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If it made no difference why would employees bother? It does make a negative difference for employers with potentially higher costs and lower flexibility over

If it made no difference why would employees bother? It does make a negative difference for employers with potentially higher costs and lower flexibility over time.

sebtron 3y ago
It makes a positive difference for the employees. You seem to imply that this is correlated to a negative difference for the employer, which is completely wrong.
- mytailorisrich 3y ago
  Obviously in general it makes a positive difference for employees, that was a rhetorical question... I have listed two main negative differences it makes for employers. I am hard-pressed to find any positive differences for them... on the issues this touches it's pretty much a zero-sum game so if employees gain it means employers 'lose'. If something is positive for both sides then I think the market will eventually adopt it on its own.
  - sebtron 3y ago
    The purpose of unions is to make sure the employees work is sustainable, easier, pleasant if possible. On a more practical level this means enforcing work regulations, if an employer is at risk of breaking regulations (intentionally or not), unions will help them keep the line. A happier employee is more productive and less likely to leave the company on the forst occasion or do anything hostile (stealing, selling company secrets). This is not exactly news, it has been known for at least 150 years.
    - mytailorisrich 3y ago
      The purpose of unions is to extract as much as possible from the employer on the behalf of its members, or at least to extract more than the employer would otherwise have given. You do not contradict anything I have written nor provide any examples of how unions might be a positive for employers... Again, if an happier, more productive employee benefits the company then the market will sort it out by itself (For instances tech companies have not needed unions to offer high pay and plenty of perks). That said, it's not an universal truth that a happier employee is a net gain.
      - ok_dad 3y ago
        You're saying "the market" like it's some magic word that makes everything fair. The market for employment is not fair. Companies hold most of the power in America today, for most jobs. Highly paid white collar workers may hold a slight edge, sometimes, but it's not common. One of the ways that workers can balance the power that a company has over them, is to unionize so that as a group all of the workers can affect the company's decisions. This is good for the market, because it equalizes power and allows for the synthesis of good efficiency through fair price discovery for labor and good worker conditions through the equality of power that they hold in a union. You can scream THE MARKET until your throat is dry, but it doesn't mean that an unfettered capitalism is the best thing for the country as a whole. Everyone must be thriving, otherwise we're all failing together.
      - close04 3y ago
        > if an happier, more productive employee benefits the company then the market will sort it out by itself I don't think this argument in particular stands well against reality. The market is generally driven by players with concentrated power and it's very likely the interests of those players will align creating an even more one sided power imbalance. People's preferences are low entropy. Things that are in the interest of individuals rarely "sort themselves out" without some intervention, usually from a regulatory body. And even that's less a democratic exercise than it is a lobbying one where concentrated donations are worth more than sparse individual contributions. In the US there was a time when more people could own a house, car, and raise a family with just one family member's income. Now it's increasingly difficult to do it even with two incomes. People didn't decide to just work more and afford less. The market sorted itself to benefit those who already had more power and could influence.
        mytailorisrich 3y ago
        > I don't think this argument in particular stands well against reality I think it does. I mentioned the salaries and perks offered by tech companies. I could also mention Henry Ford. If something benefits the company then they will do it, and if it works it will naturally spread. > Things that are in the interest of individuals rarely "sort themselves out" without some intervention I didn't write "in the interest of individuals", I wrote benefitting both sides, which means, crucially, also benefitting the company. But again, in many cases happier employees simply do not provide a net benefit to the company. Back to the point: The claim that unions benefit both sides is naive and a fairy tale. Obviously unions do not benefit companies hence why they are opposing them as much as they are legally able to.
    - trollbridge 3y ago
      Delta’s flight attendants (and a few other groups) aren’t in a union. This has left Delta very motivated to make sure their flight attendants are happy so that they won’t unionise. The end result is better workers, happier customers, and more productive workplace. But this wouldn’t happen without the threat of unionising hanging over Delta’s head. I personally think a good outcome in situations like Apple is having maybe half their stores union, half not - Apple would be very motivated to keep the non-union employees happy. Customers could end up seeing which stores work better. A competitive marketplace, if you will.
      - lightbritefight 3y ago
        Union autoworkers make more and habe better benefits than non union auto workers. You know that when the big non unionized auto workers recebtly got raises? Right after the unionised ones fought for and got their own. The union is the only thing that drives wages up. Non union shops, including your example of Delta flight staff, only get benefits because the unions are there. Without the other unions in that space, they would get nothing. You know what would ensure Delta gets all the same benefits as the unionized staff around them? Joining the same union.
  - lukan 3y ago
    "If something is positive for both sides then I think the market will eventually adopt it on its own." Due to millions of regulations already in place, the market is not really free, but very distorted. So even if the "free market" would always go for the best solution, current state is nonproof for anything. Otherwise you might argue, that europe would be a proof, because unions here are strong.
    - actionfromafar 3y ago
      Without regulations the market would remain free for at most a hot minute and you would get regulation again, your own or someone elses, to paraphrase.
    - int_19h 3y ago
      The single largest regulation in any capitalist society - the one on which literally the most policing resources are spent, by far - is abstract private property rights. Capitalism cannot exist without that, because you wouldn't be able to accumulate capital indefinitely if there aren't people with guns that are ready and willing to do violence on your behalf to protect the thing that some paper says its yours. So, yes, the market isn't really free, and never has been, when you don't selectively exclude some kinds of regulation from consideration.
