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The attitude towards unionisation on this site is sickening. I live in a country with a very strong union movement and the only reason I'm able to sit here typ

by wasx 9y ago

The attitude towards unionisation on this site is sickening. I live in a country with a very strong union movement and the only reason I'm able to sit here typing this message is because my parents and grandparents unionised rather than live off of slavery wages. That may mean nothing to Americans where it's every man for themselves, but don't think yourselves so lucky that you got to the position you're in without workers uniting with one another and ensuring they get a fair share against the greed of the few. It might not have affected many of you with the silver spoon you have in your mouths but the only damn reason that kids still aren't working in sweat shops and you get to go home at 5pm is because of workers organising and having each other's backs when abuses and overreach occur, and a little bit of solidarity for each other is necessary when you see such flagrant abuses like this.

harryh 9y ago
the only damn reason that... Doesn't labor productivity increases and spending some of that new found wealth on leisure time also have something to do with these things?
- wasx 9y ago
  What new found wealth do you think people would have without workers pushing for their rights? Without collective action and group bargaining, we would still be working 16 hour days. Progress doesn't just happen it requires people pushing and fighting for their rights, and our slice of the pie would not have magically gotten bigger just because the pie got bigger.
  - harryh 9y ago
    What new found wealth do you think people would have without workers pushing for their rights? The wealth created by productivity improvements due to new technology. Programmers make a lot more money now than they did 20 years ago. Not because of unions (which are extremely rare for programmers), but because of productivity improvements. A single programmer can accomplish vastly more now than was possible in the past. The same is generally true for all professions though the rate of improvement is obviously generally much much slower. You're certainly right to claim that unionization can somewhat move the needle when it comes to the distribution of earnings between capital and labor, but overall this effect tends to be pretty small when compared to improvements due to productivity gains as long as we're looking at things on the scale of decades and not just the short term.
    - fjsolwmv 9y ago
      Programmers make more money because their work is profitable AND demand far outstripped supply. Walmart is also highly profitable but labor supply exceeds demand so low wages.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - prewett 9y ago
        Google has a profit margin of 20% while Walmart has a profit margin of 2.3%, according to Yahoo! Finance. Labor supply for Walmart probably does exceed demand, but that is only because Walmart uses unskilled labor. Walmart can't pay much more than it does without raising prices, but it also can't raise prices much and maintain its market segment as lowest cost provider.
    - sedachv 9y ago
      > Programmers make a lot more money now than they did 20 years ago. Not because of unions (which are extremely rare for programmers), but because of productivity improvements. A single programmer can accomplish vastly more now than was possible in the past. That is complete nonsense. If your hypothesized productivity increase were true, it would be reflected in a decreased demand for programming labor (just like the advent of combines and tractors made farm workers more productive and decreased the demand for farm labor). The only reason programmers are paid more now than 20 years ago is because of an increase in demand for their labor. The productivity improvements come from the product of this labor: software. This explains the growth in demand for programmers - telecommunications infrastructure improvements and ubiquitous computers mean that companies now have many more opportunities for automating processes with software than they did 20 years ago, and are trying to take advantage of these opportunities to increase profits.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
  - ttoinou 9y ago
    Should we have a law to have a 0 hour work day ?
- dreamfactored 9y ago
  No - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day
  - harryh 9y ago
    Labor Unions were obviously a big factor and that link does a great job documenting that. But why did unions at that time choose to bargain for a decrease in hours worked instead of pay increases? Because wages had risen sufficiently that workers valued an increase in leisure time more than they valued an increase in income. It required productivity rising to get to this point.
    - eropple 9y ago
      Unions bargained for defined-length days because longer days were killing people through both physical grind and the inevitable failures of (non-negligent) attention that happen when one is worked to the bone.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
    - darpa_escapee 9y ago
      Instead of speculating about the reasons why workers wanted defined work hours and work weeks, why don't you use the many free resources at your disposal to either read primary sources or a summary someone wrote up?
      - harryh 9y ago
        I have. That's how I know that the labor protections brought up by OP are not solely the creation of organized labor but also part of a long term trend of increased wealth and productivity due to technological advancement.
packetized 9y ago
I have a parent that was wholly failed by the CWA after 24 years of service at C&W, South Central Bell, and BellSouth. I’m glad that you have an anecdote to share, but please don’t think they’re the norm.
- wasx 9y ago
  This is the second time CWA has been used as an argument against all unions in this comments section. Perhaps CWA is just a piss poor union?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - ihuman 9y ago
    It seems pretty appropriate to use CWA's past as an argument against CWA, since the article is about CWA.
    - wasx 9y ago
      Well they haven't actually used their past actions, they've just said that they've been "failed". Seems like if you're on an anti-union bend you could give specifics rather than vague complaints?
      - ihuman 9y ago
        > Seems like if you're on an anti-union bend you could give specifics rather than vague complaints? I'm not the person complaining about CWA. That's the user "packetized."
  - closeparen 9y ago
    You don't get to make a "bad apples" argument against unions. It's 100% of the point of unionization that all workers in an industry are bound by its decisions with no recourse. If you find your industry's union to be piss poor, you can suck it up or find a different line of work. That would be much worse than the current situation for software engineers, where if you find your boss's decisions to be piss poor, you can go get a better offer down the street.
mc32 9y ago
The problem with our unions is that they have not modernized, often the union is more interested in the union itself than the worker. Some are known for graft ad corruption, and they also on occasion tell their membership how to vote politically. If they want people to sympathize with them they have to modernize and address modern issues. They can't live off their 1920s laurels.
- wasx 9y ago
  A union, the act of unionisation is inherently political, of course they'll say vote for "x". You have different interests to your boss and your boss has different interests to you, of course you will vote and engage politically differently. Could you explain specifically what you mean by "modernise"? Or how they are not addressing modern issues? I could point to hundreds of examples in Australia of very successful industrial action that addresses "modern" issues, so you'll really need to be more specific.
  - dizzystar 9y ago
