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Forced membership of a union!? Seriously!? How awful. I’d rather quit than have it forced on me. If I was at the New Yorker I’d almost certainly join, but only

Forced membership of a union!? Seriously!? How awful. I’d rather quit than have it forced on me. If I was at the New Yorker I’d almost certainly join, but only if I could do so willingly. Ugh.

hbosch 8y ago
“Forced membership” is a way to maintain the union’s power.
- glibgil 8y ago
  Membership is the power. If no one is a member, there is no power
  - kevstev 8y ago
    Yeah, but when the union head starts paying themselves 300k and despite good living wages and benefits still maintain a large/expensive organizational structure and offices, etc... you still have to be a part of that union- you have very little sway to try to change anything. Forcing people to join a union is not all that much better than preventing one in the first place IMHO.
    - elicash 8y ago
      Unions are democratic institutions. Officers can be voted on. The only way to effect change in the union is to participate. Much like democracy!
      - moate 8y ago
        Yea, the idea that individual workers somehow benefit in these types of situations if there's no union in place is weird. The Worker Vs. Company conflicts that come up always favor a Company because they have more time, resources, and connections than an typical worker. The union's goal should always be to represent the needs of most workers most of the time, but there obviously will be situations where that puts an individual worker and their union at odds. This doesn't seem like a fatal flaw in the system any more than people will be elected to federal office who don't share your worldview.
        dopamean 8y ago
        Delta flight attendants aren't unionized (my step mother is one) and they are very anti union. They believe pretty strongly that they have a good relationship with management and do no need a union. From what I gather it's pretty unusual at least in the (US) airline industry.
    - gowld 8y ago
      I'd rather pay the union head 300k then the union members get 300k less pay or whatever. By the logic above, working for a corporation where the head starts paying themselves 300k (or 3M!) and maintains a large/expensive organizational structure and offices is not all that much better than preventing incorporation in the first place.
    - dopamean 8y ago
      I just want to point out that when my mother was president of her local teachers' union prior to joining NYSUT her stipend was at most a couple thousand dollars for the year.
- BryantD 8y ago
  Essentially, sure. On the other side of the power equation, disrupting unions is a way to maintain the company's power. It's just a question of who you think should have how much power in that dynamic.
glibgil 8y ago
Free services and better terms from a union that you don't pay for because you know that you will most certainly get all the benefits of the collective bargaining, ugh!?
- mixmastamyk 8y ago
  Always wondered why aren't (some) unions free, staffed with elected volunteers? Perhaps like a floss project.
  - s73v3r_ 8y ago
    Unions usually do more than just bargain and organize, including setting up funds to buffer the members in the event of a work stoppage, and getting insurance benefits for the members.
    - kazen44 8y ago
      for very good reason though. Without these buffers, going on strike is basically impossible.
  - DanBC 8y ago
    Because one of the roles of the union is to litigate to protect the rights of its members. It needs money to do so.
  - chimeracoder 8y ago
    > Always wondered why aren't (some) unions free, staffed with elected volunteers? Perhaps like a floss project. In the US, unlike in most other countries, unions usually receive exclusive rights to representation. Decertifying a union is technically possible under the law, but almost impossible in practice, so there's no competition between unions for membership the way that you see in most other countries. That gives the union very little incentive to keep its fees in check, because there's no risk of members defecting (they're legally required to pay) and essentially no risk of its members choosing to be represented by a different union.
ghaff 8y ago
I believe the law is that you cannot be forced to join a union but, in non "right to work" states, you can be required to pay the union dues depending upon the collective bargaining agreement.
vkou 8y ago
Collective action doesn't work when free-riders can benefit from the work of the collective. Unfortunately, most US labour laws are set up in such a way that most gains made by a union are extended to non-union-members. The only viable response to that is a membership requirement.
- donkey-hotei 8y ago
  > Collective action doesn't work when free-riders can benefit from the work of the collective. Can you elaborate on this comment?
  - vkou 8y ago
    That would be the Exclusive Representation rule. https://www.flra.gov/exclusive_representation https://www.flra.gov/exclusive_representation The tl;dr of it is that if 50% + 1 of a workforce unionizes, the union bargains collectively for everyone. Even for free-loaders who don't pay union dues. This is like being able to opt out of paying taxes, while still receiving all government benefits. If that were legal, then our public services would collapse by next week.
    - chimeracoder 8y ago
      > The tl;dr of it is that if 50% + 1 of a workforce unionizes, the union bargains collectively for everyone. Even for free-loaders who don't pay union dues. There are no freeloaders. The union defines the bargaining unit, and they can choose to define it to include only members. They typically don't choose to do this, because they prefer to make the bargaining unit as large as possible, and they are legally allowed to collect fees from non-members in the bargaining unit. This is a quirk of US labor law; most other countries don't permit unions to do this.
      - vkou 8y ago
        Right-to-work laws prevent them from collecting fees from non-members. That's the whole problem. Exclusive representation is fine. Right to work is fine. The two together destroy unions.
tptacek 8y ago
As an employee, you're already implicitly a member of an unofficial union whether you "join" it or not. Your employer will routinely treat you collectively, mandating extended hours during crunch periods, or changing the equipment they issue your team, or altering your health benefits package. The only question is, does the employee collective you belong to have any collective bargaining ability or not?
- prepend 8y ago
