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Because all these ideas (regulation, minimum wage, laborisation, etc) protect existing workers and harms lower skilled or newcomers, foreigners, minorities, etc

Because all these ideas (regulation, minimum wage, laborisation, etc) protect existing workers and harms lower skilled or newcomers, foreigners, minorities, etc. I don't understand your point at all. Unions explicitly fight to support all of these people. The standard argument against unions (esp. in the tech sector) is that they harm high-skilled overperforming workers by capping the maximum benefits they can receive.

chrisseaton 8y ago
> Unions explicitly fight to support all of these people. Unions fight to support newcomers? Common union tactics such as closed shops and seniority-based pay agreements are deliberately and severely hostile to newcomers. > overperforming workers Only a union supporter could argue that a worker can 'overperform'! Tell them to stop doing so well they're making everyone else look bad!
- Zeklandia 8y ago
  Overperformance is when a worker overexerts themselves, by working themselves harder or for longer. Overperformance is a problem because it exerts pressure on the other workers to do the same, leading to a runaway effect of increasing expectation for results while workers are left exhausting their bodies and their time, and often their own personal resources, trying to meet that expectation in order to not be fired or miss out on bonuses or promotions. They are not "making everyone else look bad" they are raising the bar higher than most could even reach.
  - jupp0r 8y ago
    Are you implying that performance is proportional to hours worked? Research shows that this is not the case for most people and that returns past a certain work/life balance ratio are marginal or negative.
    - hoaw 8y ago
      I don't think that is the implication. What is being said is that people start e.g. working 10 hours a day and that becomes expected regardless of performance. This type of thing is very common in Asia.
      - jupp0r 8y ago
        That doesn't sound like overperformance, but toxic culture to me.
  - ducktypegoose 8y ago
    I think overperformance is a flowery term for a race to the bottom. A vernacular red-herring whose adoption implies an argument. The contention is compromising human dignity and living in the name of getting ahead of ones peers in the workplace doesn't help anybody in the end. I propose we call it what it really is, an egotistical pursuit to instill a heirarchy where one should not exist.
  - chrisseaton 8y ago
    > Overperformance is when a worker overexerts themselves, by working themselves harder or for longer. Nonsense! 'Overperform', not 'overwork'. Someone could out-perform you in fewer hours than you work, by being more efficient, or just by being better at the job than you.
  - AlexB138 8y ago
    I have a difficult time understanding this world view. A worker choosing on their own to work extra to get ahead is called sacrifice, and is one of the things that differentiates people who do enough to get a paycheck and people who get noticed and promoted. Coming up with a way to say someone who outworks you is somehow the bad guy because they make you look bad is exactly the kind of mentality that makes me want nothing to do with union membership.
    - hoaw 8y ago
      Say you have two employees. One is smarter than the other. That employee will work relatively hard and deliver constant results. The other will take a big chance and work everything they have for a year. Say the chance of them performing better than the smarter employee is 50%. So measured over one year they essentially perform as well, but over three years the smarter employee wins since the other employee can't keep up their pace. So what is the problem? Well, now imagine there are multiple less smart employees. Even over three years it might then seem like those employees perform better since they are more and a few might succeed for the whole three years. So now the smart employee might get fired. Performance is therefor no longer about work, but who essentially is lucky enough to not burn out in e.g. three years. Soon enough all the smart employees also have to work similar hours, so now they burn out after a few years as well. All the less smart employees will love it because they feel they have a chance.
