18 ms·

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 p

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.
    - magicalist 5y ago
      I mean, police unions do exist solely to protect police officers which means their incentives are sometimes opposed to the public they serve, and so they should absolutely not be in charge of things like self investigations and time-limiting records of abuse, etc. But that's not inherent to a union. Cities shouldn't cede these extraordinary powers to the union in the first place, and if they already have, they should take them back.
- steffandroid 5y ago
  You know unions also operate in the public and non-profit sectors, right?
- sleepychu 5y ago
  co-operatives?
- fearfulofview4 5y ago
- pydry 5y ago
  >We don’t necessarily need unions. I guess we dont necessarily need child labor laws or the weekend... Remember when the cacophony of calls to "End the Olympics Now" when the IOC was found to be grossly corrupt? No, me neither. The investor owned media called for reform. As it will for literally any other institution. Tennis is necessary.
  - tnel77 5y ago
    I feel like the first line is kind of a little hyperbolic. I know that unions gave us a lot of the luxuries we take for granted today and I will state once again, for the record, that I am pro-union. I’m just saying that they are in a position where it is easy to criticize and reject them if they do something wrong. For better and for worse.
    - pydry 5y ago
      I think it would be remiss to characterize child labor laws as luxuries. I could point to a hundred nonluxuries America doesnt have because it doesnt have enough union density, too - e.g. paid maternity leave.
  - 5560675260 5y ago
    Do we need child labor laws? In countries that are reach enough to have various forms of social security there is no need to send little Timmy to work in a coal mine. In countries that aren't - they do help their parents with sustenance farming and those laws, even if they exist on some level, don't change anything.
  - JanisL 5y ago
    A lot of people don't know just how corrupt the IOC is, I suspect if this was common knowledge there would be a hugely increased number of people calling for boycotts of the Olympics.
- geofft 5y ago
  Yeah, I think talking about the benefits of "unions" in the abstract is a little weird because - at least in the US - unions are highly regulated by laws that were written primarily envisioning the model of early-20th-century manual labor. That is to say, unions were designed in a way that fit not just for-profit businesses but very particular types of for-profit businesses. So you need to separate the more conceptual parts of unions - that maybe we should value sustainable and secure employment over shareholder value, that laborers should be able to negotiate collectively and not individually, that you can do good work that is beneficial to the public by prioritizing happy laborers - from the very specific implementation of unions that we happen to have. Without our current model of for-profit businesses, the implementation of unions would not be a coherent concept (and admittedly they are a bit less coherent now and when applied to e.g. tech companies than they were in the past for the businesses for which they were designed - which isn't to say they're the wrong answer, just that they're an awkward fit). But the values are still valid. As a sibling comment said, worker-owned cooperatives are one model here. Another similar option is very small companies: the concept of a solo founder unionizing makes no sense, but the solo founder of a bootstrapped "lifestyle business" has most of the benefits one generally wants from unions, and communities of such businesses can choose to federate for a better voice in the market. There are certainly a lot of other options besides the idea of a large business owned by its founders or publicly traded.
  - wmil 5y ago
    Union organizers always want GM style unions. But really developers would be better off with something along the lines of a trade guild. Something that enforces standards on employers and employees.
    - DetroitThrow 5y ago
      The Saturn corporation had a labor-management partnership which did exactly that for standards, and was a subdivision of GM. Unfortunately it's stressful for corp and union leadership when high standards are set, so it eventually lost support despite high worker approval.
- lamontcg 5y ago
  > We don’t necessarily need unions But we do. I'd argue that if you hop into other threads about how everyone is worried about financial/societal collapse in the US that it is the end result of decimating unions in the 80s. You just don't notice right away that you need unions when you lose them, corrosively much later you notice that society has gone off the rails.
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    I think that has much more to do with legislation in the US (not from there). Unions make sense for professions with a large amount of workers with very similar conditions. This is what brings members together and especially low wage workers have not much room to bargain. Tech paints a completely different picture. Support and call center staff? Certainly can use a union. Developers? Far too diverse conditions.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
judge2020 5y ago
> but this is never used to discourage all participation in the labor force because employers are often shitty. There are approximately 93 million adults (civilian noninstitutional population) that don't work[0]. I'm sure it's not all because of the employers themselves, but surely a lot don't want to deal with the politics and culture imposed on them by managerial talent [maybe some study on this portion of the population's reason for not working would be useful]. 0: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t01.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t01.htm (Men, 20 years and over->Not in labor force + Women, 20 years and over->Not in labor force)
