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No. This is completely wrong. A company is not by default a monopoly - a union is. Imagine if there were 10 different smartphone suppliers but all the supplie
by randyrand 9y ago
No. This is completely wrong. A company is not by default a monopoly - a union is.
Imagine if there were 10 different smartphone suppliers but all the suppliers agreed that they were only going to let you buy from 1 of them - company X. Company X would just charge you whatever the hell they felt like because you would have no other options. It would fricken suck. It would feel the exact same as a monopoly.
Now compare this to a union. Company Y's employees are all unionized and the union forbids company Y from buying labor from anyone but them. Even if it's not forbidden , new hires are typically glad to join the union too, and in some cases the law forbids otherwise. See how similar that is? It's still a monopoly - just a monopoly against a single buyer.
- Caveman_Coder 9y ago> "...a modern day union is." This is also wrong. Your straw man union isn't true across the board.
- randyrand 9y agoI fixed it, as it actually does apply to all unions. Not just modern day ones.
- mikeash 9y agoI don’t believe companies are forced into any exclusivity agreement like you describe. They choose it. It’s not much different from any other long term business deal. A union is by default an organization of employees to bargain together. Anything beyond that is extra.
- randyrand 9y agoEven if hiring from the union is not forced onto them, new hires are often glad to join in on the price-fixing.
- cannonedhamster 9y agoWe get it, you really dislike unions and think that all union members are scum without any ethics. Before you try to walk your comment back, this is a pretty straightforward summation of what you just said. I think you're clearly overlooking the wide amount of abuses being done against employees, especially in the tech sector. How many times have you heard of a "salaried" employee being asked/forced to work 100 hour weeks end on end for months without extra compensation for some pie in the sky promise of stock options that get diluted with every new employee or stock offering? How many CEOs that drive companies into the ground but still get golden parachutes for laying off workers have you heard about. The power imbalance isn't with the ineffectual unions, it's with the corporations and owners that engage in rent seeking behavior.
- randyrand 9y agoI'm anti monopoly. Very much so. I'm okay with unions as long as they don't engage in monopolistic behavior - I haven't found one of those yet though. For one, if unions didn't forbid company X from who they can hire from, and were okay with company X hiring pilots from any of the 10 pilots unions concurrently, then that would often be okay. Right to work laws are a super important step towards this. Even with that step, union-monopolies and inter-union-collusion would still sometimes be a problem just like it is with companies, and that must be stamped out.
- mikeash 9y agoWhy is it price fixing when unions do it, but not when companies do it?