7 ms·

Abuse of the workforce didn't start in 1940 and end in 1979. Some labor innovations you may enjoy: - Weekends (40 hour week) - Minimum wage - No child l

by jbronn 8y ago

Abuse of the workforce didn't start in 1940 and end in 1979. Some labor innovations you may enjoy: - Weekends (40 hour week) - Minimum wage - No child labor - Workers compensation - Not being massacred by your employer¹ Don't be so glib about the necessity of unions -- the Fair Labor Standards Act was written with blood. ¹ See, e.g., the Ludlow Massacre, the Thibodaux Massacre, Battle of Blair Mountain.

keyle 8y ago
Sorry I wasn't trying to undermine the power of unions and what it did for the population in the last decades. I grew up in Europe. But also grew frustrated by the impossible situation it puts startups in, to achieve anything and remain viable.
- jowiar 8y ago
  That unions make startups unviable says something about the startup industry...
Matticus_Rex 8y ago
I'm not anti-union per se, but I am familiar with the economics literature, and the 40-hour work week, minimum wage, and lack of child labor are artifacts of economic development. People don't want their kids to have to work, so when societies become wealthy enough that they don't have to, they stop sending their kids to work, and around that time manage to also ban child labor (which has little effect at this point in the development of societies, and some of the effect it has is negative). Same with the 40-hour work week (and again, some of the effects of enshrining this in law are negative). Similar with the minimum wage, with some variation by country (and yet again, to the extent the minimum wage is above the market clearing wage, you end up with negative effects, as locales that have drastically increased theirs have seen).
- mayniac 8y ago
  >the 40-hour work week, minimum wage, and lack of child labor are artifacts of economic development The economy hasn't stopped developing however. 80 hour work weeks at the factory have been replaced with 40 hour weeks with 20 hours of unpaid overtime. Child labour has been replaced with unpaid internships. Minimum wage often doesn't match increases in inflation and cost of living, not to mention regional changes in cost of living. Also productivity has practically doubled in the UK since 1980, yet labour laws have largely stayed the same. It could be time to implement 32 hour weeks, or ban unpaid overtime, or raise the minimum wage. All of these require strong unions IMO.
  - Matticus_Rex 8y ago
    "Unpaid" internships are good -- they allow people who don't provide much value to learn and build their capital. People who want to work more than 40 hours should be allowed to work more than 40 hours, and should be allowed to make agreements with their employer that don't double their expense per hour at 40 hours. The minimum wage is just a price floor, and doesn't actually determine wages for more than an extremely small margin of workers, and raising it can increase unemployment among the most vulnerable populations. Unions have the economic effect of boosting working-class wages and well-being for people in a particular group: high-skill working class people. They depress wages, increase unemployment, and reduce well-being for the most vulnerable groups, particularly minorities and those with low education. There is no broad positive effect on labor from unions; we know from the data that the benefits accrue to a certain type of worker, and it's nowhere near the lowest classes of worker. These gains are relative, and do not enlarge the pie. (EDIT: Downvoting me doesn't make the economics literature less conclusive on this point, and there's no reason why we should expect it to be otherwise. The labor struggle is an intra-class struggle between the more-employable working-class subset and the less-employable, which is exactly what you'd predict looking at who makes up the groups.)
    - mayniac 8y ago
