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Having worked for both union and non-union employers - it's a mixed bag. Unions have advantages and disadvantages. They are great for worker representation - bu

Having worked for both union and non-union employers - it's a mixed bag. Unions have advantages and disadvantages. They are great for worker representation - but that's a double-edged sword. Ideally, unions protects worker's interests. In practice, they often lead to abuse, stagnation and corruption. I've personally witnessed union employees who contributed nothing for years, get perpetually shifted from team to team to team and even promoted because it was too complex and costly to fire them. I've seen union stewards padding their own pockets with members dues through lavish "retreats" to five-star resorts. We must not forget that unions are made up of people - and people can be awful.

lbriner 5y ago
Agree and this depends on the union also. The RMT in the UK is famously militant. When a new General Secretary was voted in a few years ago (before the current one I think), he didn't promise to "represent his members" but instead promised "that the RMT would remain militant", which doesn't sound great. Another railway union, the TSSA had a generally "no strike" policy but would still provide support for any disagreements with management. I guess, as always, be careful for what you wish for, you might not be able to afford to go on strike for something you don't feel very strongly about because the union says so and if you don't strike, well, good luck continuing to work there.
- kubb 5y ago
  Everyone could get a better comp and work conditions but noo, that one lazy guy won't be fired, we can't have that!
  - bennysomething 5y ago
    There are quite a few reasons why I don't want unions: 1. I don't want pay banding based on job title, I am capable of negotiating this myself. This is especially true because I can remain at senior Dev level but based on contribution I can be compensated, not by title . 2. Historically there's evidence of damage to industry caused by unions. 3. The unionised work places I have heard about second hand, do not sound like places I want to work. For example unproductive employees not fired, promotions and internal job moves being extremely bureaucratic and check box oriented. 4. I do not want to be forced to pay union dues. 5. I do not want people telling me I must strike.
  - CountSessine 5y ago
    If the company's in a competitive market, it's unlikely that there's a huge pot of gold somewhere to hand to employees in operations. The whole value-add for unions lately has been pitched as better employee representation in decision making. I'm all for that - if that stops management from colluding with some hedge fund to engineer an awful reverse-buyback-privitazation scheme to load the company with unservicable debt or something like that, I think unions have a lot to add. But I can tell you from experience - it's definitely not "one lazy guy" - it becomes endemic because the process for dismissal becomes so costly. It's extremely demoralizing working alongside people who are "working the system" and are lazy as fcuk. It's better to just leave.
    - cool_dude85 5y ago
      >If the company's in a competitive market, it's unlikely that there's a huge pot of gold somewhere to hand to employees in operations. Here in the US, corporations all over are making record profits! Buying back shares like never before! Unless you want to play definition games about what a "competitive market" is, plenty of companies in competitive markets have big pots of gold to hand to employees.
      - CountSessine 5y ago
        The average operating margin for companies on the S&P 500, the "best of the best" of US corporations, is 9.35% - and that's a figure that is inflated by all of the pharma companies that have crazy 20% margins and sell into a dysfunctional drug market in the US and don't have to compete with generic drugs. Remove them and the operating margin is even lower. There's no pot of gold in most cases. But I still think there's a good case for unionization.
        aylmao 5y ago
        I will point out 9.35% when talking about companies that size is a lot of money. Also worth noting; companies pay taxes on their profits, so while there's a lot of incentive to report high profits when a company is looking for investors, there's also plenty of incentive to hide profits (and thus lower operating margins) or shift them to subsidiaries in countries with lower taxes when companies that don't need to inflate their value. I am curious wether the stats you found take this into account.
adrianlmm 5y ago
taeric 5y ago
This feels... Unlikely to be a thing of unions. Seems just as likely, if you saw promotions that were unwarranted, that there was incentive for management to get more promotions. Indeed, it is often to grade managers on how many promotions they have overseen. Not shocking that measuring that would cause them to happen unwarranted sometime. Which is just too say that a healthy organization is hard. There are no panaceas. I'm mixed on unions, all told. I don't like the dichotomy they enforce between management and workers. This often exists anyway, so I can't blame unions. And it is also true that individuals don't have the leverage for negotiation that groups do, such that it makes sense on why they can get better conditions when just between company and group.
- omginternets 5y ago
  >This feels... Unlikely to be a thing of unions. Why? I likewise have mixed feelings about unions, but I have repeatedly noticed this pattern in countries with strong (typically: constitutionally-protected) unions.
  - taeric 5y ago
    I've seen in it many non unionized shops. And there are plenty of examples you can find of promotions that seem unwarranted. Nepotism is a common reason. As is just general networking. Seems common for folks to get good at networking and generally pleasing management as much as doing a great jobs. I'd be delighted to see data on this. My prior is that it is rather evenly mixed with no obvious cause.
- flavius29663 5y ago
