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Companies, generally speaking, already have guidelines around what wages they will pay. So to get significantly better pay you need to leave anyway (how often

Companies, generally speaking, already have guidelines around what wages they will pay. So to get significantly better pay you need to leave anyway (how often do you get counteroffers that meet or exceed the competitors offer). Blaming a union for the thing the company already does seems odd.

notahacker 5y ago
Companies have guidelines. Wage bargaining arrangements negotiated between companies and unions have binding guarantees. One is obviously easier for a company to ignore if it's in their interests to incentivise a staff member than another. Also, company wage setting guidelines are more likely to prioritise "retain and reward the staff we think are best" in the first place. (Obviously unions prioritising things like reducing wage inequality or rewarding the union leaders' core constituency are good for other people's wages instead.) Seems far odder to insist that as companies have some sort of guidelines, unions can take credit for but accept no blame for any of the changes they negotiate whilst formalising them.
- joshuamorton 5y ago
  > unions can take credit for but accept no blame for any of the changes they negotiate whilst formalising them. Good thing no one said that then! > One is obviously easier for a company to ignore if it's in their interests to incentivise a staff member than another. But in this situation, the offer you're getting is going to be no better than what the other company offers, so if your current company can't match, you don't lose anything.
  - notahacker 5y ago
    > But in this situation, the offer you're getting is going to be no better than what the other company offers, so if your current company can't match, you don't lose anything What a strange comment?! Perceived high achievers and high potential talents receive well above company average salaries or salary rises all the time in competitive industries like software, without waiting to see whether that person starts interviewing at other companies and what that offer is! They can't receive well above company average pay offers if the company's collective bargaining arrangement doesn't allow them to offer anything other than the standard union-agreed pay rate even the below average workers get. So they earn less. If a company is willing to pay a person more than they're willing to pay their average and below average staff, but a union rule forces them to pay everyone with that job description the same, that person is obviously earning less money, not more money. I'm genuinely amazed a concept so simple can generate so many objections
    - joshuamorton 5y ago
      > but a union rule forces them to pay everyone with that job description the same Why would we advocate for this though? You keep making the claim that unions would advocate for more and more restrictive policies. First it was guidelines, now it's strictly regimented salaries with no room for performance based pay at all. You're generating objections because you keep changing your argument. Yes, paying everyone exactly the same is probably not a good idea. But no one is advocating for this, so who cares?
      - notahacker 5y ago
        I mean, literally the entire point of collective bargaining arrangements is that instead of negotiating salaries individually, the firm agrees to pay everyone a wage schedule agreed with the union. Hence the whole subthread starting with another poster talking about collectively negotiated pay bands for all staff having less scope for large pay rises than a firm's discretionary policy, as the union also has to look after the interests of lower performing workers who want to be paid the same or nearly the same as their colleagues. A collective bargaining agreement is by definition a more restrictive wage policy than an individually negotiated one. It is not me "changing my argument" that you have spent several posts sniping at my arguments without apparently having the slightest idea what collective bargaining is.
        dundarious 5y ago
        There are plenty of unions (some examples up thread) that do variable pay. If you're arguing against a specific kind of collective bargaining agreement, then just say that, and be aware that it's a far more oblique criticism of unions, especially in this specific context of Google. Also, a salary agreement between a single individual employee and a huge corporation has by definition a huge power imbalance. Unions reduce that power imbalance. You can argue which is best (full negotiation freedom with massive power imbalance vs. collective bargaining with or without variable/performance pay and a much smaller but still non-trivial power imbalance), but there's no point in just arguing for one skew and ignoring the legitimate arguments for the other.

notahacker 5y ago

Companies have guidelines. Wage bargaining arrangements negotiated between companies and unions have binding guarantees. One is obviously easier for a company to ignore if it's in their interests to incentivise a staff member than another. Also, company wage setting guidelines are more likely to prioritise "retain and reward the staff we think are best" in the first place. (Obviously unions prioritising things like reducing wage inequality or rewarding the union leaders' core constituency are good for other people's wages instead.) Seems far odder to insist that as companies have some sort of guidelines, unions can take credit for but accept no blame for any of the changes they negotiate whilst formalising them.

joshuamorton 5y ago
> unions can take credit for but accept no blame for any of the changes they negotiate whilst formalising them. Good thing no one said that then! > One is obviously easier for a company to ignore if it's in their interests to incentivise a staff member than another. But in this situation, the offer you're getting is going to be no better than what the other company offers, so if your current company can't match, you don't lose anything.
- notahacker 5y ago
  > But in this situation, the offer you're getting is going to be no better than what the other company offers, so if your current company can't match, you don't lose anything What a strange comment?! Perceived high achievers and high potential talents receive well above company average salaries or salary rises all the time in competitive industries like software, without waiting to see whether that person starts interviewing at other companies and what that offer is! They can't receive well above company average pay offers if the company's collective bargaining arrangement doesn't allow them to offer anything other than the standard union-agreed pay rate even the below average workers get. So they earn less. If a company is willing to pay a person more than they're willing to pay their average and below average staff, but a union rule forces them to pay everyone with that job description the same, that person is obviously earning less money, not more money. I'm genuinely amazed a concept so simple can generate so many objections
  - joshuamorton 5y ago
    > but a union rule forces them to pay everyone with that job description the same Why would we advocate for this though? You keep making the claim that unions would advocate for more and more restrictive policies. First it was guidelines, now it's strictly regimented salaries with no room for performance based pay at all. You're generating objections because you keep changing your argument. Yes, paying everyone exactly the same is probably not a good idea. But no one is advocating for this, so who cares?
    - notahacker 5y ago
      I mean, literally the entire point of collective bargaining arrangements is that instead of negotiating salaries individually, the firm agrees to pay everyone a wage schedule agreed with the union. Hence the whole subthread starting with another poster talking about collectively negotiated pay bands for all staff having less scope for large pay rises than a firm's discretionary policy, as the union also has to look after the interests of lower performing workers who want to be paid the same or nearly the same as their colleagues. A collective bargaining agreement is by definition a more restrictive wage policy than an individually negotiated one. It is not me "changing my argument" that you have spent several posts sniping at my arguments without apparently having the slightest idea what collective bargaining is.
      - dundarious 5y ago
        There are plenty of unions (some examples up thread) that do variable pay. If you're arguing against a specific kind of collective bargaining agreement, then just say that, and be aware that it's a far more oblique criticism of unions, especially in this specific context of Google. Also, a salary agreement between a single individual employee and a huge corporation has by definition a huge power imbalance. Unions reduce that power imbalance. You can argue which is best (full negotiation freedom with massive power imbalance vs. collective bargaining with or without variable/performance pay and a much smaller but still non-trivial power imbalance), but there's no point in just arguing for one skew and ignoring the legitimate arguments for the other.