- polygotdomain 5y ago
  > There are approximately 93 million adults (civilian noninstitutional population) that don't work Which includes retired people, people with disabilities who can't work, stay at home spouses (who arguably are working, but not for an employer), students. Those reasons have nothing to do with avoiding "politics and culture imposed on them by managerial talent" > maybe some study on this portion of the population's reason for not working would be useful See above
everdrive 5y ago
> 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." We definitely talk about corporations in this way. All the time, in fact!
- stuartjohnson12 5y ago
  Right, but we don't oppose their existence on that basis.
  - throwawaylinux 5y ago
    The original poster didn't oppose unions' existence and acknowledged they had advantages.
- cft 5y ago
  Moreover, the market often takes care of corporations that contribute nothing. Especially of the private ones. For the public ones, there's no "union" that protects their stock price on the stock market.
  - User23 5y ago
    https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/plunge-protection-team.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/plunge-protection-team....
  - JanisL 5y ago
    Open market operations of various central banks certainly impacts equity prices of publicly traded stocks. In some cases the holdings are enormous: https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Markets/BOJ-tops-pension-whale-as-Japan-s-largest-stockholder https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Markets/BOJ-tops-pension-wh...
- airza 5y ago
  The point which i don’t think was articulated well by the GP is that depsite these objections to corporate power nobody (ok,few people) in HN threads ever seems to endorse getting rid of corporations.
slibhb 5y ago
> 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." Who doesn't talk about corporations in this manner? Doesn't everyone? > 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. Democracy doesn't make sense in every situation. It makes sense for countries because we are born into citizenship. If you dislike a company you can just leave. In situations where you can't "just leave," unions may make sense. Google is not an example of this. Everyone who works at Google could leave and find a job elsewhere tomorrow.
- pydry 5y ago
  >Who doesn't talk about corporations in this manner? Corporations are usually horrendously corrupt so we should abolish them all? No. Bit of a fringe view, that. The rule is, if it's a court, company, government, NGO or serbian tennis club then corruption should be met with reform. In the predominantly investor owned media, corruption in unions leads to calls to abolish them. It's standard.
  - ThrowawayR2 5y ago
    > "Corporations are usually horrendously corrupt so we should abolish them all?" People voluntarily don't work for corporations whose mission or behavior is incompatible with their values; they do not have that option with unionization. If the union allows workers to not join the union, not charge dues for being an non-member, and not support them, then nobody would have a problem with them.
    - pydry 5y ago
      It's almost impossible for me to work for a corporation whose values align with mine. It's really really easy to work in a non unionized workplace if thats what you want.
padastra 5y ago
Businesses create value. That's not universal -- there's regulatory capture, monopolies, tragedy of the commons, etc. -- but it is fundamentally why capitalist economies have raised billions of people out of poverty. Unions fundamentally redistribute the value that's been captured. That's not universal -- there's unions that make workers happier and result in more productivity, unions that are not adversarial and take on an HR function that's more in tune with employees -- but it is fundamentally why there can be successful companies with no unions, but of course no successful unions with no companies. Arguably, U.S. unions are more adversarial than European unions, and in many manufacturing, automobile, shipping industries have prevented their parent companies from adopting new technology, rolling out new practices, etc. to the extent that said parent companies were no longer competitive.
- lovich 5y ago
  > Businesses create value Workers labor mixed with capital creates value. Businesses are just a way of organizing that interaction that, if it succeeds, makes the interaction more efficient. The businesses through the ownership of capital are the ones doing the redistributing of value, they are the ones writing the checks. Unions just negotiate that the redistribution allocates more of the pie to labor rather than the owners
  - padastra 5y ago
