4 ms·

Ask HN: What Are Employee Unions?

• clintonb 7y ago
  What research have you done so far?
• notkaiho 7y ago
  "What is their benefit to an employer?" You, as a worker, are worried about a union's benefit to your employer rather than to yourself?
• antihero 7y ago
  The point of unions is that unlike in tech, where workers are in high demand and paid a silly amount and get company swag and ball pits or whatever so feel happy enough, in most industries and areas people are treated and paid as poorly as companies can get away with because they are expendable commoditised labour. Unions are historically a way of fighting for more rights (e.g. better wages, sick pay) for workers by collective organisation (i.e. pay us enough so we can eat, or we will all down tools and stop your factory doing anything). The arguments against unions are that they are too powerful and mean people who are poor at their job cannot be fired, but I would argue that they are very much still necessary because the nature of capitalism and employment hasn't change particularly much, and without them companies would absolutely start taking the piss as much as they possibly can because it is their function to extract capital from workers' labour as efficiently as possible. I would suggest that perhaps tech workers could join unions en-mass to fight for the rights of less privileged workers - ie if the cleaner can't eat or pay rent, you don't get your PRs merged, but I think that would take a level of altruism that is far beyond most people in this sector. You have to pay union dues because they will do things like cover people's wages during strikes, provide people legal support when they are being unfairly dismissed, etc.