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US employers spend more than $1.5B a year to fight labor unions, report finds
- miltonlost 5mo agoThey're just spending all they money they saved from the wage theft.
- fmbb 5mo agoWage theft is saving them tens of billions in the US every year. So they are hardly spending all of that for this!
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- atmavatar 5mo agoI doubt it's close to everything they saved. $1.5B is roughly the wage theft recovered between 2021-2023. It's estimated that more than $15B in wage theft occurs annually just from minimum wage shortfalls. See: https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-2021-23/ https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-2021-23/ Keep in mind that wage theft is narrowly defined to include only blatantly illegal actions such as underpaying minimum wage, failing to pay overtime, requiring off-the-clock work, denying meal breaks, etc. It that doesn't even get into more general wage suppression via abusing visas, anti-poaching collusion with competitors (a favorite pastime of FANNG), and at-or-below inflation raise policies, among other things, which have caused wages to diverge from productivity over the last half century.
- superxpro12 5mo agoBecause its ultimately cheaper to suppress unions than it is to pay the workers the fair salary.
- indoordin0saur 5mo agoI'm generally pro-union and certainly fair wage, but it's important to keep in mind that unions will grow into their own power centers and have leadership with its own internal goals which are not aligned with either their working members nor the employers.
- halestock 5mo agoAlways?
- wccrawford 5mo agoAlways. Power begets power. Everything needs to be kept in check. The only question is where the line is.
- halestock 5mo agoWhy don't unions seem to have that problem in pretty much all of Europe then?
- Jensson 5mo agoBecause European unions doesn't have as much power over workers as American unions, since Europe as right to work. Right to work means you can just quit a bad union if you don't like it without having to change your job.
- halestock 5mo agoWhat does that have to do with "power begets power"
- sieabahlpark 5mo ago[dead]
- blitzar 5mo agobut it's important to keep in mind that without unions the corporation will grow into their own power centers and have leadership with its own internal goals which are not aligned with either their working members nor the employers
- mothballed 5mo agoIt's cheaper to try and block other workers from getting a union card in your union to limit supply than trying to up your skills, as well.
- infecto 5mo ago1.5bn is a drop in the bucket.
- izacus 5mo agoI wonder if that's actually true - unionbusting is mostly an emotional issue for leaders and owners so I wonder if there's any calculation involved. I've seen corporate HR got to insane (illegal) lengths to "stick it" to people trying to unionize - to the point of being severely fined. So I wonder if anyone actually calculated financials here.
- nielsbot 5mo agothere’s also a dam breaking effect. if unionization starts kicking off again, that can be contagious. so companies are incentivized to “nip it in the bud”
- DoneWithAllThat 5mo agoIf you think unions fight exclusively for “a fair salary” you are not engaging with reality.
- thrance 5mo agoBetter a corrupt union than no union at all. The Gilded Age was not a pleasant time for workers.
- crims0n 5mo agoConsidering the annual revenue of Fortune 500 companies is near 20 Trillion, that is a much smaller amount than expected.
- blululu 5mo agoYeah, total us payroll is around 15T. They are basically spending $10 per employee per year. Or 1/10000 of the total spending on wages. This is actually small in terms of political spending. There are random scam ballot measures in CA that get more spending per voter than this. *edit: the actual report details this is just for services related to efforts targeting their own work force via lawyers and consultants. The total spending on the issue is likely much higher: https://www.epi.org/publication/u-s-employers-spend-more-than-1-5-billion-annually-on-union-avoidance/ https://www.epi.org/publication/u-s-employers-spend-more-tha...
- vjvjvjvjghv 5mo agoStuff like this and also lobbying have an incredibly high ROI. Once a company has reached a certain size investing in changing rules to their favor is the best investment they can make.
- ambicapter 5mo agoThey don't need to spend that much to convince people, Americans are already predisposed to hate unions (see the comments in this thread).
