8 ms·

I see how poorly public sector works with public sector unions (especially police, but also city government generally) and I wonder if private unions won’t be j

by n8cpdx 5y ago

I see how poorly public sector works with public sector unions (especially police, but also city government generally) and I wonder if private unions won’t be just as bad for organizations. Private companies do a lot of the work to enable modern living (e.g. producing food, handling logistics, manufacturing, etc). I get that corporate=bad, but do we want them to become more poorly run and inefficient than they are now? Unions are sort of ok when there aren’t that many of them, because market forces demand some level of competitiveness, but what happens when union shops are the only or the majority option? Again, just consider how well public sector unions work for society (ime: disastrously) and how that will work applied to the organizations that do the much of the work enabling modern society. I guess another angle is: look at how dysfunctional politics have become, at how ~50% of Americans would gladly re-elect DJT post-January 6, and ask, do you want those people to hold the industrial economy hostage? Do we really think the average worker is able to produce better outcomes than management? Maybe I’ve just been traumatized by the public sector unions. I don’t understand why people can’t make the connection between public sector unions, and the inevitable outcomes of private sector unions get too much traction.

kcatskcolbdi 5y ago
Slavery is the most efficient organizational structure. But the needs of the people producing the goods and services should take precedent over the desire for corporations to sell khaki pants at the lowest price.
- ur-whale 5y ago
  > Slavery is the most efficient organizational structure. Is it? Citation needed, at the very least.
  - kcatskcolbdi 5y ago
    I'm not certain how this isn't self-evident on it's face. The citation would be every civilization which has used slave labor to produce things. I assume they weren't/aren't using slave labor because there are vastly more efficient options but they just didn't feel like doing those.
  - imtringued 5y ago
    It isn't. That's why economic growth is so low to begin with.
mabub24 5y ago
That a union can lead to negative outcomes is not an argument in favor of no-unions, I think, it's an argument that that union should be improved. The basic gist of unions (or "collectives" or co-ops), that they offer employees and workers leverage and collective bargaining power to counteract arbitrary changes, still stands as necessary. I also have experience with public sector unions, and though management might dislike them, I know very very few employees who would choose to be non-unionized instead. It's literally giving yourself up to the whims of your employer for no gain. > I get that corporate=bad, but do we want them to become more poorly run and inefficient than they are now? Do we want them to succeed at the cost of basic human dignity, or by dragging people into shitty working conditions? "inefficient" for whom? That human dignity should come at the expense of corporate profits is, I think, always a grotesque position to hold. We can mitigate that out by understanding how profit can co-exist with safe and good working conditions for everyone.
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  > That a union can lead to negative outcomes is not an argument in favor of no-unions, I think, it's an argument that that union should be improved. Can't the same be said about companies that aren't non-unionized? > It's literally giving yourself up to the whims of your employer for no gain. You could just as well say you are giving yourself up to the whims of the union leadership, which is just a parallel management structure. Sure they are supposed to represent your interests, but they're also supposed to balance that against the interests of the company and what is practically possible. So is there really much of a difference? I feel like the bigger problem is the exclusivity. Anytime there is only one option and competition disappears (whether for an employer or for a union), the incentives get corrupted. People shouldn't have to join a particular union. They should have the right to optionally do so, but being obligated means there's no competition incentive.
  - nextaccountic 5y ago
    > You could just as well say you are giving yourself up to the whims of the union leadership, which is just a parallel management structure. Sure they are supposed to represent your interests, but they're also supposed to balance that against the interests of the company and what is practically possible. So is there really much of a difference? There's a difference: they are elected by the workers.
burkaman 5y ago
I mean, we don't have to guess, a third of US workers were union members in the 50s and 60s. You can look at the real history of private sector unions and see how they impacted society. I think it's clearly been positive, but it's tough to summarize in a comment. One easy example is the Fair Labor Standards Act, which would not have passed when it did without decades of union activism including massive strikes. Basically, I don't think the outcomes you're imagining are inevitable because we tried private sector unions for a very long time and those outcomes didn't happen. I understand why you're traumatized by police unions, but I can just as easily say I don't understand why people can't make the connection between the decline of union membership and the increase of income inequality and all its disastrous effects.
- renewiltord 5y ago
  Yeah, many of them were incredibly racist organizations focused on keeping black people from doing jobs. Easy when they cartelize labour and use violence when required. E.g. https://www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/article/charlie-walker-movie-san-francisco-oil-spill-16377938.php https://www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/article/charlie-walker-mov... Yeah they were fantastic for the majority because they allowed the majority to retain a tight grip on work. If your preference matrix prefers that racist workers get better gigs while other workers don’t get work at all, fine. That isn’t my preference matrix.
  - burkaman 5y ago
    That's why I said it's tough to summarize. Obviously there were many negatives including racism, organized crime, corruption, etc. I do not believe that racism or corruption is an inevitable outcome of unions, just like I don't think the positive outcomes are inevitable.
    - renewiltord 5y ago
      I think we’re on the same page as to the situation. You just believe that curation of the process and vigilance will ensure positive outcomes and I believe that that path is not anti-fragile and will eventually fail. Hope that’s accurate.
rackjack 5y ago
Public sector unions are different from private sector unions for reasons I don't know but I can sense. Just empirically, Finland/Sweden/Norway are famously pleasant places to live while also having very strong private sector unions, as does most of Western Europe.
ravitation 5y ago
>I see how poorly public sector works with public sector unions (especially police, but also city government generally) and I wonder if private unions won’t be just as bad for organizations. I'm not a police officer, so can you provide some insight into how police unions work poorly for police officers (i.e. their members)? >Do we really think the average worker is able to produce better outcomes than management? Are we really that concerned with corporate/organizational outcomes, which seem to generally be doing pretty well? Maybe you can explain why we should be more concerned with corporate/organizational outcomes instead of worker outcomes? >Maybe I’ve just been traumatized by the public sector unions. I'm genuinely interested to hear more about this trauma, if you're able to share.