  If you don't fire bad employees and just shift them around, it's more likely they will find a manager that promotes them, is it not? Unions sound to me like just another layer of bureaucracy, with its own mind and interests. Any extra bureaucracy increases corruption and inefficiencies.
  - taeric 5y ago
    I mean. Maybe? Seems I could just as easily blame management for not better training and removing bad managers.
dr-detroit 5y ago
tobr 5y ago
Is this the argument against unions? They are made up of people and people can be awful?
- dqv 5y ago
  It’s clearly not an argument against unions, only a reminder that they’re corruptible just like any other organization.
  - UncleMeat 5y ago
    I wouldn't say "just like any other organization." Most organizations are authoritarian and workers have literally zero say in the operations at the top. Unions are democratically controlled. This introduces a meaningful difference in corruptibility.
    - dqv 5y ago
      Yes, I don’t mean to say it’s organized just like any other organization, but that it is still susceptible to corruption. Which, again, is not an argument against unions, only something to recognize when organizing and being a member of one.
- 0xbadc0de5 5y ago
  In my experience, partially. Although I am willing to acknowledge that conditions will certainly vary from union to union and even between locals. In my experience, they add an additional layer of bureaucracy and significant cost to an organisation. They /may/ improve /some/ conditions for some workers. But they will also likely introduce other problems that affect all workers and disproportionately impact the top-performing workers to the benefit of the least performing. As has been noted, this isn't necessarily a problem with unions as a concept, but rather a problem with human nature and adding an additional layer of bureaucracy on top of another bureaucracy with conflicting interests. It will at the very least slow things down and add cost. Whether that is worthwhile probably needs a case by case analysis.
- cduzz 5y ago
ransom1538 5y ago
American Unions: fat cats (presidents), dues, fancy dinners with the execs, mafia ties, corruption, pay offs, forced politics, exclusion of work based on joining, lowering of salary, years of law suites, subcontractors (non union) to actually do the work, brain drains, unmotivated work forces, forced protesting, layoffs, forced clicks, voting, forced discrimination. "We can't use her she is non-union". "Sure he touched her, but he is union, we need to consult the union first!" Yuck. My wife dealt with the Macys mafia (union) - what a gross group of fat cats in fancy cars. She couldn't even pay her bills - but needed to pay that union due (post tax of course). All her dues were made in person - they only accepted cash. She was laid off along with a few hundred others - after the union and execs had a fancy dinner - no severance obviously. The union pigs are still doing well getting those dues! Enjoy google! PS! If you work at google, don't pay the dues: ever. Give the money to domestic violence shelters instead. Put that receipt into your union due. Fuck unions.
- borepop 5y ago
  As opposed to CEOs and upper management, who are all lovely people and want nothing but the best for their employees, and are definitely not motivated by short-term gains.
  - judge2020 5y ago
    Depends on whether you get a good union structure or not. As an observer, it doesn't seem like employees get a choice besides when voting whether or not to instate a union at all.
    - brendoelfrendo 5y ago
      You also don't get a choice in upper management, but at least the union is nominally on your side.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
brightstep 5y ago
With regard to the lazy worker, honestly, who cares? You still get paid. The company isn't going under. No doubt like most situations of abuse, this is a minority case because in general people like being productive.
- flavius29663 5y ago
  Then Google should just hire 100,000 devs this year, why not? They're not going to go under, who cares that they won't be able to contribute to the success of the company?
  - brightstep 5y ago
    Sure, what do I care? I care about people not corporations. There are competitors salivating to scoop up any devs who are out of a job if Google goes under.
  - CiPHPerCoder 5y ago
    > Then Google should just hire 100,000 devs this year, why not? Hold up that's actually a good idea. It would help a lot of entry level devs bulk up their resume and learn hands on skills. This would lead to an influx of sorely needed new talent to the entire tech industry and enable a lot more innovation than was possible before, if only due to HR red tape.
    - hkt 5y ago
      That'd be a sort of corporate keynesianism. It is both neat and scary to think that a few companies could meaningfully stimulate their entire sector over a period of years through their hiring policies.
- colejohnson66 5y ago
  The issue many have is the union dues. If the union doesn't help me, but still take 5% (or whatever) of my paycheck, I'd be pretty peeved off. It's the same issue many people have with raising taxes: politicians tout all the benefits it'll allow, but then costs go up and no visible product results.
dccoolgai 5y ago
People _can_ be awful. I've seen founders, managers and execs bleed people dry - squeezing the life out of critical contributors whole stringing them along with promised of "getting their piece of the pie" that they had no intention of ever sharing. Telling anecdotes about "that one lazy guy who got paid for doing nothing" is tired. We've done that for the last 40 years. Time to try unions again, please.
- bennysomething 5y ago
  You say let's try again, I think before doing that it would be wise to look at why we got rid of them. I'm the UK, I know people who are doctors and teachers, they all have stories of how their unions are hurting the public.
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    The thing with teachers unions and doctors unions you have to remember is that they represent the interests of the teachers or the doctors. They don't represent the interests of pupils, patients, or the public. In fact they have to work directly against those groups for the interests of their members.