      - chrisseaton 8y ago
        You should be able to see all this as a manager and talk to your people about it. Why does a union need to get involved?
        hoaw 8y ago
        That is assuming there aren't also less smart managers who have short term interests of showing swift progress until the project collapses. Management will in best case take a long term interest in the company. They won't take a long term interest in employees. Certainly not employees who doesn't seem to be performing. That is what unions are for. To represent the employees concerns about the future.
- Apocryphon 8y ago
  Why couldn’t a union created by presumably innovative, disruptive tech workers, invent a better mechanism than seniority-based pay? All of this anti-union rhetoric imagines that unions are inherently stuck in the 19th century and lack imagination.
  - yters 8y ago
    There's always human nature to wreck a good idea.
    - Apocryphon 8y ago
      And yet, Silicon Valley seems to be currently focused less on tech itself than using tech to reshape many long-running social conventions. Why would labor relationships be any different?
      - dvtrn 8y ago
        Why would labor relationships be any different? Well it seems like there's some interest to take that on at least from a product perspective when you look at these HR, Payroll, Employee Relations platforms coming out that could be argued try to take a portion of the market away from HR giants like ADP. And then you have the various interviewing services (interviewing.io is an example I often point to), developer bootcamps with (presumably, at least by some of the verbiage used by said bootcamps) deep connections and mentor programs that ostensibly exist to get people hired. Then there are your ZipRecruiters and Indeeds that claim to have revolutionized online recruiting and staffing. Maybe the question isn't "why would labor relations be any different" but "how can tech make more of an impact in labor relations than just getting people hired and automating payroll?" I don't have that answer, just thinking through my keyboard here.
    - themoonbus 8y ago
      The system as it currently stands is also being wrecked by human nature, though...
  - hoaw 8y ago
- tripzilch 8y ago
  > Only a union supporter could argue that a worker can 'overperform'! Tell them to stop doing so well they're making everyone else look bad! You must be very sure of yourself that you theoretically belong to these "over-performers", yet somehow very insecure and contingent about being recognised for it. Like you want to get paid well so you can point to that and claim it means you performed well, regardless of whether you did.
stale2002 8y ago
Ummmm, no. Unions are run by existing members of the industry. There are example after example of unions trying to screw over new comers by putting over barriers to entry, to keep out competition. Putting up barriers to entry, to keep wages up, is basically the entire purpose of many unions.
darawk 8y ago
> I don't understand your point at all. Unions explicitly fight to support all of these people They really don't. Unions fight to protect the pay and job security of their existing members. They do not generally try to make it easy to join the profession.
- uxp100 8y ago
  Right, an interesting read that covers this a little is "The Origins of the Urban Crisis" by Sugrue. Black people and Women entering the workforce was against Union interests since it increases the labor force. In many cities, building trades were essentially white only into the 80s. (I've heard pretty awful stories about the carpenter's union in town into the 90s too. Explicit statements of no Blacks allowed.) This was on purpose. Automotive unions were nearly as bad. So a baffled, "What? How can Unions be racist?" seems disingenuous.I don't think racism is inherent to unions, or that a tech workers union would even be likely to be racist against Indian people. But a blanket denial seems like trying to gaslight people.
morningcovfefe 8y ago
Untrue.. if you take a look at what existing software unions are right now lobbying for in congress