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  >I'm not a police officer, so can you provide some insight into how police unions work poorly for police officers (i.e. their members)? How about police officers who don't want to be working next to another officer with a history of abuse and excessive violence complaint but can't be fired?
  - ravitation 5y ago
    I assume you don't literally mean "working next to," but instead mean police unions prevent abusive and/or violent officers from being fired; but, as far as I'm aware, the bigger problem is that frequently arbitration hearings find in favor of officers that have been fired (and are obviously supported by their union) resulting in reinstatement. Police unions don't have direct control over arbitration though, so arbitration reform seems to be the more pressing concern. Of course you could easily make the same hypothetical argument that police officers, accused of some type of misconduct, need support from somewhere merely in the name of due process (much in the same way that legal counsel is seen as a right).
    - s1artibartfast 5y ago
      Pointing to arbitration seems to be passing the buck. The unions had a hand in negotiating the arbitration rules and criteria. Of course arbitration could result in just or unjust firing, but if you accept the premise that it currently too hard to fire bad cops, you have to look for what parties advocate for the position. School teachers are an even more example of this, where it is essentially impossible for management to fire teachers. For example, California employs 300,000+ teachers and fires ~10 year.[1] https://www.mercurynews.com/2013/01/25/firing-a-tenured-teacher-in-california-can-be-tough/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2013/01/25/firing-a-tenured-teac...
dogman144 5y ago
This makes a false equivalency between no unions or decades old, powerful, public sector unions. Between those two ranges, the following nuance is important: - will a union of $15/hr Amazon employees, in aggregate, have the same power in the short term as a union of police or firefighters. - mid-term, will those union bosses for Amazon become as powerful as the PD/FD/teachers union bosses? - Are there lessons learned from when a private sector union like the Teamsters under Hoffa got out of control? The answers to all of those, and likely more, are necessary to evaluate the outcomes of letting Amazon unionize. And from there, ya interesting discussions start - well, we do use Amazon for a lot. What if the local warehouse strikes? And so on. Another way to evaluate it is the gut feeling about this: when an Amazon contractor sprints to your door, drops off a package at 8pm, apologizes for "being late," and sprints away to the next apartment.
betterunix2 5y ago
You keep saying that "public sector unions" are bad for society without giving any specific reasons why we should think so. What is so disastrous or traumatic about public sector unions? From my perspective, unions come with plenty of problems, largely the same problems as any large organization, but on the whole workers are better off when they have a union that represents them. Society as a whole benefits when people do not have to put off seeing a doctor because their employer decided to give them a garbage health plan. Society as a whole benefits when the wealth gap is kept under control. Unions, historically and currently, negotiate compensation and benefits in ways that individual workers cannot -- because an individual negotiating with a large organization is at a disadvantage (and corporations know this, which is why they try to prevent workers from forming unions). Society benefits when the people we rely on to sort and deliver packages are not being told to pee in a bottle just to save some time. Unions have been particularly important in dangerous occupations where cutting corners or working multiple roles can result in death or permanent injuries -- which is why unions formed in the first place and why unions remain strong in certain industries (railroads, etc.). Market forces work poorly when one side of the market has greater negotiating power and a greater ability to externalize costs than the other. Corporations have been known to rely on the welfare system instead of paying workers the minimum wages needed to live in a given region or provide effective health and retirement plans. Corporations work hard to avoid compensating workers for injuries and have faced few penalties for discrimination, harassment, and other abuses. Almost all the complaints about public-sector unions are based on myths or at best unusual and extreme examples. Things that work well often go unreported, and unions typically work well.
- umvi 5y ago
  > Almost all the complaints about public-sector unions are based on myths or at best unusual and extreme examples. Haven't you just done the same with complaints about corporations? "Society benefits when the people we rely on to sort and deliver packages are not being told to pee in a bottle just to save some time." Is this really the norm in corporate America, or "an unusual and extreme example"?
  - betterunix2 5y ago
hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
There is a fundamental difference between public sector unions and private unions. Public sector unions often have outsized power with management because, with such a large number of employees, politicians want to curry their favor to get re-elected. It's basically as if public sector unions can negotiate from both sides of the table. That dynamic doesn't exist with private sector unions because management has much more independent goals than the union does.
CountSessine 5y ago
It feels like North America hates unions enough that we got the very worst of them. In Europe, there isn't the same societal conflict over unionization, but at the same time they aren't any more in love with the idea of industrial labour monopolies like the UAW than we are. Where unionization works well, it's been because the government regulated to create competitive unions. In Germany, once a company unionizes, the union has special rights and privileges within the company, including access to the company's books and executive meetings. And things like union-busting are illegal. There's a lot of legislation in place to prevent the sort of abuses that North America has always seen with "company unions". But they can't join together with workers at other companies to form industrial labour monopolies either, so you still get market competition.
whilestanding 5y ago
> Do we really think the average worker is able to produce better outcomes than management? As a long time HN reader who works in a factory, I often hear the sentiment that management is clueless MBA's and workers are better off left on their own in WFH situations. Strange I see this is a highly upvoted comment. Maybe it has something to do with this: > look at how dysfunctional politics have become, at how ~50% of Americans would gladly re-elect DJT post-January 6, and ask, do you want those people to hold the industrial economy hostage? I'm just curious why you think "those people" don't deserve the right to fight for better wages, work life balance, better benefits just as the skilled tech class does. Does some of them voting for a politician you don't like have to do with this bias perhaps? Switching jobs to up your comp by 30% isn't an option for most of "those people". Unions are likely the only option they have to bring themselves leverage in negotiation.
GoodJokes 5y ago
Public employees also by and large receive better benefits and work boundaries. The just in time logistics model, for example relies on abusing employees. So yea, government isn't going to be as fast as amazon, because they treat there employees way more like humans.