    - pmyteh 5y ago
      Sometimes, but not necessarily always. I'm in UCU, the UK academics' union. We're quite often on the same side as the students, and not on the same side as the government. We get substantial support from students' unions on the basis that 'your working conditions are our learning conditions'. Casualisation, for example, is seen as substantially damaging good quality teaching for pretty small financial gains - but teaching is not in practice seen as a major priority by government or senior university managers. We don't represent the public. Whether we're working on behalf of the public depends on whether you think the government's position represents 'the public', and which part of the public you're most interested in. (The interests of childless taxpayers who don't believe in the importance of university education are not well represented by lecturers and their unions, surprisingly enough...) I think what I'm saying is that some of the conflicts between unions and management are zero-sum, but others are not. And while public sector unions can narrowly represent a producer interest, that certainly isn't true of all situations.
tw04 5y ago
So what you're saying is you think everyone should have a worse standard of living to prevent that one lazy guy from not pulling his weight?
- arbitrage 5y ago
  Nobody is saying that.
- bennysomething 5y ago
  "so what you are day is" that's a good way to be accused of putting word in someone's mouth.
- bakuninsbart 5y ago
  Not everyone, the lazy guy will be worse off and a couple of rich people will be much richer.
boh 5y ago
So I guess unions do suck, thanks for clarifying. Hopefully people will be smart enough to not interfere with a firm's epic struggle for efficiency and polishing out the friction of overbearing worker compensation and benefits. Sounds like unions are too corrupt and will just interfere with the purity of corporate practices. I love how people have an easier time imagining colonies on mars than giving labor a platform to express their interests.
- Jensson 5y ago
  US unions are like US healthcare, regulatory capture makes them suck. Unions working well in other countries doesn't mean it works well in USA. And neither party wants to improve the state of unions, democrats are on the side of union leadership while republicans are just anti unions in general, none wants to support workers on this.
  - boh 5y ago
    Let's not bother then and just hope we're managed by some swell fellas
  - cool_dude85 5y ago
    No, I work in a US union that I'm very happy with. I have personally seen action on the ground preventing unfair discipline by management, passing people up for raises over personal vendettas, baseline quality of life stuff. I suspect that most people in a union in the US are quite happy with it.
    - Jensson 5y ago
      Right, lots of people are also happy with US healthcare, it is tied to their job (just like unions) and they didn't have any problems with it so to them it seems to work fine. For now. In most other countries unions aren't tied to your job, just like healthcare.
      - nirvdrum 5y ago
criddell 5y ago
They often do the things you say, but not always. It's up to the members. Look at the unions for professional athletes or for Hollywood writers for examples where unions are mostly doing very good work on behalf of their members.
VictorPath 5y ago
> union employees who contributed nothing for year Me and my co-workers create wealth, a portion of which is sent off in dividends, the majority of which is going to heirs who have never worked a day in their life. I am more concerned about that than that the guy working next to me isn't killing himself more to fill that heir's pockets. Organized labor is made up of the people working and creating wealth. Of course you don't mention the indolence of the idle class expropriators who the people doing the work are organizing to combat.
UncleMeat 5y ago
These can all be true things. But could you imagine if we spoke about corporations in this manner? "I've worked for corporations and they are a mixed bag. In practice, they often abuse their employees. I've personally witnessed bosses who contributed nothing for years and just played politics." For some reason we hold unions to an incredibly high standard of "no problems, ever" but this is never used to discourage all participation in the labor force because employers are often shitty. Unions are democratically controlled worker organizations. Like democratic nations, they can contain abusers, they can be inefficient, and they can fail to solve problems effectively. But like democratic nations, they provide a powerful resistance to authoritarian abuse and on balance improve the quality of life for their people.
- tnel77 5y ago
  I am very pro-union, but I feel like a part of situation you are describing is because we needs businesses. We don’t necessarily need unions. Without unions, businesses would still be here. Without businesses, where would the unions be? Edit: I would like to reiterate that I am pro-union. I am just saying that unions are optional, but businesses (or the government as some have pointed out) are more necessary from the standpoint you don’t usually form a union and then start a business. I like unions, but they are technically optional and I think that fact is what leads to people being more critical of them. When businesses/government sucks, there’s kind of a “well that’s how it is I guess.” When a union sucks, there’s a “why even do this then?”
  - CreateAccntAgn 5y ago
    The are police and other public sector unions. The point of unions is to protect labor interests. Unions can exist as long as labor does.
    - briffle 5y ago
      And those police unions are exactly why in many cases, an officer gets to see ALL evidence and video about a situation, with a required rep or lawyer, before making an official statement in many jurisdictions. Something you and I certainly don't get. In fact, they often try to trick suspects.
thrwn_frthr_awy 5y ago
