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This is why Unions are so important. I understand how it might not make much sense for high wage jobs like engineering to Unionize but I really can't see the ne

This is why Unions are so important. I understand how it might not make much sense for high wage jobs like engineering to Unionize but I really can't see the negative side to Unions for low wage jobs for everyone besides the employer (I do not buy the increase consumer price or laissez-faire arguments). One of the best benefits from a Union is a sponsored lawyer to represent you when you don't have the money to fight the big guys.

seibelj 8y ago
If a union only kept to things like safety and minimum salaries I could understand the argument better, although I still don’t support them. The problem is when they start putting in seniority rules (as if all employees are replaceable cogs), banning people from helping out with different jobs (“only the pipe fitter can replace this particular screw”), and making it extremely difficult to fire people.
- bobthepanda 8y ago
  Unions are a very broad umbrella term, like corporations, to describe a type of organized labor. Corporations, unions, and their practices all exit on a spectrum of good and bad.
  - seibelj 8y ago
    A union exists to tell the business owner how to run their business by force. The threat is a strike, or worse (damaging equipment and reputation). The reasons to allow a non-owner, non-governmental power like a union to force the business to change can make sense and pull at your heart strings. I would prefer, if we are to encourage unions, that it stays about safety and let the free market sort the rest out. People can always find new jobs.
    - WalterSear 8y ago
      > People can always find new jobs. If that was the case, we would not need unions.
      - seibelj 8y ago
        Well, I don’t believe we need unions. People can find new jobs, they just would prefer not to, but an employee’s preference and the business’ preference do not always match.
        michaelmrose 8y ago
        The fact that people COULD find new jobs isn't a counterargument for unions. If collectively nobody works within each given business to improve workers conditions at that business where will all the disaffected workers turn for a better option. Within an industry major players have no reason not to fix conditions at just crappy enough that people don't leave faster than we can hire new cogs. Anyone who things the free market just magically fixes things ought to look at the labor market in the 20s.
        seibelj 8y ago
        This is not the 1920’s, and labor rules (and many different regulations) designed for the 1920’s no longer match reality. Unemployment is near historic lows. Any employee dissatisfied can find a new job. Competition between employers drives better benefits, wages, and working conditions.
        WalterSear 8y ago
        > Any employee dissatisfied can find a new job. That's a presidentially arrogant statement to make, particularly in the middle of a discussion regarding the gig economy. > The public typically perceives a low unemployment rate as reassuring because it suggests that everyone who wants a job has one. But the broader set of jobs data suggests that’s not the case. ”As usual, the consequences of truly no growth in the labor market leaves particularly politicians to emphasize nothing other than the unemployment rate,” Snider says. https://qz.com/1297561/the-dazzling-us-unemployment-rate-is-blinding-americans-to-a-much-darker-reality/ https://qz.com/1297561/the-dazzling-us-unemployment-rate-is-...
    - bobthepanda 8y ago
      To avoid the threat, negotiate with your workers on fair compensation. It's not really rocket science.
      - seibelj 8y ago
        An employee can also quit and find a new job. It isn’t rocket science - an employee is not a slave.
        bobthepanda 8y ago
        How many industries in the US are concentrated in a handful of large companies? There's only Lyft and Uber for rideshare. Drivers could go on their own, but there's no open source platform to just offer services on that's as easy as those companies. During peak surge times, Lyft and Uber are actually more expensive than New York taxi services, but riders will reach for the app out of habit. Left to their own devices, large companies will just collude to fix wages. There needs to be a large-scale counterweight to the large-scale business. https://nypost.com/2014/04/24/tech-giants-settle-wage-fixing-allegations-for-a-reported-324m/ https://nypost.com/2014/04/24/tech-giants-settle-wage-fixing...
        seibelj 8y ago
        But they don’t have to drive for ridesharing at all...
    - josho 8y ago
      You argue that the business (a collection of individuals) has the right to negotiate with an individual. Then argue that a union (a collection of individuals) should only have limited rights to negotiate with a business in return. Do you see the contradiction in your belief?
      - seibelj 8y ago
        I simply disagree, but can you explain to me why government workers, who by definition have a monopoly on their labor, have the right to unionize and strike, holding the taxpayer hostage?
        michaelmrose 8y ago
        You are moving the goalposts now its not all unions just government workers. Forcing them to work against their will would violate their rights. The government can negotiate for their labor or do without it. In the long run they could hire new workers to the the same job nobody is holding anyone hostage.