    I think we're roughly in agreement. Businesses are composed of the capital providers, the organizers (who decide how to deploy the capital), and the workers. Capital providers colluding to set a loan rate is illegal. We shouldn't allow them to collude legally; they are a small number of experienced actors operating with information asymmetry already. Organizers (i.e. senior management) colluding is--I don't know the legality--just unnecessary. They often are paid based on value add (equity, bonuses, etc.), so they are already reasonably aligned and need no further protection. Workers can exist and do exist with or without collusion (i.e. unions). As a society, we've reasonably decided that colluding is legal, because workers often add a lot of value but have individual low value-over-replacement (hard to organize because of numbers, often inexperienced, etc.). Unions exist to help raise individual value-over-replacement closer to value-add. What's being discussed here is the pluses and minuses of unionization. What I disagree with is people in this thread--not specifically you--comparing the collusion of workers to the existence of capital or organization (i.e. corporations are sometimes bad! why doesn't anyone discuss that!). First, obviously people complain about corporations all the time. But second, private companies (capital and organization and workers) add value, and no society has done well without a large component of this. There are many pluses to unions. But, especially as currently implemented, the minuses exist too, including that many of them focus on raising VOR but wholly ignore value-add, in a way that forces the business into slower and poorer decisions; or shielding some workers from the consequences of adding little to no value.
bell-cot 5y ago
> 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... One Slight Difference - Corporations are supposed to serve their owners' financial interests. Unions are supposed to serve their members. How 'bout we speak just as harshly of mission-failure unions as we do of mission-failure corporations? OTOH, I certainly agree with your 4th para - "...Like democratic nations, they can contain abusers, they can be inefficient, and they can fail...".
- Nullabillity 5y ago
  Surely intending and designing for a negative outcome just makes it even worse?
mikkergp 5y ago
'Never' used to discourage all participation? Have you visited /r/antiwork? Also, I think some of the backlash to unions is that they are often described as an unmitigated force for good, but for some it just feels like being squeezed between two beurocracies.
savant_penguin 5y ago
There are things I do not want to be democratically controlled. My ability to negotiate salaries with my boss is one of them. The scope of my job (some unions get to decide what you are allowed to do). Who should get fired (teachers unions make it impossible for bad teachers to be fired, so students are forced to put up with them) If you should be allowed to work. Some unions forbid you to work during strikes. Often by force and by threat. Some unions manage to lobby for regulations that make it harder to get into a job. Then you need certifications and/or degrees to even consider a job. Unfortunately many use the "democratic union" argument to control your ability to make personal decisions. Unions that get to channel power from the government (commonly through regulations) can easily abuse their power. When unions are not voluntary they easily become HOAs for jobs
- wbl 5y ago
  The screen actors guild doesn't limit it's members ability to make money.
  - DaveExeter 5y ago
    Um...it does. If you are in SAG you are not allowed to work on non-union productions.
- geofft 5y ago
  Why do you prefer these things to be controlled by management and HR? To be clear - I absolutely agree that these are all important and these powers need to be exercised wisely. But without democratically controlling them, every single one of them is controlled by management/HR. Why do you feel that management/HR is going to do a better job of controlling those things?
- ramphastidae 5y ago
  > There are things I do not want to be democratically controlled. > My ability to negotiate salaries with my boss is one of them. > The scope of my job (some unions get to decide what you are allowed to do). If you are an at-will employee in the US, your ability to do any of that is entirely at the discretion of your employer. You have no rights to do any of the above. You might have more leverage or better treatment in specific scenarios, but again, the hard truth is that all of this is entirely at the whim of management.
blululu 5y ago
I think that the difference here is a matter of principles. A lot of people view corporations in a justifiably negative light (very few people say that corporations are an unalloyed good, and I have never heard anyone wish that they could work for an LLC). But a corporation is chartered to make money - we expect it to act accordingly and for the most part companies do make money (when they fail to make money, they cease existing and the general consensus is 'good riddance'). A union on the other hand is chartered to advocate for the rights and needs of workers. The standards and expectations for a union are fundamentally different than for a corporation. It depends on the union, but a lot unions don't really carry out their core function and there are no consequences for this failure. Given that Unions claim a democratic mandate to advocate for labor, people are justifiably upset when they see their union doing nothing to represent their interests.
- pydry 5y ago
  >But a corporation is chartered to make money - we expect it to act accordingly and for the most part companies do make money (when they fail to make money, they cease existing They are supposed to serve a higher purpose than just make money. If you were being equivalently fair to unions you would say that their sole purpose is to take dues. >a lot unions don't really carry out their core function and there are no consequences for this failure Yes, they do, they lose members.
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    > Yes, they do, they lose members. And they often use violence or threat of violence to try to stop this - see their reaction to 'scabbing'. If I say I don't want to work for my company any more they'd either say 'farewell' or even offer me money to stay. If you don't want to be part of a union or a strike, you better be prepared to be harassed and intimidated.
