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The prisoners dilemma shows that everyone is incentivized against unions. Unions however, would solve this. You just need a mechanism to stop union cronyism.
by ImHereToVote 3y ago
The prisoners dilemma shows that everyone is incentivized against unions. Unions however, would solve this. You just need a mechanism to stop union cronyism.
- baq 3y agoUnions should be mandatory in any organization which has an HR department, regardless of whether its internal or outsourced.
- pcthrowaway 3y agoThis is an interesting idea, but I think you need to clarify what "HR department" means here. Because companies will just get around this by calling HR something else, and I don't think it's practical for any serious company with employees to not have someone doing HR-adjacent duties.
- baq 3y agoI'd leave that for the lawmakers and courts, not an expert. Same goes for the definition of "unions". The point is HR is always acting in the interest of the company first (if you're surprised, you're probably young and work at a tech megacorp) and if the interests of employees are aligned with these (again, usually the case at tech megacorps), all is fine and dandy. Unions are needed when those interests start to diverge as individual employees have basically zero negotiating power and it's in the interest of the company to exploit that to the maximum legally achievable level - pure game theory. IOW I see the perfect union as an HR-but-for-employees department. Real unions are obviously broken by individuals exploiting unions they're part of.
- binary132 3y agoClearly we just need an “HR on the side of the union” that manages the union member adversarially. :P
- andsoitis 3y ago> You just need a mechanism to stop union cronyism How?
- ImHereToVote 3y agoMore democracy in the leadership of the union.
- darby_eight 3y agoHow are workers incentivized against unions? From my perspective there's little downside.
- cpursley 3y agoDo you know much about the history of unions in the US and the monsters many of them became?
- darby_eight 3y agoUnions have the same issues most organizations have, the same opportunity for dysfunction that all forms of hierarchy imply. Meanwhile the lack of collective leverage poses a real problem for my individual compensation—I'm not about to try to outstrip my coworkers in efforts to get compensated, life is too short for that ratfuckery.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- michaelt 3y ago> Meanwhile the lack of collective leverage poses a real problem for my individual compensation Aren't Silicon Valley programmers in the top 1% for total household income? People on HN give me the impression that graduates with no experience get paid six figures and it's considered poverty level.
- darby_eight 3y ago> People on HN give me the impression that graduates with no experience get paid six figures and it's considered poverty level. If you think anything in this thread is implying salaried tech workers are trying to pass themselves off as poor I probably can't communicate with you on any level. I apologize for whatever rhetoric I used.
- dotancohen 3y ago
- astura 3y agoUnions represent employees, not candidates. I don't see how ageism in the hiring pipeline would be fixed by unions.
- a_gnostic 3y agoUnions "represent" employees, and represent the union itself.
- vidarh 3y agoPlenty of places the norm is for unions to be broad and represent members, whether currently employed or not. Some places they'll actively investigate employers thought to engage in actions hostile to their members.
- hayst4ck 3y agoI think the collective action problem is a better reference than the prisoner's dilemma directly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem
- pjmlp 3y agoIn some European countries luckly we get to enjoy them in tech. However there are plenty of workarounds employed by companies anyway.