        seibelj 8y ago
        Government employee unions are the most powerful unions in America. They can choose not to educate society’s children to be paid more. That is a lot of power.
    - amyjess 8y ago
      Unions are the free market.
      - seibelj 8y ago
        If a business can’t fire an employee because a union demands a younger employer is fired before the older, regardless of performance, this is not a free market.
        michaelmrose 8y ago
        That isn't what a free market means.
    - michaelmrose 8y ago
      Nice propaganda, "By force" would be hitting your employer like a pinata until money came out. A union exists to make the exercise of the employees rights more meaningful by doing so collectively. If you acknowledge that an individual employee has a right to ask for more money or changes to how the business is run and decline to come to work its difficult to understand how all employees don't have the same rights collectively. Incidentally this is an instance of the free market. Labor is a market. They are selling YOU their time and collaborating to get a better deal.
      - seibelj 8y ago
        But a business owner can’t fire everyone because they are starting a union, which by your logic they should have the right to do if this is a market. The whole point of a union is to limit what managers can do and tie their hands. So even if the business wants to fire unionized labor and find new and better labor, they can’t. They must now work through a tangle of rules to make changes to their business.
        gamblor956 8y ago
        So even if the business wants to fire unionized labor and find new and better labor, they can’t. Those terms exist precisely to target the abuse you are describing: firing experienced, knowledgeable workers for "better" employees that are inexperienced and know jack-shit about what they're supposed to be doing and whose only qualifications are being cheaper. Let's face it: in most unionized gigs, the contribution of each individual worker isn't significant, so the marginal gains of hiring a "better" worker is generally immaterial to the bottom line. In the cases where that's not true, the union contracts generally have reduced job protections that make it easier for underperforming workers to be let go (on the basis of objective criteria).
        seibelj 8y ago
        Would you support banning automation and other labor-saving devices that eliminate the need for labor? Because that is another alternative.
- jkaplowitz 8y ago
  There is nothing preventing a workplace from negotiating a unionized employment contract with a more limited scope such as you describe. I share your desire for something less rigid than the (very real!) unions which match the stereotype you describe. Though I would like some intermediate restrictions on the ability of an employer to summarily fire an employee for no good reason, short of extreme difficulty. Like, maybe some advance notice or severance payment in the absence of misconduct - the unemployment insurance regime is often severely inadequate, and gaps in employment make it harder to obtain subsequent jobs. Plus some chance to refute allegations of underperformance makes sense - it can be real underperformance or it can be a cover for discrimination, both happen.
- gamblor956 8y ago
  Creative unions, like those in Hollywood, don't have seniority rules, and they do an excellent job of protecting their members' interests. They also don't have any of the other problems you describe.
  - seibelj 8y ago
    They still have rules about who can be in the union, and increases the cost of film production. You can't simply join the union, it is a guild system. I don't like rules that keep out new employees or drive up the costs of film production.
bobthepanda 8y ago
I mean, nurses are unionized and are high-wage. At the end of the day, unions are a means to organize labor. Individual workers have very little power against large corporations, especially if they end up conspiring with each other. You could take them to court, but they have more lawyers and more money to spend on them. We see the benefits of non-union representation now, but what happens when tech turns from feast to famine?
- jonny_eh 8y ago
  There's also actors and athletes.
  - pmiller2 8y ago
    Doctors aren’t unionized anywhere I know of. Do you have an example of a doctors’ union?
    - glup 8y ago
      A doctor friend was telling me the other day that he doesn't know of an instance, in contrast to the nurses' unions.
    - anon1385 8y ago
      The UK. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Medical_Association https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Medical_Association Here's them going on strike the other year: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/aug/31/bma-announces-further-strikes-junior-doctors-contract-dispute https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/aug/31/bma-announce...
    - jonchang 8y ago
      This made national news a while ago: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/business/doctors-unionize-to-resist-the-medical-machine.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/business/doctors-unionize... (written before their contract was ratified)
    - lovich 8y ago
jonny_eh 8y ago
Especially for industries immune from foreign competition, like Uber drivers. You have to be here to do the job.
mdasen 8y ago
