7 ms·

I think unions need to work on their marketing. I resonate with all of these problems, but the "fixes" sound like a politician saying, "elect me and I'll solve

by film42 2y ago

I think unions need to work on their marketing. I resonate with all of these problems, but the "fixes" sound like a politician saying, "elect me and I'll solve your problems." What's the A+ example out there of a unionized engineering team that has been able to find a great work-life balance, great benefits, and a fun product development life-cycle that is profitable or clearly on its way to profitability? Show me this company. I have family and friends who work for airline unions, parcel unions, teacher unions, etc. Some love it, some hate it. Those who love it had a broken fan in the van all summer with no air conditioning until the union stepped in. How would a union meaningfully improve that situation at a tech office with paid lunches and decent benefits? Like, the promise of a better tomorrow from unions carries the same tone as a promise to IPO "really soon" from the CEO/CFO tag team at the annual kick-off meeting. What does it look like when rubber meets the road?

sfpotter 2y ago
[flagged]
- fullshark 2y ago
  Why don't you fill in the gaps for all of us that lack imagination, instead of insult us?
- jrussino 2y ago
  > If you don't see how this can be useful, that's a failure of imagination on your part. I too can sometimes find it quite frustrating when a thing that seems like a good idea to me is rejected by other people, especially when that rejection seems to come after very little consideration. But if you want people to adopt a view similar to yours, and they haven't yet, I think this sort of attitude is counterproductive. I think the person you replied to is right about there being a marketing problem here. If there's a genuinely good idea, and its acceptance/adoption is disproportionately low, it must be because people aren't seeing its value. Maybe that's because they haven't been exposed to it, maybe it's because they lack the curiosity or motivation to understand it, maybe it's because they've been misinformed or propagandized against it... either way, if you care about increasing adoption there's really no other choice than to try to actively persuade people.
jakelazaroff 2y ago
The issue is the idea that there’s something that can magically solve all your problems. If you believe in panaceas, everything will disappoint you. Unions are a tool, and tools have tradeoffs. They will be able to solve some of your problems — most importantly, the power imbalance between employer and employee — and introduce new ones you didn’t have before. The bet is that if we collectively use unions correctly, they will solve more problems than they create; that we will, on balance, be better off.
- film42 2y ago
  Great. Show me examples of teams who took that bet and how it paid off.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - test098 2y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_history_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_history_of_the_United_St... pretty much every team in blue collar industries which have been able to negotiate better working conditions, better pay, and more time off.
    - wyager 2y ago
      But tech isn't a blue collar industry, and this is about tech unions.
      - test098 2y ago
        love those flying goalposts. i guess "tech" is different enough from other kinds of labor that it's special? ok: IFPTE, UAW, CWA (which just recently welcomed workers in the video game industry: https://cwa-union.org/news/releases/video-game-workers-launc https://cwa-union.org/news/releases/video-game-workers-launc...) edit: Alphabet Workers Union under CWA, Riot Games under UAW, Tech Workers Coalition
droopyEyelids 2y ago
Unions could address on-call rotations, that seems like a low hanging fruit.
foota 2y ago
I think a lot of people might consider taking a pay cut in return for an easier tech job. In theory working in an equally profitable company by lowering stress and comp for everyone and hiring more seems possible, but I'm not certain that it'd work out in practice because of increased coordination overhead etc.,.
- Muromec 2y ago
  I did just that about a year ago and regularly see people who work even less than me, i.e. not even 5 chill days a week, but 4 or 3. It works so far.
sophacles 2y ago
Seems like a good time to unionize is when you don't need it, while the job is good. Get the union in place and work through issues like on-call, laying out actual articulable and measurable performance targets for review time, work-life balance rules and other "small" things while the job is good. That way when the money grubbing starts, the true horror-show policies are attempted, etc - you have an established union and a better bargaining position. Better than waiting until the job is shit and having to fight an uphill battle all the way.
- parpfish 2y ago
  i've recently been thinking about when in a start-ups lifecycle should employees consider unionizing. it'd be great if a worker-friendly culture was instilled in the company from its earliest days, but i'm not sure if a) there's an effective minimum size needed to unionize or b) if the existence of a union would kill your ability to fundraise in the future
test098 2y ago
IFPTE, UAW, CWA (which just recently welcomed workers in the video game industry: https://cwa-union.org/news/releases/video-game-workers-launch-industry-wide-union-communications-workers-america https://cwa-union.org/news/releases/video-game-workers-launc...)
- film42 2y ago
  Forming the union is step one of a long road before you actually reap the benefits. It can take year(s) to negotiate the CBA with your employer. Sounds like fear of layoffs was a huge factor, but the employer must agree to those terms, and that remains to be seen. So for now that's all rhetoric. Show me a team that has gotten to the other side with these terms in a contract.
  - shagie 2y ago
    https://kickstarterunited.org/first-contract/ https://kickstarterunited.org/first-contract/