    Well, you'll get US-centric answers. The longshoremen union is a great example of a union that stops technology. The auto workers and steel workers unions didn't help the Midwest stay afloat either.
    - kevingadd 9y ago
      No possible effort by a steel workers union is going to stop globalization from hollowing out US manufacturing. That's a problem that has to be tackled at a higher level.
      - mc32 9y ago
        In that particular case, I think you're right. Old technology meant steel coming out of PA was expensive. Steel should have presented a united front (labor and employers) demanding Carter and Reagan address dumping and drive for modernization --even if that meant fewer workers in the future --but at least the industry would remain. After US announced 30% tariffs on imported solar panels, a Chinese company said they'd build a factory in the US [1]. We should demand fair reciprocal trade. None of this WTO, promises we put up with. [1]http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/30/news/economy/jinko-solar-us-china-trump/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/30/news/economy/jinko-solar-us-...
dizzystar 9y ago
Unions were a major force in America as well. For what it's worth, their tactics were truly vile, and it's a bit revisionist to claim we'd have no working rights without them. Office workers never had unions, so why the need today? The fact is that, today we have many government controls in place that protect workers. We don't owe unions a share of everyone's salary for eternity for work they take credit for.
- wasx 9y ago
  I'm an office worker and I am in a union. > today we have many government controls in place that protect workers You're joking right? You brought up America so I assume you're discussing America. How can you possibly, even slightly claim that the government protects workers rights when 90% of your country has at-will employment? Is that seriously what Americans think passes for satisfactory workers protection?
  - dizzystar 9y ago
    You should be able to fire slouches no questions asked. Not sure why that's controversial. Yes, we have minimum wage laws, child labor laws, OSHA, laws in place to ensure you get paid, wrongful termination laws, and so on.
    - rockinghigh 9y ago
      How about minimum vacation days, parental leave and healthcare coverage?
    - ryanobjc 9y ago
      Sure, but who gets to decide who is a slouch? And once you dive in to the details, thats where life gets muddy. I do think it's controversial that a single boss that might hate you for totally irrelevant reasons be able to fire you on a whim. Made up performance standards and the like.
      - djsumdog 9y ago
reitanqild 9y ago
> I live in a country with a very strong union movement and the only reason I'm able to sit here typing this message is because my parents and grandparents unionised rather than live off of slavery wages. Here's another: (AFAIK) where I live there is a strong link between companies with high rate og union membership and company profit. I learned this while I worked in the industry. I was never unionized myself, -I've considered it more than once. It seems however that every union must have terribly misguided ideas about everything from supporting local political parties to international politics. I don't want to support that. It's not so much about the money but rather that when they say that x thousand members of y are behind the boycott of z then I'm not one of them.
sidlls 9y ago
Ever read or read about "Atlas Shrugged"? There's a strong strain of "I'm John Galt" in software development. "Everyone" thinks they're smarter, better negotiators, etc. and that a union would only hold them back.
- matte_black 9y ago
  In most cases, they’re not wrong...
  - sidlls 9y ago
    They're not wrong in the sense that they're not even wrong (similar to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong, except in this context).
- prepend 9y ago
  I think this is in part because software is such a 100x type of profession. There are lots and lots of single person software companies. And there are startups doing with a handful of excellent programmers more than giant corporations. Since the work isn’t rote and the talent is super creative, this means it’s frequently better for the individual to not need a union. I’m sure there are other professions, but I’ve seen more copies of Atlas Shrugged on programmer bookshelves than other professions.
  - ryanobjc 9y ago
    ironically many programmers ARE doing fairly rote jobs. And getting paid more than ever for it!
    - prepend 9y ago
      That’s true, but I think the rote programmers are making much less than the awesome folks. I’ve done a bit of hiring and it’s pretty common to have 50-75k salary bands for positions based on performance. That’s a huge swing. You the different between being a cog at AT&T or something making $75k and a profit center developer could be 150-200. This isn’t even accounting for all the entry positions at $40k and all the google stories of $500k after stock. I’m always surprised that BLS shows the average national salary to be like $80k.
baron816 9y ago
1) Unions in America don’t have the same culture as unions wherever you are. There isn’t the same amount of trust here, and that means each side is just trying to take as much as they can, even if that eventually leads to each other’s destruction. 2) Do you not see the flaw in the logic of “something worked before, so we should keep doing it regardless of changing circumstances.” 3) American tech workers make much more than tech workers everywhere else (except Switzerland I think). Most companies know its better to give us great benefits and perks, give us autonomy and control over our work, not overwork us, etc. some startups are run by people who don’t know what they’re doing. Employees there should leave if they can.
- djsumdog 9y ago
  The amount of money a tech worker makes shouldn't really factor in. A personal example: Non-competes are banned in California. They're banned in Illinois .. if you make $13/hr or less. Why does your income change your rights? I've never signed a non-compete and refuse to. In the past most companies that had them would just take them out. "Oh they're not enforceable anyway, so if it makes you uncomfortable we'll remove it for you." I still sign NDAs, waver of patent rights, waver of copyright, anti-poaching, agree to all IP transfers, etc. etc. I just refuse to sign things that say "For 6 months after your employment with x .. you have to ask us if you can work for y" (I've never even worked for a direct competitor of a previous company). Lately it's been getting more and more difficult to fight for this right. It's getting to the point where I've considered moving back to California just because I know this right is protected by law. Tech workers don't have unions. We don't collectively bargain. But a lot of us also don't fully read contracts and hold to certain labor standards. And as a side note, if we had unions and they drove down wages a bit so everyone gets paid more fairly, wouldn't that help a lot in cities were rising wages drive a wedge into income inequality? People in Seattle and The Valley who run restaurants and Starbucks have to live pretty far away and commute 1 ~ 2 hours on a train/bus/car to be able to afford to live in cities where only a few decades ago, they could live and work easily within less than an hour bus commute. If unions could drive wages more equal (even if they'd go down a bit with everyone getting paid more equal), wouldn't that be beneficial? Wouldn't it be nice if everyone's wage wasn't a secret? If you're a Junior or Senior or SA-I or SA-II, everyone with that tile gets paid the same so everyone knows what everyone makes and you make that same amount no matter if you're black, white, male, female or other?
WalterBright 9y ago
In America, if you open a business and advertise for workers and offer slave wages, nobody is going to apply.
- w0m 9y ago