I think a lot of labor situations are different (not just low vs high wage). With Uber, one of the defining characteristics is that there are (basically) only two employers (Uber and Lyft). If there were hundreds of equivalent employers, the employer doesn't have the same control over the wage. When labor has few or one option, unions can certainly provide a counter-balance to the power that employers have. However, Uber also provides an easy way to view consumer price increases due to wage increases. I know that Uber has moved to more of a fixed-price model now, but let's pretend that Uber still had a per-mile/minute model. Uber charges $X per mile and $Y per minute and Uber takes 20% giving 80% to the driver. At that point, the absolute most that a union could increase driver wages without increasing consumer prices is 25%. If Uber was charging $1 and drivers were getting $0.80, if the union wanted a 50% raise Uber couldn't still charge $1 because drivers would be taking $1.20. I think the network effects of Uber and Lyft make it hard for labor to have power in those situations. However, given that Uber's gross margin is a percentage of receipts, it's easy to see how it would push prices higher. I'm not saying it's not a worthwhile trade-off, but it's hard to argue that Uber drivers getting paid 25% more wouldn't cause fares to increase.
- sdenton4 8y ago
  The argument here isn't about wages, though: it's about using collective power to ensure that workers don't get pushed into bullshit arbitration when the company does something awful. (Not that uber would ever do anything awful, of course.)
- bobthepanda 8y ago
  As a society, we chose to push children out of the labor market even though that made things more expensive. We pushed for weekends, time off, the 40-hour workweek and overtime, even though it made things more expensive. At the end of the day, racing to the bottom in the pursuit of lower prices is not an unmitigated good. (To be clear, I'm not saying you disagree with any of these points, these are just my $.02.)
- amyjess 8y ago
  I think the reason why Uber and Lyft drivers won't unionize is because there's little incentive for them do do so. Not that many drivers actually drive full-time for a living. A lot of them are just temps. They do some driving on the weekend to make some extra money, they're doing it temporarily while they're between jobs, and so on. If they get fed up with Uber and Lyft, they'd be more likely to just walk away than fight. Case in point: I rode with one guy a few months ago who was on paternity leave... he took up Lyft driving because his wife had no paid maternity leave so he drove during his three months paid paternity leave to make up for the family missing out on his wife's income for a few months. Once his wife is working again, he's done driving. And we're also, as a society, at a point where service jobs are almost fungible. If McDonald's fires you, you can get a job at Taco Bell. Even the same kind of service job doesn't matter. If you get tired of Uber jerking you around, you can find a restaurant and become a waiter. None of the skills involved in these jobs are particularly hard to train for. Every service job is going to require that you have basic customer service skills, and you can take those from job to job. Driving is a fundamental skill in most of America; if you can drive a car and understand Google Maps, you have the skills to drive for Uber or Lyft. For other service jobs, you don't need years of experience to take people's orders at a counter, scan groceries, or do tier 1 customer support. When unions first came to prominence, we had an industrial economy, not a service-based one. Chances are, you lived in a small town where there was just one factory, and the town probably only exists because of the factory. If you got fired, you were screwed. If the factory closed, everyone in town was screwed. And if you've been working with the same specialized proprietary factory equipment for years, it's going to take a long time to re-train you on another factory's equipment, so that's another disincentive to switching jobs. Hence unions. tl;dr Service workers, including Uber and Lyft drivers, don't unionize because losing your job doesn't mean that you and your family are hopelessly screwed.
jamiequint 8y ago
> I do not buy the increase consumer price or laissez-faire arguments Ignorance is bliss I guess? The economic research of the effects of unions on consumer pricing is well established. That you choose to willfully disbelieve the economic research in that area unfortunately does not make it less valid.
- riffic 8y ago
  I'd be happy to pay a slight increase in a product's cost if it were clear to the buyer their use of labor was ethical. Companies used to put union stamps on these sort of products back in the day.
- syntaxing 8y ago
  Can you please point me towards a paper that explains this well established effect? I haven't came across any that explicitly states Unions are bad for consumers since workers tend to be consumers (high wage = higher disposable income) especially on a Macroeconomics scale. I have seen studies explaining how Unions hurt firm growth since it shifts profits to wages which reduces cash holdings (which reduces the conversion of cash to assets, and the finance cycle continues). But the Macroeconomic of the redistribution of wealth (wage vs profit) is still to be studied, especially in our sharing economy world.
paulddraper 8y ago
However, I'm unsure how well Uber drivers could unionize, since they are typically classified as contractors (choose rates, hours, etc.), not employees. And collusion of employees (unions) is permissible. Collusion of businesses is less so.