  - test098 2y ago
    the Riot Games union is bargaining for better pay and less brutal working hours. at Blizzard they did employee walkouts, leading to better pay and changes in work culture. at Kickstarter they negotiated better remote work policies and reduction of discriminatory actions.
sanxiyn 2y ago
> What's the A+ example out there of a unionized engineering team that has been able to find a great work-life balance, great benefits, and a fun product development life-cycle that is profitable or clearly on its way to profitability? Show me this company. South Korean search giant Naver. Union website here: https://www.naverunion.com/ https://www.naverunion.com/
SequoiaHope 2y ago
One of the problems with real world union examples is all the laws that weakened and destroyed unions over the years. Even if there were few or no examples of thriving unions today because of issues with the legal regime, that does not strictly imply that better conditions are not possible. For example wildcat strikes and sympathy strikes have been illegal since 1947, putting more power in the hands of union management and taking power away from unions. That’s both unfair from a libertarian perspective (if workers want to strike there should not be a law preventing them from doing so) and it undermines the concept of worker power which unions otherwise aim to uphold. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taft%E2%80%93Hartley_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taft%E2%80%93Hartley_Act So it may be instructive to look at past examples when unions were strong and compare the working conditions of workers in unions and workers not in unions. Or to look at unions in other countries like Germany where they have board seats and better legal accommodation.
heraldgeezer 2y ago
In Sweden, devs and IT can just join the office worker union... https://www.unionen.se/in-english/this-is-unionen https://www.unionen.se/in-english/this-is-unionen It helps because at the end of the day you are just an excel sheet with numbers to your employer.
- Nullabillity 2y ago
  Or Sveriges Ingenjörer.
singron 2y ago
I'd like to see unions negotiate better equity deals. For pre-IPO companies, it's typical that the equity is worth nothing, and employees can actually lose money on their equity by buying it during early exercise or when they leave. For a typical employee, equity is too risky and too detached from their individual activity to be part of compensation, and it makes more sense to have different incentives. E.g. SAFEs or convertible notes where you can get paid at the next funding round instead of the IPO between 10 years and never. Alternatively, a union would have leverage and scale to arrange tender offers that individuals wouldn't. Also, during an acquisition, the union can negotiate to waive liquidation preference, since an acquirer doesn't want to buy a company where the employees don't get paid and strike on the first day.
- parpfish 2y ago
  this is a great example of the kind of things unions should talk about when doing tech organizing. too often, unions pitch themselves on fixing problems that are low on the hierarchy of needs in a particular job (e.g., will this job kill/maim you? do you make enough money to feed yourself?) and it just doesn't resonate with the types of problems that tech folks have. but pre-IPO equity deals are something that all employees hate and are completely powerless to change as individuals.
mikepurvis 2y ago
I'd be particularly interested in cases where unionization led to better products and processes. Like in a world where management just wanted to ship everything half baked, the union gave the workforce the voice required to insist on accurate and up to date documentation, comprehensive testing, proper dependency tracking and security practices, etc. I feel like almost everyone I talk to in tech says that behind the scenes, their company's development workflow is a nightmare, so this doesn't appear to be a problem that's fixing itself under market pressures.
- echelon 2y ago
  We don't need software unions. We need to break up big tech. Software companies should be able to hire and fire. We often need to have 24/7 oncall. Needs are flexible. Startups must be nimble. It's the tech giants that are ruining it for everyone. They're preventing new centicorns from forming. They're forcing underpriced M&A for successes, moving into markets with infinite money and killing upstarts before they find legs. They own every platform, every discovery mechanism, and they tax more than governments do. Big tech recently figured out they could pay off everyone and put pricing pressure back on the engineers that built their market position. Previously they were worried engineers could leave and start upstart competitors. That's why they hired everyone and paid top of band salaries. Now that they realize there is no governmental antitrust legislation to fear, they just crush everything. They're in search of infinite growth, so they move into new markets like Hollywood movies and primary care doctors and undercut everyone. They market themselves for free at the top of their websites and app stores (or print giant ads on their delivery trucks and cardboard packaging). Things that would cost competitors hundreds of millions of dollars to do. The problem is 100% big tech. We need to break up big tech.
  - FridgeSeal 2y ago
    Por que no los dos?? > Software companies should be able to hire and fire. Almost every company in every industry makes this dubious claim. Then we rediscover the benefits of team knowledge and stability. > We often need to have 24/7 oncall This feels completely orthogonal to the discussion at hand, nobody is claiming that a union will somehow make doing on-call impossible. Many other professions that do have unions, have an on-call analog.
ForTheKidz 2y ago
> I resonate with all of these problems, but the "fixes" sound like a politician saying, "elect me and I'll solve your problems." Damn you have a way different ear for people than I do. Unions actually have an incentive to please their constituents. Politicians generally don't (at least in america).