  - arrrg 3y ago
    It is perfectly possible that a given company performance can be reached by different paths, some better for employees, some worse. In fact, I think that even seems like a very plausible hypothesis, given that treating your employees worse can have advantages (reduction in costs and headcount) and disadvantages (less motived and potentially productive employees, worse retention, difficulties attracting people) for the employer, so those two may roughly cancel out under a whole lot of different conditions. So for the employer there may be no benefit (but also not really a downside) to treating employees better, but add to the mix this strong cultural idea in US business circles that unions are the worst and you get this taboo against unions and no market pressure to change that. Obviously this is a quite horrific situation to be in because we get worse outcomes for employees and unchanged outcomes for employers. So no one benefits and most people have worse outcomes. Bad all around.
  - simiones 3y ago
    You're missing the simple fact that this idea that the market will arrive at every positive thing that can be quantified is simply wrong. Markets will very very often converge on local maxima if allowed to. This is obvious if you think about it from a simple computational perspective: markets at best do a random walk search, and that can only ever find a local maximum, not the global maximum of a function.
  - jensgk 3y ago
    "If something is positive for both sides then I think the market will eventually adopt it on its own." In Denmark we (by law) all have 5 weeks of holiday per year (besides public holidays), paid sick leave, 37 hour work week, paid maternity care (m/f), reasonable notice of termination, reasonable rules for work environment, etc. All because of our unions. How is it in the US?
    - geertj 3y ago
      Those very generous working conditions, and the mind set that it comes from and creates, I am convinced, is also why Denmark does not have an Apple, Tesla, Google, Nvidia, or SpaceX, and why the AI revolution is heavily based on the US. I’m not dinging you for it. I am US based ex EU (NL) myself, and have lived under both systems enough time to have experienced the difference. Countries and individuals can make choices between quality of life and achievement. And while there are some short range positive correlations (more quality of life leads to better thinking and more productivity), I think the long range correlation is negative (p100 achievement will require long hours and sacrifices). Note that I am not saying one side is inherently better than the other. I’m saying it’s a choice with consequences. It is essentially a question about what you value in life.
      - jensgk 3y ago
        Well, for the size of our country, I think we are doing well, we have Novo Nordisk, Maersk, Carlsberg, Lego and maybe others. We are above the US when it comes to Nobel prizes per capita, higher than the US when it comes to happyness.
        geertj 3y ago
        Again I am not saying one system is better than the other. The companies you bring up are excellent global companies that are well run. But they have not caused the radical change like the ones that I mentioned.
      - jensgk 3y ago
        Also what is the benefit of having those things, if your citizens generelly do not gain anything from it, eg with regard to life expentacy, happyness and wealth?
gklitz 3y ago
Great question. Ledt assume that you’re discussing a topic like working hours. Your company says you have to work. 14h each day, and you argue that if you have to do that, you’ll be sleep deprived, make mistakes and be so low productivity that it wouldn’t benefit the company, especially since they would have to pay you more with a constant hourly wage than if you worked fewer hours and was more productive. The company argues: “STFU pessent, you’ll work when we say, how long we say and exactly how we say or you’re fired this instance, now get back in line before I duct your pay for the time you’re wasting by even thinking you’re worthy of talking to someone in management!” Now in that scenario the worker has no power at all, even though it actually is as we all know today, a proven benefit to have resonable working hours for the company. So if you have a union and all the workers can collectively go “we need to talk about work hours or we strike” you force through the policy that is ultimately beneficial to the company, even though management hates the idea of there being 6hours more per day that their wage slaves are not at the work benches. Why would workers argue for fewer hours if it doesn’t end up costing the company net profits? Because they are humans, not machines, and not everything in this world boils down to pure profit driven motives.
- wddkcs 3y ago
  This is a bad example and overall I don't see the argument. For decades companies did force workers into extremely long hours. The standardization of the 40 hour work week was in some sense a collective action effort, starting with the request of the National Labor Union in the U.S. in 1866. [1] Prior to those efforts, workers in industrialized positions were indeed working 80 to 100 hours a week on average, with little to no recourse. Beyond that, you ask 'Why would workers argue for fewer hours if it doesn't end up costing the company net profits? The workers don't care about net profits, at least at the expense of their own time. Time is money, and if the company has more of your time, you have less... [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/history-of-the-40-hour-workweek-2015-10?amp https://www.businessinsider.com/history-of-the-40-hour-workw...
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    >Prior to those efforts, workers in industrialized positions were indeed working 80 to 100 hours a week on average, with little to no recourse. And much lower productivity. Even by recent metrics we know the modern work is twice as efficient, but apparently the average hours per week worked is around 55-60 hours. That's part of the point. It in fact has quickly dimishing returns to work more than X hours, and past that there probably is some physical breakdown point wher ea worker loses productivety in the mid-long term (e.g. working 120 hours for 2 weeks, then sick for a month. Congrats, you lost 80 hours of productiviy + whatever middling returns happened) but companies won't budge without collective action.
globular-toast 3y ago
You're assuming it's a zero sum game?
felipelemos 3y ago
> If it made no difference why would employees bother? >> despite the data showing little negative impact of unionization to overall productivity nor company survival. * Employees should bother to improve their own lives, not to decrease productivity or affect company survival. * Emphasis mine.
skeaker 3y ago
It makes plenty of difference for employees, just not for overall company output. If anything if your union increases employee happiness and retention that's probably better for business in the long run.