  not true - we have a historically stagnant minimum wage artificially deflating salaries; they are surprisingly not market or economy based in many fields, simply '2usd more than minimum wage, y our doing great!' .. when minimum wage should be ~50% higher at least. Yay for market distortions.
  - freedomben 9y ago
    Why only ~50% higher? The minimum wage should be at least $100k a year. That would do wonders at fighting income inequality.
    - kevingadd 9y ago
      I wouldn't complain about a $100k/yr minimum if it was actually sustainable (I doubt it) but the 50% is mostly intended as a response to the fact that the current minimum wage is dramatically below the poverty line, in some cases to the point that you need more than 80 hrs of work a week just to pay rent and buy food. It wasn't always this way. The federal minimum wage used to be livable.
      - freedomben 9y ago
        What would you think about have a base income or "mincome" where every citizen essentially gets a base level to provide for necessities, and then anything else you make through employment is bonus? I've been thinking about that a lot lately due to the mass robotization of jobs. Not sure how I feel about it, but it seems like an important conversation to have.
        w0m 9y ago
        guaranteed minimum income. Honestly; that's the future (and dream?) the closer we get to a post-scarcity economy. Are we there yet? I'm not sure; but... maybe in some areas of the US...? Lots of issues with abuse though until post-scarcity is widespread. Lots to think about, we live in an interesting time.
nsxwolf 9y ago
It’s great that unions got us weekends off and ended child labor. Thanks unions! But that was a century ago. What have they done for us lately besides bankrupt state pension systems?
- djsumdog 9y ago
  The states bankrupted their own pension systems by borrowing against them. That money was there, it was promised early on and it was funded by bonds. If the city starts to run out of money, borrowing from a pension is not the fault of the worker. It's the fault of the god damn fucking state. The money was there. If you fell short because the market shrunk and you told your workers it was privately vested in mutual funds, that's fine and just pay out everyone less. But most cities and states backed them by bonds and then borrowed against pensions when they started running out of money thinking they could make it up later. What the actual fuck?! No. You're not going to be able to do that. You're an idiot mayor/governor for even thinking that. Leave money that isn't yours alone.
  - DannyBee 9y ago
    " That money was there, it was promised early on and it was funded by bonds." This is not factually accurate, in the sense that nothing could have stopped this in a bunch of states. The rate of pension payout growth in a bunch of states is far above what they could ever pay back, no matter what the investment and how well funded. It was only a matter of time. (and the union response in most cases was .... not great) It's certainly not the case everywhere, but definitely the case in some places. You are basically arguing that the problem with a ponzi scheme is that they did invest enough up front and leave it alone.
- ajsharp 9y ago
  This is some next-level privileged snark. Your attitude is remarkably selfish and closed-minded. I want to live in your bubble.
  - dang 9y ago
    Please don't respond to a bad comment with a worse one, such as a personal attack. That takes the site in just the wrong direction. That's why the HN guidelines explicitly ask you not to do this, but instead to flag egregious comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
kakarot 9y ago
Many unions in America have developed into malevolent forces that seek unfair competitive advances, often to the detriment of many people working in that industry.
- sjg007 9y ago
  Any examples?
  - kakarot 9y ago
    Most of my knowledge in this domain is contextual and thus useless but here is a good example of the more extreme side of some unions. [0] I want to make it clear that I am not against unionization. What I am against is the use of rhetoric and promises of fair treatment to create a mob-like organization that uses threats and coercion to not only manipulate the local government but the people who exist within that organization's industry. [0] https://www.phillymag.com/articles/2012/10/25/busting-philly-unions-pestronk-brothers/ https://www.phillymag.com/articles/2012/10/25/busting-philly...
- fjsolwmv 9y ago
  As have many managements in America.
all_blue_chucks 9y ago
This is probably because most American's exposure to unions is the teacher's union, and the teacher's union promotes based on tenure, not merit.
- djsumdog 9y ago
  Tenure is actually valuable at the University level .. or at least it was when professors weren't afraid of controversial research. People like Churchill, post 9/11, kept their jobs and promoted ideas that, although not everyone agreed with, at least promoted discussion and made people think. Today, let's take an controversial issue like say: climate change. There are actually quite a few secular scientists that don't agree with a lot of the man-made climate change ideas. Al Gore would have you believe differently. Many of them even get their ideas published, but they're often criticized heavily and often pushed out of Universities, even though they have tenure. There are also documentaries like Waiting for Superman that place every fault of child development on bad teachers and teachers unions. It's a pretty bias film and doesn't even consider other factors like bad neighborhoods, bad parents or poverty and tries to squarely place all the blame on teachers unions.
  - closeparen 9y ago
    Tenure in this case refers to "time in job" - teacher pay is based on how long they've been working. Raises aren't subject to performance, only the passage of time.
  - ryanwaggoner 9y ago
    There are actually quite a few secular scientists that don't agree with a lot of the man-made climate change ideas Quite a few credible experts in relevant fields of study? I recognize that if there’s genuinely an academy-wide bias that pushes these people out or discredits them it might be hard to give examples, but could you try? I’d really like the see the other side of an intelligent climate debate.
    - djsumdog 9y ago
      Dr. Judith Curry is one of them. She's a Georgia Tech professor wrote the book Climate Models for the Layman. Here's also a somewhat more editorialized report about the recent adjustments/recalibrations to the Remote Sensing Lower Troposphere Data: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlnwhcO5NC0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlnwhcO5NC0 I don't like some of the political/Orwellian stuff he goes into in the beginning, but the remote sensing data is interesting to me as I'm currently working on a project to get soil moisture data in Ethiopia to use it to re-calibrate satellite (remote sensing) data. I've also talked to some farming/loan startups that talk about data variability in remote sensing data and accuracy problems. There's a lot of current climate change work that directly depends on RSS data.
shubhamjain 9y ago
> I live in a country with a very strong union movement and the only reason I'm able to sit here typing this message is because my parents and grandparents unionised rather than live off of slavery wages. That may mean nothing to Americans where it's every man for themselves, but don't think yourselves so lucky that you got to the position you're in without workers uniting with one another and ensuring they get a fair share against the greed of the few. There is another side of this coin too. I just finished reading The Box, a book on the advent of containerization, and it's appalling how unions fiercely fought any sort of mechanization. A job that required only 1-2 longshoremen mandatorily needed many more because unions said so. Days, and sometimes weeks, were wasted on strikes when a consensus couldn't be reached. Jobs that weren't needed anymore were still forced to be kept because any labor-saving innovation was undesirable. In the end, it was more cost-effective to compulsorily retire the longshoremen with a guaranteed income than to fight them. I don't deny that the unions serve a purpose but the exploitation of their dominance can surely set back innovation by years. I wouldn't want to part of an organization that mandates that I can't touch PHP code because I am a Frontend Engineer.
