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Taking your word for it regarding HN not liking unions. Why is that if you know? What's the alternative for a UPS worker to get fair pay and fair working condit

Taking your word for it regarding HN not liking unions. Why is that if you know? What's the alternative for a UPS worker to get fair pay and fair working conditions?

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> Taking your word for it regarding HN not liking unions Don't. HN is far from a monolith on this issue. To the degree I've seen even a semblance of consensus, it's in animosity towards public-sector unions and gentle support for blue-collar private-sector unions. Where it turns to total anarchy is when we debate unionizing tech workers. (They tend to be fun reads.)
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  Even amongst public sector, cop/firefighter/judge/politician unions are a different animal than the other government worker unions.
- Xeoncross 3y ago
  > turns to total anarchy is when we debate unionizing tech workers haha, true. Lots of straw men creep into that discussion. > I can't live off $500,000/yr, what if I get laid off? We need to unionize to protect our jobs and make sure our salary keeps up with inflation! Just wait until we talk about VP's unionizing.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
dymk 3y ago
HN (generally) doesn't like unions because we're highly paid software engineers who think we're better at negotiation one-on-one than in a group.
- Spivak 3y ago
  You can have both ways which I'm shocked isn't more common. Everyone in the same position gets paid the same, if anyone negotiates higher for themselves everyone gets a pay bump to match. Now you get paid max(individual rate, group rate). Bad negotiator? Anxious? A woman? Congratulations! You're probably doing better than you could on your own. Amazing negotiator? Could sell ACs in Alaska? Congratulations! You get all the fruits of your labor and your new coworkers immediately love you. I think what messes people up isn't that they think their temporarily embarrassed millionaires, but that their temporarily undiscovered principal engineers who deserve more money for pulling the same cards as everyone else on the team.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    That can only be true if labor budgets are limitless. Even a business like Apple has some number that is the most it can pay to all of its employees. And if there is a maximum, then that means it can be divided any number of ways.
    - Spivak 3y ago
      Yes but that gets factored into the hiring because this salary scheme is for retention. If someone negotiates a higher salary it's taken as the market price for the position increasing and the company not wanting to lose their employees who will eventually or immediately realize they could be making more somewhere else.
      - lotsofpulp 3y ago
        I do not understand what salary scheme for retention means. There exists $x to pay everyone in the company. You can start from dividing it equally amongst all employees. As you pay some employees more, you have to pay others less. Keep going along this track and “max(individual rate, group rate)” will break down as you winnow down the definition of group.
    - ryandrake 3y ago
      I don't think Apple (or any company) are paying "the most it can pay to all of its employees". Labor is a market, and in a market, buyers don't pay any more than they can get away with. All companies are paying the least they can get away with while still retaining the people they want to retain. There isn't some fixed bag of money $X that gets distributed to employees, where X is uninfluenced by the market. If the labor market happened to change such that X must be more, companies would have to pay X or do without some employees. EDIT: I think we actually agree. Roundabout way of saying the same thing.
Ericson2314 3y ago
HN has a mix of opinions but there are a lot of "temporarily embarrassed ~~millionaire~~ billionaire" wannabe entrepreneurs. People that think of themselves as employers not employees, etc.
- Mountain_Skies 3y ago
  "Temporarily embarrassed millionaire" is one of the most ridiculous bits of motivated reasoning to ever come out of the left. There's little to no evidence for it but gives the one who states it the ability to hold anyone who disagrees with them both in contempt and inferiority at the same time. It is quite clever, if your goal is to protect many of the inherent contradictions on the neoliberal worldview but is terrible if your goal is to ever understand those who frustratingly refuse to hold views you paternally believe are what's best for them.
- gruez 3y ago
  Maybe you should actually read and understand the anti-union comments on this site rather than using a memetic caricature from reddit or whatever. Of the anti-union comment I've seen, none were justified on the basis that the commenter was a '"temporarily embarrassed ~~millionaire~~ billionaire" wannabe entrepreneurs'. The closest I've seen are people who think they're above average performers, and think that contracts that typically result from union negotiated contracts (eg. seniority based or credential based) would negatively impact their compensation. Regardless of whether you think arguments like these hold any water, it's a massive disservice to portray them as them being anti-union because they "think of themselves as employers not employees".
  - Ericson2314 3y ago
    That is indeed close: Why do we always hear from people who think they are well above average contributors, and not the ones that don't? I've read the other comments too. The most interesting ones were the people who previously had "conventional, blue collar" union jobs and didn't like their union. There are certainly real problems, but thankfully there are a number of "reform caucuses" right now winning elections that can start to fix them.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
tech_ken 3y ago
Two answers: * In the US there's a narrative that unions add layers to bureaucracy to a process that should (from an IMO limited "pro free market" position) efficiently settle on an optimal solution all by itself. Many people just by default accept this argument, and to be entirely fair US unions definitely got complacent in the last few decades. * Many HN commenters are affluent tech workers or entrepeneurs, and some are bosses or capital owners themselves. People in this first group kind of "won" the economy, and in the second group actively benefit from workers negotiating 1-on-1. Group (1) has a tendency to not relate well or understand the position of the typical union constituency, Group (2) has financial motivation to push back against it.
billiam 3y ago
It's true it's not a monolith, but the loudest voices here have been against all union,s not just public sector ones. But do you hear that today? Silence. It's the sound of former well-paid engineers and other tech workers of the techbro-libertarian bent realizing that the worker rights they've spent years decrying actually matter. Could this be because they finally realize that despite their notion that they are in the ownership class with their options and investments, their jobs have more in common with a UPS driver than with management and the superrich who own the companies where they work?
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  What about this post makes such people identify more with UPS than they previously would? And what about this post makes them suddenly care about the workers rights that they previously didnt think mattered?
z3t4 3y ago
Many HN readers don't want to be paid more.
danielmarkbruce 3y ago
One position is that there are not only two parties involved in a person's employment situation. The alternative is they go work another company. Another position is that unions destroy companies by forcing a cost structure which dooms the company to fail. Lots of people think one or both plus other things.

