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Collective bargaining is not at all incompatible with a "free market." It's just a smarter way to negotiate (more power collectively) and the end result is a co

Collective bargaining is not at all incompatible with a "free market." It's just a smarter way to negotiate (more power collectively) and the end result is a contract between a company and a group of workers. It's not like, say, a minimum wage where government sets a price.

mbostleman 5y ago
>>Collective bargaining is not at all incompatible with a "free market.">> For what it's worth, collective bargaining is, from an economic perspective, a monopoly. In anti trust terms it would constitute an illegal combination in trade if it weren't for statutory exemptions that explicitly give it a pass.
- danaris 5y ago
  It's not really any more a monopoly than the business itself is. The business/management is a group of people acting under a common umbrella seeking (naïvely, and oversimplifiedly) to trade the least money possible for the most production possible. The employees/union are a group of people acting under a common umbrella seeking (naïvely, and oversimplifiedly) to trade the least production possible for the most money possible. A union seeks to even the playing field between management and labor. It's not a monopoly unless the local union is affiliated with a global union that includes the vast majority of all workers in that particular field.
  - golergka 5y ago
    If I cannot work for a company without joining a union, it is a monopoly. What if I'm a junior worker on a labour market that is saturated by more experienced and skilled workers, and lowering my rate is the only chance to make it in the industry that I have? Existing union and it's members are my natural competitors.
    - danaris 5y ago
      If you're a junior worker in a field dominated by unions, I'm not sure how you can have "rate" to lower that hasn't already been set based on the market rate—which is already taking those unions into account. And the evidence is overwhelming that unionized workers make more than non-union workers of equivalent skills/qualifications. So it sounds like this boils down, once again, to the argument, "I am amazing and exceptional, and I'm afraid that if there were unions, I wouldn't be able to get more money for being amazing and exceptional." First of all, this argument cannot be true for the majority of workers—by definition, most people in any given field are not exceptional. So even if it would benefit you to not have a union, it would not benefit most people. Second of all, there is absolutely no requirement for unions to prevent compensation from being increased based on actual performance. Some unions may have strict seniority-based pay schedules, but not all that currently exist do, and if we were to create a brand new union for tech workers (or just for game devs), then the people actually forming that union would be the ones to decide what its priorities would be.
    - throwaway2048 5y ago
      you also cannot work for a company without working for said company (and their management) Are they also a monopoly?
      - CyanBird 5y ago
        They are a monopsony rather than a monopoly Joan Robinson studied labor and monopsony, her books are very illuminating for anyone interested
- Dracophoenix 5y ago
  Collective bargaining is more of a cartel (a labor cartel in this particular instance) than a monopoly. As one of the gp's pointed out, collective bargaining is not per se anti-free market (e.g. health insurance). Neither for that matter are cartels or monopolies so long as government interference remains absent. After all, free association is a right endowed to every market participants and it is a person's right to do as he/she will with it. I think the issue in this case relates more to national labor law creating uneven advantages for labor contra capital.
screye 5y ago
I actually elaborated on that in another comment in this thread. Unions are bureaucracy. Adding politics, people and power to any structure inherently adds inefficiencies. If individual bargaining is working just fine in an industry, then I would not push for collective bargaining. Because, it is tradeoff is between 'bridging the information asymmetry between how much power you think you command, vs what you actually command' and 'inefficiencies added by bureaucracy'. Gaming has clearly crossed that tradeoff threshold. IMO, big tech has not.
- manux 5y ago
  Inefficiencies aren't always bad. Efficiency, for example, is often the opposite of robustness. Many companies have learned that the hard way when COVID hit, even though they had an efficient supply chain and production pipeline, it was not robust.
  - screye 5y ago
    I guess part of it is just personal anecdotes. India was (democratically elected, but single party monopoly) socialist from 1945-1991. It is still pseudo-socialist in many senses. Watching how deeply these inefficiencies from bureaucracies plague us, has been genuinely angering. So yeah, I do come into it with personal priors which lead to be deeply suspicious of any unnecessary inefficiency. (emphasis on unnecessary. Your covid example clearly shows that the word necessary itself is subjectively evaluated)
    - yowlingcat 5y ago
      You're getting downvoted but you raise a fair point. Sometimes, the inefficiencies from bureaucracies don't trade off and create more robustness or greater scale. Sometimes they are purely extractive or arguably corrupt. With that said, is it really fair to call India pseudo-socialist? For all intents and purposes, India is closer to the EU and a region/confederation of nations than it is to a single country. One can say that inefficiencies from Indian bureaucracy plague the country, but that would be to treat India like a monolith, which it certainly is not. India is a panoply of genetic, cultural, and linguistic diversity -- a plurality, and one of the world's oldest democracies. Even so, India's growth remains blistering in real terms. Perhaps we see things a certain way because our finite lives exist in a certain point in history; but could our children or grandchildren see India the same way we see China today? It's personally hard to fathom that the answer is yes, but it's equally hard for me to fathom that the answer is no. In a way, I almost expect to be surprised.
stale2002 5y ago
Collective bargaining takes away my right to bargain for certain agreements for myself. That is definitely a free market restriction on my rights as a worker, to have a mutual agreement with that specific company.
- CyanBird 5y ago
  > Collective bargaining takes away my right to bargain for myself But it doesn't, you can choose to not be part of the union
  - stale2002 5y ago
    No, you missed the point. The union puts a limit on the contracts that I can make with the company. So I would be prevented from bargaining for certain contracts with a company. So me and this other company's mutual right to make an agreement would be limited by the union.
    - tovej 5y ago
      These limits are in your favor, you are free to negotiate contracts within the limits. I fail to see how the right to work for less pay than what others see as the absolute minimum fair pay is a right that's worth keeping. This is a bit like saying that criminal law takes away your right to be mugged, beaten, and murdered.
      - stale2002 5y ago
        > you are free to negotiate contracts within the limits. So then I am not free to negotiate, and me and this other company right to engage in a mutual agreement are prevented. Yeah, that's my point. > I fail to see how the right to work for less pay I get paid way way way more money than the average unionized tech worker, where they exist. So actually, my ability to negotiate for myself, outside of the restrictions of a union, has worked out pretty darn well for me. > the absolute minimum fair pay Oh that's funny. You aren't aware that union contracts cover much more things than just a minimum wage. The whole point is that many union provisions can be bad for many people and are not strict benefits for workers.

