7 ms·

I think this means we need to re-think how unions work. It should be used to create fair workplaces. My concern with the anti-union rhetoric in the USA is tha

by bargl 8y ago

I think this means we need to re-think how unions work. It should be used to create fair workplaces. My concern with the anti-union rhetoric in the USA is that we then turn to the government to protect workers. I think it's a lot better to have a union vs government as long as that union isn't protected from competition like they are today. If we can introduce competition into unions then they might better serve the workers and the company.

edoo 8y ago
Having competing unions is an interesting concept. It may be a hard sell because technically the primary legal ability of a union is prevent competition among the workers. If you are a rock star you can't get hired at a greater wage. If you are a nepotism cling on you can't get fired or demoted.
- jononor 8y ago
  In Norway, each employee freely chooses their union. It is common in some industries that people belong to several different unions, and that some are not part of union. And usually they are based on particular profession, like engineering or economics. Unions then have more a passive role, offering services like free legal representation, better insurance deals, and training. Only some areas like teachers seem to have near-homogeneous membership and unions taking an active role. And this seems mostly to be because 90% have the same employeer - the state (public education). Because of standardized working terms (incl salary), they have to be negotiated centrally.
  - criddell 8y ago
    Why does there have to be standard working terms? In the US professional baseball, hockey, and football have player unions and things like salary are negotiated per person.
    - SimonPStevens 8y ago
      They aren't standard working terms because of the unions. They are standard working terms because all teachers (who work in state schools at least) are employed by the local education authorities, who in turn set their working terms and salaries based on the government's department for education. So for teachers there is no individual salary negotiation, it's all decided centrally by the government and you either take it, or move to the private schools of which there are a lot less. (This is UK for me, but based on what op said, I think it's similar)
      - Aeolun 8y ago
        This is not to say that individual teachers cannot earn more or less, just that the scale on which they are being paid has been decided in advance, right?
      - jononor 8y ago
        Yep very similar. There is built in some automatic compensation for years of service, and the payscale is inflation adjusted. For a given position, there is a small range of possible salaries. So it is in principle possible to have a bit of independently negotiated salary. In practice almost everyone falls very close to each-other.
    - LanceH 8y ago
      Percentage of revenue going to the players has already been negotiated. It should also be noted that the players union represents a tiny portion of the actual employees involved and they actively negotiate money away from other employees.
- isk517 8y ago
  You've hit the nail on the head. I've seen both sides of the union coin. Unions need competition just as much as business do to function properly. My father is a trades person and when one union treated him badly he left for another one cause he had options. His union has also saved him from a lot of BS that companies he's worked for have tried to pull. Alternatively when I was a student I worked a part time job where I was forced to be a part of a union with no options. Ever week they took money from my paycheck and the one time I had a grievance they pretty much ignored me. Making sure the girl that showed up hung over and vomiting every 2nd shift was not fired was more important because seniority.
conanbatt 8y ago
> It should be used to create fair workplaces. You can't get good results through bad means. Unions are fundamentally a destructive endeavor. Their use is practical but limited: the best thing unions ever fought was the state, not employers.
- megy 8y ago
  > You can't get good results through bad means. Like a 5 day work week from 6 days? Like 8 hour work days? Like safe conditions for workers. All things unions helped deliver.
  - conanbatt 8y ago
    Higher worker productivity achieved those things, not unions. Those gains so-called 'worker rights' were achieved in countries without unions as well. It's also unmentioned how much unemployment and misery unions also caused in this narrative.
    - fwip 8y ago
      Higher worker productivity naturally leads to shortened hours? No wonder we've all got 15 hour workweeks now.
      - conanbatt 8y ago
        Better be damn sure about that. If you want to live like a worker in the 1850's, you can work 1/5 what they worked.
    - kennywinker 8y ago
      No - higher productivity made it _possible_ but unionized workers fought and died to make it actually happen.
      - conanbatt 8y ago
        Who told you that; unions?
drilldrive 8y ago
I honestly wonder (without knowing much of the history mind you) if the USA purposely made unions awful as to promote the mindset "I would rather not have a union" amongst the workers. For sure unions are terrible here, but it seems quite strange to have anti-competitive laws for unions when the USA is near-built on capitalism and the free market.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
my_username_is_ 8y ago