- gsnedders 9y ago
  > There is another side of this coin too. I just finished reading The Box, a book on the advent of containerization, and it's appalling how unions fiercely fought any sort of mechanization. A job that required only 1-2 longshoremen mandatorily needed many more because unions said so. Days, and sometimes weeks, were wasted on strikes when a consensus couldn't be reached. Jobs that weren't needed anymore were still forced to be kept because any labor-saving innovation was undesirable. In the end, it was more cost-effective to compulsorily retire the longshoremen with a guaranteed income than to fight them. To be fair, that's a failing with those unions, and in a sense part of the systemic problems with US unions; plenty of unions elsewhere saw automation as inevitable and got training for their members to find jobs in other areas.
  - pm90 9y ago
    > To be fair, that's a failing with those unions, and in a sense part of the systemic problems with US unions; plenty of unions elsewhere saw automation as inevitable and got training for their members to find jobs in other areas. Do you think this is because the Unions are different, or perhaps maybe the people/culture are different?
brandonmenc 9y ago
My mother was in IBEW for ~40 years, and went on strike a couple of times. Grandfather was a union organizer. I was in IBEW very briefly as a teenager working for GTE. My father went from being a union steward to having grievances filed against him as a member of management during his ~40 years at GE. I've seen both sides. imo, unions are best suited for workers who have no leverage: at jobs where the worker is an interchangeable part, or is unspecialized, or where the labor market is flooded, or when they want to minimize changing employers - software development is none of the above. Personally, I think software developers should be paid 2-4x what they are now - I say that as a developer, and as an employer who cut their checks at a company I helped start. Their value-add is just way higher than the current pay rate reflects. How to achieve that? Maybe a professional organization is needed - similar to doctors - but a union and all its trappings? Meh.
- tomlock 9y ago
  I find it so weird that so many software developers think they're being paid fairly in the face of Google having massive reserves of cash just lying around.
  - alphonsegaston 9y ago
    In the face of all of the companies that illegally colluded to suppress developer wages sitting on massive reserves of cash... It’s the same thing as poor whites clinging to racism because they think it elevates their class position. False consciousness abounds.
  - rtpg 9y ago
    not to mention all the anti-poaching stuff that was revealed. Why would they need to have those agreements if people were being paid a fair price?
  - whataretensors 9y ago
    Additionally there is lots of software written 5-10 years ago making tons of money today where the original authors get none of it.
mwfunk 9y ago
I agree with you that historically unions were (and still are) critical in making the world a better place, by being the only force representing the exploited. I don't dispute that at all. But there can be a dark side too. I grew up in the Detroit area, through the '70s and the '80s, which was a time of great decline for the city and for the American auto industry, which neither the city nor the industry ever recovered from. I was a kid, I didn't really understand the details of what was going on, so I would appreciate opposing views of what was going on if anyone's more informed than me. But what I absorbed from the adults around me was a sense that the UAW (United Auto Workers) had a stranglehold on the American auto industry, and it eventually killed the golden goose. It helped raise wages and benefits over the years, but in the same way that monopolies in business can be detrimental to the consumer, monopolies in labor can be detrimental to an industry as a whole. Which is not to say that unions are bad- I think they are a net good. I'm just providing an example of why many Americans have negative associations with labor unions, even on the left sometimes. America may have soured on unions because of a black swan; I don't know how true that narrative is, but that narrative is the basis of how many Americans see unions.
knowThySelfx 9y ago
Agree with some points. The state I live in has a strong union culture. There is a tendency in which unionized places think about only "Rights", but not "Responsibilities". This in turn affects productivity. I guess when the balance tilts to their side, the union leaders try to take advantage of it; shows us human nature. The trick is to achieve correct balance. That can happen if both sides are willing to discuss and understand the aims and problems associated with it.
kodablah 9y ago
> on this site is sickening. [...] may mean nothing to Americans [...] You're on a predominantly American site, commenting on an article about American unionization, admitting that your situation is different than Americans, and yet are sickened by predominantly American opinions towards these things? You can't admit regional differences and then be sickened by others contextual, region-biased opinions. You have flawed logic.
- acct1771 9y ago
  What I read was "It seems to mean nothing to Americans - but it should, because..."
  - kodablah 9y ago
    "because...it is totally the same thing across regions and history." The problem is that the appeal to emotions harms rational debate. If we cannot recognize regions and times in history are different, we cannot have a rational discussion without one side being "sickened". Contextual, region-based differences are a real thing.
    - acct1771 9y ago
      What if they're not defending the current state of Unions, but the potential future state of Unions that indeed did help us greatly back in the day?
  - DannyBee 9y ago
    "What I read was "It seems to mean nothing to Americans - but it should, because..." " Oh, it's worse. It's the typical "you only don't share my opinion because you are ignorant, not because you could reasonably disagree with me"
    - acct1771 9y ago
      What if they're not defending the current state of Unions, but the potential future state of Unions that indeed did help us greatly back in the day?
conanbatt 9y ago
What you dont see is that unionization creates a lot of poverty as well. Those that did not get a job because they werent in on the union and were left out are not on hacker news debating your point of view. > It might not have affected many of you with the silver spoon you have in your mouths but the only damn reason that kids still aren't working in sweat shops and you get to go home at 5pm is because of workers organising and having each other's backs when abuses and overreach occur, and a little bit of solidarity for each other is necessary when you see such flagrant abuses like this. Not only it is debatible that unions eliminated child labor, but even if you take that as the only way to stop it, that happend a century ago. Today's unions do not have the same plight that those did. In any case, there is no problem with unions existing, if they actually organize workers and give them better conditions and productivity, employers will be happy to deal with them and share the spoils. But thats never where unions stop.
Kiro 9y ago
> the only reason I'm able to sit here typing this message You're giving them way too much credit.
- darpa_escapee 9y ago
  People died for the 8 hour work day. What makes you believe that's a concession that would be willingly granted?
  - Kiro 9y ago
    You're placing words in my mouth. Don't do that please.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