    - pydry 5y ago
      >And they often use violence or threat of violence to try to stop this - see their reaction to 'scabbing'. If it's a competition for who has managed the most extreme violence in relation to an industrial dispute in America the prize would go to the manager of a coal mine in west virginia who brought in a private air force to bomb strikers (battle of blair mountain). I somehow doubt youll find a union that has managed that level of unbridled violence. The most extreme violence isnt in defence of livelihoods, it's in the service of profit.
sandworm101 5y ago
>> For some reason we hold unions to an incredibly high standard of "no problems, ever" Because they are democratic institutions. They can be held to a no-problems standard because every time a problem occurs then those involved can be sacked and replaced. The level of acceptable corruption is set by the membership. Rules should therefore focus on openness and member participation in leadership selection. Everyone who hates unions because of X or Y, to them I say join the leadership and run the union the way you think it should be run. Tearing down the system doesn't fix anything.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  > I say join the leadership and run the union the way you think it should be run This is like saying if you don't like the gangs in your area you should join them and try to reform them to do social work instead. Why isn't it valid to say you don't like unions and so don't want anything to do with them?
  - sgift 5y ago
    If you don't want anything to do with them you absolutely have the right to go somewhere the union doesn't exist. You do not have the right to ask the union to make your life easier. That's not their job.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - pandemicsoul 5y ago
    > Why isn't it valid to say you don't like unions and so don't want anything to do with them? Because you can't possibly have personally experienced every union, and the media isn't good at covering unions generally, so whatever bias you're (or anyone else making this statement is) presenting here feels unearned. This is similar to the bias of racism or homophobia, right? Like, "I saw a Black person steal something, so now I think that all Black people are untrustworthy." Or, "I saw a gay man hit on a straight guy and now I think all gay men are sex pests." These are declarative statements about all people in those groups based on a small amount of information and on societal bias. And these biases rarely go the other way – do you also end up saying, "I don't like corporations and don't want anything to do with them?" Corporations are, by far, have a vastly worse record on theft, corruption, anti-environmental practices, etc.
mc32 5y ago
Our unions are in need of reform. They need to serve a modern economy. They continue to act like it’s 1940. If unions had the same internal checks against abuse: Financial compliance, ability and desire to fire corrupt officials, ability to fire abusive members as well as management, were active in progress (rather than protect against progress), and acted as an arbiter for the best interest for all parties (worker, employer, self (union), and economy at large) I think I’d have a better experience with them. As they are they are parasitic to a significant degree. That’s in no way turning a blind eye to the reforms they enabled in the first half of the XX century. They are now like the non-profit whose original reason to be ceased to exist but now want to continue existing for the sake of the management structure who find themselves with an evaporated mission.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
geodel 5y ago
> 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. No, most people are holding them to reasonable standards. Just like people hold medical doctors to not kill people by their negligence. Some might say it is incredibly high standard as well but I do not think so. I am afraid employers are shitty so union can be shitty is not a great advertisement for unions. > Unions are democratically controlled worker organizations... It would interesting to understand why these shining democratic organization don't directly provide work to people. Overall wouldn't it be much better than working for grubby capitalists. May be not in USA but other countries can eliminate the concept of corporations/companies and just simply have unions.
mc32 5y ago
If unions could, they would regulate the working hours of robots and would represent robots in any discussion regarding work and would want a monetary cut of their productivity —if they could.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
lliamander 5y ago
> 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. That's not the standard. The standard is "are unions worth the trouble they cause?". I've worked in industries, as a union employee doing manual labor, where I would say yes. I don't think unions are worth the trouble for tech workers. > But like democratic nations, they provide a powerful resistance to authoritarian abuse and on balance improve the quality of life for their people. The fact that I can easily switch employers is a more effective protection against an abuse than a union ever could be.
hcurtiss 5y ago
>but this is never used to discourage all participation in the labor force because employers are often shitty. Because not working is not a viable option for any significant number of people. But you can certainly work without union representation.