- briandw 5mo agoThis is an adversarial process. Unions exist to fight employers. Unions spend about 23 billion a year in total. Only spending 1.5B to defend against 23B looks like a bargain.
- disantlor 5mo agoyeah but how much are employers spending to lobby, etc, and is that not a significant force-multiplier on their 1.5B direct spend against unions?
- fmbb 5mo agoThey have the lawmakers on their side.
- baron816 5mo agoWho does? The unions definitely have lawmakers on their side.
- maerF0x0 5mo agoAFAIK The USA is one of the most anti-union non-authoritarian countries for a very long time. In other countries people receive a lot more support and protections for the right to organize
- baron816 5mo agoUnions often exert more power at the state and local level. In certain states, they can consistently wield a lot of power. Unions in the US tend to be much more aggressive than they are in other places, which has in part led to their decline. Americans historically have tended to hate unions at the times when they’re powerful, and love them at times when they’re weak. In other words, people like the idea of unions in theory, but hate them in practice.
- maerF0x0 5mo ago
- bhoops 5mo agoNot sure if that is a bad thing - labor unions can have too much power. Its not as if the employers agree to everything that they will go away.
- miltonlost 5mo agoAny amount of power a labor union could have pales in comparison to what employers have over you as an individual.
- skeeter2020 5mo agothis really depends on the industry and union. In some sectors they hold zero power (software development) and in other they have it locked up (auto manufacturing)
- nielsbot 5mo agoyou’re saying corporation have zero coercive power against software engineers? tell that to all the Meta coders being let go today.
- well_ackshually 5mo agoOh no, the unions are going to demand fair pay and good working conditions :( Even unions like SAG-AFTRA, which is one of the most extreme ones I can consider barely reach 1% of the harm employers cause.
- nielsbot 5mo agowe’re nowhere near that problem today. don’t worry.
- Jensson 5mo agoYou don't think the police union is too powerful? You should worry, nobody likes it when unions are too powerful.
- aliasxneo 5mo agoI have pretty mixed feelings on unions. I spent most of my early career as a non-union blue collar worker embedded into mixed teams (union + non-union members). The general experience I walked away with was that unions seemed to attract the worst employees. I remember one individual in particular who, having worked with him for two years, never once actually did any work. He was actually one of my first mentors and I vividly recall riding in the truck with him as he explained "the game" to me about how to make good money while basically doing no work, and how it was "unfortunate" I couldn't play because I was "working for the man." This might not seem so annoying, but in the Bay Area where I worked, the unions had lobbied to secure work that could _only_ be done by union members. For example, I was a controls technician, and I legally couldn't wire a 12v controller because it was considered protected work. Which means I had to try to convince the same people who were not incentivized to be productive to help me. So yeah, after a few years of that, I left with a pretty sour taste in my mouth. That being said, philosophically I like the idea of unions. I've had my own share of experiences being abused by "the man." The retirement plans offered in particular were always alluring. But, despite being invited to join, I never felt compelled because I just couldn't find myself enjoying working with the people they attracted.
- phil21 5mo agoSimilar life experiences. Like the idea of unions - especially how they are explained at a textbook level. I fully believe labor needs as much leverage against capital as possible for the scales to be balanced at all. But US unions seem to exist nearly exclusively to protect people who don’t want to work. Not my thing. At all. One should be able to be rewarded for hard work and productivity when you are expending more effort than the guy clocking in and doing everything possible to avoid it. I’ve often thought you solve this via old fashioned guild based systems. The guild trains and provides labor while guaranteeing skills, quality, and honesty. They vet their members and cull the losers - a poor performing member should be seen as a liability for the rest of the pool of labor and very quickly corrected or removed from the guild. That way employers know that even if they are paying more than they would like, at least the labor being supplied is going to be top tier and the job will done done to a high standard and on time. Unions devolving to simply protect the lowest common denominator is a problem. There are some trades unions in local chapter formats that work somewhat like this today. I’d just like to see more of it and more formalized with local competition between different union groups.