Regardless of the negatives unions bring, they still can be more beneficial to workers than to not have them. Unions can be corrupt, but is the other side of the table not corrupt as well? My father, who did not finish high school, was able to earn a living as a construction worker that afforded us a computer in the 90’s. That is how I started programming which paved the way for to make $500k the last year I choose to work. This is absolutely survival-ship bias, but it’s my only experience with unions.
onion2k 5y ago
I've personally witnessed union employees who contributed nothing for years, get perpetually shifted from team to team to team and even promoted because it was too complex and costly to fire them. Employees like that exist everywhere. I've seen union stewards padding their own pockets with members dues through lavish "retreats" to five-star resorts. Managers like that exist everywhere. None of your complaints/experiences are about unions specifically, but rather they're about dishonest people who use unions for their own gain. Unions are certainly a mechanism that people can abuse to get away with being lazy or greedy, but let's not pretend that people who aren't unionized don't do that as well. If you include business owners who exploit workers then it's likely that it happens far more outside of unions than inside.
el-salvador 5y ago
> I've seen union stewards padding their own pockets with members dues through lavish "retreats" to five-star resorts. This is anecdotal, but it reminds me on one of the main ISPs here, one of the union heads even gets a free house from the company and doesn't like even work. They just try to keep him happy to avoid causing trouble.
tablespoon 5y ago
> In practice, they often lead to abuse, stagnation and corruption. In practice, that's what power often does in any situation. So the question often boils down to "who do you want to benefit from the 'abuse, stagnation and corruption'?" because someone will. > I've personally witnessed union employees who contributed nothing for years, get perpetually shifted from team to team to team and even promoted because it was too complex and costly to fire them. And there are tons of examples of hardworking non-union employees getting shafted, so the do-nothing shareholders can collect more profits. In almost all settings, shareholders are the group that contributes the absolute least to an organization (e.g. most didn't really even invest anything, they just bought a share that's long circulated in the stock market), yet their interests are the ones that are prioritized. A lot of people who are strongly against the mythically-large do-nothing union employee seem to have no problem with do-nothing shareholders.
me_me_mu_mu 5y ago
Sounds like something a union buster contractor would say!
- josephcsible 5y ago
  [I'm obviously right, so] everyone who disagrees with me must be a paid propaganda artist!
sam0x17 5y ago
Whether they are a mixed bag or not, it is extremely inappropriate, unethical, and should be illegal for an employer to discourage or manipulate employees into not unionizing or joining a union. This is in my opinion the moral equivalent of your employer giving you unsolicited accounting or medical advice (but actually worse than that, since they have bias on the matter as well) and I hope someday the law reflects that.
MarkMarine 5y ago
rdedev 5y ago
A bit tangential but check this video out https://youtu.be/yZHYiz60R5Q https://youtu.be/yZHYiz60R5Q It talks about other forms of worker representations in an company. I think it's provides a couple of decent alternatives to just having unions and their pros and cons
steelstraw 5y ago
Unions can make sense for certain industries, namely factory work. Where it's hard to own the means of production, and workers are largely uniform in output, low pay and don't have much leverage. Unions don't make sense in tech because everyone owns the means of production (a computer) and have widely different levels of output. 10x engineers are a thing. Plus tech workers have high leverage, high pay (top 5%? 1%?), can easily get a new job, or can start their own tech company by themselves with their laptop. Trying to enforce a union structure in tech is counterproductive, extractive and entirely unnecessary.
- lovich 5y ago
  In tech all that extra power individual workers have just means that multiple companies need to band together to suppress wages. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/google-apple-wage-suppression_n_2294131 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/google-apple-wage-suppression...
Melatonic 5y ago
This may be true for some crappier unions but also think about this: If a small percentage of the union members are exploiting the system and some employees of the union are benefiting more than they should who is actually losing money over this? Is it the others in the union? Or is it the employer? I would rather have a system where a small percentage of the workers can be shitheads and lose their giant mega corporation employer money than a system where the company can just exploit ALL of its workers in any way it wants to.
petre 5y ago
I'd rather have a union negotiate for me, because then I don't have to worry about dealing with HR scum myself. It's just like having a lawyer handle legal stuff for you. If the companies are discontent with lazy workers they should hire lawyers to deal withe the union and the firing process.
hintymad 5y ago
Curious: why do we assume that having an anti-union stance is automatically bad? Can't someone simply think that union is indeed bad for both workers and companies? Disclaimer: My personal view is that union can work for private organizations, but unions of government employees are absolutely evil. The reason is that a private company can die, so the power of its unions is naturally limited. On the other hand, government won't die (or die slowly), so its unions can issue all kinds of unreasonable demand. P.S., If we assume that an employer is "bad" because it opposes union, isn't it the typical case of attacking one's motive? Scott Adam calls it mind reading. To me, it's one of the most dangerous fallacy in mankind. Read the history of self-claimed do-gooders such as Chinese/French/Cambodian committing genocide, and we can see the progressives in those countries all started with attacking their political opponents' motive.