      FYI, wasn't me who downvoted you (check my karma, I actually can't) But one by one: >"Unpaid" internships are good -- they allow people who don't provide much value to learn and build their capital Unpaid internships are not available to anyone who doesn't have the necessary capital to go without income for a year or so. Which is very few people, and mainly the rich. Or people who can take internships near their parents home provided their parents earn enough to support them and provided they're not in an abusive family situation which is still far too exclusive. >People who want to work more than 40 hours should be allowed to work more than 40 hours, and should be allowed to make agreements with their employer that don't double their expense per hour at 40 hours. Sure, but that's still paid overtime, I was talking about unpaid. And a lot of the time it's not a case of "people who want to work more than 40 hours" it's "people who have to work 40 hours". I didn't get a choice at my last job, I either did it or I got fired, and that was with the EU working time directive (it wasn't very effective) >The minimum wage is just a price floor, and doesn't actually determine wages for more than an extremely small margin of workers, and raising it can increase unemployment among the most vulnerable populations. A fifth of the UK workforce earned less than the living wage in 2017 [1] and the living wage here isn't that much higher than the minimum wage. I wouldn't describe that as a small margin. All those workers would benefit from increasing the minimum wage. Furthermore regarding increasing unemployment, this isn't a valid argument: it's well established in quite a few countries that minimum wage is not enough to actually live on, so if a business cannot afford to pay the minimum wage people need to survive then they are not an effective business. I really can't emphasise that enough. If people are unemployed because of reasonable increases in minimum wage, it is entirely the fault of the business owners for not being profitable, not the fault of minimum wage law. >Unions have the economic effect of boosting working-class wages and well-being for people in a particular group: high-skill working class people. They depress wages, increase unemployment, and reduce well-being for the most vulnerable groups, particularly minorities and those with low education. There is no broad positive effect on labor from unions; we know from the data that the benefits accrue to a certain type of worker, and it's nowhere near the lowest classes of worker. These gains are relative, and do not enlarge the pie. Source please. >The labor struggle is an intra-class struggle between the more-employable working-class subset and the less-employable, which is exactly what you'd predict looking at who makes up the groups IMO plain wrong. The labour struggle is between workers and owners of capital, in fact pitting the working class against each other has been a tactic those in power have used for millennia. [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/uk-population-living-wage-less-fifth-workforce-minimum-quality-life-poverty-cost-a8035616.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/uk-populati...
oh_sigh 8y ago
On an unrelated note, can we talk about why aviation has moved away from the biplane? Biplanes gave us the first heavier than air flight. Therefore we should keep flying biplanes forever, because they gave us these great gains in our lives.
- cocacola1 8y ago
  The comparison doesn't really make sense.
  - oh_sigh 8y ago
    OP seemed to be arguing that because unions provided benefits in the past, we should keep them around now even regardless of whether they can provide current day benefits on order with their earlier benefits.
richardknop 8y ago
The 40 hour week is still not guaranteed. Especially in startup environment overtimes are quite common. In US more so than in Europe, you can easily be pulling 50h+ in a startup with all that overtime not paid for. So it's not like we don't need unions anymore.
- varjag 8y ago
  On the other hand pulling 50h+ on a shoestring budget is exactly how many startups grew into successes we know today. If that's problematic, one shouldn't work at a startup: it's part of risk-reward equation. But some want the potential (low probability but out-sized) upside at no risk and strain.
AmericanChopper 8y ago