I agree strongly. Unions don't have to undermine the productivity of a company (and really they shouldn't). A few things that a modern union could do: 1. Place limits on expected working hours. Let the management know that working above 40 hours a week, or needing to be on-call 24/7 should not be the norm. Let management know that using all your vacation time should be the norm. Set minimum amounts of vacation time for people to take, when a company advertises "Unlimited PTO". 2. Fight for minimum cost-of-living increases, presumably tied to a fair metric such as the CPI in an area. Every company that I have worked for has had a hard limit on the raises that you can earn each year--usually around 3%. This is typically close to or just above inflation. 3. Collectively hold the company leadership accountable for their actions. When management doesn't act in a professional way, they should be held accountable in the same way that someone lower on the corporate ladder would be. 'Unprofessional' behavior could be anything like sexual harassment, being physically aggressive, etc. We've all seen this first-hand or heard about it; typically HR won't get involved because it's easier to make the rank-and-file worker change divisions or leave, than to have the upper management change. 4. Place limits on executive pay relative to worker pay. Today a CEO makes hundreds of times more than your average rank-and-file worker. This multiple is only increasing. A union could fight executive pay increases without commensurate increases to worker pay. A few things that modern unions don't have to do: 1. Push for equal pay among everyone. I think we can all acknowledge that knowledge-workers don't all contribute to projects with the same level of effectiveness. I know some of my coworkers are better at their jobs than I am--and I'm okay with them getting paid more than me. Because we aren't just a cog in a machine, it doesn't make sense to treat each other as directly replaceable parts. 2. Encourage workers to limit their productivity, for fear of eliminating jobs. The union should win when the company wins. The union should do its part to help the company create more value for the world, and make sure that the employees get a fair share of that value. I think it comes down to being fair versus being equal. Workers used to be equal labor substitutes, so the unions treated everyone as equal. Workers are no longer equal, but unions haven't evolved to the new business realities. For what it's worth, I'm not a software engineer and I don't work in the Bay area. My city doesn't have many job opportunities, so I don't have the luxury of just leaving a company without also packing up and moving to a new area. For my coworkers who own houses or have a family, this is particularly hard. A union could help us create a better working environment, but many people have this idea of what a unions are based on a system of unions that was based in 19th and 20th century manufacturing.
drb91 8y ago
> fair workplaces What is this? EDIT: I don't mean to snark, it just seems like an inherently utopian ideal. Material concerns should dictate workspace conflict resolution. I certainly agree with your overall statement.
- bargl 8y ago
  Yikes, I read my original post and I think yeah, you're right. I mean "more fair workplace". And fair being for both employee and employer. That's why I think competition would be important, as long as we can avoid a race to the bottom situation it might make unions more relevant.
  - repolfx 8y ago
    I think what he/she was getting at is that "fair" isn't defined (by you). My notion of a fair workplace is one where people's pay and rewards are entirely determined by their skill and merit, as judged by the management. But lots of other people and especially unions define it totally differently: one where people's pay is determined by tenure, their union contract or their gender/race. That seems to be what these Kickstarter employees want. Without a clear definition the word 'fair' can be interpreted as having polar opposite meanings.
    - notSupplied 8y ago
      What really disappoints me is when unions make demands unrelated to pay or work conditions, but to restricting competition. See LA teachers union and their demands to cap charter schools. This is a direct demand to punish teachers who are not part of unions. This is a stark reminder that unions is a "fight coercion with more coercion" solution. It is important to remember that economic coerciveness is a result of overwhelming scale and bargaining power of one party over another. Kickstarter is a 100-ish headcount company located in Brooklyn, NY. This is hardly a captive employee pool compared to say, factory workers in a small town whose entire economy is centered around that one factory. If Kickstarter workers unionize, I don't not believe it will results in two sides with equal bargaining power, Kickstarter will be in a substantially weaker position. If Kickstarter refuses the offer, all function ceases. If the workers refuses the offer, they have the robust job market of Brooklyn NY to fall back on.
tylerl 8y ago
Unions don't exist for the employees' benefit, they exist for the union's benefit. There's a big ol difference, and because of their protected status, unions get away with a lot of really horrifying behavior. I've worked with several unions in different industries, and I can say pretty categorically that unions are brazenly unethical. Unions may sometimes improve working conditions and pay, but only in the sense that the mafia reduces crime. You have to start out from a truly horrifying place for their bargain to be any better, and in taking that deal you're giving up on ever having a healthy environment.
- mcv 8y ago
  Employees shouldn't join unions that don't exist for their benefit. And if a union doesn't benefit the workers, they should leave and start a new union. This happened years ago in Netherland: many railway employees weren't happy with something their union (part of the largest union federation) negotiated for them, so they left and started a competing union to negotiate for them instead. Messy, embarrassing for the big union, but it solved the problem. Not sure if the alternative union still exists or if it merged back into the large union again.
- CarlSchmitt 8y ago
  Union electrician here...I can annectdotally counter your "categorical" claim...have you ever worked in a skilled trade union?