jajko 2y ago
Half of those problems disappear in Europe, quality of life and happiness skyrocket. Sure, you won't have some carrot-on-the-stick IPO games but I don't need to, I am not on the verge of burning out, I have plenty of time for my family and kids and also myself. Kids education is free including top notch unis, (almost) so is stellar healthcare, no need to massively save up for that regardless of what can happen. I had a big paragliding accident last year with both legs broken, tons of treatment, mris, various physiotherapies... still ongoing and cost 0 nothing, in even rural US those costs would be brutal. My (early) retirement is very well taken care of if all works out, we will probably have more money than we could reasonably spend plus some serious assets, all just our work from 0 in past decade and a half, both just employed at companies. Criminality is a topic on its own. I could go on for a looong time. I couldn't care less about unions, I never felt oppressed or disadvantaged in any way in past 20 years across 3 different countries and many jobs, in contrary. Good luck putting a price tag on such things, if you don't get it wait till you are older. Thats how advanced modern society should look like IMHO... the stress of being american with family and without massive cash reserves must be quite intense and relentless.
- mulmen 2y ago
  I live in the US and my employer provides excellent healthcare. I broke my collarbone last spring and had surgery to repair it followed by months of physical therapy. Zero dollars out of pocket.
  - sensanaty 2y ago
    That's the problem though, you're dependent on your company in order to not go bankrupt after your injury. If you get fired, you're screwed, if I get fired here in EU, it's not that big of a deal (plus it's harder to fire me in the first place)
    - mulmen 2y ago
      Yep, exactly. Golden handcuffs.
- 2y ago
InsideOutSanta 2y ago
The main thing a union does is shift power from the employer to the employee. How that power is used is up to each union, and its members.
- x3n0ph3n3 2y ago
  It does no such thing. It shifts power from the employer to the union bosses.
  - InsideOutSanta 2y ago
    The union members (i.e., the employees) give that power to the "union boss." Not all unions work like that (some do not have a traditional union leader), and for those who do, having a powerful union leader can be a good or a bad thing, depending on who gets elected as the union leader by the union members.
jimbokun 2y ago
A big one would be ensuring adequate staffing on call rotation. If you are never truly off duty, at some point your mind will break.
LaGrange 2y ago
> I think unions need to work on their marketing. I resonate with all of these problems, but the "fixes" sound like a politician saying, "elect me and I'll solve your problems." That would track if you were asked to elect anyone. You aren't. You're told to get your shit together, talk to your coworkers, and _solve your shit_ together. And when you do that - that's a labor union. Maybe not necessarily in the legal sense, but in a very real, material sense.
hayst4ck 2y ago
> "elect me and I'll solve your problems." Isn't that a function of living within hierarchies? Can you describe a system of change where one person is not ultimately responsible for the changes? Unions exist as a structure of power, but that power still has contend with company power. Good outcomes are proportional to challenging someone else's power, and people use their power to punish challengers and reward loyalists. That means good outcomes, no matter what the system, are a function of pain tolerance and people's willingness to make sacrifices for the benefit of others. Unions are a higher leverage vehicle for making sacrifices, but if there is no tolerance for pain or sacrifice then your only option is submission and hoping those with more power than you use it responsibly rather than becoming increasingly more despotic.
specialist 2y ago
> What does it look like when rubber meets the road? The book The Logic of Collective Action helped me understand. TLDR: Collective bargaining helps prevent the free rider problem. It's just game theory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Collective_Action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Collective_Action -- I have so many complaints about unions. Very briefly. #1 Suboptimal governance. Especially when leadership gets "captured". But that's always true of all human orgs. I have nothing helpful to add here. #2 Accelerating inequity. Corporate profits up while wages remain stagnant. Just as u/singron commented elsethread. I just don't understand how this isn't the central issue. For every person, union, voter, policy maker. For everyone. #3 Adversarial relationship (in the USA). Labor and Capital (via their proxy, Management) need to work together. My only notion is to encourage member (employee) owned and managed co-ops. (Which would need access to financial support of come kind, eg "slow capital". Which is antithetical to Wall St, neoliberalism, rent seeking, yadda, yadda.) That said... I'm very pro-Labor. And unenthusiastically pro-union, out of necessity, until we figure out something better. Like you suggest, no way simply unionizing magically resolves my complaints. Meta stuff like culture, policy, laws, expectations would have to change, to create the space for "better" unions. Stuff like repeal Taft Hartley Act, institute sectorial bargaining, investment banks structured to support social endeavors (like co-ops), yadda yadda. And I have no clue where to start.
CrispyKerosene 2y ago
[flagged]
nerdponx 2y ago
Unions need to stop marketing themselves as a way to get better work-life balance. The main benefit of unions is that employees are protected from individual abuse, because the entire union can put pressure on management in support of individuals who are being mistreated, underpaid, etc.

