6 ms·

If a union formed when you have leverage doesn't deliver when you do, why would you expect it to deliver when you don't?

by Kalium 5y ago

lmm 5y ago
A union is like an insurance policy, or a lawyer on retainer, or a contract in writing. It doesn't do anything when times are good, that's not what it's for.
- eru 5y ago
  And like an insurance policy, it costs you. Not all insurance policies are good.
  - lmm 5y ago
    Oh absolutely. But the remedy for that is to be actively involved and hold them to account, not dismiss the whole thing as a scam.
    - eru 5y ago
      You want me to be actively involved in all insurance contracts that are offered to me, and try to lobby them to be better? Seems like just saying No to them would be the saner option. (Similar also for unions you don't want to participate in. Or political parties, or companies etc. Joining and getting involved is fine, if that's what you want. But avoiding is just as valid a response.)
      - lmm 5y ago
        You have to judge how much involvement to have. Just signing up and forgetting about it is a pretty bad idea. But not getting insurance at all because you've heard some insurance sucks and doesn't pay out is an even worse one. Most kinds of disaster preparedness are thankless, seemingly pointless work until the disaster in question happens.
        eru 5y ago
        Insurance is a broad term. I agree that is some forms of insurance are useful. Eg catastrophic health insurance at a good price. But that doesn't mean I need to insure my phone. Or buy health insurance that covers glasses.
        lmm 5y ago
        I do agree with that much. But having a manager attempt to fire me under false pretences was, subjectively, the worst and most stressful experience of my life; I've had scary medical incidents but those are something everyone is on your side for, a human actively trying to wreck your life is so much worse. YMMV I guess.
        eru 5y ago
        You have my sympathies. I just don't think unions are going to help on balance here. If someone doesn't want to work with you anymore, they should be allowed to just fire you. Instead of having to come up with false pretenses. See also how Orange in France ended up bullying their own employees in order to entice them to quit; mostly because they weren't allowed to just fire them. (Some of the victims were even driven into suicide.)
- 0xy 5y ago
  So it's like buying a lottery ticket every day for decades expecting to win millions. They don't show value and there's no indication they ever will, and it costs a significant amount of money. Often, the unions themselves are corrupt.
  - lmm 5y ago
    > So it's like buying a lottery ticket every day for decades expecting to win millions. They don't show value and there's no indication they ever will, and it costs a significant amount of money. Money has diminishing returns. Paying to gain a small chance of winning big is generally foolish; paying to eliminate a small chance of losing big is often wise. > Often, the unions themselves are corrupt. This seems to be a distinctly American quirk. Maybe figure out what you're doing differently to the rest of us that causes that, rather than attacking an institution that works very well elsewhere.
    - mianos 5y ago
      > This seems to be a distinctly American quirk. Not so much American. They are very corrupt here in Australia. There are union leaders or related staff in court pretty much every working day in court down here.
    - rmbyrro 5y ago
      > This seems to be a distinctly American quirk. Not at all, they're pretty much corrupt across all of South America as well. I don't have first hand experience elsewhere, but have heard similar stories from who do.
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    Most problem I see with unions is that they tend to run their own causes at some point. It is difficult to keep them focused on the interest of workers and they can get tangled up in contemporary issues. Corruption is another problem since possible. If I look at some unions some people in tech wanted to start, I don't really see the issues of worker prioritized. That said, because corporations seem to default to exploiting workers to the maximum degree possible, they are a necessary evil. I don't know how bad working for the NYT is, but I wouldn't be surprised that instead of arguing for employee conditions, they try to influence editors and dejure editorials the might not like.
woodruffw 5y ago
If I understood the parent comment, there are two kinds of leverage being discussed here: there's the leverage that individual tech workers currently have (as high demand, high income laborers in a hot market) and then there's the leverage inherent to collective bargaining. I believe the GP was saying that unions can deliver when circumstances give individuals large amounts of leverage, but they don't need to. But we all know that good times don't last forever, and unionization does provide sufficient leverage when individual leverage evaporates.
- Kalium 5y ago
  I understood the point. My counterpoint is that if a union doesn't use the leverage of collective bargaining to deliver when it's in a good position to do so, it rather weakens the argument that the same union will decide to use its leverage when individual leverage evaporates. Organizations run on precedent, policy, and consistency. Arguing for the potential for inconsistency seems to me to be a rather weak reed. Especially since the WSJ's been a union shop for 80-ish years. More likely, IMO, is that the union as a whole did not care much about the developers and was more concerned with other parts of the membership. There's one union covering the whole shop, so this seems pretty likely.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    As parent said, in good times (demand >> supply), the difference between individual optimal and union optimal is relatively small. Or negative! In bad times (demand << supply), the difference between individual optimal and union optimal is very large. Ergo, you're not going to see a lot of union benefits in good times.
    - Dracophoenix 5y ago
      People don't pay a monthly subscription for a lawyer their not likely to use even though a lawsuit or criminal charge is one bad day away. You're view of supply and demand matches that of a paranoid actor rather than a rational one. If ever the market were to contract, there are alternative solutions like savings, downsizing, or looking for another job. It's not as though one company has a monopoly on all the job opportunities in the world or working in that one company is the only way to feed oneself. A union is not a panacea. For many people, unions are just as much of a hassle as a bad job and without the benefit of self-representation. And when all breaks loose, the last thing most reasonable is trade their agency
ceejayoz 5y ago
Because you now have a strike and a contract and a grievance process as additional collective leverage.
- scarface74 5y ago
  Or I can just say “f%%% it” and get another job. With remote work being as popular as it is now, I don’t even have geographic restrictions.