Unions are not necessary at all in any country that has decent and enforced labor laws. In developed economies they only serve as a levelling mechanism, which also make it impossible to fire anybody. The only people they serve are unproductive and incompetent employees.
- enraged_camel 8y ago
  Laws aren’t permanent. They can be, and in fact often are, rolled back or abolished. See Glass-Steagall Act and the much more recent Dodd-Frank rollbacks as examples. The fact of the matter is that when you make progress in an area you can’t just sit back and relax. You have to continue to work hard to prevent regression, especially when there are strong economic pressures in that direction. This is why unions are as important today as they were in the mid-19th century.
  - adventured 8y ago
    The perpetual cruft stacking seems to be a far greater problem of passing large laws like eg Dodd Frank. In terms of regulation, the biggest problem the US has, is a century of cruft having built up, and the rarity with which it gets fully removed or even looked at + questioned for whether it should be on the books at all. The perpetual, hilariously absurd expansion of the number of pages in the Code of Federal Regulations is a nice example of that in action (180,000 pages). My favorite example, that does a wonderful job of pointing out the absurdity of this endless stacking, is the Twitter account A Crime a Day: https://twitter.com/crimeaday https://twitter.com/crimeaday Who is going through and removing all of that trash? Nobody, it's perpetually expanding. They almost never actually remove large bills like Dodd Frank from the system, they stack more cruft forever on top. If you want to roll back a section, you add 20 more pages of cruft to do it.
    - PhasmaFelis 8y ago
      May 17: "18 USC §§2340 & 2340A make it a federal crime for a person acting under color of law to commit torture overseas." ...That doesn't seem to fit the general "frivolous law" theme...
ekianjo 8y ago
There is poor evidence to support your points. And what about Switzerland that has very low union membership, have pretty much 40 hours weeks, no child labor, and the highest compensation across Europe despite having no minimum wage? It does not add up if we follow your narrative.
- jackvalentine 8y ago
  It would be interesting to explore. How did Sweden come to a 40 hour week via parallel means?
- jacquesm 8y ago
  Switzerland is an exceptional country that has a political system far removed from the rest of the world. Democracy in Switzerland is so direct that there is a much higher level of engagement of the voters with the issues at stake. You can't take something that works in Switzerland out of that context and then apply it to some other country with the arguement 'it works in Switzerland'.
  - ekianjo 8y ago
    Of course you can. The above narrative clearly implied that unions are the motor of social progress while it is blantantly false. Economic development is what brings social progress. And the richest countries in the world are the ones with the best working conditions, regardless of unions power.
    - jacquesm 8y ago
      > Economic development is what brings social progress. Not necessarily. Economic development can be limited to the owners of the companies whilst exploiting the employees. That is what gave rise to unionization, it was a reaction to abusive practices. That unions later on became self sustaining and that they work against the interest of some of the people that are employed (seniority system for instance) has nothing to do with why they exist in the first place.
selimthegrim 8y ago
Good on you for highlighting the Thibodaux Massacre - I was just reading about it the other day in a New Orleans free paper.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
baud147258 8y ago
The unions in France are currently crapping our transportation system with their unlimited strike 2 days out of 5, all because the unions are clinging to their power. Unions in France has stopped caring about workers a long time ago, they just want to have unionized worker in order to get their (and the gov's) money.
selimthegrim 8y ago
There is still research continuing into the Thibodeaux Massacre - https://tulane.edu/earth-beneath-dumpsite-offers-clues-racial-massacre https://tulane.edu/earth-beneath-dumpsite-offers-clues-racia...