by wasx 9y ago

harryh 9y ago

the only damn reason that... Doesn't labor productivity increases and spending some of that new found wealth on leisure time also have something to do with these things?

wasx 9y ago
What new found wealth do you think people would have without workers pushing for their rights? Without collective action and group bargaining, we would still be working 16 hour days. Progress doesn't just happen it requires people pushing and fighting for their rights, and our slice of the pie would not have magically gotten bigger just because the pie got bigger.
- harryh 9y ago
  What new found wealth do you think people would have without workers pushing for their rights? The wealth created by productivity improvements due to new technology. Programmers make a lot more money now than they did 20 years ago. Not because of unions (which are extremely rare for programmers), but because of productivity improvements. A single programmer can accomplish vastly more now than was possible in the past. The same is generally true for all professions though the rate of improvement is obviously generally much much slower. You're certainly right to claim that unionization can somewhat move the needle when it comes to the distribution of earnings between capital and labor, but overall this effect tends to be pretty small when compared to improvements due to productivity gains as long as we're looking at things on the scale of decades and not just the short term.
  - fjsolwmv 9y ago
    Programmers make more money because their work is profitable AND demand far outstripped supply. Walmart is also highly profitable but labor supply exceeds demand so low wages.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - prewett 9y ago
      Google has a profit margin of 20% while Walmart has a profit margin of 2.3%, according to Yahoo! Finance. Labor supply for Walmart probably does exceed demand, but that is only because Walmart uses unskilled labor. Walmart can't pay much more than it does without raising prices, but it also can't raise prices much and maintain its market segment as lowest cost provider.
  - sedachv 9y ago
    > Programmers make a lot more money now than they did 20 years ago. Not because of unions (which are extremely rare for programmers), but because of productivity improvements. A single programmer can accomplish vastly more now than was possible in the past. That is complete nonsense. If your hypothesized productivity increase were true, it would be reflected in a decreased demand for programming labor (just like the advent of combines and tractors made farm workers more productive and decreased the demand for farm labor). The only reason programmers are paid more now than 20 years ago is because of an increase in demand for their labor. The productivity improvements come from the product of this labor: software. This explains the growth in demand for programmers - telecommunications infrastructure improvements and ubiquitous computers mean that companies now have many more opportunities for automating processes with software than they did 20 years ago, and are trying to take advantage of these opportunities to increase profits.
    - deleted 9y ago
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- ttoinou 9y ago
  Should we have a law to have a 0 hour work day ?
dreamfactored 9y ago
No - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day
- harryh 9y ago
  Labor Unions were obviously a big factor and that link does a great job documenting that. But why did unions at that time choose to bargain for a decrease in hours worked instead of pay increases? Because wages had risen sufficiently that workers valued an increase in leisure time more than they valued an increase in income. It required productivity rising to get to this point.
  - eropple 9y ago
    Unions bargained for defined-length days because longer days were killing people through both physical grind and the inevitable failures of (non-negligent) attention that happen when one is worked to the bone.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - darpa_escapee 9y ago
    Instead of speculating about the reasons why workers wanted defined work hours and work weeks, why don't you use the many free resources at your disposal to either read primary sources or a summary someone wrote up?
    - harryh 9y ago
      I have. That's how I know that the labor protections brought up by OP are not solely the creation of organized labor but also part of a long term trend of increased wealth and productivity due to technological advancement.

packetized 9y ago

I have a parent that was wholly failed by the CWA after 24 years of service at C&W, South Central Bell, and BellSouth. I’m glad that you have an anecdote to share, but please don’t think they’re the norm.

wasx 9y ago
This is the second time CWA has been used as an argument against all unions in this comments section. Perhaps CWA is just a piss poor union?
- deleted 9y ago
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- ihuman 9y ago
  It seems pretty appropriate to use CWA's past as an argument against CWA, since the article is about CWA.
  - wasx 9y ago
    Well they haven't actually used their past actions, they've just said that they've been "failed". Seems like if you're on an anti-union bend you could give specifics rather than vague complaints?
    - ihuman 9y ago
      > Seems like if you're on an anti-union bend you could give specifics rather than vague complaints? I'm not the person complaining about CWA. That's the user "packetized."
- closeparen 9y ago
  You don't get to make a "bad apples" argument against unions. It's 100% of the point of unionization that all workers in an industry are bound by its decisions with no recourse. If you find your industry's union to be piss poor, you can suck it up or find a different line of work. That would be much worse than the current situation for software engineers, where if you find your boss's decisions to be piss poor, you can go get a better offer down the street.

mc32 9y ago

The problem with our unions is that they have not modernized, often the union is more interested in the union itself than the worker. Some are known for graft ad corruption, and they also on occasion tell their membership how to vote politically. If they want people to sympathize with them they have to modernize and address modern issues. They can't live off their 1920s laurels.

wasx 9y ago
A union, the act of unionisation is inherently political, of course they'll say vote for "x". You have different interests to your boss and your boss has different interests to you, of course you will vote and engage politically differently. Could you explain specifically what you mean by "modernise"? Or how they are not addressing modern issues? I could point to hundreds of examples in Australia of very successful industrial action that addresses "modern" issues, so you'll really need to be more specific.
- dizzystar 9y ago
  Well, you'll get US-centric answers. The longshoremen union is a great example of a union that stops technology. The auto workers and steel workers unions didn't help the Midwest stay afloat either.
  - kevingadd 9y ago
    No possible effort by a steel workers union is going to stop globalization from hollowing out US manufacturing. That's a problem that has to be tackled at a higher level.
    - mc32 9y ago
      In that particular case, I think you're right. Old technology meant steel coming out of PA was expensive. Steel should have presented a united front (labor and employers) demanding Carter and Reagan address dumping and drive for modernization --even if that meant fewer workers in the future --but at least the industry would remain. After US announced 30% tariffs on imported solar panels, a Chinese company said they'd build a factory in the US [1]. We should demand fair reciprocal trade. None of this WTO, promises we put up with. [1]http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/30/news/economy/jinko-solar-us-china-trump/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/30/news/economy/jinko-solar-us-...