- bonsai_spool 5mo agoThink about the recent tech layoffs - we spend a lot of time comparing one set of severance concessions to another. Wouldn't it be better if this were a matter of contract instead of your great corporate overlords deciding how much they deign to give you as they take away your job? This may be the moment to start thinking about unions seriously in tech. The large employers have, themselves, acted to suppress worker power in the past: https://journals.law.unc.edu/ncjolt/blogs/wage-fixing-scheme-shocks-silicon-valley-google-apple-and-many-others-now-under-doj-investigation/ https://journals.law.unc.edu/ncjolt/blogs/wage-fixing-scheme...
- xur17 5mo agoI feel like the general consensus on most of the recent layoffs were that they severance was pretty generous. If it seems to be working okay, why do we need to introduce additional inefficiencies to get something we already have?
- chaosharmonic 5mo ago"Generous" means nothing in a context where severances in are entirely voluntary, and aren't actually a standard that you can reliably expect.
- bonsai_spool 5mo agoThe issue is the 'most' - and the severance packages can be changed tomorrow unilaterally. And maybe it would be better not to have the layoffs in the first place? The profits of the hyperscalers are growing steadily even as they fire more workers. I think this may be one of the last moments when programmers have enough power to dictate these things, should LLMs become as powerful as some suggest.
- kingjimmy 5mo ago1.5B seems kinda low, no?
- steviedotboston 5mo agothat was my first thought too
- booleandilemma 5mo agoWow, what are they so afraid of? Treating people with dignity?
- nielsbot 5mo agodemocracy in the workplace
- tptacek 5mo agoThe word "fight" is doing way too much work in this Guardian headline, because that money includes labor relations work employers do to try to stave off the incentives to start unions. You can feel any way you like about it, but logically if you're going to argue that you have to argue that every dollar above median a non-unionized shop pays is also an effort to fight unions.
- slibhb 5mo agoRecently the LIRR (Long Island Rail Road workers) went on strike. The NYT has covered it, including this interesting fact: > For instance, if an engineer drives a diesel train at the start of a shift but is asked to switch to an electric train in the same day, the M.T.A. must compensate that worker with two days’ pay. If, on the same day, the engineer is also asked to switch from driving passengers to driving a train back to a yard for maintenance or storage, that worker is entitled to a third day’s pay. Take from that what you will. My view is that -- with some exceptions -- unions today are mostly bad, and worth fighting.
- InsideOutSanta 5mo ago> must compensate that worker with two days’ pay The reason for this rule is that it forces management to schedule workers more predictably and compensates workers who invest in obtaining broader qualifications. > My view is that -- with some exceptions -- unions today are mostly bad, and worth fighting. There are literally thousands of unions just in the US. I agree that some are dysfunctional, but making a claim like "with some exceptions -- unions today are mostly bad" needs a lot more evidence. My counter-evidence is simple: historically, there's a direct correlation with the strength of unions and the existence of a strong middle class.
- slibhb 5mo ago> The reason for this rule is that it forces management to schedule workers more predictably and compensates workers who invest in obtaining broader qualifications. No, it's just a scam, and anyone should be able to see that. It's like saying I get 2 days pay if I have to write go in addition to typescript. And 3 days pay if I have to write java. > There are literally thousands of unions just in the US. I agree that some are dysfunctional, but making a claim like "with some exceptions -- unions today are mostly bad" needs a lot more evidence. My counter-evidence is simple: historically, there's a direct correlation with the strength of unions and the existence of a strong middle class. Unions had a good reason to exist post industrialization when many people worked in factories under terrible conditions. But today, in the West, that's no longer the case. Today, unions are mostly bad.
