easier to just put a "Closed for lunch" sign out front. Or take health insurance, which is purchased in bulk. You can't give the vast majority of employees a better plan and keep the rest on the old plan. The old plan no longer is available to you with those enrollment numbers. You can either put them on a more expensive plan that resembles their old plan, or on the new plan, or on no plan at all. And that's leaving aside the fact that the negotiating parameters change. If I want a 1-hour lunch break and none of my coworkers have it, that negotiation is hard. If I want a 1-hour lunch break and all of my coworkers have it, that's an entirely different conversation. If I want a better health plan than any of the ones my company offers, that's a huge uphill battle. If I want a better health plan than I'm on that all my coworkers are already on, I can probably just have that for the asking. There is just no way that you can require that the non-members are not allowed to benefit from the union negotiations. It doesn't work like that.
- neuland 9y ago
  It depends on the industry. When all the workers need to be working at the same time, the lunch break thing makes sense. For other industries (like programming), it doesn't matter if your coworkers are on break, you can keep working. I'm actually in this position, because I work remotely and only overlap a couple of hours with some team members. For health care, there exists individual plans. So, the employer can choose to offer that to non-members if they think it's worth it. The employer could also have a standard non-union benefit package if the company had enough non-union employees. Or, it could choose not to offer health insurance (or any other benefit it offered to the union). I don't agree that seeing your union colleagues get a benefit means that an individual negotiator be more likely to get a benefit. This knowledge does reveal that the employer is willing to give that benefit to the union. But, the union has the weight of it's members to extract that benefit. The non-member has only their individual contribution. So it depends on the individual's value to the business versus the union members' value. I suspect that there would still be a strong incentive to bargain collectively in jobs where an employee is easily replaced. These workers would see that they can get better compensation by banding together than going it alone. Meanwhile, it would basically not be feasible to unionize in areas where there is a significant difference in the productivity of individual employees. Most programming falls into this category in my opinion. More broadly, I think you've kinda missed my position a bit. I'm thinking about freedom of association as a negative right (as in "government can't force you to {x}"). So, if that right was interpreted the way I would like it to be, it doesn't really matter what the actual outcome is. It shouldn't be legal to force a non-member to associate with a union (unless the employer chooses to contract exclusively with that union). Obviously, you're arguing that my interpretation is not desirable b/c it would cause a free-rider problem (which I don't think is as strong of a possibility as you do).

geofft 9y ago

> Edit: and the non-member employee shouldn't get any of the pay rates, benefits, or work rules that the union negotiates for it's members. How does this work, though? Take the lunch-break example - it is economically irrational for a company that is giving a 1-hour lunch break to the vast majority of its employees to require a couple of employees to work through lunch, when you have no guarantee that you'll have a complete set of workers. It's easier to just put a "Closed for lunch" sign out front. Or take health insurance, which is purchased in bulk. You can't give the vast majority of employees a better plan and keep the rest on the old plan. The old plan no longer is available to you with those enrollment numbers. You can either put them on a more expensive plan that resembles their old plan, or on the new plan, or on no plan at all. And that's leaving aside the fact that the negotiating parameters change. If I want a 1-hour lunch break and none of my coworkers have it, that negotiation is hard. If I want a 1-hour lunch break and all of my coworkers have it, that's an entirely different conversation. If I want a better health plan than any of the ones my company offers, that's a huge uphill battle. If I want a better health plan than I'm on that all my coworkers are already on, I can probably just have that for the asking. There is just no way that you can require that the non-members are not allowed to benefit from the union negotiations. It doesn't work like that.

neuland 9y ago
It depends on the industry. When all the workers need to be working at the same time, the lunch break thing makes sense. For other industries (like programming), it doesn't matter if your coworkers are on break, you can keep working. I'm actually in this position, because I work remotely and only overlap a couple of hours with some team members. For health care, there exists individual plans. So, the employer can choose to offer that to non-members if they think it's worth it. The employer could also have a standard non-union benefit package if the company had enough non-union employees. Or, it could choose not to offer health insurance (or any other benefit it offered to the union). I don't agree that seeing your union colleagues get a benefit means that an individual negotiator be more likely to get a benefit. This knowledge does reveal that the employer is willing to give that benefit to the union. But, the union has the weight of it's members to extract that benefit. The non-member has only their individual contribution. So it depends on the individual's value to the business versus the union members' value. I suspect that there would still be a strong incentive to bargain collectively in jobs where an employee is easily replaced. These workers would see that they can get better compensation by banding together than going it alone. Meanwhile, it would basically not be feasible to unionize in areas where there is a significant difference in the productivity of individual employees. Most programming falls into this category in my opinion. More broadly, I think you've kinda missed my position a bit. I'm thinking about freedom of association as a negative right (as in "government can't force you to {x}"). So, if that right was interpreted the way I would like it to be, it doesn't really matter what the actual outcome is. It shouldn't be legal to force a non-member to associate with a union (unless the employer chooses to contract exclusively with that union). Obviously, you're arguing that my interpretation is not desirable b/c it would cause a free-rider problem (which I don't think is as strong of a possibility as you do).