lbriner 5y ago

Agree and this depends on the union also. The RMT in the UK is famously militant. When a new General Secretary was voted in a few years ago (before the current one I think), he didn't promise to "represent his members" but instead promised "that the RMT would remain militant", which doesn't sound great. Another railway union, the TSSA had a generally "no strike" policy but would still provide support for any disagreements with management. I guess, as always, be careful for what you wish for, you might not be able to afford to go on strike for something you don't feel very strongly about because the union says so and if you don't strike, well, good luck continuing to work there.

kubb 5y ago
Everyone could get a better comp and work conditions but noo, that one lazy guy won't be fired, we can't have that!
- bennysomething 5y ago
  There are quite a few reasons why I don't want unions: 1. I don't want pay banding based on job title, I am capable of negotiating this myself. This is especially true because I can remain at senior Dev level but based on contribution I can be compensated, not by title . 2. Historically there's evidence of damage to industry caused by unions. 3. The unionised work places I have heard about second hand, do not sound like places I want to work. For example unproductive employees not fired, promotions and internal job moves being extremely bureaucratic and check box oriented. 4. I do not want to be forced to pay union dues. 5. I do not want people telling me I must strike.
- CountSessine 5y ago
  If the company's in a competitive market, it's unlikely that there's a huge pot of gold somewhere to hand to employees in operations. The whole value-add for unions lately has been pitched as better employee representation in decision making. I'm all for that - if that stops management from colluding with some hedge fund to engineer an awful reverse-buyback-privitazation scheme to load the company with unservicable debt or something like that, I think unions have a lot to add. But I can tell you from experience - it's definitely not "one lazy guy" - it becomes endemic because the process for dismissal becomes so costly. It's extremely demoralizing working alongside people who are "working the system" and are lazy as fcuk. It's better to just leave.
  - cool_dude85 5y ago
    >If the company's in a competitive market, it's unlikely that there's a huge pot of gold somewhere to hand to employees in operations. Here in the US, corporations all over are making record profits! Buying back shares like never before! Unless you want to play definition games about what a "competitive market" is, plenty of companies in competitive markets have big pots of gold to hand to employees.
    - CountSessine 5y ago
      The average operating margin for companies on the S&P 500, the "best of the best" of US corporations, is 9.35% - and that's a figure that is inflated by all of the pharma companies that have crazy 20% margins and sell into a dysfunctional drug market in the US and don't have to compete with generic drugs. Remove them and the operating margin is even lower. There's no pot of gold in most cases. But I still think there's a good case for unionization.
      - aylmao 5y ago
        I will point out 9.35% when talking about companies that size is a lot of money. Also worth noting; companies pay taxes on their profits, so while there's a lot of incentive to report high profits when a company is looking for investors, there's also plenty of incentive to hide profits (and thus lower operating margins) or shift them to subsidiaries in countries with lower taxes when companies that don't need to inflate their value. I am curious wether the stats you found take this into account.

adrianlmm 5y ago

taeric 5y ago

This feels... Unlikely to be a thing of unions. Seems just as likely, if you saw promotions that were unwarranted, that there was incentive for management to get more promotions. Indeed, it is often to grade managers on how many promotions they have overseen. Not shocking that measuring that would cause them to happen unwarranted sometime. Which is just too say that a healthy organization is hard. There are no panaceas. I'm mixed on unions, all told. I don't like the dichotomy they enforce between management and workers. This often exists anyway, so I can't blame unions. And it is also true that individuals don't have the leverage for negotiation that groups do, such that it makes sense on why they can get better conditions when just between company and group.

omginternets 5y ago
>This feels... Unlikely to be a thing of unions. Why? I likewise have mixed feelings about unions, but I have repeatedly noticed this pattern in countries with strong (typically: constitutionally-protected) unions.
- taeric 5y ago
  I've seen in it many non unionized shops. And there are plenty of examples you can find of promotions that seem unwarranted. Nepotism is a common reason. As is just general networking. Seems common for folks to get good at networking and generally pleasing management as much as doing a great jobs. I'd be delighted to see data on this. My prior is that it is rather evenly mixed with no obvious cause.
flavius29663 5y ago
If you don't fire bad employees and just shift them around, it's more likely they will find a manager that promotes them, is it not? Unions sound to me like just another layer of bureaucracy, with its own mind and interests. Any extra bureaucracy increases corruption and inefficiencies.
- taeric 5y ago
  I mean. Maybe? Seems I could just as easily blame management for not better training and removing bad managers.