by bargl 8y ago

edoo 8y ago

Having competing unions is an interesting concept. It may be a hard sell because technically the primary legal ability of a union is prevent competition among the workers. If you are a rock star you can't get hired at a greater wage. If you are a nepotism cling on you can't get fired or demoted.

jononor 8y ago
In Norway, each employee freely chooses their union. It is common in some industries that people belong to several different unions, and that some are not part of union. And usually they are based on particular profession, like engineering or economics. Unions then have more a passive role, offering services like free legal representation, better insurance deals, and training. Only some areas like teachers seem to have near-homogeneous membership and unions taking an active role. And this seems mostly to be because 90% have the same employeer - the state (public education). Because of standardized working terms (incl salary), they have to be negotiated centrally.
- criddell 8y ago
  Why does there have to be standard working terms? In the US professional baseball, hockey, and football have player unions and things like salary are negotiated per person.
  - SimonPStevens 8y ago
    They aren't standard working terms because of the unions. They are standard working terms because all teachers (who work in state schools at least) are employed by the local education authorities, who in turn set their working terms and salaries based on the government's department for education. So for teachers there is no individual salary negotiation, it's all decided centrally by the government and you either take it, or move to the private schools of which there are a lot less. (This is UK for me, but based on what op said, I think it's similar)
    - Aeolun 8y ago
      This is not to say that individual teachers cannot earn more or less, just that the scale on which they are being paid has been decided in advance, right?
    - jononor 8y ago
      Yep very similar. There is built in some automatic compensation for years of service, and the payscale is inflation adjusted. For a given position, there is a small range of possible salaries. So it is in principle possible to have a bit of independently negotiated salary. In practice almost everyone falls very close to each-other.
  - LanceH 8y ago
    Percentage of revenue going to the players has already been negotiated. It should also be noted that the players union represents a tiny portion of the actual employees involved and they actively negotiate money away from other employees.
isk517 8y ago
You've hit the nail on the head. I've seen both sides of the union coin. Unions need competition just as much as business do to function properly. My father is a trades person and when one union treated him badly he left for another one cause he had options. His union has also saved him from a lot of BS that companies he's worked for have tried to pull. Alternatively when I was a student I worked a part time job where I was forced to be a part of a union with no options. Ever week they took money from my paycheck and the one time I had a grievance they pretty much ignored me. Making sure the girl that showed up hung over and vomiting every 2nd shift was not fired was more important because seniority.

conanbatt 8y ago

> It should be used to create fair workplaces. You can't get good results through bad means. Unions are fundamentally a destructive endeavor. Their use is practical but limited: the best thing unions ever fought was the state, not employers.

megy 8y ago
> You can't get good results through bad means. Like a 5 day work week from 6 days? Like 8 hour work days? Like safe conditions for workers. All things unions helped deliver.
- conanbatt 8y ago
  Higher worker productivity achieved those things, not unions. Those gains so-called 'worker rights' were achieved in countries without unions as well. It's also unmentioned how much unemployment and misery unions also caused in this narrative.
  - fwip 8y ago
    Higher worker productivity naturally leads to shortened hours? No wonder we've all got 15 hour workweeks now.
    - conanbatt 8y ago
      Better be damn sure about that. If you want to live like a worker in the 1850's, you can work 1/5 what they worked.
  - kennywinker 8y ago
    No - higher productivity made it _possible_ but unionized workers fought and died to make it actually happen.
    - conanbatt 8y ago
      Who told you that; unions?

drilldrive 8y ago

I honestly wonder (without knowing much of the history mind you) if the USA purposely made unions awful as to promote the mindset "I would rather not have a union" amongst the workers. For sure unions are terrible here, but it seems quite strange to have anti-competitive laws for unions when the USA is near-built on capitalism and the free market.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