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.
  - magicalist 5y ago
    I mean, police unions do exist solely to protect police officers which means their incentives are sometimes opposed to the public they serve, and so they should absolutely not be in charge of things like self investigations and time-limiting records of abuse, etc. But that's not inherent to a union. Cities shouldn't cede these extraordinary powers to the union in the first place, and if they already have, they should take them back.
steffandroid 5y ago
You know unions also operate in the public and non-profit sectors, right?
sleepychu 5y ago
co-operatives?
fearfulofview4 5y ago
pydry 5y ago
>We don’t necessarily need unions. I guess we dont necessarily need child labor laws or the weekend... Remember when the cacophony of calls to "End the Olympics Now" when the IOC was found to be grossly corrupt? No, me neither. The investor owned media called for reform. As it will for literally any other institution. Tennis is necessary.
- tnel77 5y ago
  I feel like the first line is kind of a little hyperbolic. I know that unions gave us a lot of the luxuries we take for granted today and I will state once again, for the record, that I am pro-union. I’m just saying that they are in a position where it is easy to criticize and reject them if they do something wrong. For better and for worse.
  - pydry 5y ago
    I think it would be remiss to characterize child labor laws as luxuries. I could point to a hundred nonluxuries America doesnt have because it doesnt have enough union density, too - e.g. paid maternity leave.
- 5560675260 5y ago
  Do we need child labor laws? In countries that are reach enough to have various forms of social security there is no need to send little Timmy to work in a coal mine. In countries that aren't - they do help their parents with sustenance farming and those laws, even if they exist on some level, don't change anything.
- JanisL 5y ago
  A lot of people don't know just how corrupt the IOC is, I suspect if this was common knowledge there would be a hugely increased number of people calling for boycotts of the Olympics.
geofft 5y ago
Yeah, I think talking about the benefits of "unions" in the abstract is a little weird because - at least in the US - unions are highly regulated by laws that were written primarily envisioning the model of early-20th-century manual labor. That is to say, unions were designed in a way that fit not just for-profit businesses but very particular types of for-profit businesses. So you need to separate the more conceptual parts of unions - that maybe we should value sustainable and secure employment over shareholder value, that laborers should be able to negotiate collectively and not individually, that you can do good work that is beneficial to the public by prioritizing happy laborers - from the very specific implementation of unions that we happen to have. Without our current model of for-profit businesses, the implementation of unions would not be a coherent concept (and admittedly they are a bit less coherent now and when applied to e.g. tech companies than they were in the past for the businesses for which they were designed - which isn't to say they're the wrong answer, just that they're an awkward fit). But the values are still valid. As a sibling comment said, worker-owned cooperatives are one model here. Another similar option is very small companies: the concept of a solo founder unionizing makes no sense, but the solo founder of a bootstrapped "lifestyle business" has most of the benefits one generally wants from unions, and communities of such businesses can choose to federate for a better voice in the market. There are certainly a lot of other options besides the idea of a large business owned by its founders or publicly traded.
- wmil 5y ago
  Union organizers always want GM style unions. But really developers would be better off with something along the lines of a trade guild. Something that enforces standards on employers and employees.
  - DetroitThrow 5y ago
    The Saturn corporation had a labor-management partnership which did exactly that for standards, and was a subdivision of GM. Unfortunately it's stressful for corp and union leadership when high standards are set, so it eventually lost support despite high worker approval.
lamontcg 5y ago
> We don’t necessarily need unions But we do. I'd argue that if you hop into other threads about how everyone is worried about financial/societal collapse in the US that it is the end result of decimating unions in the 80s. You just don't notice right away that you need unions when you lose them, corrosively much later you notice that society has gone off the rails.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  I think that has much more to do with legislation in the US (not from there). Unions make sense for professions with a large amount of workers with very similar conditions. This is what brings members together and especially low wage workers have not much room to bargain. Tech paints a completely different picture. Support and call center staff? Certainly can use a union. Developers? Far too diverse conditions.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