dr-detroit 5y ago

tobr 5y ago

Is this the argument against unions? They are made up of people and people can be awful?

dqv 5y ago
It’s clearly not an argument against unions, only a reminder that they’re corruptible just like any other organization.
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  I wouldn't say "just like any other organization." Most organizations are authoritarian and workers have literally zero say in the operations at the top. Unions are democratically controlled. This introduces a meaningful difference in corruptibility.
  - dqv 5y ago
    Yes, I don’t mean to say it’s organized just like any other organization, but that it is still susceptible to corruption. Which, again, is not an argument against unions, only something to recognize when organizing and being a member of one.
0xbadc0de5 5y ago
In my experience, partially. Although I am willing to acknowledge that conditions will certainly vary from union to union and even between locals. In my experience, they add an additional layer of bureaucracy and significant cost to an organisation. They /may/ improve /some/ conditions for some workers. But they will also likely introduce other problems that affect all workers and disproportionately impact the top-performing workers to the benefit of the least performing. As has been noted, this isn't necessarily a problem with unions as a concept, but rather a problem with human nature and adding an additional layer of bureaucracy on top of another bureaucracy with conflicting interests. It will at the very least slow things down and add cost. Whether that is worthwhile probably needs a case by case analysis.
cduzz 5y ago

ransom1538 5y ago

American Unions: fat cats (presidents), dues, fancy dinners with the execs, mafia ties, corruption, pay offs, forced politics, exclusion of work based on joining, lowering of salary, years of law suites, subcontractors (non union) to actually do the work, brain drains, unmotivated work forces, forced protesting, layoffs, forced clicks, voting, forced discrimination. "We can't use her she is non-union". "Sure he touched her, but he is union, we need to consult the union first!" Yuck. My wife dealt with the Macys mafia (union) - what a gross group of fat cats in fancy cars. She couldn't even pay her bills - but needed to pay that union due (post tax of course). All her dues were made in person - they only accepted cash. She was laid off along with a few hundred others - after the union and execs had a fancy dinner - no severance obviously. The union pigs are still doing well getting those dues! Enjoy google! PS! If you work at google, don't pay the dues: ever. Give the money to domestic violence shelters instead. Put that receipt into your union due. Fuck unions.

borepop 5y ago
As opposed to CEOs and upper management, who are all lovely people and want nothing but the best for their employees, and are definitely not motivated by short-term gains.
- judge2020 5y ago
  Depends on whether you get a good union structure or not. As an observer, it doesn't seem like employees get a choice besides when voting whether or not to instate a union at all.
  - brendoelfrendo 5y ago
    You also don't get a choice in upper management, but at least the union is nominally on your side.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

brightstep 5y ago

With regard to the lazy worker, honestly, who cares? You still get paid. The company isn't going under. No doubt like most situations of abuse, this is a minority case because in general people like being productive.

flavius29663 5y ago
Then Google should just hire 100,000 devs this year, why not? They're not going to go under, who cares that they won't be able to contribute to the success of the company?
- brightstep 5y ago
  Sure, what do I care? I care about people not corporations. There are competitors salivating to scoop up any devs who are out of a job if Google goes under.
- CiPHPerCoder 5y ago
  > Then Google should just hire 100,000 devs this year, why not? Hold up that's actually a good idea. It would help a lot of entry level devs bulk up their resume and learn hands on skills. This would lead to an influx of sorely needed new talent to the entire tech industry and enable a lot more innovation than was possible before, if only due to HR red tape.
  - hkt 5y ago
    That'd be a sort of corporate keynesianism. It is both neat and scary to think that a few companies could meaningfully stimulate their entire sector over a period of years through their hiring policies.
colejohnson66 5y ago
The issue many have is the union dues. If the union doesn't help me, but still take 5% (or whatever) of my paycheck, I'd be pretty peeved off. It's the same issue many people have with raising taxes: politicians tout all the benefits it'll allow, but then costs go up and no visible product results.

dccoolgai 5y ago

People _can_ be awful. I've seen founders, managers and execs bleed people dry - squeezing the life out of critical contributors whole stringing them along with promised of "getting their piece of the pie" that they had no intention of ever sharing. Telling anecdotes about "that one lazy guy who got paid for doing nothing" is tired. We've done that for the last 40 years. Time to try unions again, please.