  You’re right,but you are a member of one or more implicit unions, not a single. For example, the dev group could be treated differently than ops than sales than content than mechanical. And you can have different groups even within devs for example. So being able to choose as an employee before joining or through career is important to me. I have never looked at a union’s value proposition for me and chose to join. Either through not joining a firm, or through not joining an optional union. But I’m a programmer-type and likely others will feel differently based on their conditions and principles.
  - stnmtn 8y ago
    If the majority of your co-workers join the union, at what point do you feel that you would be scabbing by not joining the union that is fighting for better standards for you?
    - idiot900 8y ago
      At what point does the union feel bad for mandating that I join it, even if I don't want to?
    - prepend 8y ago
      I would evaluate the union and choose to stay and join, stay and not join, or leave. There are lots of factors so it’s hard to say. I think I wouldn’t feel too bad if I was in a position and co-workers joined a union, but I didn’t. But I would feel kind of scabish if I joined a majority union org and didn’t join the union. Kind of like if you live in a house and your neighbors form an HOA and you choose not to join. I wouldn’t feel bad at all, as I bought the house with the expectation of no HOA.
s73v3r_ 8y ago
Why is it that conservatives, when faced with any other aspect of a job (pay, working hours, safety conditions) offer the defense of, "You know what you signed up for going in." But when it comes to workers organizing together to increase their bargaining power, it's suddenly the worst thing ever, and it should be banned from all jobs?
- bkohlmann 8y ago
  As a conservative, I fully support the right to unionize. It's a bedrock of free association and the free market. I happen to also believe unionization is wrong for many industries, but folks should be able to make those choices on their own. Many conservatives I know believe the same.
  - IanDrake 8y ago
    I believe people have a right to unionize so long as that is balanced out with a company's right to not hire anyone from a union. Free association has two sides.
    - scarmig 8y ago
      Should a union have the right to negotiate a contract to hire only workers from the union?
      - IanDrake 8y ago
        If the company agrees to it, I don’t see why not. It sounds like a bad idea for everyone except the union leaders, but I’ve seen other non-union based agreements like this where companies completely outsourced HR. As a Union leader though, I now have a rather captive audience where I serve as the gatekeeper to any job someone might want at the company and gatekeeper to any employee the company might want. That seems like a recipe for abuse. Low and behold, there are lots of examples of abuse by union leaders which a quick google search will show.
specialist 8y ago
Game theory 101. It's to mitigate the free rider problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Collective_Action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Collective_Action
- superbaconman 8y ago
  Why wouldn't unions only negotiate for union members? Seems silly to call someone a free rider if the union willingly lobbies on everyone's behalf. Maybe there's something else?
  - kevinmchugh 8y ago
    Many benefits are not containable to only the union members - safety features of the workplace being chief among them.
  - specialist 8y ago
    Unions should negotiate on behalf of defectors?
  - chimeracoder 8y ago
    > Why wouldn't unions only negotiate for union members? Seems silly to call someone a free rider if the union willingly lobbies on everyone's behalf. Maybe there's something else? In the US, unions have two options: 1) Define a large bargaining unit which includes both members and non-members, collect fees from everyone in the bargaining unit (whether or not they are a member), and provide representation to everyone (and also have control over everyone in the bargaining unit). 2) Define a bargaining unit to include only members of the union, collect fees and dues from members of the union, and provide representation to members (and have control only over members). In both cases, the union has full, exclusive control and representation of the bargaining unit - it does not compete with other unions for representation of members, and it is free to define the bargaining unit pretty much as it wishes. In the US, unions have typically preferred to do #1, because it allows them to collect money from a larger pool of people, and it gives them a greater degree of control. In most other countries, unions either aren't allowed to collect fees from non-members or have to compete with other unions for representation of members, so they can't rely on exclusive representation laws to give them the right to represent (or control) people who decline to join.
mtgx 8y ago
Forced unions are especially bad when it's for public servants. That means you, the citizen, will have less power to fire them and you'll also have to pay them more out of your pocket through taxes (think how the police keeps settling for millions of dollars at a time for wrongful murder of suspects, just as an example).
adamsea 8y ago
“The NewsGuild said nearly 90% of staffers have signed on to the unionizing efforts.” https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/money/2018/06/06/media/new-yorker-union/index.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/money/2018/06/06/me... Nine out of ten of the people actually working there appear to be fans of unionizing.
imbokodo 8y ago
> forced You are working at a place where you are as forced to take orders from bosses employed by the Newhouse heirs. People work all day to get their wages and refurbish ongoing capital expenses, then at night they work for free to kick up expropriated surplus time profits to SI Newhouse IV. Conde Nast, without consulting you, as they do for most decisions, has theoretically come to the agreement with a union that they represent you as a bargaining unit. This , of all the things you are forced to do seems to be the only one you have a problem with, the one giving you more autonomy and money. It's a bizarrely convoluted logic where you have almost no say in Conde Nast's decision about your own management, revenue disbursement etc., but in solely this decision that they made, you are being "forced".
fallingfrog 8y ago
From the point of view of an employer, the easiest way to crush a union is to pay all employees according to the union contract even if they're not members of the union. That way, there's no incentive to join. So the way the union will combat that loophole is to specify in the contract that the employer agrees to only hire union labor or to charge agency fees to anyone that is paid according to the union rate. "Right to work" laws just make those kinds of agreements illegal.