judge2020 5y ago

> but this is never used to discourage all participation in the labor force because employers are often shitty. There are approximately 93 million adults (civilian noninstitutional population) that don't work[0]. I'm sure it's not all because of the employers themselves, but surely a lot don't want to deal with the politics and culture imposed on them by managerial talent [maybe some study on this portion of the population's reason for not working would be useful]. 0: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t01.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t01.htm (Men, 20 years and over->Not in labor force + Women, 20 years and over->Not in labor force)

polygotdomain 5y ago
> There are approximately 93 million adults (civilian noninstitutional population) that don't work Which includes retired people, people with disabilities who can't work, stay at home spouses (who arguably are working, but not for an employer), students. Those reasons have nothing to do with avoiding "politics and culture imposed on them by managerial talent" > maybe some study on this portion of the population's reason for not working would be useful See above

everdrive 5y ago

stuartjohnson12 5y ago
Right, but we don't oppose their existence on that basis.
- throwawaylinux 5y ago
  The original poster didn't oppose unions' existence and acknowledged they had advantages.
cft 5y ago
Moreover, the market often takes care of corporations that contribute nothing. Especially of the private ones. For the public ones, there's no "union" that protects their stock price on the stock market.
- User23 5y ago
  https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/plunge-protection-team.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/plunge-protection-team....
- JanisL 5y ago
  Open market operations of various central banks certainly impacts equity prices of publicly traded stocks. In some cases the holdings are enormous: https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Markets/BOJ-tops-pension-whale-as-Japan-s-largest-stockholder https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Markets/BOJ-tops-pension-wh...
airza 5y ago
The point which i don’t think was articulated well by the GP is that depsite these objections to corporate power nobody (ok,few people) in HN threads ever seems to endorse getting rid of corporations.

slibhb 5y ago

> 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." Who doesn't talk about corporations in this manner? Doesn't everyone? > 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. Democracy doesn't make sense in every situation. It makes sense for countries because we are born into citizenship. If you dislike a company you can just leave. In situations where you can't "just leave," unions may make sense. Google is not an example of this. Everyone who works at Google could leave and find a job elsewhere tomorrow.

pydry 5y ago
>Who doesn't talk about corporations in this manner? Corporations are usually horrendously corrupt so we should abolish them all? No. Bit of a fringe view, that. The rule is, if it's a court, company, government, NGO or serbian tennis club then corruption should be met with reform. In the predominantly investor owned media, corruption in unions leads to calls to abolish them. It's standard.
- ThrowawayR2 5y ago
  > "Corporations are usually horrendously corrupt so we should abolish them all?" People voluntarily don't work for corporations whose mission or behavior is incompatible with their values; they do not have that option with unionization. If the union allows workers to not join the union, not charge dues for being an non-member, and not support them, then nobody would have a problem with them.
  - pydry 5y ago
    It's almost impossible for me to work for a corporation whose values align with mine. It's really really easy to work in a non unionized workplace if thats what you want.

padastra 5y ago

Businesses create value. That's not universal -- there's regulatory capture, monopolies, tragedy of the commons, etc. -- but it is fundamentally why capitalist economies have raised billions of people out of poverty. Unions fundamentally redistribute the value that's been captured. That's not universal -- there's unions that make workers happier and result in more productivity, unions that are not adversarial and take on an HR function that's more in tune with employees -- but it is fundamentally why there can be successful companies with no unions, but of course no successful unions with no companies. Arguably, U.S. unions are more adversarial than European unions, and in many manufacturing, automobile, shipping industries have prevented their parent companies from adopting new technology, rolling out new practices, etc. to the extent that said parent companies were no longer competitive.

