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American unions are far from perfect, but I feel like you’re drastically understating the good they did for American workers during their heyday.

garciasn 5y ago
I think everyone understands the historical good unions did for the average worker. But, particularly for workers who most often frequent sites like HN, unions have not had much of a positive impact, contemporarily.
- lsiebert 5y ago
  Yeah but only one tech company has a union, right? And the workers there seem to think it's valuable. Here's the oral history I've been listening to. https://engelberg-center-live.simplecast.com/episodes https://engelberg-center-live.simplecast.com/episodes
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  Perhaps that’s less about unions becoming less good, and more about the collapse of unionization rates? Union membership is at an all time low, Occam’s razor says that the fact that most people aren’t in a union is the most likely explanation for why unions haven’t don’t people anything good recently.
  - garciasn 5y ago
    Possibly, but since we’re hypothesizing: it could potentially be that unions are better suited for aiding those working in some professions and not others. Perhaps highly educated knowledge workers can better manage salary/benefits and quality of work life better than a slate of hired guns? Maybe because the skill sets and work output is generally more unique, knowledge workers can more easily move jobs than those who work in traditional union shops?
    - ashtonkem 5y ago
      > it could potentially be that unions are better suited for aiding those working in some professions and not others. Possible, but unionization rates are also down in industries that used to be unionized, such as manufacturing. This strongly implies that the issue is less “unions are bad” and more “unions were good, so bosses fought to get rid of them”. Companies wouldn’t need to hire anti-union firms if unions weren’t at least attractive to laborers, right? After all, it’s not like life in those sectors has gotten so comfortable that laborers don’t think they need unions anymore. > Perhaps highly educated knowledge workers can better manage salary/benefits and quality of work life better than a slate of hired guns? Huh? I think you’re calling union reps “hired guns”, which is deeply ironic given the history of bosses hiring actual men with actual guns to actually shoot labor activists. > Maybe because the skill sets and work output is generally more unique, knowledge workers can more easily move jobs than those who work in traditional union shops? I mean, unequal professions do unionize all the time. Take a look at professional sports. Unions are extremely useful in negotiating between labor and capital about things other than just pay. Length of contracts, benefits, safety regulations, etc. Regardless, it’s pretty silly to argue that unions are useless because “they’ve had no impact” for this crowd when this crowd has never really had the opportunity to join a union. Hell, even quitting software and finding a union shop to join would actually be very hard in any field, given the low rates of unionization in this country.
      - RHSeeger 5y ago
        > unions were good, so bosses fought to get rid of them It's also worth noting that "unions were good" doesn't necessarily mean "unions are good". It's entirely possible that most of the things unions can do to help works has already been accomplished and enshrined in law (osha, breaks, overtime, etc). While I believe that there's still good unions can accomplish, the cap on how much good is much lower than it used to be.
        ashtonkem 5y ago
        That’s plausible if you ignore pay. Pay is the one area where it’s self evident that something has gone horribly awry, which makes it hard to accept the “labor won” argument. Obviously other factors can be at play here, but it’s certainly not the case that everything is honky dory and that’s why workers stopped unionizing. The decline of union membership over this time frame is not conclusive, but it’s something worth investigating! Well that and there’s Frito Lay workers striking to end “suicide shifts” that literally killed people from exhaustion. It’s kind of hard to argue that labor won these issues when they’re dragging the corpse of a worker off the assembly line of the potato chip factory after working 12 hour days for weeks on end without a day off finally killed them. That it took a strike to fix that also implies that labor law needs some more work.
  - RHSeeger 5y ago
    I don't think Occam's razor says any such thing. I see, all the time, first hand accounts of unions acting in ways that cause harm to nearly everyone except those in the union, and only actually benefit a select few. Examples like - not being allowed to plug in your monitor at conference center or vacuum your area; instead needing to pay a union member a minimum of 30 minutes of time for 2 minutes of work. - union members verbally and even physically abusing people that are just minding their own business, trying not to get involved; you're either with them or against them. Unions have done great good for the American worker, and continue to do so in many cases. But they also do great harm and, when leadership is looking out for itself over it's members, can provide very little practical benefit. It's a rough topic because it's VERY polarizing. It seems like the vast majority of people fall into 1 of 2 camps; they either love everything about unions and can't see the negatives, or vice versa. It's very hard to improve on the situation when that's the case.
    - ashtonkem 5y ago
      I’m sorry that you’ve had some bad experiences, but a few personal anecdotes are not persuasive about such large scale concerns. Obviously seeing someone physically abused by a union member is bad, but “unions are bad” does not logically follow from that experience.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
rdtwo 5y ago
The American union is pretty bad it seems to represent the lobby arm and is totally out of touch with employee needs. It’s not a local org of your peers it feels like just another rent seeking corporate entity.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  [Citation Needed]
  - rdtwo 5y ago
    Personal experience. All our local unions got sold out by union headquarters when it came time for contract negotiations. They did things like surprise votes over holiday weekend and negotiating contracts without involvement from local reps
    - ashtonkem 5y ago
      How many unions are we talking about here? One, a dozen, a hundred? Is it enough to draw a reasonable pattern from, or are we in “I had a bad experience with a union therefore all unions are bad” territory?
      - rdtwo 5y ago
        Teachers union got sabotaged, machinist union got sabotaged, engineers union same deal. Different kinds of tricks but it seems pretty consistent story. Big Union hq negotiates a contract that’s not great for local members but skirts by at 51% vote under suspicion conditions. I’m not anti union. I mean union do provide slightly better pay conditions for members but they seem to be super corrupt as well. They are like a mafia, they provide services for members and Mafia members do slightly better but it no co-op.
        ashtonkem 5y ago
        So two private sector unions and a public union. Not exactly a strong base to build a trend from.