by film42 2y ago

sfpotter 2y ago

[flagged]

fullshark 2y ago
Why don't you fill in the gaps for all of us that lack imagination, instead of insult us?
jrussino 2y ago
> If you don't see how this can be useful, that's a failure of imagination on your part. I too can sometimes find it quite frustrating when a thing that seems like a good idea to me is rejected by other people, especially when that rejection seems to come after very little consideration. But if you want people to adopt a view similar to yours, and they haven't yet, I think this sort of attitude is counterproductive. I think the person you replied to is right about there being a marketing problem here. If there's a genuinely good idea, and its acceptance/adoption is disproportionately low, it must be because people aren't seeing its value. Maybe that's because they haven't been exposed to it, maybe it's because they lack the curiosity or motivation to understand it, maybe it's because they've been misinformed or propagandized against it... either way, if you care about increasing adoption there's really no other choice than to try to actively persuade people.

jakelazaroff 2y ago

The issue is the idea that there’s something that can magically solve all your problems. If you believe in panaceas, everything will disappoint you. Unions are a tool, and tools have tradeoffs. They will be able to solve some of your problems — most importantly, the power imbalance between employer and employee — and introduce new ones you didn’t have before. The bet is that if we collectively use unions correctly, they will solve more problems than they create; that we will, on balance, be better off.

