6 ms·

What power do you have as an individual in a company? Other than quitting, your leverage is extremely limited.

Godel_unicode 4y ago
The problem with this question is there are people, like me, for whom the answer is "a lot". I have repeatedly gotten my employer to do things for me that they would not have done on their own. They need me more than I need them, and we both know it. This is also by the way the main dissenting opinion in the recent Amazon union vote. There were several people who were interviewed by the economist as voting no, who said that they'd never had a bad interaction with HR and had gotten everything that they asked for. This is not the one-sided issue that pro-union activists act like it is, and that level of ignorance is what is holding them back.
- JW_00000 4y ago
  Open question (I'm not American, so I don't get the full context): would you lose that bargaining power if a union was created at your workplace?
  - csande17 4y ago
    Say, for sake of argument, that I'm the World's Greatest Widget Engineer. I'm worth more than the average employee at my company, so I can get stuff I want by negotiating individually with my employer. On the other hand, if a union imposes some broad agreement on the company under threat of strikes, I can't convince my company to break that agreement on my own because I'm not more valuable than the entire rest of the company combined. A union's interests are probably not completely aligned with mine—they're focused on protecting the majority of employees, who are probably not as valuable as me—so forming a union could very easily lead to me getting less of the things I want. For example, if a union convinced a company to pay/promote based on seniority rather than performance, that could be good for most of the people in the union but bad for me.
    - kadoban 4y ago
      > A union's interests are probably not completely aligned with mine Sure, but the company's interests are almost completely opposed to yours in most ways. It's _possible_ for you to be worse off in a union, but rare.
      - barry-cotter 4y ago
        > but the company's interests are almost completely opposed to yours in most ways. This really isn’t true. What you’re describing isn’t even a zero sum game it’s negative sum, where hurting the other party is among your goals in itself. The company is interested in using you to make money and for many purposes happy, satisfied employees who are growing in productivity are good. All of those are also things the employees usually want. Are employee and company interests fully aligned? Absolutely not, but if your employer’s interests are almost completely opposed to yours get out.
      - kortilla 4y ago
        > Sure, but the company's interests are almost completely opposed to yours in most ways. You do know that your employment depends on the success of the business, right? The relationship with an employee is no more adversarial than your relationship with the local grocery store when you buy a bag of potatoes.
        hiptobecubic 4y ago
        Yeah, except that switching grocery stores is practically zero cost, so any store that does silly shenanigans gets spanked almost immediately. Also, grocery stores are about a million billion gazillion times more transparent about trading with you relative to trading with other shoppers.
        WWLink 4y ago
        The trading with a grocery store is heavily regulated as well. They have requirements for storage and handling, their scales have to be calibrated, and there can be very strict fines for things like screwing around with sale prices.
  - Godel_unicode 4y ago
    According to a family friend who worked for the UAW (the huge American auto workers union) the answer to this is yes. I suspect the answer is actually "it depends", but I don't know of any documented examples of unions whose members are allowed to make a separate peace. There are people in the comments who it sounds like have done so, perhaps they can weigh in on the mechanism.
  - skeeter2020 4y ago
    Yes, you would be compelled to support union actions, such as job action in support of collective goals you don't agree with, and get to pay for the right to do so as well. You would not be allowed to negotiate individual concessions for work or skill beyond the norm. Everyone is even more focused on "fair outcomes" (read: the same) than in any non-union environment. We're not interchangeable cogs in some manufacturing machine; we're extremely skilled experts in the biggest seller's market of our careers. Why anyone would want to unionize right now is beyond me.
- marricks 4y ago
  It’s a such a coincidence that those are the same talking points the employees were forced to here during the many mandatory meeting. Also interesting that the NLRB found those forced meetings illegal.

The problem with this question is there are people, like me, for whom the answer is "a lot". I have repeatedly gotten my employer to do things for me that they would not have done on their own. They need me more than I need them, and we both know it. This is also by the way the main dissenting opinion in the recent Amazon union vote. There were several people who were interviewed by the economist as voting no, who said that they'd never had a bad interaction with HR and had gotten everything that they asked for. This is not the one-sided issue that pro-union activists act like it is, and that level of ignorance is what is holding them back.

JW_00000 4y ago
Open question (I'm not American, so I don't get the full context): would you lose that bargaining power if a union was created at your workplace?
- csande17 4y ago
  Say, for sake of argument, that I'm the World's Greatest Widget Engineer. I'm worth more than the average employee at my company, so I can get stuff I want by negotiating individually with my employer. On the other hand, if a union imposes some broad agreement on the company under threat of strikes, I can't convince my company to break that agreement on my own because I'm not more valuable than the entire rest of the company combined. A union's interests are probably not completely aligned with mine—they're focused on protecting the majority of employees, who are probably not as valuable as me—so forming a union could very easily lead to me getting less of the things I want. For example, if a union convinced a company to pay/promote based on seniority rather than performance, that could be good for most of the people in the union but bad for me.
  - kadoban 4y ago
    > A union's interests are probably not completely aligned with mine Sure, but the company's interests are almost completely opposed to yours in most ways. It's _possible_ for you to be worse off in a union, but rare.
    - barry-cotter 4y ago
      > but the company's interests are almost completely opposed to yours in most ways. This really isn’t true. What you’re describing isn’t even a zero sum game it’s negative sum, where hurting the other party is among your goals in itself. The company is interested in using you to make money and for many purposes happy, satisfied employees who are growing in productivity are good. All of those are also things the employees usually want. Are employee and company interests fully aligned? Absolutely not, but if your employer’s interests are almost completely opposed to yours get out.
    - kortilla 4y ago
      > Sure, but the company's interests are almost completely opposed to yours in most ways. You do know that your employment depends on the success of the business, right? The relationship with an employee is no more adversarial than your relationship with the local grocery store when you buy a bag of potatoes.
      - hiptobecubic 4y ago
        Yeah, except that switching grocery stores is practically zero cost, so any store that does silly shenanigans gets spanked almost immediately. Also, grocery stores are about a million billion gazillion times more transparent about trading with you relative to trading with other shoppers.
        WWLink 4y ago
        The trading with a grocery store is heavily regulated as well. They have requirements for storage and handling, their scales have to be calibrated, and there can be very strict fines for things like screwing around with sale prices.
- Godel_unicode 4y ago
  According to a family friend who worked for the UAW (the huge American auto workers union) the answer to this is yes. I suspect the answer is actually "it depends", but I don't know of any documented examples of unions whose members are allowed to make a separate peace. There are people in the comments who it sounds like have done so, perhaps they can weigh in on the mechanism.
- skeeter2020 4y ago
  Yes, you would be compelled to support union actions, such as job action in support of collective goals you don't agree with, and get to pay for the right to do so as well. You would not be allowed to negotiate individual concessions for work or skill beyond the norm. Everyone is even more focused on "fair outcomes" (read: the same) than in any non-union environment. We're not interchangeable cogs in some manufacturing machine; we're extremely skilled experts in the biggest seller's market of our careers. Why anyone would want to unionize right now is beyond me.
marricks 4y ago
It’s a such a coincidence that those are the same talking points the employees were forced to here during the many mandatory meeting. Also interesting that the NLRB found those forced meetings illegal.