11 ms·

Why? I would argue rhat the consumer might get harmed (higher prices) or the business (higher wage costs) but the employee? How?

kortilla 5y ago
Because US-style unions are bad for top performers. Incompetent employees don’t get fired and seniority takes priority over skills. Overall, this encourages everyone to act in the bare minimum fashion and the business will suffer when pitted against a motivated workforce at a competitor. Unless the business has a very big moat, it will collapse under the union bloat.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > US-style unions are bad for top performers Not necessarily. It just institutionalises office politics. If you’re in a customer-facing role, the skills that make you successful at lobbying customers and lobbying your union might be identical.
- jjeaff 5y ago
  Is the screen actor's guild a US style union? Because it seems to be working just fine for their top performers.
  - flir 5y ago
    Every counterexample will be a special case for some reason. Police unions?
    - legutierr 5y ago
      Police officers seem on an individual level to be quite happy with their unions.
      - throwaway894345 5y ago
        Society on the other hand, less so.
    - JohnWhigham 5y ago
      Seeing as police won't hire you if your IQ is too high, top performers aren't really a concern for them.
  - syshum 5y ago
    No, it is not. SAG is in no way the norm when it comes to US Labor employment unions.
    - ethanbond 5y ago
      Why so? Is it structurally different?
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    Film stars are their own brand. People will go see the new Owen Wilson movie but they won’t buy software just because it’s built by Frank the SWE. This isn’t a good comparison IMO.
    - someguydave 5y ago
      I would buy software built by Frank the SWE if he was good. Why can’t I find authorship information for software?
      - ghaff 5y ago
        Significant software is rarely an individual effort. Same with movies of course but a film star can have an outsized impact. A lot of software does often have a credits splash screen somewhere, if it's open source you can probably see contributions on GitHub, etc. Game designers are fairly well known even if all the coders aren't.
      - alisonkisk 5y ago
        why do you think you can't? people can talk about what they work on. You can buy John Carmack products.
    - emptyparadise 5y ago
      I'd buy software written by Fabrice Bellard.
  - username90 5y ago
    Top performers doesn't like SAG, they'd prefer not to be in it but SAG forces them to pay their union fees and not take non-union contracts anyway since most big budget movies are union shops. And you can't compare professions where you get paid for fame with professions where you get paid for performance. It is really hard to prevent famous people from making loads of cash, but it is very easy to prevent high performers from getting a higher salary than their peers as both companies and unions would prefer that.
    - criddell 5y ago
      Unions for professional athletes seem to have figured out how to get paid for performance.
- quicklime 5y ago
  Unions will never take root in the tech industry because the workers see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed top performers :) Even Amazon FC workers, and SV employees who had their wages suppressed by illegal collusion, it seems.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    In Europe they do.
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      In Europe tech workers also make ~40% less than American tech workers after taxes, retirement/pension, and healthcare. I’m sure that’s not entirely attributable to unions, (and I would genuinely be interested in understanding the full cause of the disparity) but I imagine it plays a role.
      - pjmlp 5y ago
        I am quite happy with my 40h week, extra pay for overtime and weekends work, 30 day vacation, health care and retirement, no need for extra 40%.
        username90 5y ago
        You don't need to be in a union to get that though, you don't even need to be in a profession that has a union in any company to get that.
        pjmlp 5y ago
        If you are lucky, here mostly everyone gets it.
        throwaway894345 5y ago
        Again, the benefit is standard among tech workers here as well. We can still appreciate Europe without the pretense that it is better than America for every category of citizen. No need for the defensiveness.
- adrianN 5y ago
  I don't know how it is in the US, but here in Germany unions are democratic entities. They are pretty much exactly what (the actively voting subset of) their members want them to be.
- Frondo 5y ago
  The NFL Players League and the Screen Actors Guild do not operate this way. Their top performers negotiate significantly higher salaries for themselves (check out what Tom Cruise is getting for a film) while retaining the protections of the guild. Why wouldn't organized labor in software build their unions the same way?
ralusek 5y ago
Have you ever worked for a union? It's just another entity that you have to negotiate with, except not only are they a self interested entity like your employer, but they also average out your interests within the context of their other members. It's good if you were on the bottom half of the distribution and you don't value independence/personal leverage. If you are a talented individual who is able to make your worth known to a self interested employer, such that you can typically negotiate higher pay, or choose to work on specific things, at specific hours, etc, unions can be extremely constraining. They often have arbitrary systems in place of meritocracies, where a position you might be better suited for, which your employer would prefer to have you do, will instead go to someone with seniority, or someone who has played the union political game better than you. In other words, it's just another interested party that gets inserted as a middle man between you and your employer. If you weren't lacking in leverage, which most engineers are not, you're unlikely to find the upside.
- realityking 5y ago
  > If you are a talented individual who is able to make your worth known to a self interested employer, such that you can typically negotiate higher pay, or choose to work on specific things, at specific hours, etc, unions can be extremely constraining. I’ve never worked in an Amazon Warehouse but I don’t think there’s any room to negotiate any of that - no matter how good you are, you’re still a replaceable cog to Amazon.
  - syshum 5y ago
    Everyone is replaceable, this is fact and people need to recognize this fact However even roles where the skill set is filled by more people a good worker, that shows up on time, has few absences, performs the job with limited errors, and has higher productivity then other members will be valued more by the company, and (in a non-union setting) often be giving more wage increased, promotions etc In a union setting however none of that matters, everyone is on the exact same contract, and the pay is often determined by tenure not performance.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    Which is why Amazon Warehouse workers are a good target for unions, while tech workers are not. If amazon figures out a way to measure productivity of warehouse workers and reward the better ones, then suddenly they are not a good target of unions. Unions work when people are all equal in output. Assembly lines are only as fast the line, it doesn't matter how much faster you can put that bolt in the hole than the next guy: it just means you have more time to wait for the next widget to come before you can put the bolt in the hole, so you can't be worth more than the guy who barely gets done in time (and the guy who is a little slower needs to be fired)
BeFlatXIII 5y ago
The stereotypical anti-union case are rules that are about making work for other employees rather than providing higher wages and shorter hours. Think “you’re not allowed to plug that in: that’s a job for the lighting Union”
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
Decreased managerial discretion and increased rigidity in assignment and pay. Obviously this is a doubled edged sword. As long as you hit whatever metrics the agreement says you're gonna be tracked by you'll say employed and get your scheduled raises. People can be real jerks to everyone around them and cause all sorts of problems while still doing whatever their on-paper job duties are. The guy who wants to work his butt off make everyone happy and pivot that built up goodwill into a quick promotion or internal transfer to a different role is usually SOL in those kinds of workplaces.

