6 ms·

As a small government advocate, i have no issue with labor boards. the alternative is violence or unionization, neither of which are optimal in resolving dispu

by pxue 4y ago

As a small government advocate, i have no issue with labor boards. the alternative is violence or unionization, neither of which are optimal in resolving disputes like these in a civilized and efficient manner.

hourago 4y ago
> the alternative is violence or unionization, neither of which are optimal in resolving disputes like these in a civilized and efficient manner. Unionization is a great way of solving disputes. Many big corporations need to be counter-weight with some other big organization. To put violence and unions at the same level seems uncalled for.
- Idk__Throwaway 4y ago
  > Many big corporations need to be counter-weight with some other big organization. Such as labor boards, or rather the government that gives them power.
- bmitc 4y ago
  A lot of unions directly block solving disputes, choosing instead to deny all disputes. I know one union that was perfectly happy letting government workers make sox figures while "working" from home, while they produced objectively zero work over a period of months. These were the type of workers that would keep government equipment after retiring, quitting, or rarely being fired, requiring the government to send officers to collect. Any movement towards trying to get the workers to do literally anything or simply rating them low was met with vehement pushback. Like a union representative storming into you're office and yelling. In this case, the union was a giant ball of mud whose only existence was to hold the government hostage. As much as I dislike Thune power corporations can hold, unions are not a fix all and can become the same overlords.
  - hourago 4y ago
    > I know one union that was perfectly happy letting government workers make sox figures while "working" from home, while they produced objectively zero work over a period of months. "Companies save billions of dollars by giving employees fake “manager” titles" is fraud. If you do not like unions because ONE did something that you do not like , how much do you hate companies were you have thousands of examples of bad behavior? > As much as I dislike Thune power corporations can hold, unions are not a fix all and can become the same overlords. I do not know what concept do you have about unions, but it seems come from anti-union propaganda and not from any reasonable definition of what a union is. Unions gave us the eight hour work week, vacations and many more rights. That is not "overlord" behavior but being able to negotiate with powerful corporations.
    - wobbly_bush 4y ago
      >If you do not like unions because ONE did something that you do not like Not the person you are replying to, but I think discounting the behavior of unions as one-off is not helping. The examples I have are from outside US though - there are entire states where union presence is strong. Those states had a good industrial sector but over several decades the unions made it so problematic for the industries there that majority of businesses moved to states where there were no unions. Public calls for "strikes" and other work-stopping behavior and violence is common occurence in those states. So the risk of a union becoming mafia-like is more than just propaganda - it has plenty of examples worldwide in several countries.
    - JamesBarney 4y ago
      On hackernews most of the complaints I see about unions are people who've had direct experience with unions. My experience with unions was they were shady, jobs were given out based on nepotism, work was given out solely based on seniority and most work you did for them involved kickbacks.
      - drewcoo 4y ago
        We must read different HNs. Most of the what I see is anti-union FUD from people raised on horror stories about unions but without any actual contact with them except for possibly being inconvenienced by someone else's strike.
  - Georgelemental 4y ago
    Generally I am more suspicious of public sector unions than private. The power of private sector unions is counterbalanced by the profit motive of the company; meanwhile governments are often perfectly happy wasting a fortune in taxpayer dollars.
    - acdha 4y ago
      To the extent that the government wastes money, why should we believe that's due to a union and not unrelated issues such as outside politics?
      - kennend3 4y ago
        https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/federal-union-wants-47-compensation-increase https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/federal-union-wants-4... You tell us, is a 47% increase in pay "normal"? why did the body intended to help with the negotiations write this: The union’s proposals “do not appear realistic for what should be a fairly advanced stage of negotiations. The numerous proposals are not focused and they would result in an increase to compensation far beyond what is reasonable,” reads the unanimous report signed by three commissioners.
        mistrial9 4y ago
        Conrad Black built the National Post around the Financial Post, a financial newspaper in Toronto which Hollinger Inc. purchased from Sun Media in 1997. Financial Post was retained as the name of the new newspaper's business section. Beyond his political vision, Black attempted to compete directly with Kenneth Thomson's media empire led in Canada by The Globe and Mail, which Black and many others perceived as the platform of the Liberal establishment. --wikipedia
        kennend3 4y ago
        The point you are attempting to make is unclear?? Is your point that you can copy/paste from wikipedia and provide no actual commentary??
  - kennend3 4y ago
    You can simply step back and watch what is taking place in Canada right now. https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/federal-union-wants-47-compensation-increase https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/federal-union-wants-4... Because it is not going anywhere, they had an independent body get involved, their commentary says it all: "The union’s proposals “do not appear realistic for what should be a fairly advanced stage of negotiations. The numerous proposals are not focused and they would result in an increase to compensation far beyond what is reasonable,” reads the unanimous report signed by three commissioners." These same union employees are also fighting "unilateral contract changes" that mandates they return to the office, but did not fight the unilateral contract changes that allowed them to WFH in the first place? The contract they signed was for "IN_PERSON" work, so they are simply being asked to do what they signed up for prior to COVID.
    - bawolff 4y ago
      > would result in an increase to compensation far beyond what is reasonable Its a negotiation. The union asking for the highest number it can get is what its supposed to do.
      - bmitc 4y ago
