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Unions are fascinating to me. When you are in a Union, part of your money goes to the union in order to, hopefully, make things better for you. This means the

• haolez 3y ago
  Unions are really powerful in corrupt and underdeveloped countries. Correlation is not causation, but still, it's frustrating for workers in those regions.
  • EdwardDiego 3y ago
    Like, Australia?
    • haolez 3y ago
      Brazil has more than 10 thousand unions. There is a union for union workers. Welcome to the underdeveloped world :)
  • niels8472 3y ago
    The least corrupt countries per the corruption perceptions index also (mostly) have strong unions. Danmark and Finland topping the list have 70% membership.
    • hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
      US-Finland expat here, and yes, I quite like my union. But I especially like my unemployment fund: 100 euros a year gets me 50% of my pre-tax salary for a year if I lose or leave my job. Unemployment insurance plans seem underrated in general by FTEs, both in the US and elsewhere. Without it, your ability to exercise both halves of "voice or exit" in the corporate world are severely curtailed. Like life insurance, it's relatively hard to game as a policy - it's usually pretty clear when you lose your salaried job, just like it's usually pretty clear when you die. I see few downsides, especially if you live cheap enough to pay all of your bills on that X% of your income anyway.
      • bluGill 3y ago
        $100 euros a year does not get you 50% of your pre-tax salary for a year. That 100 might be what you paid, but that is not anywhere close to what that costs. Do not confuse the cost of something with the price you pay. At 100 per year they should just make it free. I'm not sure what the real cost of unemployment is per year (there are people who's job it is to figure this out - they have more data than me), but it is thousands per year.
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        • hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
          Not totally sure what argument you're making here. Say you're a professional making $100k per year, with a 1% chance per year of losing your job. A 50% unemployment insurance policy like I described in a private market should cost you a little over $500/yr. That still seems like a good deal to me, and probably to most people.
          • bluGill 3y ago
            Your chance of losing your job is a lot more than 1%.
            • 3y ago
• KittenInABox 3y ago
  Yes, unions are super nuanced and have their pros and cons. I think the writers strike on hollywood forcing them to pay for using written work in streaming is a good choice. I think gatekeeping participating in studios on union work effectively gatekeeps tv writing to the already-connected, also. Overall I guess unions are only as good or as bad as the people in them.
  • JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    The writers' and UPS strikes were a good juxtaposition of where (private sector) unions work and when they don't. The writers got, approximately, squat. Most of them got laid off. The pay raises don't compensate for the months of lost work. The advantages of hedging with foreign content was laid bare. They struck when they had no leverage and it showed. The UPS strike, on the other hand, was a resounding success. Swiftly resolved. Material pay and safety improvements. And a stable workforce for UPS in the midst of a broader labor shortage. Win win. (Yellow got fucked, but that's a different story.)
• taurath 3y ago
  I would always rather be in a union than not. Sometimes unions can be opaque or byzantine especially in older industries, but what is always opaque is management. Having fair pay and time off is something I’d rather not leave to whoever happens to sit in the chair above me, because who sits in the chair above me can change on a whim. Congrats to the Fastmail team!
  • brightball 3y ago
    As long as there's an option to not be in the union, it's completely fine IMO. In a free market, the best option will win. When non-union jobs are better than union jobs the need for the union should vanish (in theory).
    • vlovich123 3y ago
      You realize how collective bargaining breaks down when you aren’t a united front right?
      • brightball 3y ago
        If you are forced to be in the union, you're not united...you're coerced. If you choose to be, you are.
        • vlovich123 3y ago
          I’m forced to pay taxes to the government and can’t opt out. Can still recognize that on balance it’s better in terms of building a larger, stable, more robust society than we’d have otherwise even with all the downsides that come with that coercion.
          • brightball 3y ago
            And yet, if you disagree you can still opt out of paying those taxes...by moving. Don't like the way your city, county or state spends the tax money? You can vote to change it or you can move. You can even do it nationally by moving to another country that you think does it better. We still get a choice. On balance, having a choice is always better than the alternative.
• user3939382 3y ago
  What we need are Unions Squared. It’s a union for the union. If the first level union isn’t fighting for the workers they lose their membership. But… what if the second level union fails…
  • nonrandomstring 3y ago
    Unions tend amalgamate in much the way companies acquire. In Britain we've had, and still have, some quite powerful unions that formed from smaller groups in the 1970s, notably the Transport and General Workers' Union [0]. Also, unions naturally cooperate and support each other forming a formidable power bloc. My 1980s memories are of Flying Pickets and Solidarity. Indeed, in Poland, Lech Walesa's Solidarity [1] was arguably a key domino in the events leading to the overthrow of communism in East Europe. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_and_General_Workers%27_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_and_General_Workers%... [1] https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lech-Walesa https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lech-Walesa
  • sneeze-slayer 3y ago
    Or have elected officials. If the union isn't fighting for you...elect someone who will. To me, unions are a lot like democracies. They can function very well, but need constant oversight by their constituents to ensure that they are working towards the interests of all members. Not coincidentally, the strongest democracies are the ones with many laws regarding transparency to eliminate corruption.