Taking your word for it regarding HN not liking unions. Why is that if you know? What's the alternative for a UPS worker to get fair pay and fair working conditions?

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> Taking your word for it regarding HN not liking unions Don't. HN is far from a monolith on this issue. To the degree I've seen even a semblance of consensus, it's in animosity towards public-sector unions and gentle support for blue-collar private-sector unions. Where it turns to total anarchy is when we debate unionizing tech workers. (They tend to be fun reads.)

lotsofpulp 3y ago
Even amongst public sector, cop/firefighter/judge/politician unions are a different animal than the other government worker unions.
Xeoncross 3y ago
> turns to total anarchy is when we debate unionizing tech workers haha, true. Lots of straw men creep into that discussion. > I can't live off $500,000/yr, what if I get laid off? We need to unionize to protect our jobs and make sure our salary keeps up with inflation! Just wait until we talk about VP's unionizing.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

dymk 3y ago

HN (generally) doesn't like unions because we're highly paid software engineers who think we're better at negotiation one-on-one than in a group.

Spivak 3y ago
You can have both ways which I'm shocked isn't more common. Everyone in the same position gets paid the same, if anyone negotiates higher for themselves everyone gets a pay bump to match. Now you get paid max(individual rate, group rate). Bad negotiator? Anxious? A woman? Congratulations! You're probably doing better than you could on your own. Amazing negotiator? Could sell ACs in Alaska? Congratulations! You get all the fruits of your labor and your new coworkers immediately love you. I think what messes people up isn't that they think their temporarily embarrassed millionaires, but that their temporarily undiscovered principal engineers who deserve more money for pulling the same cards as everyone else on the team.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  That can only be true if labor budgets are limitless. Even a business like Apple has some number that is the most it can pay to all of its employees. And if there is a maximum, then that means it can be divided any number of ways.
  - Spivak 3y ago
    Yes but that gets factored into the hiring because this salary scheme is for retention. If someone negotiates a higher salary it's taken as the market price for the position increasing and the company not wanting to lose their employees who will eventually or immediately realize they could be making more somewhere else.
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      I do not understand what salary scheme for retention means. There exists $x to pay everyone in the company. You can start from dividing it equally amongst all employees. As you pay some employees more, you have to pay others less. Keep going along this track and “max(individual rate, group rate)” will break down as you winnow down the definition of group.
  - ryandrake 3y ago
    I don't think Apple (or any company) are paying "the most it can pay to all of its employees". Labor is a market, and in a market, buyers don't pay any more than they can get away with. All companies are paying the least they can get away with while still retaining the people they want to retain. There isn't some fixed bag of money $X that gets distributed to employees, where X is uninfluenced by the market. If the labor market happened to change such that X must be more, companies would have to pay X or do without some employees. EDIT: I think we actually agree. Roundabout way of saying the same thing.