chrisseaton 8y ago

> Unions explicitly fight to support all of these people. Unions fight to support newcomers? Common union tactics such as closed shops and seniority-based pay agreements are deliberately and severely hostile to newcomers. > overperforming workers Only a union supporter could argue that a worker can 'overperform'! Tell them to stop doing so well they're making everyone else look bad!

Zeklandia 8y ago
Overperformance is when a worker overexerts themselves, by working themselves harder or for longer. Overperformance is a problem because it exerts pressure on the other workers to do the same, leading to a runaway effect of increasing expectation for results while workers are left exhausting their bodies and their time, and often their own personal resources, trying to meet that expectation in order to not be fired or miss out on bonuses or promotions. They are not "making everyone else look bad" they are raising the bar higher than most could even reach.
- jupp0r 8y ago
  Are you implying that performance is proportional to hours worked? Research shows that this is not the case for most people and that returns past a certain work/life balance ratio are marginal or negative.
  - hoaw 8y ago
    I don't think that is the implication. What is being said is that people start e.g. working 10 hours a day and that becomes expected regardless of performance. This type of thing is very common in Asia.
    - jupp0r 8y ago
      That doesn't sound like overperformance, but toxic culture to me.
- ducktypegoose 8y ago
  I think overperformance is a flowery term for a race to the bottom. A vernacular red-herring whose adoption implies an argument. The contention is compromising human dignity and living in the name of getting ahead of ones peers in the workplace doesn't help anybody in the end. I propose we call it what it really is, an egotistical pursuit to instill a heirarchy where one should not exist.
- chrisseaton 8y ago
  > Overperformance is when a worker overexerts themselves, by working themselves harder or for longer. Nonsense! 'Overperform', not 'overwork'. Someone could out-perform you in fewer hours than you work, by being more efficient, or just by being better at the job than you.
- AlexB138 8y ago
  I have a difficult time understanding this world view. A worker choosing on their own to work extra to get ahead is called sacrifice, and is one of the things that differentiates people who do enough to get a paycheck and people who get noticed and promoted. Coming up with a way to say someone who outworks you is somehow the bad guy because they make you look bad is exactly the kind of mentality that makes me want nothing to do with union membership.
  - hoaw 8y ago
    Say you have two employees. One is smarter than the other. That employee will work relatively hard and deliver constant results. The other will take a big chance and work everything they have for a year. Say the chance of them performing better than the smarter employee is 50%. So measured over one year they essentially perform as well, but over three years the smarter employee wins since the other employee can't keep up their pace. So what is the problem? Well, now imagine there are multiple less smart employees. Even over three years it might then seem like those employees perform better since they are more and a few might succeed for the whole three years. So now the smart employee might get fired. Performance is therefor no longer about work, but who essentially is lucky enough to not burn out in e.g. three years. Soon enough all the smart employees also have to work similar hours, so now they burn out after a few years as well. All the less smart employees will love it because they feel they have a chance.
    - chrisseaton 8y ago
      You should be able to see all this as a manager and talk to your people about it. Why does a union need to get involved?
      - hoaw 8y ago
        That is assuming there aren't also less smart managers who have short term interests of showing swift progress until the project collapses. Management will in best case take a long term interest in the company. They won't take a long term interest in employees. Certainly not employees who doesn't seem to be performing. That is what unions are for. To represent the employees concerns about the future.
Apocryphon 8y ago
Why couldn’t a union created by presumably innovative, disruptive tech workers, invent a better mechanism than seniority-based pay? All of this anti-union rhetoric imagines that unions are inherently stuck in the 19th century and lack imagination.
- yters 8y ago
  There's always human nature to wreck a good idea.
  - Apocryphon 8y ago
    And yet, Silicon Valley seems to be currently focused less on tech itself than using tech to reshape many long-running social conventions. Why would labor relationships be any different?
    - dvtrn 8y ago
      Why would labor relationships be any different? Well it seems like there's some interest to take that on at least from a product perspective when you look at these HR, Payroll, Employee Relations platforms coming out that could be argued try to take a portion of the market away from HR giants like ADP. And then you have the various interviewing services (interviewing.io is an example I often point to), developer bootcamps with (presumably, at least by some of the verbiage used by said bootcamps) deep connections and mentor programs that ostensibly exist to get people hired. Then there are your ZipRecruiters and Indeeds that claim to have revolutionized online recruiting and staffing. Maybe the question isn't "why would labor relations be any different" but "how can tech make more of an impact in labor relations than just getting people hired and automating payroll?" I don't have that answer, just thinking through my keyboard here.
  - themoonbus 8y ago
    The system as it currently stands is also being wrecked by human nature, though...
- hoaw 8y ago
tripzilch 8y ago
> Only a union supporter could argue that a worker can 'overperform'! Tell them to stop doing so well they're making everyone else look bad! You must be very sure of yourself that you theoretically belong to these "over-performers", yet somehow very insecure and contingent about being recognised for it. Like you want to get paid well so you can point to that and claim it means you performed well, regardless of whether you did.

stale2002 8y ago

Ummmm, no. Unions are run by existing members of the industry. There are example after example of unions trying to screw over new comers by putting over barriers to entry, to keep out competition. Putting up barriers to entry, to keep wages up, is basically the entire purpose of many unions.

darawk 8y ago

> I don't understand your point at all. Unions explicitly fight to support all of these people They really don't. Unions fight to protect the pay and job security of their existing members. They do not generally try to make it easy to join the profession.

uxp100 8y ago
Right, an interesting read that covers this a little is "The Origins of the Urban Crisis" by Sugrue. Black people and Women entering the workforce was against Union interests since it increases the labor force. In many cities, building trades were essentially white only into the 80s. (I've heard pretty awful stories about the carpenter's union in town into the 90s too. Explicit statements of no Blacks allowed.) This was on purpose. Automotive unions were nearly as bad. So a baffled, "What? How can Unions be racist?" seems disingenuous.I don't think racism is inherent to unions, or that a tech workers union would even be likely to be racist against Indian people. But a blanket denial seems like trying to gaslight people.

morningcovfefe 8y ago

Untrue.. if you take a look at what existing software unions are right now lobbying for in congress