by n8cpdx 5y ago

kcatskcolbdi 5y ago

Slavery is the most efficient organizational structure. But the needs of the people producing the goods and services should take precedent over the desire for corporations to sell khaki pants at the lowest price.

ur-whale 5y ago
> Slavery is the most efficient organizational structure. Is it? Citation needed, at the very least.
- kcatskcolbdi 5y ago
  I'm not certain how this isn't self-evident on it's face. The citation would be every civilization which has used slave labor to produce things. I assume they weren't/aren't using slave labor because there are vastly more efficient options but they just didn't feel like doing those.
- imtringued 5y ago
  It isn't. That's why economic growth is so low to begin with.

mabub24 5y ago

That a union can lead to negative outcomes is not an argument in favor of no-unions, I think, it's an argument that that union should be improved. The basic gist of unions (or "collectives" or co-ops), that they offer employees and workers leverage and collective bargaining power to counteract arbitrary changes, still stands as necessary. I also have experience with public sector unions, and though management might dislike them, I know very very few employees who would choose to be non-unionized instead. It's literally giving yourself up to the whims of your employer for no gain. > I get that corporate=bad, but do we want them to become more poorly run and inefficient than they are now? Do we want them to succeed at the cost of basic human dignity, or by dragging people into shitty working conditions? "inefficient" for whom? That human dignity should come at the expense of corporate profits is, I think, always a grotesque position to hold. We can mitigate that out by understanding how profit can co-exist with safe and good working conditions for everyone.

