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Curious to hear about about any tech unions anywhere in the world where revenue (not profit) is superior to a non-union counterpart, per worker. At the very le

Curious to hear about about any tech unions anywhere in the world where revenue (not profit) is superior to a non-union counterpart, per worker. At the very least I'd be curious to hear about a union (not guild or association) where the profession does not involve significant manual labor, where it makes more money per worker.

UncleMeat 4y ago
Why would this be an expectation? I experience only very modest benefits from my employer increasing revenue/employee and in some cases this is achieved through actions that explicitly harm me. The point of a union is to advocate for its members, not to make a corporation grow.
- endisneigh 4y ago
  If a unionized organization makes less money per worker I would expect members to make less money. My premise supposed equivalent work. The result is that union members make less money than non-union. If this is the case why would anyone join? If this is not the case, where are the examples of such? There are plenty of examples of this outside of tech. For example in Chicago teachers in the union make more money than non-union teachers. Pretty easy to look up.
  - epgui 4y ago
    > If a unionized organization makes less money per worker I would expect members to make less money. This only works if both: - Wages are associated with business profits - Business profits are the limiting factor for wages Unions do their best work when the two above criteria are not met.
    - endisneigh 4y ago
      That sounds reasonable enough. Where's the example? Kickstarter for example pays a lot less than other tech companies as far as I can tell.
  - UncleMeat 4y ago
    In my experience, there isn't a strong connection between corporate revenue or profit and wages. When the revenue and profit per employee of my employer skyrocketed in 2021 I definitely didn't get a big fat raise.
    - endisneigh 4y ago
      did your employer hire more people? if so, there you go. think of the pool of money that is profit to go to workers. when employers make more money, more nominal amounts (not percentage) go to the workers collectively. you can look at the balance sheet of basically any company to show this. to contrast, I know of a single tech union, Kickstarter. From publicly available information I see no evidence that workers are getting more money. In fact kickstarter employees seem to be paid less than general (especially for NYC, where they're based).
      - UncleMeat 4y ago
        I said "per employee" in my post.
        endisneigh 4y ago
        Yes, but that’s not relevant to my point. More profit per employee means more capital for new initiatives means more employees.
        UncleMeat 4y ago
        Ok then I don't understand. You brought up revenue comparisons as an argument against unionization, presumably because a company making less revenue per employee is somehow bad for employees. I claimed that revenue per employee is largely unrelated to compensation or benefits and we should really be talking about those things. Now you seem to agree that profit per employee doesn't affect wages but instead only benefits the corporation, which is able to start new projects.
        4y ago
- UtopiaPunk 4y ago
  Wages tend to be set by "the market," not by how much money the company is making. Companies will pay as little as they can get away with, maybe a tiny bit more than their competitors, but that's it. I work in a company where employees are distributed globally. Certain timezone and language coverage is needed. Guess what? The employees that live in low cost-of-living areas get paid less money for doing literally the same work. On one hand, it's nice that the company acknowledges rent/mortgages cost more in certain areas and that will eat into employees' paychecks, but on the other hand, it is painfully clear that the value I produce for my company is hardly related to my paycheck. My paycheck is determined by what similar workers in my field are being paid in my area. That's it.
doikor 4y ago
> a union (not guild or association) All 3 are the same thing with different name (and much better PR departments)
- endisneigh 4y ago
  They're not. Teamsters and American Bar Association are not equivalent organizations. You could definitely argue that a guild and association are basically the same, though.
  - doikor 4y ago
    Nah both are the same. Both are professional associations represent their members (the description of a union). How they go about that depends on the union/whatever you want to call it.
    - endisneigh 4y ago
      ok I agree they're both groups if you want to be obtuse about it and ignore their actual structure, fees and organization.
      - doikor 4y ago
        They are mostly different due to the market where they work in being very different. This is a good thing. No point in trying to put the exact same organization everywhere. For lawyers much more of them work for small law firms as average us law firm size is 3 people including the owner(s) vs something like auto unions where the employers very often have 100k+ workers. Also by definition all of them are experts at law so do not need one of the most important benefits that a modern union gives its members (lawyers).
        endisneigh 4y ago
        > They are mostly different Nah both are the same

