4 ms·

Maybe the US has a different experience with unions but in Brazil, they are simply hated. They were made mandatory by law and very rarely (never?) step in to he

Maybe the US has a different experience with unions but in Brazil, they are simply hated. They were made mandatory by law and very rarely (never?) step in to help employees. It's only at big factories that they show up when more than X number of people are fired and do a big show out of that. Meanwhile, all the employees not working for big factories paid their union fees and saw nothing back. It's often a platform to launch their political careers. Luckily, they are not mandatory anymore and now employees have to opt-in which was a great change. They have to work to earn respect and those fees back... but I'm not seeing much movement in that direction. So far they have been going the legal route, trying to cancel the changes to the law (and have lost). In theory, the concept of unions is great but in practice, at least here, it was a terrible thing, from my IT bubble perspective.

StudentStuff 8y ago
Unions are voted on by workers at each workplace (and can be ejected and replaced) in most countries, sounds like Brazil had something similar to the mandatory, toothless union that China enforces on larger businesses like Walmart.
i_am_proteus 8y ago
Not everyone in the US likes unions. Union-driven high labor costs are one of the reasons why lots of auto manufacturing left Michigan for various points foreign and domestic. Some unions do a great job negotiating benefits for workers. Others do a great job only for union leadership, to the ultimate detriment of companies' profitability and workers' salaries and job security. If tech unions are new organizations by, for, and of tech workers, they might result in positive change for tech workers. If they fall in line with AFL-CIO et al., stand by for trouble.
freewilly1040 8y ago
I'd be interested to learn more about the German system, where the union sits on the board of the company. They would seem to then have an actual interest in the success of the enterprise as a whole, rather than just trying to extract as much as they can from it. Of course in other places they have no power and just extract fees from workers.
criley2 8y ago
In the US, it is illegal federally to mandate that an employee join a union as part of their employment, and it's illegal to force them to pay dues. Some of our states go a step further and have introduced measures that seek to directly attack the ability of employees to collectively bargain, to remove the power organized labor has against management. These are called "right to work states". Generally speaking, RTW states have lower pay on average, they are less educated on average, and their workers have less benefits from their businesses (parental leave, vacation time, healthcare benefits, etc), they have less recourses against employer bad behavior (both as a function of RTW attacking collective bargaining, and from the reality that the same politics that are against unions also are very anti-labor, anti-minimum wage, anti-regulation of labor marketplace all together, so there are far less public resources and regulators to assist with claims). If you're an employer, this probably sounds great. Labor is cheaper and you can fire them whenever you want for no reason at all on the drop of a dime AND there is no pesky government regulator to come waste your time and money investigating. "Easy come easy go" is one of the most common management philosophies from small and medium business owners in my RTW state, from my experience. From the perspective of an American: you choose a liberal/blue/union state when you want good infrastructure, highly educated and competent staff, and little turnover. You choose a conservative/red/anti-union state when you're planning to take advantage of your staff, you don't care about higher turnover, you want to pay below-national-market rates as a rule, and you don't care as much about the individual quality of each employee. There's a reason why tech companies don't pick the South and when they do they require billions in literal free cash to do so. It is what it is, but the slow death of the union in the United States correlates quite perfectly with the slow death of the American middle class in terms of wealth and income gains per year.
- mrisoli 8y ago
  (disclaimer: also Brazilian, even if I don't live in Brazil anymore) I have mixed experience with unions in Brazil, the fact that they are mandated makes it almost like a scam, a part of your wages go towards union contributions but rarely do you get anything out of that. Most directors at unions are in it for political powers as the bigger unions are major players in politics(as seen that our ex-president is a former unionist). On one hand, unions can provide negotiation power, specially in class action suits, including unfair dismissal. But most of the time I've seen unions collude with companies and associations to provide underwhelming benefits and wages that are below inflation. In some cases such as medicine and dentistry they are solid credentials of many professionals and I take it as mostly positive. In the case of engineering it should follow the same as the engineer's union is a very strong powerhouse that requires quite high minimum wages for engineers(IIRC 8.5x the national minimum wage). However this has led many companies to use a loophole where engineers are hired with a different job title, performing the same job, just so that they don't have to pay that minimum, while sometimes even requiring that said engineer is registered with the union. As computer science is not engineering, even though some computer engineers are qualified as such, I've never met a programmer that has a proper engineer contract.