mbostleman 5y ago

>>Collective bargaining is not at all incompatible with a "free market.">> For what it's worth, collective bargaining is, from an economic perspective, a monopoly. In anti trust terms it would constitute an illegal combination in trade if it weren't for statutory exemptions that explicitly give it a pass.

danaris 5y ago
It's not really any more a monopoly than the business itself is. The business/management is a group of people acting under a common umbrella seeking (naïvely, and oversimplifiedly) to trade the least money possible for the most production possible. The employees/union are a group of people acting under a common umbrella seeking (naïvely, and oversimplifiedly) to trade the least production possible for the most money possible. A union seeks to even the playing field between management and labor. It's not a monopoly unless the local union is affiliated with a global union that includes the vast majority of all workers in that particular field.
- golergka 5y ago
  If I cannot work for a company without joining a union, it is a monopoly. What if I'm a junior worker on a labour market that is saturated by more experienced and skilled workers, and lowering my rate is the only chance to make it in the industry that I have? Existing union and it's members are my natural competitors.
  - danaris 5y ago
    If you're a junior worker in a field dominated by unions, I'm not sure how you can have "rate" to lower that hasn't already been set based on the market rate—which is already taking those unions into account. And the evidence is overwhelming that unionized workers make more than non-union workers of equivalent skills/qualifications. So it sounds like this boils down, once again, to the argument, "I am amazing and exceptional, and I'm afraid that if there were unions, I wouldn't be able to get more money for being amazing and exceptional." First of all, this argument cannot be true for the majority of workers—by definition, most people in any given field are not exceptional. So even if it would benefit you to not have a union, it would not benefit most people. Second of all, there is absolutely no requirement for unions to prevent compensation from being increased based on actual performance. Some unions may have strict seniority-based pay schedules, but not all that currently exist do, and if we were to create a brand new union for tech workers (or just for game devs), then the people actually forming that union would be the ones to decide what its priorities would be.
  - throwaway2048 5y ago
    you also cannot work for a company without working for said company (and their management) Are they also a monopoly?
    - CyanBird 5y ago
      They are a monopsony rather than a monopoly Joan Robinson studied labor and monopsony, her books are very illuminating for anyone interested
Dracophoenix 5y ago
Collective bargaining is more of a cartel (a labor cartel in this particular instance) than a monopoly. As one of the gp's pointed out, collective bargaining is not per se anti-free market (e.g. health insurance). Neither for that matter are cartels or monopolies so long as government interference remains absent. After all, free association is a right endowed to every market participants and it is a person's right to do as he/she will with it. I think the issue in this case relates more to national labor law creating uneven advantages for labor contra capital.