lovich 5y ago
> Businesses create value Workers labor mixed with capital creates value. Businesses are just a way of organizing that interaction that, if it succeeds, makes the interaction more efficient. The businesses through the ownership of capital are the ones doing the redistributing of value, they are the ones writing the checks. Unions just negotiate that the redistribution allocates more of the pie to labor rather than the owners
- padastra 5y ago
  I think we're roughly in agreement. Businesses are composed of the capital providers, the organizers (who decide how to deploy the capital), and the workers. Capital providers colluding to set a loan rate is illegal. We shouldn't allow them to collude legally; they are a small number of experienced actors operating with information asymmetry already. Organizers (i.e. senior management) colluding is--I don't know the legality--just unnecessary. They often are paid based on value add (equity, bonuses, etc.), so they are already reasonably aligned and need no further protection. Workers can exist and do exist with or without collusion (i.e. unions). As a society, we've reasonably decided that colluding is legal, because workers often add a lot of value but have individual low value-over-replacement (hard to organize because of numbers, often inexperienced, etc.). Unions exist to help raise individual value-over-replacement closer to value-add. What's being discussed here is the pluses and minuses of unionization. What I disagree with is people in this thread--not specifically you--comparing the collusion of workers to the existence of capital or organization (i.e. corporations are sometimes bad! why doesn't anyone discuss that!). First, obviously people complain about corporations all the time. But second, private companies (capital and organization and workers) add value, and no society has done well without a large component of this. There are many pluses to unions. But, especially as currently implemented, the minuses exist too, including that many of them focus on raising VOR but wholly ignore value-add, in a way that forces the business into slower and poorer decisions; or shielding some workers from the consequences of adding little to no value.

bell-cot 5y ago

> 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... One Slight Difference - Corporations are supposed to serve their owners' financial interests. Unions are supposed to serve their members. How 'bout we speak just as harshly of mission-failure unions as we do of mission-failure corporations? OTOH, I certainly agree with your 4th para - "...Like democratic nations, they can contain abusers, they can be inefficient, and they can fail...".

Nullabillity 5y ago
Surely intending and designing for a negative outcome just makes it even worse?

mikkergp 5y ago

'Never' used to discourage all participation? Have you visited /r/antiwork? Also, I think some of the backlash to unions is that they are often described as an unmitigated force for good, but for some it just feels like being squeezed between two beurocracies.

savant_penguin 5y ago

There are things I do not want to be democratically controlled. My ability to negotiate salaries with my boss is one of them. The scope of my job (some unions get to decide what you are allowed to do). Who should get fired (teachers unions make it impossible for bad teachers to be fired, so students are forced to put up with them) If you should be allowed to work. Some unions forbid you to work during strikes. Often by force and by threat. Some unions manage to lobby for regulations that make it harder to get into a job. Then you need certifications and/or degrees to even consider a job. Unfortunately many use the "democratic union" argument to control your ability to make personal decisions. Unions that get to channel power from the government (commonly through regulations) can easily abuse their power. When unions are not voluntary they easily become HOAs for jobs

wbl 5y ago
The screen actors guild doesn't limit it's members ability to make money.
- DaveExeter 5y ago
  Um...it does. If you are in SAG you are not allowed to work on non-union productions.
geofft 5y ago
Why do you prefer these things to be controlled by management and HR? To be clear - I absolutely agree that these are all important and these powers need to be exercised wisely. But without democratically controlling them, every single one of them is controlled by management/HR. Why do you feel that management/HR is going to do a better job of controlling those things?
ramphastidae 5y ago
> There are things I do not want to be democratically controlled. > My ability to negotiate salaries with my boss is one of them. > The scope of my job (some unions get to decide what you are allowed to do). If you are an at-will employee in the US, your ability to do any of that is entirely at the discretion of your employer. You have no rights to do any of the above. You might have more leverage or better treatment in specific scenarios, but again, the hard truth is that all of this is entirely at the whim of management.

blululu 5y ago

I think that the difference here is a matter of principles. A lot of people view corporations in a justifiably negative light (very few people say that corporations are an unalloyed good, and I have never heard anyone wish that they could work for an LLC). But a corporation is chartered to make money - we expect it to act accordingly and for the most part companies do make money (when they fail to make money, they cease existing and the general consensus is 'good riddance'). A union on the other hand is chartered to advocate for the rights and needs of workers. The standards and expectations for a union are fundamentally different than for a corporation. It depends on the union, but a lot unions don't really carry out their core function and there are no consequences for this failure. Given that Unions claim a democratic mandate to advocate for labor, people are justifiably upset when they see their union doing nothing to represent their interests.