StudentStuff 8y ago

Unions are voted on by workers at each workplace (and can be ejected and replaced) in most countries, sounds like Brazil had something similar to the mandatory, toothless union that China enforces on larger businesses like Walmart.

i_am_proteus 8y ago

Not everyone in the US likes unions. Union-driven high labor costs are one of the reasons why lots of auto manufacturing left Michigan for various points foreign and domestic. Some unions do a great job negotiating benefits for workers. Others do a great job only for union leadership, to the ultimate detriment of companies' profitability and workers' salaries and job security. If tech unions are new organizations by, for, and of tech workers, they might result in positive change for tech workers. If they fall in line with AFL-CIO et al., stand by for trouble.

freewilly1040 8y ago

I'd be interested to learn more about the German system, where the union sits on the board of the company. They would seem to then have an actual interest in the success of the enterprise as a whole, rather than just trying to extract as much as they can from it. Of course in other places they have no power and just extract fees from workers.

criley2 8y ago

In the US, it is illegal federally to mandate that an employee join a union as part of their employment, and it's illegal to force them to pay dues. Some of our states go a step further and have introduced measures that seek to directly attack the ability of employees to collectively bargain, to remove the power organized labor has against management. These are called "right to work states". Generally speaking, RTW states have lower pay on average, they are less educated on average, and their workers have less benefits from their businesses (parental leave, vacation time, healthcare benefits, etc), they have less recourses against employer bad behavior (both as a function of RTW attacking collective bargaining, and from the reality that the same politics that are against unions also are very anti-labor, anti-minimum wage, anti-regulation of labor marketplace all together, so there are far less public resources and regulators to assist with claims). If you're an employer, this probably sounds great. Labor is cheaper and you can fire them whenever you want for no reason at all on the drop of a dime AND there is no pesky government regulator to come waste your time and money investigating. "Easy come easy go" is one of the most common management philosophies from small and medium business owners in my RTW state, from my experience. From the perspective of an American: you choose a liberal/blue/union state when you want good infrastructure, highly educated and competent staff, and little turnover. You choose a conservative/red/anti-union state when you're planning to take advantage of your staff, you don't care about higher turnover, you want to pay below-national-market rates as a rule, and you don't care as much about the individual quality of each employee. There's a reason why tech companies don't pick the South and when they do they require billions in literal free cash to do so. It is what it is, but the slow death of the union in the United States correlates quite perfectly with the slow death of the American middle class in terms of wealth and income gains per year.

mrisoli 8y ago
(disclaimer: also Brazilian, even if I don't live in Brazil anymore) I have mixed experience with unions in Brazil, the fact that they are mandated makes it almost like a scam, a part of your wages go towards union contributions but rarely do you get anything out of that. Most directors at unions are in it for political powers as the bigger unions are major players in politics(as seen that our ex-president is a former unionist). On one hand, unions can provide negotiation power, specially in class action suits, including unfair dismissal. But most of the time I've seen unions collude with companies and associations to provide underwhelming benefits and wages that are below inflation. In some cases such as medicine and dentistry they are solid credentials of many professionals and I take it as mostly positive. In the case of engineering it should follow the same as the engineer's union is a very strong powerhouse that requires quite high minimum wages for engineers(IIRC 8.5x the national minimum wage). However this has led many companies to use a loophole where engineers are hired with a different job title, performing the same job, just so that they don't have to pay that minimum, while sometimes even requiring that said engineer is registered with the union. As computer science is not engineering, even though some computer engineers are qualified as such, I've never met a programmer that has a proper engineer contract.