by jbronn 8y ago

keyle 8y ago

Sorry I wasn't trying to undermine the power of unions and what it did for the population in the last decades. I grew up in Europe. But also grew frustrated by the impossible situation it puts startups in, to achieve anything and remain viable.

jowiar 8y ago
That unions make startups unviable says something about the startup industry...

Matticus_Rex 8y ago

I'm not anti-union per se, but I am familiar with the economics literature, and the 40-hour work week, minimum wage, and lack of child labor are artifacts of economic development. People don't want their kids to have to work, so when societies become wealthy enough that they don't have to, they stop sending their kids to work, and around that time manage to also ban child labor (which has little effect at this point in the development of societies, and some of the effect it has is negative). Same with the 40-hour work week (and again, some of the effects of enshrining this in law are negative). Similar with the minimum wage, with some variation by country (and yet again, to the extent the minimum wage is above the market clearing wage, you end up with negative effects, as locales that have drastically increased theirs have seen).

mayniac 8y ago
>the 40-hour work week, minimum wage, and lack of child labor are artifacts of economic development The economy hasn't stopped developing however. 80 hour work weeks at the factory have been replaced with 40 hour weeks with 20 hours of unpaid overtime. Child labour has been replaced with unpaid internships. Minimum wage often doesn't match increases in inflation and cost of living, not to mention regional changes in cost of living. Also productivity has practically doubled in the UK since 1980, yet labour laws have largely stayed the same. It could be time to implement 32 hour weeks, or ban unpaid overtime, or raise the minimum wage. All of these require strong unions IMO.
- Matticus_Rex 8y ago
  "Unpaid" internships are good -- they allow people who don't provide much value to learn and build their capital. People who want to work more than 40 hours should be allowed to work more than 40 hours, and should be allowed to make agreements with their employer that don't double their expense per hour at 40 hours. The minimum wage is just a price floor, and doesn't actually determine wages for more than an extremely small margin of workers, and raising it can increase unemployment among the most vulnerable populations. Unions have the economic effect of boosting working-class wages and well-being for people in a particular group: high-skill working class people. They depress wages, increase unemployment, and reduce well-being for the most vulnerable groups, particularly minorities and those with low education. There is no broad positive effect on labor from unions; we know from the data that the benefits accrue to a certain type of worker, and it's nowhere near the lowest classes of worker. These gains are relative, and do not enlarge the pie. (EDIT: Downvoting me doesn't make the economics literature less conclusive on this point, and there's no reason why we should expect it to be otherwise. The labor struggle is an intra-class struggle between the more-employable working-class subset and the less-employable, which is exactly what you'd predict looking at who makes up the groups.)
  - mayniac 8y ago
    FYI, wasn't me who downvoted you (check my karma, I actually can't) But one by one: >"Unpaid" internships are good -- they allow people who don't provide much value to learn and build their capital Unpaid internships are not available to anyone who doesn't have the necessary capital to go without income for a year or so. Which is very few people, and mainly the rich. Or people who can take internships near their parents home provided their parents earn enough to support them and provided they're not in an abusive family situation which is still far too exclusive. >People who want to work more than 40 hours should be allowed to work more than 40 hours, and should be allowed to make agreements with their employer that don't double their expense per hour at 40 hours. Sure, but that's still paid overtime, I was talking about unpaid. And a lot of the time it's not a case of "people who want to work more than 40 hours" it's "people who have to work 40 hours". I didn't get a choice at my last job, I either did it or I got fired, and that was with the EU working time directive (it wasn't very effective) >The minimum wage is just a price floor, and doesn't actually determine wages for more than an extremely small margin of workers, and raising it can increase unemployment among the most vulnerable populations. A fifth of the UK workforce earned less than the living wage in 2017 [1] and the living wage here isn't that much higher than the minimum wage. I wouldn't describe that as a small margin. All those workers would benefit from increasing the minimum wage. Furthermore regarding increasing unemployment, this isn't a valid argument: it's well established in quite a few countries that minimum wage is not enough to actually live on, so if a business cannot afford to pay the minimum wage people need to survive then they are not an effective business. I really can't emphasise that enough. If people are unemployed because of reasonable increases in minimum wage, it is entirely the fault of the business owners for not being profitable, not the fault of minimum wage law. >Unions have the economic effect of boosting working-class wages and well-being for people in a particular group: high-skill working class people. They depress wages, increase unemployment, and reduce well-being for the most vulnerable groups, particularly minorities and those with low education. There is no broad positive effect on labor from unions; we know from the data that the benefits accrue to a certain type of worker, and it's nowhere near the lowest classes of worker. These gains are relative, and do not enlarge the pie. Source please. >The labor struggle is an intra-class struggle between the more-employable working-class subset and the less-employable, which is exactly what you'd predict looking at who makes up the groups IMO plain wrong. The labour struggle is between workers and owners of capital, in fact pitting the working class against each other has been a tactic those in power have used for millennia. [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/uk-population-living-wage-less-fifth-workforce-minimum-quality-life-poverty-cost-a8035616.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/uk-populati...

oh_sigh 8y ago

On an unrelated note, can we talk about why aviation has moved away from the biplane? Biplanes gave us the first heavier than air flight. Therefore we should keep flying biplanes forever, because they gave us these great gains in our lives.

cocacola1 8y ago
The comparison doesn't really make sense.
- oh_sigh 8y ago
  OP seemed to be arguing that because unions provided benefits in the past, we should keep them around now even regardless of whether they can provide current day benefits on order with their earlier benefits.

richardknop 8y ago

The 40 hour week is still not guaranteed. Especially in startup environment overtimes are quite common. In US more so than in Europe, you can easily be pulling 50h+ in a startup with all that overtime not paid for. So it's not like we don't need unions anymore.

varjag 8y ago
On the other hand pulling 50h+ on a shoestring budget is exactly how many startups grew into successes we know today. If that's problematic, one shouldn't work at a startup: it's part of risk-reward equation. But some want the potential (low probability but out-sized) upside at no risk and strain.