film42 2y ago
Great. Show me examples of teams who took that bet and how it paid off.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- test098 2y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_history_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_history_of_the_United_St... pretty much every team in blue collar industries which have been able to negotiate better working conditions, better pay, and more time off.
  - wyager 2y ago
    But tech isn't a blue collar industry, and this is about tech unions.
    - test098 2y ago
      love those flying goalposts. i guess "tech" is different enough from other kinds of labor that it's special? ok: IFPTE, UAW, CWA (which just recently welcomed workers in the video game industry: https://cwa-union.org/news/releases/video-game-workers-launc https://cwa-union.org/news/releases/video-game-workers-launc...) edit: Alphabet Workers Union under CWA, Riot Games under UAW, Tech Workers Coalition

droopyEyelids 2y ago

Unions could address on-call rotations, that seems like a low hanging fruit.

foota 2y ago

I think a lot of people might consider taking a pay cut in return for an easier tech job. In theory working in an equally profitable company by lowering stress and comp for everyone and hiring more seems possible, but I'm not certain that it'd work out in practice because of increased coordination overhead etc.,.

Muromec 2y ago
I did just that about a year ago and regularly see people who work even less than me, i.e. not even 5 chill days a week, but 4 or 3. It works so far.

sophacles 2y ago

Seems like a good time to unionize is when you don't need it, while the job is good. Get the union in place and work through issues like on-call, laying out actual articulable and measurable performance targets for review time, work-life balance rules and other "small" things while the job is good. That way when the money grubbing starts, the true horror-show policies are attempted, etc - you have an established union and a better bargaining position. Better than waiting until the job is shit and having to fight an uphill battle all the way.

parpfish 2y ago
i've recently been thinking about when in a start-ups lifecycle should employees consider unionizing. it'd be great if a worker-friendly culture was instilled in the company from its earliest days, but i'm not sure if a) there's an effective minimum size needed to unionize or b) if the existence of a union would kill your ability to fundraise in the future

test098 2y ago

IFPTE, UAW, CWA (which just recently welcomed workers in the video game industry: https://cwa-union.org/news/releases/video-game-workers-launch-industry-wide-union-communications-workers-america https://cwa-union.org/news/releases/video-game-workers-launc...)

film42 2y ago
Forming the union is step one of a long road before you actually reap the benefits. It can take year(s) to negotiate the CBA with your employer. Sounds like fear of layoffs was a huge factor, but the employer must agree to those terms, and that remains to be seen. So for now that's all rhetoric. Show me a team that has gotten to the other side with these terms in a contract.
- shagie 2y ago
  https://kickstarterunited.org/first-contract/ https://kickstarterunited.org/first-contract/
- test098 2y ago
  the Riot Games union is bargaining for better pay and less brutal working hours. at Blizzard they did employee walkouts, leading to better pay and changes in work culture. at Kickstarter they negotiated better remote work policies and reduction of discriminatory actions.

sanxiyn 2y ago

> What's the A+ example out there of a unionized engineering team that has been able to find a great work-life balance, great benefits, and a fun product development life-cycle that is profitable or clearly on its way to profitability? Show me this company. South Korean search giant Naver. Union website here: https://www.naverunion.com/ https://www.naverunion.com/

SequoiaHope 2y ago

One of the problems with real world union examples is all the laws that weakened and destroyed unions over the years. Even if there were few or no examples of thriving unions today because of issues with the legal regime, that does not strictly imply that better conditions are not possible. For example wildcat strikes and sympathy strikes have been illegal since 1947, putting more power in the hands of union management and taking power away from unions. That’s both unfair from a libertarian perspective (if workers want to strike there should not be a law preventing them from doing so) and it undermines the concept of worker power which unions otherwise aim to uphold. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taft%E2%80%93Hartley_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taft%E2%80%93Hartley_Act So it may be instructive to look at past examples when unions were strong and compare the working conditions of workers in unions and workers not in unions. Or to look at unions in other countries like Germany where they have board seats and better legal accommodation.

heraldgeezer 2y ago

In Sweden, devs and IT can just join the office worker union... https://www.unionen.se/in-english/this-is-unionen https://www.unionen.se/in-english/this-is-unionen It helps because at the end of the day you are just an excel sheet with numbers to your employer.