bennysomething 5y ago
You say let's try again, I think before doing that it would be wise to look at why we got rid of them. I'm the UK, I know people who are doctors and teachers, they all have stories of how their unions are hurting the public.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  The thing with teachers unions and doctors unions you have to remember is that they represent the interests of the teachers or the doctors. They don't represent the interests of pupils, patients, or the public. In fact they have to work directly against those groups for the interests of their members.
  - pmyteh 5y ago
    Sometimes, but not necessarily always. I'm in UCU, the UK academics' union. We're quite often on the same side as the students, and not on the same side as the government. We get substantial support from students' unions on the basis that 'your working conditions are our learning conditions'. Casualisation, for example, is seen as substantially damaging good quality teaching for pretty small financial gains - but teaching is not in practice seen as a major priority by government or senior university managers. We don't represent the public. Whether we're working on behalf of the public depends on whether you think the government's position represents 'the public', and which part of the public you're most interested in. (The interests of childless taxpayers who don't believe in the importance of university education are not well represented by lecturers and their unions, surprisingly enough...) I think what I'm saying is that some of the conflicts between unions and management are zero-sum, but others are not. And while public sector unions can narrowly represent a producer interest, that certainly isn't true of all situations.

tw04 5y ago

So what you're saying is you think everyone should have a worse standard of living to prevent that one lazy guy from not pulling his weight?

arbitrage 5y ago
Nobody is saying that.
bennysomething 5y ago
"so what you are day is" that's a good way to be accused of putting word in someone's mouth.
bakuninsbart 5y ago
Not everyone, the lazy guy will be worse off and a couple of rich people will be much richer.

boh 5y ago

So I guess unions do suck, thanks for clarifying. Hopefully people will be smart enough to not interfere with a firm's epic struggle for efficiency and polishing out the friction of overbearing worker compensation and benefits. Sounds like unions are too corrupt and will just interfere with the purity of corporate practices. I love how people have an easier time imagining colonies on mars than giving labor a platform to express their interests.

Jensson 5y ago
US unions are like US healthcare, regulatory capture makes them suck. Unions working well in other countries doesn't mean it works well in USA. And neither party wants to improve the state of unions, democrats are on the side of union leadership while republicans are just anti unions in general, none wants to support workers on this.
- boh 5y ago
  Let's not bother then and just hope we're managed by some swell fellas
- cool_dude85 5y ago
  No, I work in a US union that I'm very happy with. I have personally seen action on the ground preventing unfair discipline by management, passing people up for raises over personal vendettas, baseline quality of life stuff. I suspect that most people in a union in the US are quite happy with it.
  - Jensson 5y ago
    Right, lots of people are also happy with US healthcare, it is tied to their job (just like unions) and they didn't have any problems with it so to them it seems to work fine. For now. In most other countries unions aren't tied to your job, just like healthcare.
    - nirvdrum 5y ago

criddell 5y ago

They often do the things you say, but not always. It's up to the members. Look at the unions for professional athletes or for Hollywood writers for examples where unions are mostly doing very good work on behalf of their members.

VictorPath 5y ago

> union employees who contributed nothing for year Me and my co-workers create wealth, a portion of which is sent off in dividends, the majority of which is going to heirs who have never worked a day in their life. I am more concerned about that than that the guy working next to me isn't killing himself more to fill that heir's pockets. Organized labor is made up of the people working and creating wealth. Of course you don't mention the indolence of the idle class expropriators who the people doing the work are organizing to combat.

UncleMeat 5y ago

These can all be true things. But could you imagine if we spoke about corporations in this manner? "I've worked for corporations and they are a mixed bag. In practice, they often abuse their employees. I've personally witnessed bosses who contributed nothing for years and just played politics." For some reason we hold unions to an incredibly high standard of "no problems, ever" but this is never used to discourage all participation in the labor force because employers are often shitty. Unions are democratically controlled worker organizations. Like democratic nations, they can contain abusers, they can be inefficient, and they can fail to solve problems effectively. But like democratic nations, they provide a powerful resistance to authoritarian abuse and on balance improve the quality of life for their people.

tnel77 5y ago
I am very pro-union, but I feel like a part of situation you are describing is because we needs businesses. We don’t necessarily need unions. Without unions, businesses would still be here. Without businesses, where would the unions be? Edit: I would like to reiterate that I am pro-union. I am just saying that unions are optional, but businesses (or the government as some have pointed out) are more necessary from the standpoint you don’t usually form a union and then start a business. I like unions, but they are technically optional and I think that fact is what leads to people being more critical of them. When businesses/government sucks, there’s kind of a “well that’s how it is I guess.” When a union sucks, there’s a “why even do this then?”
- CreateAccntAgn 5y ago
  The are police and other public sector unions. The point of unions is to protect labor interests. Unions can exist as long as labor does.
  - briffle 5y ago
    And those police unions are exactly why in many cases, an officer gets to see ALL evidence and video about a situation, with a required rep or lawyer, before making an official statement in many jurisdictions. Something you and I certainly don't get. In fact, they often try to trick suspects.

thrwn_frthr_awy 5y ago

Regardless of the negatives unions bring, they still can be more beneficial to workers than to not have them. Unions can be corrupt, but is the other side of the table not corrupt as well? My father, who did not finish high school, was able to earn a living as a construction worker that afforded us a computer in the 90’s. That is how I started programming which paved the way for to make $500k the last year I choose to work. This is absolutely survival-ship bias, but it’s my only experience with unions.