seibelj 8y ago

If a union only kept to things like safety and minimum salaries I could understand the argument better, although I still don’t support them. The problem is when they start putting in seniority rules (as if all employees are replaceable cogs), banning people from helping out with different jobs (“only the pipe fitter can replace this particular screw”), and making it extremely difficult to fire people.

bobthepanda 8y ago
Unions are a very broad umbrella term, like corporations, to describe a type of organized labor. Corporations, unions, and their practices all exit on a spectrum of good and bad.
- seibelj 8y ago
  A union exists to tell the business owner how to run their business by force. The threat is a strike, or worse (damaging equipment and reputation). The reasons to allow a non-owner, non-governmental power like a union to force the business to change can make sense and pull at your heart strings. I would prefer, if we are to encourage unions, that it stays about safety and let the free market sort the rest out. People can always find new jobs.
  - WalterSear 8y ago
    > People can always find new jobs. If that was the case, we would not need unions.
    - seibelj 8y ago
      Well, I don’t believe we need unions. People can find new jobs, they just would prefer not to, but an employee’s preference and the business’ preference do not always match.
      - michaelmrose 8y ago
        The fact that people COULD find new jobs isn't a counterargument for unions. If collectively nobody works within each given business to improve workers conditions at that business where will all the disaffected workers turn for a better option. Within an industry major players have no reason not to fix conditions at just crappy enough that people don't leave faster than we can hire new cogs. Anyone who things the free market just magically fixes things ought to look at the labor market in the 20s.
        seibelj 8y ago
        This is not the 1920’s, and labor rules (and many different regulations) designed for the 1920’s no longer match reality. Unemployment is near historic lows. Any employee dissatisfied can find a new job. Competition between employers drives better benefits, wages, and working conditions.
        WalterSear 8y ago
        > Any employee dissatisfied can find a new job. That's a presidentially arrogant statement to make, particularly in the middle of a discussion regarding the gig economy. > The public typically perceives a low unemployment rate as reassuring because it suggests that everyone who wants a job has one. But the broader set of jobs data suggests that’s not the case. ”As usual, the consequences of truly no growth in the labor market leaves particularly politicians to emphasize nothing other than the unemployment rate,” Snider says. https://qz.com/1297561/the-dazzling-us-unemployment-rate-is-blinding-americans-to-a-much-darker-reality/ https://qz.com/1297561/the-dazzling-us-unemployment-rate-is-...
  - bobthepanda 8y ago
    To avoid the threat, negotiate with your workers on fair compensation. It's not really rocket science.
    - seibelj 8y ago
      An employee can also quit and find a new job. It isn’t rocket science - an employee is not a slave.
      - bobthepanda 8y ago
        How many industries in the US are concentrated in a handful of large companies? There's only Lyft and Uber for rideshare. Drivers could go on their own, but there's no open source platform to just offer services on that's as easy as those companies. During peak surge times, Lyft and Uber are actually more expensive than New York taxi services, but riders will reach for the app out of habit. Left to their own devices, large companies will just collude to fix wages. There needs to be a large-scale counterweight to the large-scale business. https://nypost.com/2014/04/24/tech-giants-settle-wage-fixing-allegations-for-a-reported-324m/ https://nypost.com/2014/04/24/tech-giants-settle-wage-fixing...
        seibelj 8y ago
        But they don’t have to drive for ridesharing at all...
  - josho 8y ago
    You argue that the business (a collection of individuals) has the right to negotiate with an individual. Then argue that a union (a collection of individuals) should only have limited rights to negotiate with a business in return. Do you see the contradiction in your belief?