kortilla 5y ago

Because US-style unions are bad for top performers. Incompetent employees don’t get fired and seniority takes priority over skills. Overall, this encourages everyone to act in the bare minimum fashion and the business will suffer when pitted against a motivated workforce at a competitor. Unless the business has a very big moat, it will collapse under the union bloat.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> US-style unions are bad for top performers Not necessarily. It just institutionalises office politics. If you’re in a customer-facing role, the skills that make you successful at lobbying customers and lobbying your union might be identical.
jjeaff 5y ago
Is the screen actor's guild a US style union? Because it seems to be working just fine for their top performers.
- flir 5y ago
  Every counterexample will be a special case for some reason. Police unions?
  - legutierr 5y ago
    Police officers seem on an individual level to be quite happy with their unions.
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      Society on the other hand, less so.
  - JohnWhigham 5y ago
    Seeing as police won't hire you if your IQ is too high, top performers aren't really a concern for them.
- syshum 5y ago
  No, it is not. SAG is in no way the norm when it comes to US Labor employment unions.
  - ethanbond 5y ago
    Why so? Is it structurally different?
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  Film stars are their own brand. People will go see the new Owen Wilson movie but they won’t buy software just because it’s built by Frank the SWE. This isn’t a good comparison IMO.
  - someguydave 5y ago
    I would buy software built by Frank the SWE if he was good. Why can’t I find authorship information for software?
    - ghaff 5y ago
      Significant software is rarely an individual effort. Same with movies of course but a film star can have an outsized impact. A lot of software does often have a credits splash screen somewhere, if it's open source you can probably see contributions on GitHub, etc. Game designers are fairly well known even if all the coders aren't.
    - alisonkisk 5y ago
      why do you think you can't? people can talk about what they work on. You can buy John Carmack products.
  - emptyparadise 5y ago
    I'd buy software written by Fabrice Bellard.
- username90 5y ago
  Top performers doesn't like SAG, they'd prefer not to be in it but SAG forces them to pay their union fees and not take non-union contracts anyway since most big budget movies are union shops. And you can't compare professions where you get paid for fame with professions where you get paid for performance. It is really hard to prevent famous people from making loads of cash, but it is very easy to prevent high performers from getting a higher salary than their peers as both companies and unions would prefer that.
  - criddell 5y ago
    Unions for professional athletes seem to have figured out how to get paid for performance.
quicklime 5y ago
Unions will never take root in the tech industry because the workers see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed top performers :) Even Amazon FC workers, and SV employees who had their wages suppressed by illegal collusion, it seems.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  In Europe they do.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    In Europe tech workers also make ~40% less than American tech workers after taxes, retirement/pension, and healthcare. I’m sure that’s not entirely attributable to unions, (and I would genuinely be interested in understanding the full cause of the disparity) but I imagine it plays a role.
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      I am quite happy with my 40h week, extra pay for overtime and weekends work, 30 day vacation, health care and retirement, no need for extra 40%.
      - username90 5y ago
        You don't need to be in a union to get that though, you don't even need to be in a profession that has a union in any company to get that.
        pjmlp 5y ago
        If you are lucky, here mostly everyone gets it.
        throwaway894345 5y ago
        Again, the benefit is standard among tech workers here as well. We can still appreciate Europe without the pretense that it is better than America for every category of citizen. No need for the defensiveness.
adrianN 5y ago
I don't know how it is in the US, but here in Germany unions are democratic entities. They are pretty much exactly what (the actively voting subset of) their members want them to be.
Frondo 5y ago
The NFL Players League and the Screen Actors Guild do not operate this way. Their top performers negotiate significantly higher salaries for themselves (check out what Tom Cruise is getting for a film) while retaining the protections of the guild. Why wouldn't organized labor in software build their unions the same way?