Nullabillity 2y ago
Or Sveriges Ingenjörer.

singron 2y ago

I'd like to see unions negotiate better equity deals. For pre-IPO companies, it's typical that the equity is worth nothing, and employees can actually lose money on their equity by buying it during early exercise or when they leave. For a typical employee, equity is too risky and too detached from their individual activity to be part of compensation, and it makes more sense to have different incentives. E.g. SAFEs or convertible notes where you can get paid at the next funding round instead of the IPO between 10 years and never. Alternatively, a union would have leverage and scale to arrange tender offers that individuals wouldn't. Also, during an acquisition, the union can negotiate to waive liquidation preference, since an acquirer doesn't want to buy a company where the employees don't get paid and strike on the first day.

parpfish 2y ago
this is a great example of the kind of things unions should talk about when doing tech organizing. too often, unions pitch themselves on fixing problems that are low on the hierarchy of needs in a particular job (e.g., will this job kill/maim you? do you make enough money to feed yourself?) and it just doesn't resonate with the types of problems that tech folks have. but pre-IPO equity deals are something that all employees hate and are completely powerless to change as individuals.

mikepurvis 2y ago

I'd be particularly interested in cases where unionization led to better products and processes. Like in a world where management just wanted to ship everything half baked, the union gave the workforce the voice required to insist on accurate and up to date documentation, comprehensive testing, proper dependency tracking and security practices, etc. I feel like almost everyone I talk to in tech says that behind the scenes, their company's development workflow is a nightmare, so this doesn't appear to be a problem that's fixing itself under market pressures.

echelon 2y ago
We don't need software unions. We need to break up big tech. Software companies should be able to hire and fire. We often need to have 24/7 oncall. Needs are flexible. Startups must be nimble. It's the tech giants that are ruining it for everyone. They're preventing new centicorns from forming. They're forcing underpriced M&A for successes, moving into markets with infinite money and killing upstarts before they find legs. They own every platform, every discovery mechanism, and they tax more than governments do. Big tech recently figured out they could pay off everyone and put pricing pressure back on the engineers that built their market position. Previously they were worried engineers could leave and start upstart competitors. That's why they hired everyone and paid top of band salaries. Now that they realize there is no governmental antitrust legislation to fear, they just crush everything. They're in search of infinite growth, so they move into new markets like Hollywood movies and primary care doctors and undercut everyone. They market themselves for free at the top of their websites and app stores (or print giant ads on their delivery trucks and cardboard packaging). Things that would cost competitors hundreds of millions of dollars to do. The problem is 100% big tech. We need to break up big tech.
- FridgeSeal 2y ago
  Por que no los dos?? > Software companies should be able to hire and fire. Almost every company in every industry makes this dubious claim. Then we rediscover the benefits of team knowledge and stability. > We often need to have 24/7 oncall This feels completely orthogonal to the discussion at hand, nobody is claiming that a union will somehow make doing on-call impossible. Many other professions that do have unions, have an on-call analog.

ForTheKidz 2y ago

> I resonate with all of these problems, but the "fixes" sound like a politician saying, "elect me and I'll solve your problems." Damn you have a way different ear for people than I do. Unions actually have an incentive to please their constituents. Politicians generally don't (at least in america).

jajko 2y ago

Half of those problems disappear in Europe, quality of life and happiness skyrocket. Sure, you won't have some carrot-on-the-stick IPO games but I don't need to, I am not on the verge of burning out, I have plenty of time for my family and kids and also myself. Kids education is free including top notch unis, (almost) so is stellar healthcare, no need to massively save up for that regardless of what can happen. I had a big paragliding accident last year with both legs broken, tons of treatment, mris, various physiotherapies... still ongoing and cost 0 nothing, in even rural US those costs would be brutal. My (early) retirement is very well taken care of if all works out, we will probably have more money than we could reasonably spend plus some serious assets, all just our work from 0 in past decade and a half, both just employed at companies. Criminality is a topic on its own. I could go on for a looong time. I couldn't care less about unions, I never felt oppressed or disadvantaged in any way in past 20 years across 3 different countries and many jobs, in contrary. Good luck putting a price tag on such things, if you don't get it wait till you are older. Thats how advanced modern society should look like IMHO... the stress of being american with family and without massive cash reserves must be quite intense and relentless.

