4 ms·

Sorry, I use to work for GM under a union. When I left and started working in non-union businesses I never once said "I wish we had a union here.". Unions have

Sorry, I use to work for GM under a union. When I left and started working in non-union businesses I never once said "I wish we had a union here.". Unions have done a lot of good in the past, but for the last couple of decades they seem to be more organizations more interested in paying big paychecks to their own representatives.

runako 5y ago
This is interesting. Do you do the same kind of job that you did when you were a union employee? My understanding of unions is employers hate them in part because they make labor more expensive, which would seem to be exactly why one would want to be represented by a union. Is that not correct?
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  It depends on how much of that extra expense you can capture as your own pay and how much is dead weight costs (e.g. union overhead or additional costs imposed on employers), as well as how likely it is to mean you can't get a job in the first place. So it depends very much on things like overall economic growth, how the union cooperates with management, etc. In Europe, unions collaborate with management whereas US unions have historically been more adversarial. In the US, for example, managers can't be union members whereas in some places in Europe union reps have board seats and are partners with management in trying to get the company to grow.
  - runako 5y ago
    Quick stats check via Google shows that in the US, union workers earn ~11% more than non-union workers. Which would seem enough to warrant a modest membership fee. Also aligns with the management rhetoric that union labor & benefits are expensive and reason enough to move entire factories to the South to escape collective bargaining. (It does not make sense that they would do this to save the cost of union management's paychecks, the numbers are not big enough.) What I was trying to understand from the OP was what's missing from the picture and whether perhaps her role was somehow an outlier.
    - rsj_hn 5y ago
      By that logic, if we fired everyone earning below $20/hr, then the average wage of workers would go up, but that doesn't necessarily mean workers as a whole would be better off under that deal. Yes, the company with unionized workers pays 11% higher wages. It also hires fewer workers. By limiting employment to only workers earning that extra 11%, yes, those workers are doing well but overall employment is lower, there are deadweight losses to pay for the union fees, and that isn't necessarily a policy that can scale to the whole economy. This is why there are such problems with youth unemployment in nations with high unionization rates -- it's tougher to break into that labor market.
      - runako 5y ago
        Yes, obviously unions have problems scaling to the entire country. But I was specifically asking why someone (the OP) who is presumably earning 11% more would rather work in a non-union shop.
        rsj_hn 5y ago
        So think of the union as hiring someone to negotiate for you. there is option A: In option A, you are already being paid the market wage for your job. The job has a number on it for the wage. That number doesn't change. When you unionize every job with a low number disappers. Thus joining a union can only hurt you, because at best you stay where you are (but pay the union overhead). Nevertheless the jobs that are unionized earn 11% more. People who think of themselves as having bargaining power view themselves in this bucket, e.g. that they are being paid the market wage already and don't benefit from the union. Then there is option B: Unions cause the same workers to earn 11% more - the number does change -- and the firm just scales back on hiring (or lays off workers) until it's total labor expenditure is back in line with its expenses. People without a sense that they have market power (e.g. that the labor market is driven by real competitive pressure in which companies bid on your skills, as opposed to firms mandating wages to workers without better options). Now someone who views themselves in category B would or would not join the union depending on whether they thought the risk/reward trade off was worth it. E.g. yes, maybe you'd be less likely to get the job but if you did you'd have a better life so maybe its worth it to you. But note that these choices are not exogenous: once a lot of people join unions, the labor market as a whole becomes less flexible and they end up with fewer options. Thus their market power decreases and they are more dependant on the union. This is especially true if an industry as a whole unionizes. That gives unions a stickiness because those workers know it would be really hard to find a better job on their own. So unions are something you join out of greed but stay in out of fear. Then of course people make irrational choices as well. E.g. they oppose unions purely because they are morally offended at price fixing, even if it's for their benefit, or support unions purely because they are morally offended by low paying jobs existing, even if there are people who would rather have those jobs than be unemployed. The fact of the matter is that labor markets are not always competitive but it's also true that in many cases they are quite competitive, or close enough to being competitive that they wouldn't justify the overhead of the union. So it depends on how competitive your particular labor market is, whether the union will help you or hurt you, and that is true even if people working for unions earn more on average than those who do not.
GavinMcG 5y ago
That's fair! But you know your workplace and you know what a union could look like. The union I was in paid a little bit to a national parent union, and got a lot more than we paid for when it came to legal representation in a contract dispute, training, etc. And all the local leadership was entirely volunteer. Still, the vast majority of workers in the U.S. don't have much exposure to what the tradeoffs even could be, so as to even make a decision. And frankly, for the folks here on HN, it's not especially surprising that a union isn't a priority. But there are a lot of people who would be grateful for things like consistent week-to-week scheduling, health coverage, fair dispute resolution, etc., and don't even know that there are peer workplaces that have all those things thanks to a union.