UncleMeat 4y ago

Why would this be an expectation? I experience only very modest benefits from my employer increasing revenue/employee and in some cases this is achieved through actions that explicitly harm me. The point of a union is to advocate for its members, not to make a corporation grow.

endisneigh 4y ago
If a unionized organization makes less money per worker I would expect members to make less money. My premise supposed equivalent work. The result is that union members make less money than non-union. If this is the case why would anyone join? If this is not the case, where are the examples of such? There are plenty of examples of this outside of tech. For example in Chicago teachers in the union make more money than non-union teachers. Pretty easy to look up.
- epgui 4y ago
  > If a unionized organization makes less money per worker I would expect members to make less money. This only works if both: - Wages are associated with business profits - Business profits are the limiting factor for wages Unions do their best work when the two above criteria are not met.
  - endisneigh 4y ago
    That sounds reasonable enough. Where's the example? Kickstarter for example pays a lot less than other tech companies as far as I can tell.
- UncleMeat 4y ago
  In my experience, there isn't a strong connection between corporate revenue or profit and wages. When the revenue and profit per employee of my employer skyrocketed in 2021 I definitely didn't get a big fat raise.
  - endisneigh 4y ago
    did your employer hire more people? if so, there you go. think of the pool of money that is profit to go to workers. when employers make more money, more nominal amounts (not percentage) go to the workers collectively. you can look at the balance sheet of basically any company to show this. to contrast, I know of a single tech union, Kickstarter. From publicly available information I see no evidence that workers are getting more money. In fact kickstarter employees seem to be paid less than general (especially for NYC, where they're based).
    - UncleMeat 4y ago
      I said "per employee" in my post.
      - endisneigh 4y ago
        Yes, but that’s not relevant to my point. More profit per employee means more capital for new initiatives means more employees.
        UncleMeat 4y ago
        Ok then I don't understand. You brought up revenue comparisons as an argument against unionization, presumably because a company making less revenue per employee is somehow bad for employees. I claimed that revenue per employee is largely unrelated to compensation or benefits and we should really be talking about those things. Now you seem to agree that profit per employee doesn't affect wages but instead only benefits the corporation, which is able to start new projects.
        4y ago
UtopiaPunk 4y ago
Wages tend to be set by "the market," not by how much money the company is making. Companies will pay as little as they can get away with, maybe a tiny bit more than their competitors, but that's it. I work in a company where employees are distributed globally. Certain timezone and language coverage is needed. Guess what? The employees that live in low cost-of-living areas get paid less money for doing literally the same work. On one hand, it's nice that the company acknowledges rent/mortgages cost more in certain areas and that will eat into employees' paychecks, but on the other hand, it is painfully clear that the value I produce for my company is hardly related to my paycheck. My paycheck is determined by what similar workers in my field are being paid in my area. That's it.

doikor 4y ago

> a union (not guild or association) All 3 are the same thing with different name (and much better PR departments)

endisneigh 4y ago
They're not. Teamsters and American Bar Association are not equivalent organizations. You could definitely argue that a guild and association are basically the same, though.
- doikor 4y ago
  Nah both are the same. Both are professional associations represent their members (the description of a union). How they go about that depends on the union/whatever you want to call it.
  - endisneigh 4y ago
    ok I agree they're both groups if you want to be obtuse about it and ignore their actual structure, fees and organization.
    - doikor 4y ago
      They are mostly different due to the market where they work in being very different. This is a good thing. No point in trying to put the exact same organization everywhere. For lawyers much more of them work for small law firms as average us law firm size is 3 people including the owner(s) vs something like auto unions where the employers very often have 100k+ workers. Also by definition all of them are experts at law so do not need one of the most important benefits that a modern union gives its members (lawyers).
      - endisneigh 4y ago
        > They are mostly different Nah both are the same