• some_random 3y ago
  There's a whole societal level aspect too, most Unions are net positive imo (better wages and conditions is better for everyone), but some definitely aren't. The FOP is the absolute epitome of this, if you've ever wonder how we ended up where we are in the US with our cops, look into what their Union does for them.
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• duped 3y ago
  The SAG-AFTA and WGA strikes should be a signal to knowledge workers that not everything has to look like what they think a union contract is. Competitive pay and benefits can be individually negotiated while unions can represent their interests in the industry at large instead of just looking at compensation.
• EdwardDiego 3y ago
  > where the Union negotiated pay/benefits they got was less (before and after union dues) than the surrounding non-union competition. Yeah, that's a common anti-union tactic. Another one is passing on any better terms negotiated with a union to non-union workers to make it look like union membership gains you nothing. Of course, when the union is gone, the largesse tends to end.
  • pc86 3y ago
    How is "I give my negotiating rights away to a union and they did a worse job negotiating than I did" a "common anti-union tactic?" It sounds like just something that happens from time to time.
    • slothtrop 3y ago
      That's true, but of course as a member you can pressure/vote for your union to bargain. And at any rate, most of the time union work pays better.
    • sneeze-slayer 3y ago
      Typically because the company is more benevolent to non-union workers in this case so to try to incentivize workers to not join or leave the union. If there was no union involved, then the company wouldn't be so benevolent to non-union workers.
    • dontlaugh 3y ago
      Unions negotiate collective minimums. Individuals frequently manage to negotiate more for themselves, if they have the leverage.
      • mfer 3y ago
        It depends on the Union and where you're at. Some unions negotiate everything from vacation time to pay bands to how raises happen. There are many places where the hardest worker and the laziest worker make the same. There are places where what you make is solely based on how long you've had the job and it's not negotiable. Unions work differently in different places.
• capitol_ 3y ago
  That could be a long play from the employer side to disincentivize the workers from joining forming/joining a union.
  • carlosjobim 3y ago
    Is the goal to improve wages and conditions for workers or is the goal that everybody's in a union? If companies improve wages and conditions for workers to deter then from forming or joining a union, then there is no need for a union. Unless you've fallen for partisan faith.
    • capitol_ 3y ago
      There is also a time aspect to the equation. The goal is to improve wages and conditions for workers in a sustainable way so that the improvements are guaranteed to persist over time and not be a one time thing. Basically it's important to not lose the war by winning one battle.
      • carlosjobim 3y ago
        That sounds like a total zero-sum perspective on life itself.
• deleted 3y ago
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• babalulu 3y ago
  While I'm pro-union in general, not all unions are equal. Some are powerful. Some are weak. Back in the 1990s I worked part-time for a unionized grocery store chain and was a member of the UFCW. There were four contract negotiations while I was there, and each time the union rolled over and approved pay cuts, decreasing the top pay rate and slashing insurance benefits. Long-time workers saw their pay cut from $11.11 an hour to $7.50 an hour over the course of a few years. Many left or took an offered buyout during the last pay cut. The last cut finally affected me as well and I took that same buyout. No one at my store liked the union, and I have to admit that it turned me off of unions for a while. The UFCW was weak and had little bargaining power over a company that was losing money and, as we later learned, was being embezzled dry by its president.
  • patmorgan23 3y ago
    I totally get your perspective given your experience. There are unions with bad leadership, but think those generally come about by a disengage union membership. As a member you and your coworkers ARE the union and have the power to affect what it does and who its leadership is. Several unions have gone through democratic reforms in the last few years to make their leadership directly elected and accountable to the rank and file members. The Teamsters and UAW being to examples, and it turned them from weak company unions into powerful advocates for their members. Unions are groups of people, just like all other organizations.
• Vinnl 3y ago
  It's also interesting to note that they work differently in different countries. For example: > I was recently talking with someone where the Union negotiated pay/benefits they got was less (before and after union dues) than the surrounding non-union competition. As far as I know this wouldn't happen in the Netherlands - unions have the legal backing to negotiate on behalf of all employees, member or not.