throwawaysea 5y ago
> That a union can lead to negative outcomes is not an argument in favor of no-unions, I think, it's an argument that that union should be improved. Can't the same be said about companies that aren't non-unionized? > It's literally giving yourself up to the whims of your employer for no gain. You could just as well say you are giving yourself up to the whims of the union leadership, which is just a parallel management structure. Sure they are supposed to represent your interests, but they're also supposed to balance that against the interests of the company and what is practically possible. So is there really much of a difference? I feel like the bigger problem is the exclusivity. Anytime there is only one option and competition disappears (whether for an employer or for a union), the incentives get corrupted. People shouldn't have to join a particular union. They should have the right to optionally do so, but being obligated means there's no competition incentive.
- nextaccountic 5y ago
  > You could just as well say you are giving yourself up to the whims of the union leadership, which is just a parallel management structure. Sure they are supposed to represent your interests, but they're also supposed to balance that against the interests of the company and what is practically possible. So is there really much of a difference? There's a difference: they are elected by the workers.

burkaman 5y ago

I mean, we don't have to guess, a third of US workers were union members in the 50s and 60s. You can look at the real history of private sector unions and see how they impacted society. I think it's clearly been positive, but it's tough to summarize in a comment. One easy example is the Fair Labor Standards Act, which would not have passed when it did without decades of union activism including massive strikes. Basically, I don't think the outcomes you're imagining are inevitable because we tried private sector unions for a very long time and those outcomes didn't happen. I understand why you're traumatized by police unions, but I can just as easily say I don't understand why people can't make the connection between the decline of union membership and the increase of income inequality and all its disastrous effects.

renewiltord 5y ago
Yeah, many of them were incredibly racist organizations focused on keeping black people from doing jobs. Easy when they cartelize labour and use violence when required. E.g. https://www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/article/charlie-walker-movie-san-francisco-oil-spill-16377938.php https://www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/article/charlie-walker-mov... Yeah they were fantastic for the majority because they allowed the majority to retain a tight grip on work. If your preference matrix prefers that racist workers get better gigs while other workers don’t get work at all, fine. That isn’t my preference matrix.
- burkaman 5y ago
  That's why I said it's tough to summarize. Obviously there were many negatives including racism, organized crime, corruption, etc. I do not believe that racism or corruption is an inevitable outcome of unions, just like I don't think the positive outcomes are inevitable.
  - renewiltord 5y ago
    I think we’re on the same page as to the situation. You just believe that curation of the process and vigilance will ensure positive outcomes and I believe that that path is not anti-fragile and will eventually fail. Hope that’s accurate.

rackjack 5y ago

Public sector unions are different from private sector unions for reasons I don't know but I can sense. Just empirically, Finland/Sweden/Norway are famously pleasant places to live while also having very strong private sector unions, as does most of Western Europe.

ravitation 5y ago

>I see how poorly public sector works with public sector unions (especially police, but also city government generally) and I wonder if private unions won’t be just as bad for organizations. I'm not a police officer, so can you provide some insight into how police unions work poorly for police officers (i.e. their members)? >Do we really think the average worker is able to produce better outcomes than management? Are we really that concerned with corporate/organizational outcomes, which seem to generally be doing pretty well? Maybe you can explain why we should be more concerned with corporate/organizational outcomes instead of worker outcomes? >Maybe I’ve just been traumatized by the public sector unions. I'm genuinely interested to hear more about this trauma, if you're able to share.

s1artibartfast 5y ago
>I'm not a police officer, so can you provide some insight into how police unions work poorly for police officers (i.e. their members)? How about police officers who don't want to be working next to another officer with a history of abuse and excessive violence complaint but can't be fired?
- ravitation 5y ago
  I assume you don't literally mean "working next to," but instead mean police unions prevent abusive and/or violent officers from being fired; but, as far as I'm aware, the bigger problem is that frequently arbitration hearings find in favor of officers that have been fired (and are obviously supported by their union) resulting in reinstatement. Police unions don't have direct control over arbitration though, so arbitration reform seems to be the more pressing concern. Of course you could easily make the same hypothetical argument that police officers, accused of some type of misconduct, need support from somewhere merely in the name of due process (much in the same way that legal counsel is seen as a right).
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    Pointing to arbitration seems to be passing the buck. The unions had a hand in negotiating the arbitration rules and criteria. Of course arbitration could result in just or unjust firing, but if you accept the premise that it currently too hard to fire bad cops, you have to look for what parties advocate for the position. School teachers are an even more example of this, where it is essentially impossible for management to fire teachers. For example, California employs 300,000+ teachers and fires ~10 year.[1] https://www.mercurynews.com/2013/01/25/firing-a-tenured-teacher-in-california-can-be-tough/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2013/01/25/firing-a-tenured-teac...