        > Its a negotiation. Only relevant in a spirit-like sense, but reading this line immediately reminded me of this scene in Intolerable Cruelty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PpQk63iIWw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PpQk63iIWw
    - cool_dude85 4y ago
      >These same union employees are also fighting "unilateral contract changes" that mandates they return to the office, but did not fight the unilateral contract changes that allowed them to WFH in the first place? Huh? They fight against contract changes they don't like, and don't fight against contract changes they do like? Sounds pretty crazy to me.
  - bmitc 4y ago
    Apologies for the phone-based typos. Corrections: sox -> six, you're -> your, and Thune -> the.
- HEmanZ 4y ago
  Unionization can have serious problems/risks. I this case, where the business is literally breaking the law, there is no need to get a union involved. Wage theft is illegal. It should be treated as a legal issue where the state gets involved and uses its monopoly on force to enforce the law. That's what the state is there for. [Aside, putting violence at the same level as unions: I've been around a union, while working in a factory in the midwest US, that had "kneebreakers" that "encouraged" members to vote a certain way by threat-of-force, support certain candidates for union leadership, and used the Union to blatantly extort local businesses and politicians. Not every union is like this, but blue-collar unions in the US have a history of going this way. Which, even tho I like unionization in theory and cheer a bit inside when I see union action at e.g Starbucks or Amazon, I have seen a very terrible union and so they scare me.]
  - drewcoo 4y ago
    Labor laws didn't happen because of noble-minded politicians or kind-hearted captains of industry.
  - 93po 4y ago
    Wage theft is overwhelmingly not enforced, and it's the largest form of theft in the country. Until this is not the case, unions are the best option.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- WesternWind 4y ago
  Folks with union jobs tend do better then their same industry non union counterparts, in terms of wages, health care, access to sick days, etc. There is however a third choice, which is government regulation. Unfortunately government regulations can't adapt as quickly as a union can to changes. Maybe the relatively inflexibility of regulation is what is needed to maintain a minimum necessary commitment to living wages and reasonable benefits though.
  - fooker 4y ago
    > Folks with union jobs tend do better Just like planes which survived battles only had bullet marks on their wings.
pupperino 4y ago
What really matters is how human institutions and organizations shape each other's incentives and costs [1]. Instead of aiming for abstract, intangible goals like "small" or "big" government, how about developing a sense of institutional design and relating that to a set of moral and political values. That way, it's actually possible to debug disagreements, either reducing them down to moral values and hopefully leaving it out of the public sphere or locating actual policy questions with less room for aesthetics and more for evidence, studies and sensible debate. [1] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w10481/w10481.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w10481/w104...
fHr 4y ago
Unionization is amazing. I do not know why especially people in US are so against this. Did they just gave up and are okay with the big corps fucking them over withouth having any leverage?
- mistrial9 4y ago
  more than a hundred years ago, the USA was not a large world power.. more than half the country was frontier and a lot of raw agriculture that is dependent on labor. When the 'red' social flames burned through Europe at the end of the Great Monarchies, political people here in the USA were seriously worried. So an ugly deal was forged.. the hardcore lefts were jailed and harassed and beaten.. and insider right wing groups that knew how to play for the long term were elevated to power. This is not popular to say, but the history is there for the reading, about ethnic gangsters running unions across the USA. It never was completely cleared up and persisted well into the 1970s and perhaps later.. The public relations campaign by Big Media was very effective at smearing the name of Unions to the public, and the Unions made some dumb moves, too. High tech and Hollywood generated huge money, and Wall Street style money was always anti-Union. It is worth saying that Hollywood movie production is very heavily unionized, and that small system works pretty well.
  - pyuser583 4y ago
    Another interpretation is that the New Deal institutionalized labor. Labor got a seat at the table in exchange for removing radical elements.
    - mistrial9 4y ago
      new movie out -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Irishman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Irishman
- dfxm12 4y ago
  I do not know why especially people in US are so against this. I think there's some truth to the old adage that there's a class of Americans, especially represented among the HN crowd that "see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." There are many reasons for the decline of organized labor in the US. Some cultural yeah, but just as much, if not more, legal... "Right to work" legislation Employers fighting harder against unionization Decreased enforcement of labor laws Judges (including SCOTUS) who keep striking down labor protections Media portrayal of unions
realslimjd 4y ago
What do unions have to do with small government? A union contract is an agreement between two private parties.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- pxue 4y ago
  Nothing. Small government is relating to government run labor boards.
- pyuser583 4y ago
  But it’s not. There are tons and tons of “union laws” that treat unions very differently than any other entity. Some of these laws hurt unions, others help. For example, a union contract can’t require an employer to hire only union members. That would create a situation where people would apply to the union first, and if they union accepted them, then they apply for the job. That would give unions too much power, so it’s not allowed. Another law forbids sympathy strikes. Unions can only strike against their own employers, not in sympathy with other strikers. Modern labor law also seeks to discourage strikes by using a war-game like approach to negotiating. Maybe a good idea, maybe not. But certainly not something that happens for non-union orgs. If we adopted a “hands off” approach to unions, we could easily wind up with insanely powerful unions. If 2% of the working population went on strike simultaneously, the economy would stop working quickly. So general strikes are very illegal, even though they are 100% in accord with libertarian ideology.
- molotovh 4y ago
  My interpretation of that comment was, "I'm not in favor of increasing the size of government, but I'd rather see a government labor board exist than another union."