dizzystar 9y ago

Unions were a major force in America as well. For what it's worth, their tactics were truly vile, and it's a bit revisionist to claim we'd have no working rights without them. Office workers never had unions, so why the need today? The fact is that, today we have many government controls in place that protect workers. We don't owe unions a share of everyone's salary for eternity for work they take credit for.

wasx 9y ago
I'm an office worker and I am in a union. > today we have many government controls in place that protect workers You're joking right? You brought up America so I assume you're discussing America. How can you possibly, even slightly claim that the government protects workers rights when 90% of your country has at-will employment? Is that seriously what Americans think passes for satisfactory workers protection?
- dizzystar 9y ago
  You should be able to fire slouches no questions asked. Not sure why that's controversial. Yes, we have minimum wage laws, child labor laws, OSHA, laws in place to ensure you get paid, wrongful termination laws, and so on.
  - rockinghigh 9y ago
    How about minimum vacation days, parental leave and healthcare coverage?
  - ryanobjc 9y ago
    Sure, but who gets to decide who is a slouch? And once you dive in to the details, thats where life gets muddy. I do think it's controversial that a single boss that might hate you for totally irrelevant reasons be able to fire you on a whim. Made up performance standards and the like.
    - djsumdog 9y ago

reitanqild 9y ago

> I live in a country with a very strong union movement and the only reason I'm able to sit here typing this message is because my parents and grandparents unionised rather than live off of slavery wages. Here's another: (AFAIK) where I live there is a strong link between companies with high rate og union membership and company profit. I learned this while I worked in the industry. I was never unionized myself, -I've considered it more than once. It seems however that every union must have terribly misguided ideas about everything from supporting local political parties to international politics. I don't want to support that. It's not so much about the money but rather that when they say that x thousand members of y are behind the boycott of z then I'm not one of them.

sidlls 9y ago

Ever read or read about "Atlas Shrugged"? There's a strong strain of "I'm John Galt" in software development. "Everyone" thinks they're smarter, better negotiators, etc. and that a union would only hold them back.

matte_black 9y ago
In most cases, they’re not wrong...
- sidlls 9y ago
  They're not wrong in the sense that they're not even wrong (similar to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong, except in this context).
prepend 9y ago
I think this is in part because software is such a 100x type of profession. There are lots and lots of single person software companies. And there are startups doing with a handful of excellent programmers more than giant corporations. Since the work isn’t rote and the talent is super creative, this means it’s frequently better for the individual to not need a union. I’m sure there are other professions, but I’ve seen more copies of Atlas Shrugged on programmer bookshelves than other professions.
- ryanobjc 9y ago
  ironically many programmers ARE doing fairly rote jobs. And getting paid more than ever for it!
  - prepend 9y ago
    That’s true, but I think the rote programmers are making much less than the awesome folks. I’ve done a bit of hiring and it’s pretty common to have 50-75k salary bands for positions based on performance. That’s a huge swing. You the different between being a cog at AT&T or something making $75k and a profit center developer could be 150-200. This isn’t even accounting for all the entry positions at $40k and all the google stories of $500k after stock. I’m always surprised that BLS shows the average national salary to be like $80k.

baron816 9y ago

1) Unions in America don’t have the same culture as unions wherever you are. There isn’t the same amount of trust here, and that means each side is just trying to take as much as they can, even if that eventually leads to each other’s destruction. 2) Do you not see the flaw in the logic of “something worked before, so we should keep doing it regardless of changing circumstances.” 3) American tech workers make much more than tech workers everywhere else (except Switzerland I think). Most companies know its better to give us great benefits and perks, give us autonomy and control over our work, not overwork us, etc. some startups are run by people who don’t know what they’re doing. Employees there should leave if they can.

djsumdog 9y ago
The amount of money a tech worker makes shouldn't really factor in. A personal example: Non-competes are banned in California. They're banned in Illinois .. if you make $13/hr or less. Why does your income change your rights? I've never signed a non-compete and refuse to. In the past most companies that had them would just take them out. "Oh they're not enforceable anyway, so if it makes you uncomfortable we'll remove it for you." I still sign NDAs, waver of patent rights, waver of copyright, anti-poaching, agree to all IP transfers, etc. etc. I just refuse to sign things that say "For 6 months after your employment with x .. you have to ask us if you can work for y" (I've never even worked for a direct competitor of a previous company). Lately it's been getting more and more difficult to fight for this right. It's getting to the point where I've considered moving back to California just because I know this right is protected by law. Tech workers don't have unions. We don't collectively bargain. But a lot of us also don't fully read contracts and hold to certain labor standards. And as a side note, if we had unions and they drove down wages a bit so everyone gets paid more fairly, wouldn't that help a lot in cities were rising wages drive a wedge into income inequality? People in Seattle and The Valley who run restaurants and Starbucks have to live pretty far away and commute 1 ~ 2 hours on a train/bus/car to be able to afford to live in cities where only a few decades ago, they could live and work easily within less than an hour bus commute. If unions could drive wages more equal (even if they'd go down a bit with everyone getting paid more equal), wouldn't that be beneficial? Wouldn't it be nice if everyone's wage wasn't a secret? If you're a Junior or Senior or SA-I or SA-II, everyone with that tile gets paid the same so everyone knows what everyone makes and you make that same amount no matter if you're black, white, male, female or other?