screye 5y ago

I actually elaborated on that in another comment in this thread. Unions are bureaucracy. Adding politics, people and power to any structure inherently adds inefficiencies. If individual bargaining is working just fine in an industry, then I would not push for collective bargaining. Because, it is tradeoff is between 'bridging the information asymmetry between how much power you think you command, vs what you actually command' and 'inefficiencies added by bureaucracy'. Gaming has clearly crossed that tradeoff threshold. IMO, big tech has not.

manux 5y ago
Inefficiencies aren't always bad. Efficiency, for example, is often the opposite of robustness. Many companies have learned that the hard way when COVID hit, even though they had an efficient supply chain and production pipeline, it was not robust.
- screye 5y ago
  I guess part of it is just personal anecdotes. India was (democratically elected, but single party monopoly) socialist from 1945-1991. It is still pseudo-socialist in many senses. Watching how deeply these inefficiencies from bureaucracies plague us, has been genuinely angering. So yeah, I do come into it with personal priors which lead to be deeply suspicious of any unnecessary inefficiency. (emphasis on unnecessary. Your covid example clearly shows that the word necessary itself is subjectively evaluated)
  - yowlingcat 5y ago
    You're getting downvoted but you raise a fair point. Sometimes, the inefficiencies from bureaucracies don't trade off and create more robustness or greater scale. Sometimes they are purely extractive or arguably corrupt. With that said, is it really fair to call India pseudo-socialist? For all intents and purposes, India is closer to the EU and a region/confederation of nations than it is to a single country. One can say that inefficiencies from Indian bureaucracy plague the country, but that would be to treat India like a monolith, which it certainly is not. India is a panoply of genetic, cultural, and linguistic diversity -- a plurality, and one of the world's oldest democracies. Even so, India's growth remains blistering in real terms. Perhaps we see things a certain way because our finite lives exist in a certain point in history; but could our children or grandchildren see India the same way we see China today? It's personally hard to fathom that the answer is yes, but it's equally hard for me to fathom that the answer is no. In a way, I almost expect to be surprised.

stale2002 5y ago

Collective bargaining takes away my right to bargain for certain agreements for myself. That is definitely a free market restriction on my rights as a worker, to have a mutual agreement with that specific company.

CyanBird 5y ago
> Collective bargaining takes away my right to bargain for myself But it doesn't, you can choose to not be part of the union
- stale2002 5y ago
  No, you missed the point. The union puts a limit on the contracts that I can make with the company. So I would be prevented from bargaining for certain contracts with a company. So me and this other company's mutual right to make an agreement would be limited by the union.
  - tovej 5y ago
    These limits are in your favor, you are free to negotiate contracts within the limits. I fail to see how the right to work for less pay than what others see as the absolute minimum fair pay is a right that's worth keeping. This is a bit like saying that criminal law takes away your right to be mugged, beaten, and murdered.
    - stale2002 5y ago
      > you are free to negotiate contracts within the limits. So then I am not free to negotiate, and me and this other company right to engage in a mutual agreement are prevented. Yeah, that's my point. > I fail to see how the right to work for less pay I get paid way way way more money than the average unionized tech worker, where they exist. So actually, my ability to negotiate for myself, outside of the restrictions of a union, has worked out pretty darn well for me. > the absolute minimum fair pay Oh that's funny. You aren't aware that union contracts cover much more things than just a minimum wage. The whole point is that many union provisions can be bad for many people and are not strict benefits for workers.