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Alternatively, perhaps Unions have declined after having suffered from decades of negative publicity from capitalists. Unions - bringing you weekends, the NHS,

by edent 13y ago

Alternatively, perhaps Unions have declined after having suffered from decades of negative publicity from capitalists. Unions - bringing you weekends, the NHS, paid holidays, sick pay, protection from unfair dismissal, safety standards to ensure you don't get injured and die, and stopping discrimination and exploitation. What's not to like? I'm a highly educated and well paid technology worker - and I'm in a Trade Union - http://www.prospect.org.uk/ http://www.prospect.org.uk/ They've helped me when I was made redundant, have held my hand when dealing with difficult work situations, and given me training when my employer wouldn't. Here's the way I look at it - your employer has some very high priced lawyers on the payroll. If they (or your boss) decide to screw you over, who would you have on your side? Union dues (in the UK, at least) are the cheapest and most effective form of "insurance" you can have.

mjn 13y ago
It's similar here in Denmark. Most people are members of a union, because it's cheap, and the union has experts in labor law and contracts, while most workers are not experts in those things. We give similar advice to startup founders: don't sign anything without getting a good lawyer to review it first. You could hire a private lawyer as a worker as well, but joining a union is typically more cost-effective. One thing that helps in Denmark is that the individual advocacy angle and the general bargaining angle are separated. I can join any of several unions, or none, as I wish. In my case the researcher's union or the engineer's union are both decent choices. But my broader workplace conditions are negotiated between my employer and the union for this sector of the economy, not my personal union (they might be the same, might not be). As a result there is also no such thing as a "unionized" or a "non-unionized" business; every business over a certain size is unionized in a sense, because labor conditions are always negotiated between employers and employees on a collective basis. Generally this produces a much nicer situation, in which I don't have to become a DIY expert in employment contracts in order to avoid being taken advantage of. It also helps keep onerous terms out of employment contracts, because someone with actual negotiating power and knowledge (rather than me as an individual employee) will object if the employer tries to include a non-compete clause, or similar types of terms. Even highly-paid, intelligent techies in the U.S. often fail to do that: in states where it's legal, suckering people into non-competes is extremely common, and they don't always even realize it until it's too late.
afsina 13y ago
I cannot comment on the unions for workers in private companies, But I think In my country unions built for public workers and officials are blood sucking leeches on tax payers. They are highly ideological and so far I have not seen any good coming from them in my line of work. I am forced to enter an union and I have to pay them a good sum for nothing and I cannot leave because they create a mechanism that you will loose benefits if you are not a member (Before they used to give those benefits without a union anyway). There are laws protecting the workers already and I would rather take the chances and deal with my employee on my own when I am in trouble.
rsynnott 13y ago
The trouble is, people tend to look on things like working time controls, paid holidays, etc., as just what they're entitled to, without looking at how they came about.
- rafcavallaro 13y ago
  Right - PG makes the mistake of talking about what labor is actually worth, but this value is dependent on what the political system will allow - the balance of power between labor and capital. Where labor organizing risks torture and death, labor is cheap. Where labor organizing is a protected right, labor is relatively expensive. This drives offshoring, as capital seeks production regimes where they can reduce the cost not just of wages, but of meeting environmental and safety standards. The naive capitalist then claims that the low ball cost of production in unsafe, toxic, politically repressive locations is the "true" cost of labor. Unions declined in power in the US as the economy moved away from manufacturing, and Reagan set the tone for service unions by firing striking air traffic controllers. By declaring open season on service workers unions, the capital backed Republican right made it clear they weren't going to allow them the same sort of power industrial unions had in the mid 20th c. This political struggle continues today in efforts to raise the minimum wage both nationally and for individual large employers like Walmart and macdonalds.
cma 13y ago
Taft Hartley outlawed secondary strikes. That was what gradually did unions in.
- judk 13y ago
  Interesting, because the recent grocery store labor dispute in Seattle included a planned secondary stroke against firms that accepted union's terms.
jerf 13y ago
You can make anything look good by only considering the good aspects. You can make anything look bad by only considering the bad aspects. Neither of those is particularly better than the other. I live near Detroit. I can see by metaphorically looking out the window that it's not all good. (Note for the purposes of this post I'm not saying "Unions 100% caused Detroit's collapse"... it is enough merely that they had a non-trivial hand in the collapse by pricing themselves entirely out of the market, and that's merely the easiest manifestation of their problems to put in a post like this. Nor am I making the claim I just said in my second paragraph is a bad thing; I'm not saying unions are all bad. I'm saying it's a great deal more complicated than edent makes it sound, and without understanding both sides, you can't understand what's happening.)
- tehwalrus 13y ago
  I don't think poorly run unions are a satisfactory justification for the belief that "unions are bad" (PG's contention, not yours.) I'd like to start a union that did things properly whenever I hear about RMT being Trotskyites on the radio again - but then, more civilised alternatives do exist in the UK, like Propsect.
  - pron 13y ago
    I can't speak for PG, but I don't think he believes unions are bad. Actually, one of the things I found amusing (due to my own preconceived notions about Silicon Valley, formed as a result of reading the young libertarian commenters on HN) when I was going through YC was how much it functions as a union. In a sense, PG is a union leader himself.
    - tehwalrus 13y ago
      Cool. That's my kind of union! :)
    - the_watcher 13y ago
      Unions are about collective bargaining to result in rules that apply equally to everyone in the union, regardless of value add (instead of value, they reward seniority). YC is definitely not this kind of union. It's much more similar to a powerful advocacy group, whose influence protects its members from exploitation, but stops at about that point.
yummyfajitas 13y ago
If my employer/boss decide to screw me over, what's the worst that can happen? Suppose exactly the day after a paycheck they decide to stop paying me. 15 days later I don't get a check, and 7 days later I stop working due to the paycheck issue not being fixed (maybe I gave them the benefit of the doubt, it's a minor snafu). At the worst, I'm out 22 days of pay, assuming their high priced lawyer lets them get away with this (highly unlikely). I don't need insurance for low cost, low probability events.
- vidarh 13y ago
  If you think the worst case scenario is that you don't get paid for a single period, you have not thought things trough. Here's another scenario for you: Your employer accuses you of gross negligence to get out of dealing with a harassment claim you've made. Now you're out of a job, in circumstances that makes you basically unemployable, unless you manage to successfully defend yourself.
  - john_b 13y ago
    What marginal value would a union lawyer add over an individually hired lawyer here?
    - smackfu 13y ago
      You don't need to have money to pay them right at the point that you need to save money the most.
  - yummyfajitas 13y ago
    Yes, theoretically my employer could slander me. They could also just move from slander straight to murder, I suppose. So I guess I was wrong about what the worst case scenario was. Incidentally, in the US the deck is stacked so far towards employees that even if I was grossly negligent, the employer is unlikely to say anything other than "he worked here from $START_DATE to $END_DATE."
    - 13y ago