AmericanChopper 8y ago

Unions are not necessary at all in any country that has decent and enforced labor laws. In developed economies they only serve as a levelling mechanism, which also make it impossible to fire anybody. The only people they serve are unproductive and incompetent employees.

enraged_camel 8y ago
Laws aren’t permanent. They can be, and in fact often are, rolled back or abolished. See Glass-Steagall Act and the much more recent Dodd-Frank rollbacks as examples. The fact of the matter is that when you make progress in an area you can’t just sit back and relax. You have to continue to work hard to prevent regression, especially when there are strong economic pressures in that direction. This is why unions are as important today as they were in the mid-19th century.
- adventured 8y ago
  The perpetual cruft stacking seems to be a far greater problem of passing large laws like eg Dodd Frank. In terms of regulation, the biggest problem the US has, is a century of cruft having built up, and the rarity with which it gets fully removed or even looked at + questioned for whether it should be on the books at all. The perpetual, hilariously absurd expansion of the number of pages in the Code of Federal Regulations is a nice example of that in action (180,000 pages). My favorite example, that does a wonderful job of pointing out the absurdity of this endless stacking, is the Twitter account A Crime a Day: https://twitter.com/crimeaday https://twitter.com/crimeaday Who is going through and removing all of that trash? Nobody, it's perpetually expanding. They almost never actually remove large bills like Dodd Frank from the system, they stack more cruft forever on top. If you want to roll back a section, you add 20 more pages of cruft to do it.
  - PhasmaFelis 8y ago
    May 17: "18 USC §§2340 & 2340A make it a federal crime for a person acting under color of law to commit torture overseas." ...That doesn't seem to fit the general "frivolous law" theme...

ekianjo 8y ago

There is poor evidence to support your points. And what about Switzerland that has very low union membership, have pretty much 40 hours weeks, no child labor, and the highest compensation across Europe despite having no minimum wage? It does not add up if we follow your narrative.

jackvalentine 8y ago
It would be interesting to explore. How did Sweden come to a 40 hour week via parallel means?
jacquesm 8y ago
Switzerland is an exceptional country that has a political system far removed from the rest of the world. Democracy in Switzerland is so direct that there is a much higher level of engagement of the voters with the issues at stake. You can't take something that works in Switzerland out of that context and then apply it to some other country with the arguement 'it works in Switzerland'.
- ekianjo 8y ago
  Of course you can. The above narrative clearly implied that unions are the motor of social progress while it is blantantly false. Economic development is what brings social progress. And the richest countries in the world are the ones with the best working conditions, regardless of unions power.
  - jacquesm 8y ago
    > Economic development is what brings social progress. Not necessarily. Economic development can be limited to the owners of the companies whilst exploiting the employees. That is what gave rise to unionization, it was a reaction to abusive practices. That unions later on became self sustaining and that they work against the interest of some of the people that are employed (seniority system for instance) has nothing to do with why they exist in the first place.

selimthegrim 8y ago

Good on you for highlighting the Thibodaux Massacre - I was just reading about it the other day in a New Orleans free paper.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

baud147258 8y ago

The unions in France are currently crapping our transportation system with their unlimited strike 2 days out of 5, all because the unions are clinging to their power. Unions in France has stopped caring about workers a long time ago, they just want to have unionized worker in order to get their (and the gov's) money.

selimthegrim 8y ago

There is still research continuing into the Thibodeaux Massacre - https://tulane.edu/earth-beneath-dumpsite-offers-clues-racial-massacre https://tulane.edu/earth-beneath-dumpsite-offers-clues-racia...