my_username_is_ 8y ago

I agree strongly. Unions don't have to undermine the productivity of a company (and really they shouldn't). A few things that a modern union could do: 1. Place limits on expected working hours. Let the management know that working above 40 hours a week, or needing to be on-call 24/7 should not be the norm. Let management know that using all your vacation time should be the norm. Set minimum amounts of vacation time for people to take, when a company advertises "Unlimited PTO". 2. Fight for minimum cost-of-living increases, presumably tied to a fair metric such as the CPI in an area. Every company that I have worked for has had a hard limit on the raises that you can earn each year--usually around 3%. This is typically close to or just above inflation. 3. Collectively hold the company leadership accountable for their actions. When management doesn't act in a professional way, they should be held accountable in the same way that someone lower on the corporate ladder would be. 'Unprofessional' behavior could be anything like sexual harassment, being physically aggressive, etc. We've all seen this first-hand or heard about it; typically HR won't get involved because it's easier to make the rank-and-file worker change divisions or leave, than to have the upper management change. 4. Place limits on executive pay relative to worker pay. Today a CEO makes hundreds of times more than your average rank-and-file worker. This multiple is only increasing. A union could fight executive pay increases without commensurate increases to worker pay. A few things that modern unions don't have to do: 1. Push for equal pay among everyone. I think we can all acknowledge that knowledge-workers don't all contribute to projects with the same level of effectiveness. I know some of my coworkers are better at their jobs than I am--and I'm okay with them getting paid more than me. Because we aren't just a cog in a machine, it doesn't make sense to treat each other as directly replaceable parts. 2. Encourage workers to limit their productivity, for fear of eliminating jobs. The union should win when the company wins. The union should do its part to help the company create more value for the world, and make sure that the employees get a fair share of that value. I think it comes down to being fair versus being equal. Workers used to be equal labor substitutes, so the unions treated everyone as equal. Workers are no longer equal, but unions haven't evolved to the new business realities. For what it's worth, I'm not a software engineer and I don't work in the Bay area. My city doesn't have many job opportunities, so I don't have the luxury of just leaving a company without also packing up and moving to a new area. For my coworkers who own houses or have a family, this is particularly hard. A union could help us create a better working environment, but many people have this idea of what a unions are based on a system of unions that was based in 19th and 20th century manufacturing.

drb91 8y ago

> fair workplaces What is this? EDIT: I don't mean to snark, it just seems like an inherently utopian ideal. Material concerns should dictate workspace conflict resolution. I certainly agree with your overall statement.

bargl 8y ago
Yikes, I read my original post and I think yeah, you're right. I mean "more fair workplace". And fair being for both employee and employer. That's why I think competition would be important, as long as we can avoid a race to the bottom situation it might make unions more relevant.
- repolfx 8y ago
  I think what he/she was getting at is that "fair" isn't defined (by you). My notion of a fair workplace is one where people's pay and rewards are entirely determined by their skill and merit, as judged by the management. But lots of other people and especially unions define it totally differently: one where people's pay is determined by tenure, their union contract or their gender/race. That seems to be what these Kickstarter employees want. Without a clear definition the word 'fair' can be interpreted as having polar opposite meanings.
  - notSupplied 8y ago
    What really disappoints me is when unions make demands unrelated to pay or work conditions, but to restricting competition. See LA teachers union and their demands to cap charter schools. This is a direct demand to punish teachers who are not part of unions. This is a stark reminder that unions is a "fight coercion with more coercion" solution. It is important to remember that economic coerciveness is a result of overwhelming scale and bargaining power of one party over another. Kickstarter is a 100-ish headcount company located in Brooklyn, NY. This is hardly a captive employee pool compared to say, factory workers in a small town whose entire economy is centered around that one factory. If Kickstarter workers unionize, I don't not believe it will results in two sides with equal bargaining power, Kickstarter will be in a substantially weaker position. If Kickstarter refuses the offer, all function ceases. If the workers refuses the offer, they have the robust job market of Brooklyn NY to fall back on.

tylerl 8y ago

Unions don't exist for the employees' benefit, they exist for the union's benefit. There's a big ol difference, and because of their protected status, unions get away with a lot of really horrifying behavior. I've worked with several unions in different industries, and I can say pretty categorically that unions are brazenly unethical. Unions may sometimes improve working conditions and pay, but only in the sense that the mafia reduces crime. You have to start out from a truly horrifying place for their bargain to be any better, and in taking that deal you're giving up on ever having a healthy environment.

mcv 8y ago
Employees shouldn't join unions that don't exist for their benefit. And if a union doesn't benefit the workers, they should leave and start a new union. This happened years ago in Netherland: many railway employees weren't happy with something their union (part of the largest union federation) negotiated for them, so they left and started a competing union to negotiate for them instead. Messy, embarrassing for the big union, but it solved the problem. Not sure if the alternative union still exists or if it merged back into the large union again.
CarlSchmitt 8y ago
Union electrician here...I can annectdotally counter your "categorical" claim...have you ever worked in a skilled trade union?