WalterBright 9y ago

In America, if you open a business and advertise for workers and offer slave wages, nobody is going to apply.

w0m 9y ago
not true - we have a historically stagnant minimum wage artificially deflating salaries; they are surprisingly not market or economy based in many fields, simply '2usd more than minimum wage, y our doing great!' .. when minimum wage should be ~50% higher at least. Yay for market distortions.
- freedomben 9y ago
  Why only ~50% higher? The minimum wage should be at least $100k a year. That would do wonders at fighting income inequality.
  - kevingadd 9y ago
    I wouldn't complain about a $100k/yr minimum if it was actually sustainable (I doubt it) but the 50% is mostly intended as a response to the fact that the current minimum wage is dramatically below the poverty line, in some cases to the point that you need more than 80 hrs of work a week just to pay rent and buy food. It wasn't always this way. The federal minimum wage used to be livable.
    - freedomben 9y ago
      What would you think about have a base income or "mincome" where every citizen essentially gets a base level to provide for necessities, and then anything else you make through employment is bonus? I've been thinking about that a lot lately due to the mass robotization of jobs. Not sure how I feel about it, but it seems like an important conversation to have.
      - w0m 9y ago
        guaranteed minimum income. Honestly; that's the future (and dream?) the closer we get to a post-scarcity economy. Are we there yet? I'm not sure; but... maybe in some areas of the US...? Lots of issues with abuse though until post-scarcity is widespread. Lots to think about, we live in an interesting time.

nsxwolf 9y ago

It’s great that unions got us weekends off and ended child labor. Thanks unions! But that was a century ago. What have they done for us lately besides bankrupt state pension systems?

djsumdog 9y ago
The states bankrupted their own pension systems by borrowing against them. That money was there, it was promised early on and it was funded by bonds. If the city starts to run out of money, borrowing from a pension is not the fault of the worker. It's the fault of the god damn fucking state. The money was there. If you fell short because the market shrunk and you told your workers it was privately vested in mutual funds, that's fine and just pay out everyone less. But most cities and states backed them by bonds and then borrowed against pensions when they started running out of money thinking they could make it up later. What the actual fuck?! No. You're not going to be able to do that. You're an idiot mayor/governor for even thinking that. Leave money that isn't yours alone.
- DannyBee 9y ago
  " That money was there, it was promised early on and it was funded by bonds." This is not factually accurate, in the sense that nothing could have stopped this in a bunch of states. The rate of pension payout growth in a bunch of states is far above what they could ever pay back, no matter what the investment and how well funded. It was only a matter of time. (and the union response in most cases was .... not great) It's certainly not the case everywhere, but definitely the case in some places. You are basically arguing that the problem with a ponzi scheme is that they did invest enough up front and leave it alone.
ajsharp 9y ago
This is some next-level privileged snark. Your attitude is remarkably selfish and closed-minded. I want to live in your bubble.
- dang 9y ago
  Please don't respond to a bad comment with a worse one, such as a personal attack. That takes the site in just the wrong direction. That's why the HN guidelines explicitly ask you not to do this, but instead to flag egregious comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

kakarot 9y ago

Many unions in America have developed into malevolent forces that seek unfair competitive advances, often to the detriment of many people working in that industry.

sjg007 9y ago
Any examples?
- kakarot 9y ago
  Most of my knowledge in this domain is contextual and thus useless but here is a good example of the more extreme side of some unions. [0] I want to make it clear that I am not against unionization. What I am against is the use of rhetoric and promises of fair treatment to create a mob-like organization that uses threats and coercion to not only manipulate the local government but the people who exist within that organization's industry. [0] https://www.phillymag.com/articles/2012/10/25/busting-philly-unions-pestronk-brothers/ https://www.phillymag.com/articles/2012/10/25/busting-philly...
fjsolwmv 9y ago
As have many managements in America.

all_blue_chucks 9y ago

This is probably because most American's exposure to unions is the teacher's union, and the teacher's union promotes based on tenure, not merit.

djsumdog 9y ago
Tenure is actually valuable at the University level .. or at least it was when professors weren't afraid of controversial research. People like Churchill, post 9/11, kept their jobs and promoted ideas that, although not everyone agreed with, at least promoted discussion and made people think. Today, let's take an controversial issue like say: climate change. There are actually quite a few secular scientists that don't agree with a lot of the man-made climate change ideas. Al Gore would have you believe differently. Many of them even get their ideas published, but they're often criticized heavily and often pushed out of Universities, even though they have tenure. There are also documentaries like Waiting for Superman that place every fault of child development on bad teachers and teachers unions. It's a pretty bias film and doesn't even consider other factors like bad neighborhoods, bad parents or poverty and tries to squarely place all the blame on teachers unions.
- closeparen 9y ago
  Tenure in this case refers to "time in job" - teacher pay is based on how long they've been working. Raises aren't subject to performance, only the passage of time.
- ryanwaggoner 9y ago
  There are actually quite a few secular scientists that don't agree with a lot of the man-made climate change ideas Quite a few credible experts in relevant fields of study? I recognize that if there’s genuinely an academy-wide bias that pushes these people out or discredits them it might be hard to give examples, but could you try? I’d really like the see the other side of an intelligent climate debate.
  - djsumdog 9y ago
    Dr. Judith Curry is one of them. She's a Georgia Tech professor wrote the book Climate Models for the Layman. Here's also a somewhat more editorialized report about the recent adjustments/recalibrations to the Remote Sensing Lower Troposphere Data: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlnwhcO5NC0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlnwhcO5NC0 I don't like some of the political/Orwellian stuff he goes into in the beginning, but the remote sensing data is interesting to me as I'm currently working on a project to get soil moisture data in Ethiopia to use it to re-calibrate satellite (remote sensing) data. I've also talked to some farming/loan startups that talk about data variability in remote sensing data and accuracy problems. There's a lot of current climate change work that directly depends on RSS data.

shubhamjain 9y ago

> I live in a country with a very strong union movement and the only reason I'm able to sit here typing this message is because my parents and grandparents unionised rather than live off of slavery wages. That may mean nothing to Americans where it's every man for themselves, but don't think yourselves so lucky that you got to the position you're in without workers uniting with one another and ensuring they get a fair share against the greed of the few. There is another side of this coin too. I just finished reading The Box, a book on the advent of containerization, and it's appalling how unions fiercely fought any sort of mechanization. A job that required only 1-2 longshoremen mandatorily needed many more because unions said so. Days, and sometimes weeks, were wasted on strikes when a consensus couldn't be reached. Jobs that weren't needed anymore were still forced to be kept because any labor-saving innovation was undesirable. In the end, it was more cost-effective to compulsorily retire the longshoremen with a guaranteed income than to fight them. I don't deny that the unions serve a purpose but the exploitation of their dominance can surely set back innovation by years. I wouldn't want to part of an organization that mandates that I can't touch PHP code because I am a Frontend Engineer.