If it made no difference why would employees bother? It does make a negative difference for employers with potentially higher costs and lower flexibility over time.

sebtron 3y ago

It makes a positive difference for the employees. You seem to imply that this is correlated to a negative difference for the employer, which is completely wrong.

mytailorisrich 3y ago
Obviously in general it makes a positive difference for employees, that was a rhetorical question... I have listed two main negative differences it makes for employers. I am hard-pressed to find any positive differences for them... on the issues this touches it's pretty much a zero-sum game so if employees gain it means employers 'lose'. If something is positive for both sides then I think the market will eventually adopt it on its own.
- sebtron 3y ago
  The purpose of unions is to make sure the employees work is sustainable, easier, pleasant if possible. On a more practical level this means enforcing work regulations, if an employer is at risk of breaking regulations (intentionally or not), unions will help them keep the line. A happier employee is more productive and less likely to leave the company on the forst occasion or do anything hostile (stealing, selling company secrets). This is not exactly news, it has been known for at least 150 years.
  - mytailorisrich 3y ago
    The purpose of unions is to extract as much as possible from the employer on the behalf of its members, or at least to extract more than the employer would otherwise have given. You do not contradict anything I have written nor provide any examples of how unions might be a positive for employers... Again, if an happier, more productive employee benefits the company then the market will sort it out by itself (For instances tech companies have not needed unions to offer high pay and plenty of perks). That said, it's not an universal truth that a happier employee is a net gain.
    - ok_dad 3y ago
      You're saying "the market" like it's some magic word that makes everything fair. The market for employment is not fair. Companies hold most of the power in America today, for most jobs. Highly paid white collar workers may hold a slight edge, sometimes, but it's not common. One of the ways that workers can balance the power that a company has over them, is to unionize so that as a group all of the workers can affect the company's decisions. This is good for the market, because it equalizes power and allows for the synthesis of good efficiency through fair price discovery for labor and good worker conditions through the equality of power that they hold in a union. You can scream THE MARKET until your throat is dry, but it doesn't mean that an unfettered capitalism is the best thing for the country as a whole. Everyone must be thriving, otherwise we're all failing together.
    - close04 3y ago
      > if an happier, more productive employee benefits the company then the market will sort it out by itself I don't think this argument in particular stands well against reality. The market is generally driven by players with concentrated power and it's very likely the interests of those players will align creating an even more one sided power imbalance. People's preferences are low entropy. Things that are in the interest of individuals rarely "sort themselves out" without some intervention, usually from a regulatory body. And even that's less a democratic exercise than it is a lobbying one where concentrated donations are worth more than sparse individual contributions. In the US there was a time when more people could own a house, car, and raise a family with just one family member's income. Now it's increasingly difficult to do it even with two incomes. People didn't decide to just work more and afford less. The market sorted itself to benefit those who already had more power and could influence.
      - mytailorisrich 3y ago
        > I don't think this argument in particular stands well against reality I think it does. I mentioned the salaries and perks offered by tech companies. I could also mention Henry Ford. If something benefits the company then they will do it, and if it works it will naturally spread. > Things that are in the interest of individuals rarely "sort themselves out" without some intervention I didn't write "in the interest of individuals", I wrote benefitting both sides, which means, crucially, also benefitting the company. But again, in many cases happier employees simply do not provide a net benefit to the company. Back to the point: The claim that unions benefit both sides is naive and a fairy tale. Obviously unions do not benefit companies hence why they are opposing them as much as they are legally able to.
  - trollbridge 3y ago
    Delta’s flight attendants (and a few other groups) aren’t in a union. This has left Delta very motivated to make sure their flight attendants are happy so that they won’t unionise. The end result is better workers, happier customers, and more productive workplace. But this wouldn’t happen without the threat of unionising hanging over Delta’s head. I personally think a good outcome in situations like Apple is having maybe half their stores union, half not - Apple would be very motivated to keep the non-union employees happy. Customers could end up seeing which stores work better. A competitive marketplace, if you will.