garciasn 5y ago

I think everyone understands the historical good unions did for the average worker. But, particularly for workers who most often frequent sites like HN, unions have not had much of a positive impact, contemporarily.

lsiebert 5y ago
Yeah but only one tech company has a union, right? And the workers there seem to think it's valuable. Here's the oral history I've been listening to. https://engelberg-center-live.simplecast.com/episodes https://engelberg-center-live.simplecast.com/episodes
ashtonkem 5y ago
Perhaps that’s less about unions becoming less good, and more about the collapse of unionization rates? Union membership is at an all time low, Occam’s razor says that the fact that most people aren’t in a union is the most likely explanation for why unions haven’t don’t people anything good recently.
- garciasn 5y ago
  Possibly, but since we’re hypothesizing: it could potentially be that unions are better suited for aiding those working in some professions and not others. Perhaps highly educated knowledge workers can better manage salary/benefits and quality of work life better than a slate of hired guns? Maybe because the skill sets and work output is generally more unique, knowledge workers can more easily move jobs than those who work in traditional union shops?
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    > it could potentially be that unions are better suited for aiding those working in some professions and not others. Possible, but unionization rates are also down in industries that used to be unionized, such as manufacturing. This strongly implies that the issue is less “unions are bad” and more “unions were good, so bosses fought to get rid of them”. Companies wouldn’t need to hire anti-union firms if unions weren’t at least attractive to laborers, right? After all, it’s not like life in those sectors has gotten so comfortable that laborers don’t think they need unions anymore. > Perhaps highly educated knowledge workers can better manage salary/benefits and quality of work life better than a slate of hired guns? Huh? I think you’re calling union reps “hired guns”, which is deeply ironic given the history of bosses hiring actual men with actual guns to actually shoot labor activists. > Maybe because the skill sets and work output is generally more unique, knowledge workers can more easily move jobs than those who work in traditional union shops? I mean, unequal professions do unionize all the time. Take a look at professional sports. Unions are extremely useful in negotiating between labor and capital about things other than just pay. Length of contracts, benefits, safety regulations, etc. Regardless, it’s pretty silly to argue that unions are useless because “they’ve had no impact” for this crowd when this crowd has never really had the opportunity to join a union. Hell, even quitting software and finding a union shop to join would actually be very hard in any field, given the low rates of unionization in this country.
    - RHSeeger 5y ago
      > unions were good, so bosses fought to get rid of them It's also worth noting that "unions were good" doesn't necessarily mean "unions are good". It's entirely possible that most of the things unions can do to help works has already been accomplished and enshrined in law (osha, breaks, overtime, etc). While I believe that there's still good unions can accomplish, the cap on how much good is much lower than it used to be.
      - ashtonkem 5y ago
        That’s plausible if you ignore pay. Pay is the one area where it’s self evident that something has gone horribly awry, which makes it hard to accept the “labor won” argument. Obviously other factors can be at play here, but it’s certainly not the case that everything is honky dory and that’s why workers stopped unionizing. The decline of union membership over this time frame is not conclusive, but it’s something worth investigating! Well that and there’s Frito Lay workers striking to end “suicide shifts” that literally killed people from exhaustion. It’s kind of hard to argue that labor won these issues when they’re dragging the corpse of a worker off the assembly line of the potato chip factory after working 12 hour days for weeks on end without a day off finally killed them. That it took a strike to fix that also implies that labor law needs some more work.
- RHSeeger 5y ago
  I don't think Occam's razor says any such thing. I see, all the time, first hand accounts of unions acting in ways that cause harm to nearly everyone except those in the union, and only actually benefit a select few. Examples like - not being allowed to plug in your monitor at conference center or vacuum your area; instead needing to pay a union member a minimum of 30 minutes of time for 2 minutes of work. - union members verbally and even physically abusing people that are just minding their own business, trying not to get involved; you're either with them or against them. Unions have done great good for the American worker, and continue to do so in many cases. But they also do great harm and, when leadership is looking out for itself over it's members, can provide very little practical benefit. It's a rough topic because it's VERY polarizing. It seems like the vast majority of people fall into 1 of 2 camps; they either love everything about unions and can't see the negatives, or vice versa. It's very hard to improve on the situation when that's the case.
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    I’m sorry that you’ve had some bad experiences, but a few personal anecdotes are not persuasive about such large scale concerns. Obviously seeing someone physically abused by a union member is bad, but “unions are bad” does not logically follow from that experience.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]

rdtwo 5y ago

The American union is pretty bad it seems to represent the lobby arm and is totally out of touch with employee needs. It’s not a local org of your peers it feels like just another rent seeking corporate entity.

ashtonkem 5y ago
[Citation Needed]
- rdtwo 5y ago
  Personal experience. All our local unions got sold out by union headquarters when it came time for contract negotiations. They did things like surprise votes over holiday weekend and negotiating contracts without involvement from local reps
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    How many unions are we talking about here? One, a dozen, a hundred? Is it enough to draw a reasonable pattern from, or are we in “I had a bad experience with a union therefore all unions are bad” territory?
    - rdtwo 5y ago
      Teachers union got sabotaged, machinist union got sabotaged, engineers union same deal. Different kinds of tricks but it seems pretty consistent story. Big Union hq negotiates a contract that’s not great for local members but skirts by at 51% vote under suspicion conditions. I’m not anti union. I mean union do provide slightly better pay conditions for members but they seem to be super corrupt as well. They are like a mafia, they provide services for members and Mafia members do slightly better but it no co-op.
      - ashtonkem 5y ago
        So two private sector unions and a public union. Not exactly a strong base to build a trend from.