by pxue 4y ago

hourago 4y ago

> the alternative is violence or unionization, neither of which are optimal in resolving disputes like these in a civilized and efficient manner. Unionization is a great way of solving disputes. Many big corporations need to be counter-weight with some other big organization. To put violence and unions at the same level seems uncalled for.

Idk__Throwaway 4y ago
> Many big corporations need to be counter-weight with some other big organization. Such as labor boards, or rather the government that gives them power.
bmitc 4y ago
A lot of unions directly block solving disputes, choosing instead to deny all disputes. I know one union that was perfectly happy letting government workers make sox figures while "working" from home, while they produced objectively zero work over a period of months. These were the type of workers that would keep government equipment after retiring, quitting, or rarely being fired, requiring the government to send officers to collect. Any movement towards trying to get the workers to do literally anything or simply rating them low was met with vehement pushback. Like a union representative storming into you're office and yelling. In this case, the union was a giant ball of mud whose only existence was to hold the government hostage. As much as I dislike Thune power corporations can hold, unions are not a fix all and can become the same overlords.
- hourago 4y ago
  > I know one union that was perfectly happy letting government workers make sox figures while "working" from home, while they produced objectively zero work over a period of months. "Companies save billions of dollars by giving employees fake “manager” titles" is fraud. If you do not like unions because ONE did something that you do not like , how much do you hate companies were you have thousands of examples of bad behavior? > As much as I dislike Thune power corporations can hold, unions are not a fix all and can become the same overlords. I do not know what concept do you have about unions, but it seems come from anti-union propaganda and not from any reasonable definition of what a union is. Unions gave us the eight hour work week, vacations and many more rights. That is not "overlord" behavior but being able to negotiate with powerful corporations.
  - wobbly_bush 4y ago
    >If you do not like unions because ONE did something that you do not like Not the person you are replying to, but I think discounting the behavior of unions as one-off is not helping. The examples I have are from outside US though - there are entire states where union presence is strong. Those states had a good industrial sector but over several decades the unions made it so problematic for the industries there that majority of businesses moved to states where there were no unions. Public calls for "strikes" and other work-stopping behavior and violence is common occurence in those states. So the risk of a union becoming mafia-like is more than just propaganda - it has plenty of examples worldwide in several countries.
  - JamesBarney 4y ago
    On hackernews most of the complaints I see about unions are people who've had direct experience with unions. My experience with unions was they were shady, jobs were given out based on nepotism, work was given out solely based on seniority and most work you did for them involved kickbacks.
    - drewcoo 4y ago
      We must read different HNs. Most of the what I see is anti-union FUD from people raised on horror stories about unions but without any actual contact with them except for possibly being inconvenienced by someone else's strike.
- Georgelemental 4y ago
  Generally I am more suspicious of public sector unions than private. The power of private sector unions is counterbalanced by the profit motive of the company; meanwhile governments are often perfectly happy wasting a fortune in taxpayer dollars.
  - acdha 4y ago
    To the extent that the government wastes money, why should we believe that's due to a union and not unrelated issues such as outside politics?
    - kennend3 4y ago
      https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/federal-union-wants-47-compensation-increase https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/federal-union-wants-4... You tell us, is a 47% increase in pay "normal"? why did the body intended to help with the negotiations write this: The union’s proposals “do not appear realistic for what should be a fairly advanced stage of negotiations. The numerous proposals are not focused and they would result in an increase to compensation far beyond what is reasonable,” reads the unanimous report signed by three commissioners.