    - seibelj 8y ago
      I simply disagree, but can you explain to me why government workers, who by definition have a monopoly on their labor, have the right to unionize and strike, holding the taxpayer hostage?
      - michaelmrose 8y ago
        You are moving the goalposts now its not all unions just government workers. Forcing them to work against their will would violate their rights. The government can negotiate for their labor or do without it. In the long run they could hire new workers to the the same job nobody is holding anyone hostage.
        seibelj 8y ago
        Government employee unions are the most powerful unions in America. They can choose not to educate society’s children to be paid more. That is a lot of power.
  - amyjess 8y ago
    Unions are the free market.
    - seibelj 8y ago
      If a business can’t fire an employee because a union demands a younger employer is fired before the older, regardless of performance, this is not a free market.
      - michaelmrose 8y ago
        That isn't what a free market means.
  - michaelmrose 8y ago
    Nice propaganda, "By force" would be hitting your employer like a pinata until money came out. A union exists to make the exercise of the employees rights more meaningful by doing so collectively. If you acknowledge that an individual employee has a right to ask for more money or changes to how the business is run and decline to come to work its difficult to understand how all employees don't have the same rights collectively. Incidentally this is an instance of the free market. Labor is a market. They are selling YOU their time and collaborating to get a better deal.
    - seibelj 8y ago
      But a business owner can’t fire everyone because they are starting a union, which by your logic they should have the right to do if this is a market. The whole point of a union is to limit what managers can do and tie their hands. So even if the business wants to fire unionized labor and find new and better labor, they can’t. They must now work through a tangle of rules to make changes to their business.
      - gamblor956 8y ago
        So even if the business wants to fire unionized labor and find new and better labor, they can’t. Those terms exist precisely to target the abuse you are describing: firing experienced, knowledgeable workers for "better" employees that are inexperienced and know jack-shit about what they're supposed to be doing and whose only qualifications are being cheaper. Let's face it: in most unionized gigs, the contribution of each individual worker isn't significant, so the marginal gains of hiring a "better" worker is generally immaterial to the bottom line. In the cases where that's not true, the union contracts generally have reduced job protections that make it easier for underperforming workers to be let go (on the basis of objective criteria).
        seibelj 8y ago
        Would you support banning automation and other labor-saving devices that eliminate the need for labor? Because that is another alternative.
jkaplowitz 8y ago
There is nothing preventing a workplace from negotiating a unionized employment contract with a more limited scope such as you describe. I share your desire for something less rigid than the (very real!) unions which match the stereotype you describe. Though I would like some intermediate restrictions on the ability of an employer to summarily fire an employee for no good reason, short of extreme difficulty. Like, maybe some advance notice or severance payment in the absence of misconduct - the unemployment insurance regime is often severely inadequate, and gaps in employment make it harder to obtain subsequent jobs. Plus some chance to refute allegations of underperformance makes sense - it can be real underperformance or it can be a cover for discrimination, both happen.
gamblor956 8y ago
Creative unions, like those in Hollywood, don't have seniority rules, and they do an excellent job of protecting their members' interests. They also don't have any of the other problems you describe.
- seibelj 8y ago
  They still have rules about who can be in the union, and increases the cost of film production. You can't simply join the union, it is a guild system. I don't like rules that keep out new employees or drive up the costs of film production.