dogman144 5y ago

This makes a false equivalency between no unions or decades old, powerful, public sector unions. Between those two ranges, the following nuance is important: - will a union of $15/hr Amazon employees, in aggregate, have the same power in the short term as a union of police or firefighters. - mid-term, will those union bosses for Amazon become as powerful as the PD/FD/teachers union bosses? - Are there lessons learned from when a private sector union like the Teamsters under Hoffa got out of control? The answers to all of those, and likely more, are necessary to evaluate the outcomes of letting Amazon unionize. And from there, ya interesting discussions start - well, we do use Amazon for a lot. What if the local warehouse strikes? And so on. Another way to evaluate it is the gut feeling about this: when an Amazon contractor sprints to your door, drops off a package at 8pm, apologizes for "being late," and sprints away to the next apartment.

betterunix2 5y ago

You keep saying that "public sector unions" are bad for society without giving any specific reasons why we should think so. What is so disastrous or traumatic about public sector unions? From my perspective, unions come with plenty of problems, largely the same problems as any large organization, but on the whole workers are better off when they have a union that represents them. Society as a whole benefits when people do not have to put off seeing a doctor because their employer decided to give them a garbage health plan. Society as a whole benefits when the wealth gap is kept under control. Unions, historically and currently, negotiate compensation and benefits in ways that individual workers cannot -- because an individual negotiating with a large organization is at a disadvantage (and corporations know this, which is why they try to prevent workers from forming unions). Society benefits when the people we rely on to sort and deliver packages are not being told to pee in a bottle just to save some time. Unions have been particularly important in dangerous occupations where cutting corners or working multiple roles can result in death or permanent injuries -- which is why unions formed in the first place and why unions remain strong in certain industries (railroads, etc.). Market forces work poorly when one side of the market has greater negotiating power and a greater ability to externalize costs than the other. Corporations have been known to rely on the welfare system instead of paying workers the minimum wages needed to live in a given region or provide effective health and retirement plans. Corporations work hard to avoid compensating workers for injuries and have faced few penalties for discrimination, harassment, and other abuses. Almost all the complaints about public-sector unions are based on myths or at best unusual and extreme examples. Things that work well often go unreported, and unions typically work well.

umvi 5y ago
> Almost all the complaints about public-sector unions are based on myths or at best unusual and extreme examples. Haven't you just done the same with complaints about corporations? "Society benefits when the people we rely on to sort and deliver packages are not being told to pee in a bottle just to save some time." Is this really the norm in corporate America, or "an unusual and extreme example"?
- betterunix2 5y ago

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago

There is a fundamental difference between public sector unions and private unions. Public sector unions often have outsized power with management because, with such a large number of employees, politicians want to curry their favor to get re-elected. It's basically as if public sector unions can negotiate from both sides of the table. That dynamic doesn't exist with private sector unions because management has much more independent goals than the union does.

CountSessine 5y ago

It feels like North America hates unions enough that we got the very worst of them. In Europe, there isn't the same societal conflict over unionization, but at the same time they aren't any more in love with the idea of industrial labour monopolies like the UAW than we are. Where unionization works well, it's been because the government regulated to create competitive unions. In Germany, once a company unionizes, the union has special rights and privileges within the company, including access to the company's books and executive meetings. And things like union-busting are illegal. There's a lot of legislation in place to prevent the sort of abuses that North America has always seen with "company unions". But they can't join together with workers at other companies to form industrial labour monopolies either, so you still get market competition.

whilestanding 5y ago

> Do we really think the average worker is able to produce better outcomes than management? As a long time HN reader who works in a factory, I often hear the sentiment that management is clueless MBA's and workers are better off left on their own in WFH situations. Strange I see this is a highly upvoted comment. Maybe it has something to do with this: > look at how dysfunctional politics have become, at how ~50% of Americans would gladly re-elect DJT post-January 6, and ask, do you want those people to hold the industrial economy hostage? I'm just curious why you think "those people" don't deserve the right to fight for better wages, work life balance, better benefits just as the skilled tech class does. Does some of them voting for a politician you don't like have to do with this bias perhaps? Switching jobs to up your comp by 30% isn't an option for most of "those people". Unions are likely the only option they have to bring themselves leverage in negotiation.

GoodJokes 5y ago

Public employees also by and large receive better benefits and work boundaries. The just in time logistics model, for example relies on abusing employees. So yea, government isn't going to be as fast as amazon, because they treat there employees way more like humans.