    - lightbritefight 3y ago
      Union autoworkers make more and habe better benefits than non union auto workers. You know that when the big non unionized auto workers recebtly got raises? Right after the unionised ones fought for and got their own. The union is the only thing that drives wages up. Non union shops, including your example of Delta flight staff, only get benefits because the unions are there. Without the other unions in that space, they would get nothing. You know what would ensure Delta gets all the same benefits as the unionized staff around them? Joining the same union.
- lukan 3y ago
  "If something is positive for both sides then I think the market will eventually adopt it on its own." Due to millions of regulations already in place, the market is not really free, but very distorted. So even if the "free market" would always go for the best solution, current state is nonproof for anything. Otherwise you might argue, that europe would be a proof, because unions here are strong.
  - actionfromafar 3y ago
    Without regulations the market would remain free for at most a hot minute and you would get regulation again, your own or someone elses, to paraphrase.
  - int_19h 3y ago
    The single largest regulation in any capitalist society - the one on which literally the most policing resources are spent, by far - is abstract private property rights. Capitalism cannot exist without that, because you wouldn't be able to accumulate capital indefinitely if there aren't people with guns that are ready and willing to do violence on your behalf to protect the thing that some paper says its yours. So, yes, the market isn't really free, and never has been, when you don't selectively exclude some kinds of regulation from consideration.
- arrrg 3y ago
  It is perfectly possible that a given company performance can be reached by different paths, some better for employees, some worse. In fact, I think that even seems like a very plausible hypothesis, given that treating your employees worse can have advantages (reduction in costs and headcount) and disadvantages (less motived and potentially productive employees, worse retention, difficulties attracting people) for the employer, so those two may roughly cancel out under a whole lot of different conditions. So for the employer there may be no benefit (but also not really a downside) to treating employees better, but add to the mix this strong cultural idea in US business circles that unions are the worst and you get this taboo against unions and no market pressure to change that. Obviously this is a quite horrific situation to be in because we get worse outcomes for employees and unchanged outcomes for employers. So no one benefits and most people have worse outcomes. Bad all around.
- simiones 3y ago
  You're missing the simple fact that this idea that the market will arrive at every positive thing that can be quantified is simply wrong. Markets will very very often converge on local maxima if allowed to. This is obvious if you think about it from a simple computational perspective: markets at best do a random walk search, and that can only ever find a local maximum, not the global maximum of a function.
- jensgk 3y ago
  "If something is positive for both sides then I think the market will eventually adopt it on its own." In Denmark we (by law) all have 5 weeks of holiday per year (besides public holidays), paid sick leave, 37 hour work week, paid maternity care (m/f), reasonable notice of termination, reasonable rules for work environment, etc. All because of our unions. How is it in the US?
  - geertj 3y ago
    Those very generous working conditions, and the mind set that it comes from and creates, I am convinced, is also why Denmark does not have an Apple, Tesla, Google, Nvidia, or SpaceX, and why the AI revolution is heavily based on the US. I’m not dinging you for it. I am US based ex EU (NL) myself, and have lived under both systems enough time to have experienced the difference. Countries and individuals can make choices between quality of life and achievement. And while there are some short range positive correlations (more quality of life leads to better thinking and more productivity), I think the long range correlation is negative (p100 achievement will require long hours and sacrifices). Note that I am not saying one side is inherently better than the other. I’m saying it’s a choice with consequences. It is essentially a question about what you value in life.
    - jensgk 3y ago
      Well, for the size of our country, I think we are doing well, we have Novo Nordisk, Maersk, Carlsberg, Lego and maybe others. We are above the US when it comes to Nobel prizes per capita, higher than the US when it comes to happyness.
      - geertj 3y ago
        Again I am not saying one system is better than the other. The companies you bring up are excellent global companies that are well run. But they have not caused the radical change like the ones that I mentioned.
    - jensgk 3y ago
      Also what is the benefit of having those things, if your citizens generelly do not gain anything from it, eg with regard to life expentacy, happyness and wealth?