mulmen 2y ago
I live in the US and my employer provides excellent healthcare. I broke my collarbone last spring and had surgery to repair it followed by months of physical therapy. Zero dollars out of pocket.
- sensanaty 2y ago
  That's the problem though, you're dependent on your company in order to not go bankrupt after your injury. If you get fired, you're screwed, if I get fired here in EU, it's not that big of a deal (plus it's harder to fire me in the first place)
  - mulmen 2y ago
    Yep, exactly. Golden handcuffs.
2y ago

InsideOutSanta 2y ago

The main thing a union does is shift power from the employer to the employee. How that power is used is up to each union, and its members.

x3n0ph3n3 2y ago
It does no such thing. It shifts power from the employer to the union bosses.
- InsideOutSanta 2y ago
  The union members (i.e., the employees) give that power to the "union boss." Not all unions work like that (some do not have a traditional union leader), and for those who do, having a powerful union leader can be a good or a bad thing, depending on who gets elected as the union leader by the union members.

jimbokun 2y ago

A big one would be ensuring adequate staffing on call rotation. If you are never truly off duty, at some point your mind will break.

LaGrange 2y ago

> I think unions need to work on their marketing. I resonate with all of these problems, but the "fixes" sound like a politician saying, "elect me and I'll solve your problems." That would track if you were asked to elect anyone. You aren't. You're told to get your shit together, talk to your coworkers, and _solve your shit_ together. And when you do that - that's a labor union. Maybe not necessarily in the legal sense, but in a very real, material sense.

hayst4ck 2y ago

> "elect me and I'll solve your problems." Isn't that a function of living within hierarchies? Can you describe a system of change where one person is not ultimately responsible for the changes? Unions exist as a structure of power, but that power still has contend with company power. Good outcomes are proportional to challenging someone else's power, and people use their power to punish challengers and reward loyalists. That means good outcomes, no matter what the system, are a function of pain tolerance and people's willingness to make sacrifices for the benefit of others. Unions are a higher leverage vehicle for making sacrifices, but if there is no tolerance for pain or sacrifice then your only option is submission and hoping those with more power than you use it responsibly rather than becoming increasingly more despotic.

specialist 2y ago

> What does it look like when rubber meets the road? The book The Logic of Collective Action helped me understand. TLDR: Collective bargaining helps prevent the free rider problem. It's just game theory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Collective_Action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Collective_Action -- I have so many complaints about unions. Very briefly. #1 Suboptimal governance. Especially when leadership gets "captured". But that's always true of all human orgs. I have nothing helpful to add here. #2 Accelerating inequity. Corporate profits up while wages remain stagnant. Just as u/singron commented elsethread. I just don't understand how this isn't the central issue. For every person, union, voter, policy maker. For everyone. #3 Adversarial relationship (in the USA). Labor and Capital (via their proxy, Management) need to work together. My only notion is to encourage member (employee) owned and managed co-ops. (Which would need access to financial support of come kind, eg "slow capital". Which is antithetical to Wall St, neoliberalism, rent seeking, yadda, yadda.) That said... I'm very pro-Labor. And unenthusiastically pro-union, out of necessity, until we figure out something better. Like you suggest, no way simply unionizing magically resolves my complaints. Meta stuff like culture, policy, laws, expectations would have to change, to create the space for "better" unions. Stuff like repeal Taft Hartley Act, institute sectorial bargaining, investment banks structured to support social endeavors (like co-ops), yadda yadda. And I have no clue where to start.

CrispyKerosene 2y ago

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nerdponx 2y ago

Unions need to stop marketing themselves as a way to get better work-life balance. The main benefit of unions is that employees are protected from individual abuse, because the entire union can put pressure on management in support of individuals who are being mistreated, underpaid, etc.