Forced membership of a union!? Seriously!? How awful. I’d rather quit than have it forced on me. If I was at the New Yorker I’d almost certainly join, but only if I could do so willingly. Ugh.

hbosch 8y ago

“Forced membership” is a way to maintain the union’s power.

glibgil 8y ago
Membership is the power. If no one is a member, there is no power
- kevstev 8y ago
  Yeah, but when the union head starts paying themselves 300k and despite good living wages and benefits still maintain a large/expensive organizational structure and offices, etc... you still have to be a part of that union- you have very little sway to try to change anything. Forcing people to join a union is not all that much better than preventing one in the first place IMHO.
  - elicash 8y ago
    Unions are democratic institutions. Officers can be voted on. The only way to effect change in the union is to participate. Much like democracy!
    - moate 8y ago
      Yea, the idea that individual workers somehow benefit in these types of situations if there's no union in place is weird. The Worker Vs. Company conflicts that come up always favor a Company because they have more time, resources, and connections than an typical worker. The union's goal should always be to represent the needs of most workers most of the time, but there obviously will be situations where that puts an individual worker and their union at odds. This doesn't seem like a fatal flaw in the system any more than people will be elected to federal office who don't share your worldview.
      - dopamean 8y ago
        Delta flight attendants aren't unionized (my step mother is one) and they are very anti union. They believe pretty strongly that they have a good relationship with management and do no need a union. From what I gather it's pretty unusual at least in the (US) airline industry.
  - gowld 8y ago
    I'd rather pay the union head 300k then the union members get 300k less pay or whatever. By the logic above, working for a corporation where the head starts paying themselves 300k (or 3M!) and maintains a large/expensive organizational structure and offices is not all that much better than preventing incorporation in the first place.
  - dopamean 8y ago
    I just want to point out that when my mother was president of her local teachers' union prior to joining NYSUT her stipend was at most a couple thousand dollars for the year.
BryantD 8y ago
Essentially, sure. On the other side of the power equation, disrupting unions is a way to maintain the company's power. It's just a question of who you think should have how much power in that dynamic.