runako 5y ago

This is interesting. Do you do the same kind of job that you did when you were a union employee? My understanding of unions is employers hate them in part because they make labor more expensive, which would seem to be exactly why one would want to be represented by a union. Is that not correct?

rsj_hn 5y ago
It depends on how much of that extra expense you can capture as your own pay and how much is dead weight costs (e.g. union overhead or additional costs imposed on employers), as well as how likely it is to mean you can't get a job in the first place. So it depends very much on things like overall economic growth, how the union cooperates with management, etc. In Europe, unions collaborate with management whereas US unions have historically been more adversarial. In the US, for example, managers can't be union members whereas in some places in Europe union reps have board seats and are partners with management in trying to get the company to grow.
- runako 5y ago
  Quick stats check via Google shows that in the US, union workers earn ~11% more than non-union workers. Which would seem enough to warrant a modest membership fee. Also aligns with the management rhetoric that union labor & benefits are expensive and reason enough to move entire factories to the South to escape collective bargaining. (It does not make sense that they would do this to save the cost of union management's paychecks, the numbers are not big enough.) What I was trying to understand from the OP was what's missing from the picture and whether perhaps her role was somehow an outlier.
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    By that logic, if we fired everyone earning below $20/hr, then the average wage of workers would go up, but that doesn't necessarily mean workers as a whole would be better off under that deal. Yes, the company with unionized workers pays 11% higher wages. It also hires fewer workers. By limiting employment to only workers earning that extra 11%, yes, those workers are doing well but overall employment is lower, there are deadweight losses to pay for the union fees, and that isn't necessarily a policy that can scale to the whole economy. This is why there are such problems with youth unemployment in nations with high unionization rates -- it's tougher to break into that labor market.
    - runako 5y ago
      Yes, obviously unions have problems scaling to the entire country. But I was specifically asking why someone (the OP) who is presumably earning 11% more would rather work in a non-union shop.
      - rsj_hn 5y ago
        So think of the union as hiring someone to negotiate for you. there is option A: In option A, you are already being paid the market wage for your job. The job has a number on it for the wage. That number doesn't change. When you unionize every job with a low number disappers. Thus joining a union can only hurt you, because at best you stay where you are (but pay the union overhead). Nevertheless the jobs that are unionized earn 11% more. People who think of themselves as having bargaining power view themselves in this bucket, e.g. that they are being paid the market wage already and don't benefit from the union. Then there is option B: Unions cause the same workers to earn 11% more - the number does change -- and the firm just scales back on hiring (or lays off workers) until it's total labor expenditure is back in line with its expenses. People without a sense that they have market power (e.g. that the labor market is driven by real competitive pressure in which companies bid on your skills, as opposed to firms mandating wages to workers without better options). Now someone who views themselves in category B would or would not join the union depending on whether they thought the risk/reward trade off was worth it. E.g. yes, maybe you'd be less likely to get the job but if you did you'd have a better life so maybe its worth it to you. But note that these choices are not exogenous: once a lot of people join unions, the labor market as a whole becomes less flexible and they end up with fewer options. Thus their market power decreases and they are more dependant on the union. This is especially true if an industry as a whole unionizes. That gives unions a stickiness because those workers know it would be really hard to find a better job on their own. So unions are something you join out of greed but stay in out of fear. Then of course people make irrational choices as well. E.g. they oppose unions purely because they are morally offended at price fixing, even if it's for their benefit, or support unions purely because they are morally offended by low paying jobs existing, even if there are people who would rather have those jobs than be unemployed. The fact of the matter is that labor markets are not always competitive but it's also true that in many cases they are quite competitive, or close enough to being competitive that they wouldn't justify the overhead of the union. So it depends on how competitive your particular labor market is, whether the union will help you or hurt you, and that is true even if people working for unions earn more on average than those who do not.

GavinMcG 5y ago

That's fair! But you know your workplace and you know what a union could look like. The union I was in paid a little bit to a national parent union, and got a lot more than we paid for when it came to legal representation in a contract dispute, training, etc. And all the local leadership was entirely volunteer. Still, the vast majority of workers in the U.S. don't have much exposure to what the tradeoffs even could be, so as to even make a decision. And frankly, for the folks here on HN, it's not especially surprising that a union isn't a priority. But there are a lot of people who would be grateful for things like consistent week-to-week scheduling, health coverage, fair dispute resolution, etc., and don't even know that there are peer workplaces that have all those things thanks to a union.