ralusek 5y ago

Have you ever worked for a union? It's just another entity that you have to negotiate with, except not only are they a self interested entity like your employer, but they also average out your interests within the context of their other members. It's good if you were on the bottom half of the distribution and you don't value independence/personal leverage. If you are a talented individual who is able to make your worth known to a self interested employer, such that you can typically negotiate higher pay, or choose to work on specific things, at specific hours, etc, unions can be extremely constraining. They often have arbitrary systems in place of meritocracies, where a position you might be better suited for, which your employer would prefer to have you do, will instead go to someone with seniority, or someone who has played the union political game better than you. In other words, it's just another interested party that gets inserted as a middle man between you and your employer. If you weren't lacking in leverage, which most engineers are not, you're unlikely to find the upside.

realityking 5y ago
> If you are a talented individual who is able to make your worth known to a self interested employer, such that you can typically negotiate higher pay, or choose to work on specific things, at specific hours, etc, unions can be extremely constraining. I’ve never worked in an Amazon Warehouse but I don’t think there’s any room to negotiate any of that - no matter how good you are, you’re still a replaceable cog to Amazon.
- syshum 5y ago
  Everyone is replaceable, this is fact and people need to recognize this fact However even roles where the skill set is filled by more people a good worker, that shows up on time, has few absences, performs the job with limited errors, and has higher productivity then other members will be valued more by the company, and (in a non-union setting) often be giving more wage increased, promotions etc In a union setting however none of that matters, everyone is on the exact same contract, and the pay is often determined by tenure not performance.
- bluGill 5y ago
  Which is why Amazon Warehouse workers are a good target for unions, while tech workers are not. If amazon figures out a way to measure productivity of warehouse workers and reward the better ones, then suddenly they are not a good target of unions. Unions work when people are all equal in output. Assembly lines are only as fast the line, it doesn't matter how much faster you can put that bolt in the hole than the next guy: it just means you have more time to wait for the next widget to come before you can put the bolt in the hole, so you can't be worth more than the guy who barely gets done in time (and the guy who is a little slower needs to be fired)

BeFlatXIII 5y ago

The stereotypical anti-union case are rules that are about making work for other employees rather than providing higher wages and shorter hours. Think “you’re not allowed to plug that in: that’s a job for the lighting Union”

throwaway0a5e 5y ago

Decreased managerial discretion and increased rigidity in assignment and pay. Obviously this is a doubled edged sword. As long as you hit whatever metrics the agreement says you're gonna be tracked by you'll say employed and get your scheduled raises. People can be real jerks to everyone around them and cause all sorts of problems while still doing whatever their on-paper job duties are. The guy who wants to work his butt off make everyone happy and pivot that built up goodwill into a quick promotion or internal transfer to a different role is usually SOL in those kinds of workplaces.