      - mistrial9 4y ago
        Conrad Black built the National Post around the Financial Post, a financial newspaper in Toronto which Hollinger Inc. purchased from Sun Media in 1997. Financial Post was retained as the name of the new newspaper's business section. Beyond his political vision, Black attempted to compete directly with Kenneth Thomson's media empire led in Canada by The Globe and Mail, which Black and many others perceived as the platform of the Liberal establishment. --wikipedia
        kennend3 4y ago
        The point you are attempting to make is unclear?? Is your point that you can copy/paste from wikipedia and provide no actual commentary??
- kennend3 4y ago
  You can simply step back and watch what is taking place in Canada right now. https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/federal-union-wants-47-compensation-increase https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/federal-union-wants-4... Because it is not going anywhere, they had an independent body get involved, their commentary says it all: "The union’s proposals “do not appear realistic for what should be a fairly advanced stage of negotiations. The numerous proposals are not focused and they would result in an increase to compensation far beyond what is reasonable,” reads the unanimous report signed by three commissioners." These same union employees are also fighting "unilateral contract changes" that mandates they return to the office, but did not fight the unilateral contract changes that allowed them to WFH in the first place? The contract they signed was for "IN_PERSON" work, so they are simply being asked to do what they signed up for prior to COVID.
  - bawolff 4y ago
    > would result in an increase to compensation far beyond what is reasonable Its a negotiation. The union asking for the highest number it can get is what its supposed to do.
    - bmitc 4y ago
      > Its a negotiation. Only relevant in a spirit-like sense, but reading this line immediately reminded me of this scene in Intolerable Cruelty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PpQk63iIWw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PpQk63iIWw
  - cool_dude85 4y ago
    >These same union employees are also fighting "unilateral contract changes" that mandates they return to the office, but did not fight the unilateral contract changes that allowed them to WFH in the first place? Huh? They fight against contract changes they don't like, and don't fight against contract changes they do like? Sounds pretty crazy to me.
- bmitc 4y ago
  Apologies for the phone-based typos. Corrections: sox -> six, you're -> your, and Thune -> the.
HEmanZ 4y ago
Unionization can have serious problems/risks. I this case, where the business is literally breaking the law, there is no need to get a union involved. Wage theft is illegal. It should be treated as a legal issue where the state gets involved and uses its monopoly on force to enforce the law. That's what the state is there for. [Aside, putting violence at the same level as unions: I've been around a union, while working in a factory in the midwest US, that had "kneebreakers" that "encouraged" members to vote a certain way by threat-of-force, support certain candidates for union leadership, and used the Union to blatantly extort local businesses and politicians. Not every union is like this, but blue-collar unions in the US have a history of going this way. Which, even tho I like unionization in theory and cheer a bit inside when I see union action at e.g Starbucks or Amazon, I have seen a very terrible union and so they scare me.]
- drewcoo 4y ago
  Labor laws didn't happen because of noble-minded politicians or kind-hearted captains of industry.
- 93po 4y ago
  Wage theft is overwhelmingly not enforced, and it's the largest form of theft in the country. Until this is not the case, unions are the best option.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
WesternWind 4y ago
Folks with union jobs tend do better then their same industry non union counterparts, in terms of wages, health care, access to sick days, etc. There is however a third choice, which is government regulation. Unfortunately government regulations can't adapt as quickly as a union can to changes. Maybe the relatively inflexibility of regulation is what is needed to maintain a minimum necessary commitment to living wages and reasonable benefits though.
- fooker 4y ago
  > Folks with union jobs tend do better Just like planes which survived battles only had bullet marks on their wings.