glibgil 8y ago

Free services and better terms from a union that you don't pay for because you know that you will most certainly get all the benefits of the collective bargaining, ugh!?

mixmastamyk 8y ago
Always wondered why aren't (some) unions free, staffed with elected volunteers? Perhaps like a floss project.
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  Unions usually do more than just bargain and organize, including setting up funds to buffer the members in the event of a work stoppage, and getting insurance benefits for the members.
  - kazen44 8y ago
    for very good reason though. Without these buffers, going on strike is basically impossible.
- DanBC 8y ago
  Because one of the roles of the union is to litigate to protect the rights of its members. It needs money to do so.
- chimeracoder 8y ago
  > Always wondered why aren't (some) unions free, staffed with elected volunteers? Perhaps like a floss project. In the US, unlike in most other countries, unions usually receive exclusive rights to representation. Decertifying a union is technically possible under the law, but almost impossible in practice, so there's no competition between unions for membership the way that you see in most other countries. That gives the union very little incentive to keep its fees in check, because there's no risk of members defecting (they're legally required to pay) and essentially no risk of its members choosing to be represented by a different union.

ghaff 8y ago

I believe the law is that you cannot be forced to join a union but, in non "right to work" states, you can be required to pay the union dues depending upon the collective bargaining agreement.

vkou 8y ago

Collective action doesn't work when free-riders can benefit from the work of the collective. Unfortunately, most US labour laws are set up in such a way that most gains made by a union are extended to non-union-members. The only viable response to that is a membership requirement.

donkey-hotei 8y ago
> Collective action doesn't work when free-riders can benefit from the work of the collective. Can you elaborate on this comment?
- vkou 8y ago
  That would be the Exclusive Representation rule. https://www.flra.gov/exclusive_representation https://www.flra.gov/exclusive_representation The tl;dr of it is that if 50% + 1 of a workforce unionizes, the union bargains collectively for everyone. Even for free-loaders who don't pay union dues. This is like being able to opt out of paying taxes, while still receiving all government benefits. If that were legal, then our public services would collapse by next week.
  - chimeracoder 8y ago
    > The tl;dr of it is that if 50% + 1 of a workforce unionizes, the union bargains collectively for everyone. Even for free-loaders who don't pay union dues. There are no freeloaders. The union defines the bargaining unit, and they can choose to define it to include only members. They typically don't choose to do this, because they prefer to make the bargaining unit as large as possible, and they are legally allowed to collect fees from non-members in the bargaining unit. This is a quirk of US labor law; most other countries don't permit unions to do this.
    - vkou 8y ago
      Right-to-work laws prevent them from collecting fees from non-members. That's the whole problem. Exclusive representation is fine. Right to work is fine. The two together destroy unions.

tptacek 8y ago

As an employee, you're already implicitly a member of an unofficial union whether you "join" it or not. Your employer will routinely treat you collectively, mandating extended hours during crunch periods, or changing the equipment they issue your team, or altering your health benefits package. The only question is, does the employee collective you belong to have any collective bargaining ability or not?

prepend 8y ago
You’re right,but you are a member of one or more implicit unions, not a single. For example, the dev group could be treated differently than ops than sales than content than mechanical. And you can have different groups even within devs for example. So being able to choose as an employee before joining or through career is important to me. I have never looked at a union’s value proposition for me and chose to join. Either through not joining a firm, or through not joining an optional union. But I’m a programmer-type and likely others will feel differently based on their conditions and principles.
- stnmtn 8y ago
  If the majority of your co-workers join the union, at what point do you feel that you would be scabbing by not joining the union that is fighting for better standards for you?
  - idiot900 8y ago
    At what point does the union feel bad for mandating that I join it, even if I don't want to?
  - prepend 8y ago
    I would evaluate the union and choose to stay and join, stay and not join, or leave. There are lots of factors so it’s hard to say. I think I wouldn’t feel too bad if I was in a position and co-workers joined a union, but I didn’t. But I would feel kind of scabish if I joined a majority union org and didn’t join the union. Kind of like if you live in a house and your neighbors form an HOA and you choose not to join. I wouldn’t feel bad at all, as I bought the house with the expectation of no HOA.

