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There's no law saying a union can't fight for things besides salary. But in practice that's what it's often about. Take the NYTimes tech worker union, for exam

There's no law saying a union can't fight for things besides salary. But in practice that's what it's often about. Take the NYTimes tech worker union, for example (previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41504026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41504026). It really only has 2 objectives on its platform: indefinite remote work, and "pay equity". Notably, their objective is for pay equity regardless of different representation across different jobs. So not even "equal pay for equal work" but rather "equal pay for different work".

nothercastle 2y ago
Union incentive align mostly to more members not more salary or benefits. Similar how companies tend to go for more revenue unions benefit more from additional member and less from higher salaries
- Manuel_D 2y ago
  The two are not mutually exclusive. The incentive for seniority-based pay is that low-performers are dissatisfied with lesser career advancement, so they form a block within the union electorate and vote in leadership that flattens pay. You are correct that unions are also incentivized to increase membership, that's why unions often oppose more efficient work practices. More efficiency reduces the number of personnel needed to perform the job. An example of this is the longshoremen's unions in the US. They have consistently rejected the automation that most other developed countries have long-since adoped [1]. The result? American ports are some of the least efficient in the world, despite also being quite expensive [2]. 1. https://apnews.com/article/longshoremen-strike-pay-automation-ports-jobs-consumers-3aa66e0a05db25a49645fad404a5f000 https://apnews.com/article/longshoremen-strike-pay-automatio... 2. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/6cebb847-6f46-44e7-9533-12ac893b3693/content https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/server/api/core/bitstrea...

nothercastle 2y ago

Union incentive align mostly to more members not more salary or benefits. Similar how companies tend to go for more revenue unions benefit more from additional member and less from higher salaries

Manuel_D 2y ago
The two are not mutually exclusive. The incentive for seniority-based pay is that low-performers are dissatisfied with lesser career advancement, so they form a block within the union electorate and vote in leadership that flattens pay. You are correct that unions are also incentivized to increase membership, that's why unions often oppose more efficient work practices. More efficiency reduces the number of personnel needed to perform the job. An example of this is the longshoremen's unions in the US. They have consistently rejected the automation that most other developed countries have long-since adoped [1]. The result? American ports are some of the least efficient in the world, despite also being quite expensive [2]. 1. https://apnews.com/article/longshoremen-strike-pay-automation-ports-jobs-consumers-3aa66e0a05db25a49645fad404a5f000 https://apnews.com/article/longshoremen-strike-pay-automatio... 2. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/6cebb847-6f46-44e7-9533-12ac893b3693/content https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/server/api/core/bitstrea...