bobthepanda 8y ago

I mean, nurses are unionized and are high-wage. At the end of the day, unions are a means to organize labor. Individual workers have very little power against large corporations, especially if they end up conspiring with each other. You could take them to court, but they have more lawyers and more money to spend on them. We see the benefits of non-union representation now, but what happens when tech turns from feast to famine?

jonny_eh 8y ago
There's also actors and athletes.
- pmiller2 8y ago
  Doctors aren’t unionized anywhere I know of. Do you have an example of a doctors’ union?
  - glup 8y ago
    A doctor friend was telling me the other day that he doesn't know of an instance, in contrast to the nurses' unions.
  - anon1385 8y ago
    The UK. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Medical_Association https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Medical_Association Here's them going on strike the other year: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/aug/31/bma-announces-further-strikes-junior-doctors-contract-dispute https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/aug/31/bma-announce...
  - jonchang 8y ago
    This made national news a while ago: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/business/doctors-unionize-to-resist-the-medical-machine.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/business/doctors-unionize... (written before their contract was ratified)
  - lovich 8y ago

jonny_eh 8y ago

Especially for industries immune from foreign competition, like Uber drivers. You have to be here to do the job.

mdasen 8y ago

I think a lot of labor situations are different (not just low vs high wage). With Uber, one of the defining characteristics is that there are (basically) only two employers (Uber and Lyft). If there were hundreds of equivalent employers, the employer doesn't have the same control over the wage. When labor has few or one option, unions can certainly provide a counter-balance to the power that employers have. However, Uber also provides an easy way to view consumer price increases due to wage increases. I know that Uber has moved to more of a fixed-price model now, but let's pretend that Uber still had a per-mile/minute model. Uber charges $X per mile and $Y per minute and Uber takes 20% giving 80% to the driver. At that point, the absolute most that a union could increase driver wages without increasing consumer prices is 25%. If Uber was charging $1 and drivers were getting $0.80, if the union wanted a 50% raise Uber couldn't still charge $1 because drivers would be taking $1.20. I think the network effects of Uber and Lyft make it hard for labor to have power in those situations. However, given that Uber's gross margin is a percentage of receipts, it's easy to see how it would push prices higher. I'm not saying it's not a worthwhile trade-off, but it's hard to argue that Uber drivers getting paid 25% more wouldn't cause fares to increase.

sdenton4 8y ago
The argument here isn't about wages, though: it's about using collective power to ensure that workers don't get pushed into bullshit arbitration when the company does something awful. (Not that uber would ever do anything awful, of course.)
bobthepanda 8y ago
As a society, we chose to push children out of the labor market even though that made things more expensive. We pushed for weekends, time off, the 40-hour workweek and overtime, even though it made things more expensive. At the end of the day, racing to the bottom in the pursuit of lower prices is not an unmitigated good. (To be clear, I'm not saying you disagree with any of these points, these are just my $.02.)
amyjess 8y ago
I think the reason why Uber and Lyft drivers won't unionize is because there's little incentive for them do do so. Not that many drivers actually drive full-time for a living. A lot of them are just temps. They do some driving on the weekend to make some extra money, they're doing it temporarily while they're between jobs, and so on. If they get fed up with Uber and Lyft, they'd be more likely to just walk away than fight. Case in point: I rode with one guy a few months ago who was on paternity leave... he took up Lyft driving because his wife had no paid maternity leave so he drove during his three months paid paternity leave to make up for the family missing out on his wife's income for a few months. Once his wife is working again, he's done driving. And we're also, as a society, at a point where service jobs are almost fungible. If McDonald's fires you, you can get a job at Taco Bell. Even the same kind of service job doesn't matter. If you get tired of Uber jerking you around, you can find a restaurant and become a waiter. None of the skills involved in these jobs are particularly hard to train for. Every service job is going to require that you have basic customer service skills, and you can take those from job to job. Driving is a fundamental skill in most of America; if you can drive a car and understand Google Maps, you have the skills to drive for Uber or Lyft. For other service jobs, you don't need years of experience to take people's orders at a counter, scan groceries, or do tier 1 customer support. When unions first came to prominence, we had an industrial economy, not a service-based one. Chances are, you lived in a small town where there was just one factory, and the town probably only exists because of the factory. If you got fired, you were screwed. If the factory closed, everyone in town was screwed. And if you've been working with the same specialized proprietary factory equipment for years, it's going to take a long time to re-train you on another factory's equipment, so that's another disincentive to switching jobs. Hence unions. tl;dr Service workers, including Uber and Lyft drivers, don't unionize because losing your job doesn't mean that you and your family are hopelessly screwed.

jamiequint 8y ago

> I do not buy the increase consumer price or laissez-faire arguments Ignorance is bliss I guess? The economic research of the effects of unions on consumer pricing is well established. That you choose to willfully disbelieve the economic research in that area unfortunately does not make it less valid.

riffic 8y ago
I'd be happy to pay a slight increase in a product's cost if it were clear to the buyer their use of labor was ethical. Companies used to put union stamps on these sort of products back in the day.
syntaxing 8y ago
Can you please point me towards a paper that explains this well established effect? I haven't came across any that explicitly states Unions are bad for consumers since workers tend to be consumers (high wage = higher disposable income) especially on a Macroeconomics scale. I have seen studies explaining how Unions hurt firm growth since it shifts profits to wages which reduces cash holdings (which reduces the conversion of cash to assets, and the finance cycle continues). But the Macroeconomic of the redistribution of wealth (wage vs profit) is still to be studied, especially in our sharing economy world.

paulddraper 8y ago

However, I'm unsure how well Uber drivers could unionize, since they are typically classified as contractors (choose rates, hours, etc.), not employees. And collusion of employees (unions) is permissible. Collusion of businesses is less so.