If a union formed when you have leverage doesn't deliver when you do, why would you expect it to deliver when you don't?

by Kalium 5y ago

If a union formed when you have leverage doesn't deliver when you do, why would you expect it to deliver when you don't?

lmm 5y ago

A union is like an insurance policy, or a lawyer on retainer, or a contract in writing. It doesn't do anything when times are good, that's not what it's for.

eru 5y ago
And like an insurance policy, it costs you. Not all insurance policies are good.
- lmm 5y ago
  Oh absolutely. But the remedy for that is to be actively involved and hold them to account, not dismiss the whole thing as a scam.
  - eru 5y ago
    You want me to be actively involved in all insurance contracts that are offered to me, and try to lobby them to be better? Seems like just saying No to them would be the saner option. (Similar also for unions you don't want to participate in. Or political parties, or companies etc. Joining and getting involved is fine, if that's what you want. But avoiding is just as valid a response.)
    - lmm 5y ago
      You have to judge how much involvement to have. Just signing up and forgetting about it is a pretty bad idea. But not getting insurance at all because you've heard some insurance sucks and doesn't pay out is an even worse one. Most kinds of disaster preparedness are thankless, seemingly pointless work until the disaster in question happens.
      - eru 5y ago
        Insurance is a broad term. I agree that is some forms of insurance are useful. Eg catastrophic health insurance at a good price. But that doesn't mean I need to insure my phone. Or buy health insurance that covers glasses.
        lmm 5y ago
        I do agree with that much. But having a manager attempt to fire me under false pretences was, subjectively, the worst and most stressful experience of my life; I've had scary medical incidents but those are something everyone is on your side for, a human actively trying to wreck your life is so much worse. YMMV I guess.
        eru 5y ago
        You have my sympathies. I just don't think unions are going to help on balance here. If someone doesn't want to work with you anymore, they should be allowed to just fire you. Instead of having to come up with false pretenses. See also how Orange in France ended up bullying their own employees in order to entice them to quit; mostly because they weren't allowed to just fire them. (Some of the victims were even driven into suicide.)
0xy 5y ago
So it's like buying a lottery ticket every day for decades expecting to win millions. They don't show value and there's no indication they ever will, and it costs a significant amount of money. Often, the unions themselves are corrupt.
- lmm 5y ago
  > So it's like buying a lottery ticket every day for decades expecting to win millions. They don't show value and there's no indication they ever will, and it costs a significant amount of money. Money has diminishing returns. Paying to gain a small chance of winning big is generally foolish; paying to eliminate a small chance of losing big is often wise. > Often, the unions themselves are corrupt. This seems to be a distinctly American quirk. Maybe figure out what you're doing differently to the rest of us that causes that, rather than attacking an institution that works very well elsewhere.
  - mianos 5y ago
    > This seems to be a distinctly American quirk. Not so much American. They are very corrupt here in Australia. There are union leaders or related staff in court pretty much every working day in court down here.
  - rmbyrro 5y ago
    > This seems to be a distinctly American quirk. Not at all, they're pretty much corrupt across all of South America as well. I don't have first hand experience elsewhere, but have heard similar stories from who do.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  Most problem I see with unions is that they tend to run their own causes at some point. It is difficult to keep them focused on the interest of workers and they can get tangled up in contemporary issues. Corruption is another problem since possible. If I look at some unions some people in tech wanted to start, I don't really see the issues of worker prioritized. That said, because corporations seem to default to exploiting workers to the maximum degree possible, they are a necessary evil. I don't know how bad working for the NYT is, but I wouldn't be surprised that instead of arguing for employee conditions, they try to influence editors and dejure editorials the might not like.

woodruffw 5y ago

If I understood the parent comment, there are two kinds of leverage being discussed here: there's the leverage that individual tech workers currently have (as high demand, high income laborers in a hot market) and then there's the leverage inherent to collective bargaining. I believe the GP was saying that unions can deliver when circumstances give individuals large amounts of leverage, but they don't need to. But we all know that good times don't last forever, and unionization does provide sufficient leverage when individual leverage evaporates.

Kalium 5y ago
I understood the point. My counterpoint is that if a union doesn't use the leverage of collective bargaining to deliver when it's in a good position to do so, it rather weakens the argument that the same union will decide to use its leverage when individual leverage evaporates. Organizations run on precedent, policy, and consistency. Arguing for the potential for inconsistency seems to me to be a rather weak reed. Especially since the WSJ's been a union shop for 80-ish years. More likely, IMO, is that the union as a whole did not care much about the developers and was more concerned with other parts of the membership. There's one union covering the whole shop, so this seems pretty likely.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  As parent said, in good times (demand >> supply), the difference between individual optimal and union optimal is relatively small. Or negative! In bad times (demand << supply), the difference between individual optimal and union optimal is very large. Ergo, you're not going to see a lot of union benefits in good times.
  - Dracophoenix 5y ago
    People don't pay a monthly subscription for a lawyer their not likely to use even though a lawsuit or criminal charge is one bad day away. You're view of supply and demand matches that of a paranoid actor rather than a rational one. If ever the market were to contract, there are alternative solutions like savings, downsizing, or looking for another job. It's not as though one company has a monopoly on all the job opportunities in the world or working in that one company is the only way to feed oneself. A union is not a panacea. For many people, unions are just as much of a hassle as a bad job and without the benefit of self-representation. And when all breaks loose, the last thing most reasonable is trade their agency

ceejayoz 5y ago

Because you now have a strike and a contract and a grievance process as additional collective leverage.

scarface74 5y ago
Or I can just say “f%%% it” and get another job. With remote work being as popular as it is now, I don’t even have geographic restrictions.