by edent 13y ago

mjn 13y ago

It's similar here in Denmark. Most people are members of a union, because it's cheap, and the union has experts in labor law and contracts, while most workers are not experts in those things. We give similar advice to startup founders: don't sign anything without getting a good lawyer to review it first. You could hire a private lawyer as a worker as well, but joining a union is typically more cost-effective. One thing that helps in Denmark is that the individual advocacy angle and the general bargaining angle are separated. I can join any of several unions, or none, as I wish. In my case the researcher's union or the engineer's union are both decent choices. But my broader workplace conditions are negotiated between my employer and the union for this sector of the economy, not my personal union (they might be the same, might not be). As a result there is also no such thing as a "unionized" or a "non-unionized" business; every business over a certain size is unionized in a sense, because labor conditions are always negotiated between employers and employees on a collective basis. Generally this produces a much nicer situation, in which I don't have to become a DIY expert in employment contracts in order to avoid being taken advantage of. It also helps keep onerous terms out of employment contracts, because someone with actual negotiating power and knowledge (rather than me as an individual employee) will object if the employer tries to include a non-compete clause, or similar types of terms. Even highly-paid, intelligent techies in the U.S. often fail to do that: in states where it's legal, suckering people into non-competes is extremely common, and they don't always even realize it until it's too late.