pydry 5y ago
>But a corporation is chartered to make money - we expect it to act accordingly and for the most part companies do make money (when they fail to make money, they cease existing They are supposed to serve a higher purpose than just make money. If you were being equivalently fair to unions you would say that their sole purpose is to take dues. >a lot unions don't really carry out their core function and there are no consequences for this failure Yes, they do, they lose members.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  > Yes, they do, they lose members. And they often use violence or threat of violence to try to stop this - see their reaction to 'scabbing'. If I say I don't want to work for my company any more they'd either say 'farewell' or even offer me money to stay. If you don't want to be part of a union or a strike, you better be prepared to be harassed and intimidated.
  - pydry 5y ago
    >And they often use violence or threat of violence to try to stop this - see their reaction to 'scabbing'. If it's a competition for who has managed the most extreme violence in relation to an industrial dispute in America the prize would go to the manager of a coal mine in west virginia who brought in a private air force to bomb strikers (battle of blair mountain). I somehow doubt youll find a union that has managed that level of unbridled violence. The most extreme violence isnt in defence of livelihoods, it's in the service of profit.

sandworm101 5y ago

>> For some reason we hold unions to an incredibly high standard of "no problems, ever" Because they are democratic institutions. They can be held to a no-problems standard because every time a problem occurs then those involved can be sacked and replaced. The level of acceptable corruption is set by the membership. Rules should therefore focus on openness and member participation in leadership selection. Everyone who hates unions because of X or Y, to them I say join the leadership and run the union the way you think it should be run. Tearing down the system doesn't fix anything.

chrisseaton 5y ago
> I say join the leadership and run the union the way you think it should be run This is like saying if you don't like the gangs in your area you should join them and try to reform them to do social work instead. Why isn't it valid to say you don't like unions and so don't want anything to do with them?
- sgift 5y ago
  If you don't want anything to do with them you absolutely have the right to go somewhere the union doesn't exist. You do not have the right to ask the union to make your life easier. That's not their job.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- pandemicsoul 5y ago
  > Why isn't it valid to say you don't like unions and so don't want anything to do with them? Because you can't possibly have personally experienced every union, and the media isn't good at covering unions generally, so whatever bias you're (or anyone else making this statement is) presenting here feels unearned. This is similar to the bias of racism or homophobia, right? Like, "I saw a Black person steal something, so now I think that all Black people are untrustworthy." Or, "I saw a gay man hit on a straight guy and now I think all gay men are sex pests." These are declarative statements about all people in those groups based on a small amount of information and on societal bias. And these biases rarely go the other way – do you also end up saying, "I don't like corporations and don't want anything to do with them?" Corporations are, by far, have a vastly worse record on theft, corruption, anti-environmental practices, etc.

mc32 5y ago

Our unions are in need of reform. They need to serve a modern economy. They continue to act like it’s 1940. If unions had the same internal checks against abuse: Financial compliance, ability and desire to fire corrupt officials, ability to fire abusive members as well as management, were active in progress (rather than protect against progress), and acted as an arbiter for the best interest for all parties (worker, employer, self (union), and economy at large) I think I’d have a better experience with them. As they are they are parasitic to a significant degree. That’s in no way turning a blind eye to the reforms they enabled in the first half of the XX century. They are now like the non-profit whose original reason to be ceased to exist but now want to continue existing for the sake of the management structure who find themselves with an evaporated mission.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

geodel 5y ago

> 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. No, most people are holding them to reasonable standards. Just like people hold medical doctors to not kill people by their negligence. Some might say it is incredibly high standard as well but I do not think so. I am afraid employers are shitty so union can be shitty is not a great advertisement for unions. > Unions are democratically controlled worker organizations... It would interesting to understand why these shining democratic organization don't directly provide work to people. Overall wouldn't it be much better than working for grubby capitalists. May be not in USA but other countries can eliminate the concept of corporations/companies and just simply have unions.

mc32 5y ago

If unions could, they would regulate the working hours of robots and would represent robots in any discussion regarding work and would want a monetary cut of their productivity —if they could.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

lliamander 5y ago

> 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. That's not the standard. The standard is "are unions worth the trouble they cause?". I've worked in industries, as a union employee doing manual labor, where I would say yes. I don't think unions are worth the trouble for tech workers. > But like democratic nations, they provide a powerful resistance to authoritarian abuse and on balance improve the quality of life for their people. The fact that I can easily switch employers is a more effective protection against an abuse than a union ever could be.

hcurtiss 5y ago

>but this is never used to discourage all participation in the labor force because employers are often shitty. Because not working is not a viable option for any significant number of people. But you can certainly work without union representation.