pupperino 4y ago

What really matters is how human institutions and organizations shape each other's incentives and costs [1]. Instead of aiming for abstract, intangible goals like "small" or "big" government, how about developing a sense of institutional design and relating that to a set of moral and political values. That way, it's actually possible to debug disagreements, either reducing them down to moral values and hopefully leaving it out of the public sphere or locating actual policy questions with less room for aesthetics and more for evidence, studies and sensible debate. [1] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w10481/w10481.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w10481/w104...

fHr 4y ago

Unionization is amazing. I do not know why especially people in US are so against this. Did they just gave up and are okay with the big corps fucking them over withouth having any leverage?

mistrial9 4y ago
more than a hundred years ago, the USA was not a large world power.. more than half the country was frontier and a lot of raw agriculture that is dependent on labor. When the 'red' social flames burned through Europe at the end of the Great Monarchies, political people here in the USA were seriously worried. So an ugly deal was forged.. the hardcore lefts were jailed and harassed and beaten.. and insider right wing groups that knew how to play for the long term were elevated to power. This is not popular to say, but the history is there for the reading, about ethnic gangsters running unions across the USA. It never was completely cleared up and persisted well into the 1970s and perhaps later.. The public relations campaign by Big Media was very effective at smearing the name of Unions to the public, and the Unions made some dumb moves, too. High tech and Hollywood generated huge money, and Wall Street style money was always anti-Union. It is worth saying that Hollywood movie production is very heavily unionized, and that small system works pretty well.
- pyuser583 4y ago
  Another interpretation is that the New Deal institutionalized labor. Labor got a seat at the table in exchange for removing radical elements.
  - mistrial9 4y ago
    new movie out -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Irishman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Irishman
dfxm12 4y ago
I do not know why especially people in US are so against this. I think there's some truth to the old adage that there's a class of Americans, especially represented among the HN crowd that "see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." There are many reasons for the decline of organized labor in the US. Some cultural yeah, but just as much, if not more, legal... "Right to work" legislation Employers fighting harder against unionization Decreased enforcement of labor laws Judges (including SCOTUS) who keep striking down labor protections Media portrayal of unions

realslimjd 4y ago

What do unions have to do with small government? A union contract is an agreement between two private parties.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
pxue 4y ago
Nothing. Small government is relating to government run labor boards.
pyuser583 4y ago
But it’s not. There are tons and tons of “union laws” that treat unions very differently than any other entity. Some of these laws hurt unions, others help. For example, a union contract can’t require an employer to hire only union members. That would create a situation where people would apply to the union first, and if they union accepted them, then they apply for the job. That would give unions too much power, so it’s not allowed. Another law forbids sympathy strikes. Unions can only strike against their own employers, not in sympathy with other strikers. Modern labor law also seeks to discourage strikes by using a war-game like approach to negotiating. Maybe a good idea, maybe not. But certainly not something that happens for non-union orgs. If we adopted a “hands off” approach to unions, we could easily wind up with insanely powerful unions. If 2% of the working population went on strike simultaneously, the economy would stop working quickly. So general strikes are very illegal, even though they are 100% in accord with libertarian ideology.
molotovh 4y ago
My interpretation of that comment was, "I'm not in favor of increasing the size of government, but I'd rather see a government labor board exist than another union."