s73v3r_ 8y ago

Why is it that conservatives, when faced with any other aspect of a job (pay, working hours, safety conditions) offer the defense of, "You know what you signed up for going in." But when it comes to workers organizing together to increase their bargaining power, it's suddenly the worst thing ever, and it should be banned from all jobs?

bkohlmann 8y ago
As a conservative, I fully support the right to unionize. It's a bedrock of free association and the free market. I happen to also believe unionization is wrong for many industries, but folks should be able to make those choices on their own. Many conservatives I know believe the same.
- IanDrake 8y ago
  I believe people have a right to unionize so long as that is balanced out with a company's right to not hire anyone from a union. Free association has two sides.
  - scarmig 8y ago
    Should a union have the right to negotiate a contract to hire only workers from the union?
    - IanDrake 8y ago
      If the company agrees to it, I don’t see why not. It sounds like a bad idea for everyone except the union leaders, but I’ve seen other non-union based agreements like this where companies completely outsourced HR. As a Union leader though, I now have a rather captive audience where I serve as the gatekeeper to any job someone might want at the company and gatekeeper to any employee the company might want. That seems like a recipe for abuse. Low and behold, there are lots of examples of abuse by union leaders which a quick google search will show.

specialist 8y ago

Game theory 101. It's to mitigate the free rider problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Collective_Action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Collective_Action

superbaconman 8y ago
Why wouldn't unions only negotiate for union members? Seems silly to call someone a free rider if the union willingly lobbies on everyone's behalf. Maybe there's something else?
- kevinmchugh 8y ago
  Many benefits are not containable to only the union members - safety features of the workplace being chief among them.
- specialist 8y ago
  Unions should negotiate on behalf of defectors?
- chimeracoder 8y ago
  > Why wouldn't unions only negotiate for union members? Seems silly to call someone a free rider if the union willingly lobbies on everyone's behalf. Maybe there's something else? In the US, unions have two options: 1) Define a large bargaining unit which includes both members and non-members, collect fees from everyone in the bargaining unit (whether or not they are a member), and provide representation to everyone (and also have control over everyone in the bargaining unit). 2) Define a bargaining unit to include only members of the union, collect fees and dues from members of the union, and provide representation to members (and have control only over members). In both cases, the union has full, exclusive control and representation of the bargaining unit - it does not compete with other unions for representation of members, and it is free to define the bargaining unit pretty much as it wishes. In the US, unions have typically preferred to do #1, because it allows them to collect money from a larger pool of people, and it gives them a greater degree of control. In most other countries, unions either aren't allowed to collect fees from non-members or have to compete with other unions for representation of members, so they can't rely on exclusive representation laws to give them the right to represent (or control) people who decline to join.

mtgx 8y ago

Forced unions are especially bad when it's for public servants. That means you, the citizen, will have less power to fire them and you'll also have to pay them more out of your pocket through taxes (think how the police keeps settling for millions of dollars at a time for wrongful murder of suspects, just as an example).

adamsea 8y ago

“The NewsGuild said nearly 90% of staffers have signed on to the unionizing efforts.” https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/money/2018/06/06/media/new-yorker-union/index.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/money/2018/06/06/me... Nine out of ten of the people actually working there appear to be fans of unionizing.

imbokodo 8y ago

> forced You are working at a place where you are as forced to take orders from bosses employed by the Newhouse heirs. People work all day to get their wages and refurbish ongoing capital expenses, then at night they work for free to kick up expropriated surplus time profits to SI Newhouse IV. Conde Nast, without consulting you, as they do for most decisions, has theoretically come to the agreement with a union that they represent you as a bargaining unit. This , of all the things you are forced to do seems to be the only one you have a problem with, the one giving you more autonomy and money. It's a bizarrely convoluted logic where you have almost no say in Conde Nast's decision about your own management, revenue disbursement etc., but in solely this decision that they made, you are being "forced".

fallingfrog 8y ago

From the point of view of an employer, the easiest way to crush a union is to pay all employees according to the union contract even if they're not members of the union. That way, there's no incentive to join. So the way the union will combat that loophole is to specify in the contract that the employer agrees to only hire union labor or to charge agency fees to anyone that is paid according to the union rate. "Right to work" laws just make those kinds of agreements illegal.