onion2k 5y ago

I've personally witnessed union employees who contributed nothing for years, get perpetually shifted from team to team to team and even promoted because it was too complex and costly to fire them. Employees like that exist everywhere. I've seen union stewards padding their own pockets with members dues through lavish "retreats" to five-star resorts. Managers like that exist everywhere. None of your complaints/experiences are about unions specifically, but rather they're about dishonest people who use unions for their own gain. Unions are certainly a mechanism that people can abuse to get away with being lazy or greedy, but let's not pretend that people who aren't unionized don't do that as well. If you include business owners who exploit workers then it's likely that it happens far more outside of unions than inside.

el-salvador 5y ago

> I've seen union stewards padding their own pockets with members dues through lavish "retreats" to five-star resorts. This is anecdotal, but it reminds me on one of the main ISPs here, one of the union heads even gets a free house from the company and doesn't like even work. They just try to keep him happy to avoid causing trouble.

tablespoon 5y ago

> In practice, they often lead to abuse, stagnation and corruption. In practice, that's what power often does in any situation. So the question often boils down to "who do you want to benefit from the 'abuse, stagnation and corruption'?" because someone will. > I've personally witnessed union employees who contributed nothing for years, get perpetually shifted from team to team to team and even promoted because it was too complex and costly to fire them. And there are tons of examples of hardworking non-union employees getting shafted, so the do-nothing shareholders can collect more profits. In almost all settings, shareholders are the group that contributes the absolute least to an organization (e.g. most didn't really even invest anything, they just bought a share that's long circulated in the stock market), yet their interests are the ones that are prioritized. A lot of people who are strongly against the mythically-large do-nothing union employee seem to have no problem with do-nothing shareholders.

me_me_mu_mu 5y ago

Sounds like something a union buster contractor would say!

josephcsible 5y ago
[I'm obviously right, so] everyone who disagrees with me must be a paid propaganda artist!

sam0x17 5y ago

Whether they are a mixed bag or not, it is extremely inappropriate, unethical, and should be illegal for an employer to discourage or manipulate employees into not unionizing or joining a union. This is in my opinion the moral equivalent of your employer giving you unsolicited accounting or medical advice (but actually worse than that, since they have bias on the matter as well) and I hope someday the law reflects that.

MarkMarine 5y ago

rdedev 5y ago

A bit tangential but check this video out https://youtu.be/yZHYiz60R5Q https://youtu.be/yZHYiz60R5Q It talks about other forms of worker representations in an company. I think it's provides a couple of decent alternatives to just having unions and their pros and cons

steelstraw 5y ago

Unions can make sense for certain industries, namely factory work. Where it's hard to own the means of production, and workers are largely uniform in output, low pay and don't have much leverage. Unions don't make sense in tech because everyone owns the means of production (a computer) and have widely different levels of output. 10x engineers are a thing. Plus tech workers have high leverage, high pay (top 5%? 1%?), can easily get a new job, or can start their own tech company by themselves with their laptop. Trying to enforce a union structure in tech is counterproductive, extractive and entirely unnecessary.

lovich 5y ago
In tech all that extra power individual workers have just means that multiple companies need to band together to suppress wages. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/google-apple-wage-suppression_n_2294131 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/google-apple-wage-suppression...

Melatonic 5y ago

This may be true for some crappier unions but also think about this: If a small percentage of the union members are exploiting the system and some employees of the union are benefiting more than they should who is actually losing money over this? Is it the others in the union? Or is it the employer? I would rather have a system where a small percentage of the workers can be shitheads and lose their giant mega corporation employer money than a system where the company can just exploit ALL of its workers in any way it wants to.

petre 5y ago

I'd rather have a union negotiate for me, because then I don't have to worry about dealing with HR scum myself. It's just like having a lawyer handle legal stuff for you. If the companies are discontent with lazy workers they should hire lawyers to deal withe the union and the firing process.

hintymad 5y ago

Curious: why do we assume that having an anti-union stance is automatically bad? Can't someone simply think that union is indeed bad for both workers and companies? Disclaimer: My personal view is that union can work for private organizations, but unions of government employees are absolutely evil. The reason is that a private company can die, so the power of its unions is naturally limited. On the other hand, government won't die (or die slowly), so its unions can issue all kinds of unreasonable demand. P.S., If we assume that an employer is "bad" because it opposes union, isn't it the typical case of attacking one's motive? Scott Adam calls it mind reading. To me, it's one of the most dangerous fallacy in mankind. Read the history of self-claimed do-gooders such as Chinese/French/Cambodian committing genocide, and we can see the progressives in those countries all started with attacking their political opponents' motive.