- luizfzs 5mo agoUnions only exist because there is a huge power imbalance between employer and employee. They attempt to balance the field. In doing so, companies may lose their leverage and are forced to actually negotiate. This is often painted as blackmailing, but it's the same thing they do to employees. Bosses often go with "we're doing you a favor. If you don't want this job, I have a replacement for you". When their power and leverage vanishes, they see it as being blackmailed, when in reality they are just being forced to play a fair game. This thread has several stories of unions "keeping lazy workers", etc. I can't deny your experiences. But what about the thousands of companies that violate Labor Laws? Why are we not talking about these stories? e.g. https://www.epi.org/publication/unlawful-employer-opposition-to-union-election-campaigns/ https://www.epi.org/publication/unlawful-employer-opposition... When you push people hard enough, they will fight back. In fighting back, the corporations that had the leverage will feel attacked by losing their power. While 68% of workers approve unions (https://news.gallup.com/poll/694472/labor-union-approval-relatively-steady.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/694472/labor-union-approval-rel...) there are only 9% of them that actually belong to a union. That's a huge discrepancy. It can be explained by the immense difficulty in forming one due to illegal corporation practices and laws that make it difficult.
- thedevilslawyer 5mo agoThis will not work until unions deal with the reality of globalization, and push to form a worldwide union, which ensures compensation has no more than 2x difference based on one's country. This is the multiplier where people will not want to transfer work for cost vs skill level. This is unpalatable to HCOL engineers, because their pay will significantly compress in this union to support the growth of compensation of similarly skilled LCOL regions/countries. QED: Unions will not happen.
- zackmorris 5mo agoI live in a Right-to-Work (for less) state: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law Loosely that just means that if you work somewhere with a lot of employees, you'll hear that the same job in a neighboring state pays 1.5-2 times as much. And that they have a harder time firing you. And that you'll be more likely to get compensated if you get hurt or whatever. Etc etc etc because unions. It was pitched as a way to avoid paying union dues and possibly make it easier to move around the job market. And especially avoid working with "those" people. If you sensed the ick factor there, that's why I think it's hard to have a rational debate around unions. It's become a divisive word like liberal due to deep-rooted disagreements going back to the founding of the (cough) union. I prefer to use a term like representation. Do we want an advocate between us and the bosses when the next round of layoffs comes? Of course. Do we want our own form of human resources (HR) that has real teeth when something violent or inappropriate happens to a coworker? Of course. Do we want to have our voices heard when it comes to the quality of our work environment? Of course. When people agree on principles but not on the umbrella term that covers them, it makes them vulnerable to political manipulation so that they can be divided and convinced to vote against their own interests. I understand that a free market where people can switch jobs easily might be seen as more ideal than unions. But do we live in that market really? How many cities in America have a handful of large companies propping up the local economy? How many of those companies would take us in if we got fired from the other companies? How often do we hear about people moving to another city because they can't find a job? There seems to be quite a discrepancy between the ideal and the actual. Another way to make people vulnerable to political manipulation. I think maybe it comes down to how we see ourselves as blue collar or white collar. I understand how unions might be against the interests of white collar workers who tell blue collar workers what to do. What I can't understand is why blue collar workers would be against unions. What is the rationale there, really? Without logic, we're left with bad faith arguments. Unions don't exist much these days for the same reasons that people on food stamps vote for billionaires. There's an irony there that their hope for opportunity gets used against them in a negative reinforcement loop. It's plain to see, and yet no help is coming. If companies decide who gets hired instead of the people doing the work, that would seem to open the door to corruption and prejudice. So it's interesting that we might associate unions with mob activity, but not the existing corporate status quo. Why is that?
- kokoe 5mo agoImagine a world where they just paid that $1.5B to the employees instead. Probably wouldn’t need unions at that point.
- keybored 5mo agoThat HNers like unions “in theory” reads to me like a thirty year old closeted gay guy that insists that he likes women. Sure, I love women. I just haven’t found one that arouses me yet.
- sometimelurker 5mo agoguys I figured it out: play people not to unionize <insert galaxy brain meme>
- cyanydeez 5mo agothats less than the cost of a bloodless American coup.
- stogot 5mo ago> Employers spent company money Wow! How dare they.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]