gsnedders 9y ago
> There is another side of this coin too. I just finished reading The Box, a book on the advent of containerization, and it's appalling how unions fiercely fought any sort of mechanization. A job that required only 1-2 longshoremen mandatorily needed many more because unions said so. Days, and sometimes weeks, were wasted on strikes when a consensus couldn't be reached. Jobs that weren't needed anymore were still forced to be kept because any labor-saving innovation was undesirable. In the end, it was more cost-effective to compulsorily retire the longshoremen with a guaranteed income than to fight them. To be fair, that's a failing with those unions, and in a sense part of the systemic problems with US unions; plenty of unions elsewhere saw automation as inevitable and got training for their members to find jobs in other areas.
- pm90 9y ago
  > To be fair, that's a failing with those unions, and in a sense part of the systemic problems with US unions; plenty of unions elsewhere saw automation as inevitable and got training for their members to find jobs in other areas. Do you think this is because the Unions are different, or perhaps maybe the people/culture are different?

brandonmenc 9y ago

My mother was in IBEW for ~40 years, and went on strike a couple of times. Grandfather was a union organizer. I was in IBEW very briefly as a teenager working for GTE. My father went from being a union steward to having grievances filed against him as a member of management during his ~40 years at GE. I've seen both sides. imo, unions are best suited for workers who have no leverage: at jobs where the worker is an interchangeable part, or is unspecialized, or where the labor market is flooded, or when they want to minimize changing employers - software development is none of the above. Personally, I think software developers should be paid 2-4x what they are now - I say that as a developer, and as an employer who cut their checks at a company I helped start. Their value-add is just way higher than the current pay rate reflects. How to achieve that? Maybe a professional organization is needed - similar to doctors - but a union and all its trappings? Meh.

tomlock 9y ago
I find it so weird that so many software developers think they're being paid fairly in the face of Google having massive reserves of cash just lying around.
- alphonsegaston 9y ago
  In the face of all of the companies that illegally colluded to suppress developer wages sitting on massive reserves of cash... It’s the same thing as poor whites clinging to racism because they think it elevates their class position. False consciousness abounds.
- rtpg 9y ago
  not to mention all the anti-poaching stuff that was revealed. Why would they need to have those agreements if people were being paid a fair price?
- whataretensors 9y ago
  Additionally there is lots of software written 5-10 years ago making tons of money today where the original authors get none of it.

mwfunk 9y ago

I agree with you that historically unions were (and still are) critical in making the world a better place, by being the only force representing the exploited. I don't dispute that at all. But there can be a dark side too. I grew up in the Detroit area, through the '70s and the '80s, which was a time of great decline for the city and for the American auto industry, which neither the city nor the industry ever recovered from. I was a kid, I didn't really understand the details of what was going on, so I would appreciate opposing views of what was going on if anyone's more informed than me. But what I absorbed from the adults around me was a sense that the UAW (United Auto Workers) had a stranglehold on the American auto industry, and it eventually killed the golden goose. It helped raise wages and benefits over the years, but in the same way that monopolies in business can be detrimental to the consumer, monopolies in labor can be detrimental to an industry as a whole. Which is not to say that unions are bad- I think they are a net good. I'm just providing an example of why many Americans have negative associations with labor unions, even on the left sometimes. America may have soured on unions because of a black swan; I don't know how true that narrative is, but that narrative is the basis of how many Americans see unions.

knowThySelfx 9y ago

Agree with some points. The state I live in has a strong union culture. There is a tendency in which unionized places think about only "Rights", but not "Responsibilities". This in turn affects productivity. I guess when the balance tilts to their side, the union leaders try to take advantage of it; shows us human nature. The trick is to achieve correct balance. That can happen if both sides are willing to discuss and understand the aims and problems associated with it.

kodablah 9y ago

> on this site is sickening. [...] may mean nothing to Americans [...] You're on a predominantly American site, commenting on an article about American unionization, admitting that your situation is different than Americans, and yet are sickened by predominantly American opinions towards these things? You can't admit regional differences and then be sickened by others contextual, region-biased opinions. You have flawed logic.

acct1771 9y ago
What I read was "It seems to mean nothing to Americans - but it should, because..."
- kodablah 9y ago
  "because...it is totally the same thing across regions and history." The problem is that the appeal to emotions harms rational debate. If we cannot recognize regions and times in history are different, we cannot have a rational discussion without one side being "sickened". Contextual, region-based differences are a real thing.
  - acct1771 9y ago
    What if they're not defending the current state of Unions, but the potential future state of Unions that indeed did help us greatly back in the day?
- DannyBee 9y ago
  "What I read was "It seems to mean nothing to Americans - but it should, because..." " Oh, it's worse. It's the typical "you only don't share my opinion because you are ignorant, not because you could reasonably disagree with me"
  - acct1771 9y ago
    What if they're not defending the current state of Unions, but the potential future state of Unions that indeed did help us greatly back in the day?

conanbatt 9y ago

What you dont see is that unionization creates a lot of poverty as well. Those that did not get a job because they werent in on the union and were left out are not on hacker news debating your point of view. > It might not have affected many of you with the silver spoon you have in your mouths but the only damn reason that kids still aren't working in sweat shops and you get to go home at 5pm is because of workers organising and having each other's backs when abuses and overreach occur, and a little bit of solidarity for each other is necessary when you see such flagrant abuses like this. Not only it is debatible that unions eliminated child labor, but even if you take that as the only way to stop it, that happend a century ago. Today's unions do not have the same plight that those did. In any case, there is no problem with unions existing, if they actually organize workers and give them better conditions and productivity, employers will be happy to deal with them and share the spoils. But thats never where unions stop.

Kiro 9y ago

> the only reason I'm able to sit here typing this message You're giving them way too much credit.

darpa_escapee 9y ago
People died for the 8 hour work day. What makes you believe that's a concession that would be willingly granted?
- Kiro 9y ago
  You're placing words in my mouth. Don't do that please.

deleted 9y ago

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