gklitz 3y ago

Great question. Ledt assume that you’re discussing a topic like working hours. Your company says you have to work. 14h each day, and you argue that if you have to do that, you’ll be sleep deprived, make mistakes and be so low productivity that it wouldn’t benefit the company, especially since they would have to pay you more with a constant hourly wage than if you worked fewer hours and was more productive. The company argues: “STFU pessent, you’ll work when we say, how long we say and exactly how we say or you’re fired this instance, now get back in line before I duct your pay for the time you’re wasting by even thinking you’re worthy of talking to someone in management!” Now in that scenario the worker has no power at all, even though it actually is as we all know today, a proven benefit to have resonable working hours for the company. So if you have a union and all the workers can collectively go “we need to talk about work hours or we strike” you force through the policy that is ultimately beneficial to the company, even though management hates the idea of there being 6hours more per day that their wage slaves are not at the work benches. Why would workers argue for fewer hours if it doesn’t end up costing the company net profits? Because they are humans, not machines, and not everything in this world boils down to pure profit driven motives.

wddkcs 3y ago
This is a bad example and overall I don't see the argument. For decades companies did force workers into extremely long hours. The standardization of the 40 hour work week was in some sense a collective action effort, starting with the request of the National Labor Union in the U.S. in 1866. [1] Prior to those efforts, workers in industrialized positions were indeed working 80 to 100 hours a week on average, with little to no recourse. Beyond that, you ask 'Why would workers argue for fewer hours if it doesn't end up costing the company net profits? The workers don't care about net profits, at least at the expense of their own time. Time is money, and if the company has more of your time, you have less... [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/history-of-the-40-hour-workweek-2015-10?amp https://www.businessinsider.com/history-of-the-40-hour-workw...
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  >Prior to those efforts, workers in industrialized positions were indeed working 80 to 100 hours a week on average, with little to no recourse. And much lower productivity. Even by recent metrics we know the modern work is twice as efficient, but apparently the average hours per week worked is around 55-60 hours. That's part of the point. It in fact has quickly dimishing returns to work more than X hours, and past that there probably is some physical breakdown point wher ea worker loses productivety in the mid-long term (e.g. working 120 hours for 2 weeks, then sick for a month. Congrats, you lost 80 hours of productiviy + whatever middling returns happened) but companies won't budge without collective action.

globular-toast 3y ago

You're assuming it's a zero sum game?

felipelemos 3y ago

> If it made no difference why would employees bother? >> despite the data showing little negative impact of unionization to overall productivity nor company survival. * Employees should bother to improve their own lives, not to decrease productivity or affect company survival. * Emphasis mine.

skeaker 3y ago

It makes plenty of difference for employees, just not for overall company output. If anything if your union increases employee happiness and retention that's probably better for business in the long run.