Ericson2314 3y ago

HN has a mix of opinions but there are a lot of "temporarily embarrassed ~~millionaire~~ billionaire" wannabe entrepreneurs. People that think of themselves as employers not employees, etc.

Mountain_Skies 3y ago
"Temporarily embarrassed millionaire" is one of the most ridiculous bits of motivated reasoning to ever come out of the left. There's little to no evidence for it but gives the one who states it the ability to hold anyone who disagrees with them both in contempt and inferiority at the same time. It is quite clever, if your goal is to protect many of the inherent contradictions on the neoliberal worldview but is terrible if your goal is to ever understand those who frustratingly refuse to hold views you paternally believe are what's best for them.
gruez 3y ago
Maybe you should actually read and understand the anti-union comments on this site rather than using a memetic caricature from reddit or whatever. Of the anti-union comment I've seen, none were justified on the basis that the commenter was a '"temporarily embarrassed ~~millionaire~~ billionaire" wannabe entrepreneurs'. The closest I've seen are people who think they're above average performers, and think that contracts that typically result from union negotiated contracts (eg. seniority based or credential based) would negatively impact their compensation. Regardless of whether you think arguments like these hold any water, it's a massive disservice to portray them as them being anti-union because they "think of themselves as employers not employees".
- Ericson2314 3y ago
  That is indeed close: Why do we always hear from people who think they are well above average contributors, and not the ones that don't? I've read the other comments too. The most interesting ones were the people who previously had "conventional, blue collar" union jobs and didn't like their union. There are certainly real problems, but thankfully there are a number of "reform caucuses" right now winning elections that can start to fix them.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

tech_ken 3y ago

Two answers: * In the US there's a narrative that unions add layers to bureaucracy to a process that should (from an IMO limited "pro free market" position) efficiently settle on an optimal solution all by itself. Many people just by default accept this argument, and to be entirely fair US unions definitely got complacent in the last few decades. * Many HN commenters are affluent tech workers or entrepeneurs, and some are bosses or capital owners themselves. People in this first group kind of "won" the economy, and in the second group actively benefit from workers negotiating 1-on-1. Group (1) has a tendency to not relate well or understand the position of the typical union constituency, Group (2) has financial motivation to push back against it.

billiam 3y ago

It's true it's not a monolith, but the loudest voices here have been against all union,s not just public sector ones. But do you hear that today? Silence. It's the sound of former well-paid engineers and other tech workers of the techbro-libertarian bent realizing that the worker rights they've spent years decrying actually matter. Could this be because they finally realize that despite their notion that they are in the ownership class with their options and investments, their jobs have more in common with a UPS driver than with management and the superrich who own the companies where they work?

nonethewiser 3y ago
What about this post makes such people identify more with UPS than they previously would? And what about this post makes them suddenly care about the workers rights that they previously didnt think mattered?

z3t4 3y ago

Many HN readers don't want to be paid more.

danielmarkbruce 3y ago

One position is that there are not only two parties involved in a person's employment situation. The alternative is they go work another company. Another position is that unions destroy companies by forcing a cost structure which dooms the company to fail. Lots of people think one or both plus other things.