afsina 13y ago

I cannot comment on the unions for workers in private companies, But I think In my country unions built for public workers and officials are blood sucking leeches on tax payers. They are highly ideological and so far I have not seen any good coming from them in my line of work. I am forced to enter an union and I have to pay them a good sum for nothing and I cannot leave because they create a mechanism that you will loose benefits if you are not a member (Before they used to give those benefits without a union anyway). There are laws protecting the workers already and I would rather take the chances and deal with my employee on my own when I am in trouble.

rsynnott 13y ago

The trouble is, people tend to look on things like working time controls, paid holidays, etc., as just what they're entitled to, without looking at how they came about.

rafcavallaro 13y ago
Right - PG makes the mistake of talking about what labor is actually worth, but this value is dependent on what the political system will allow - the balance of power between labor and capital. Where labor organizing risks torture and death, labor is cheap. Where labor organizing is a protected right, labor is relatively expensive. This drives offshoring, as capital seeks production regimes where they can reduce the cost not just of wages, but of meeting environmental and safety standards. The naive capitalist then claims that the low ball cost of production in unsafe, toxic, politically repressive locations is the "true" cost of labor. Unions declined in power in the US as the economy moved away from manufacturing, and Reagan set the tone for service unions by firing striking air traffic controllers. By declaring open season on service workers unions, the capital backed Republican right made it clear they weren't going to allow them the same sort of power industrial unions had in the mid 20th c. This political struggle continues today in efforts to raise the minimum wage both nationally and for individual large employers like Walmart and macdonalds.

cma 13y ago

Taft Hartley outlawed secondary strikes. That was what gradually did unions in.

judk 13y ago
Interesting, because the recent grocery store labor dispute in Seattle included a planned secondary stroke against firms that accepted union's terms.

jerf 13y ago

You can make anything look good by only considering the good aspects. You can make anything look bad by only considering the bad aspects. Neither of those is particularly better than the other. I live near Detroit. I can see by metaphorically looking out the window that it's not all good. (Note for the purposes of this post I'm not saying "Unions 100% caused Detroit's collapse"... it is enough merely that they had a non-trivial hand in the collapse by pricing themselves entirely out of the market, and that's merely the easiest manifestation of their problems to put in a post like this. Nor am I making the claim I just said in my second paragraph is a bad thing; I'm not saying unions are all bad. I'm saying it's a great deal more complicated than edent makes it sound, and without understanding both sides, you can't understand what's happening.)

tehwalrus 13y ago
I don't think poorly run unions are a satisfactory justification for the belief that "unions are bad" (PG's contention, not yours.) I'd like to start a union that did things properly whenever I hear about RMT being Trotskyites on the radio again - but then, more civilised alternatives do exist in the UK, like Propsect.
- pron 13y ago
  I can't speak for PG, but I don't think he believes unions are bad. Actually, one of the things I found amusing (due to my own preconceived notions about Silicon Valley, formed as a result of reading the young libertarian commenters on HN) when I was going through YC was how much it functions as a union. In a sense, PG is a union leader himself.
  - tehwalrus 13y ago
    Cool. That's my kind of union! :)
  - the_watcher 13y ago
    Unions are about collective bargaining to result in rules that apply equally to everyone in the union, regardless of value add (instead of value, they reward seniority). YC is definitely not this kind of union. It's much more similar to a powerful advocacy group, whose influence protects its members from exploitation, but stops at about that point.

yummyfajitas 13y ago

If my employer/boss decide to screw me over, what's the worst that can happen? Suppose exactly the day after a paycheck they decide to stop paying me. 15 days later I don't get a check, and 7 days later I stop working due to the paycheck issue not being fixed (maybe I gave them the benefit of the doubt, it's a minor snafu). At the worst, I'm out 22 days of pay, assuming their high priced lawyer lets them get away with this (highly unlikely). I don't need insurance for low cost, low probability events.

vidarh 13y ago
If you think the worst case scenario is that you don't get paid for a single period, you have not thought things trough. Here's another scenario for you: Your employer accuses you of gross negligence to get out of dealing with a harassment claim you've made. Now you're out of a job, in circumstances that makes you basically unemployable, unless you manage to successfully defend yourself.
- john_b 13y ago
  What marginal value would a union lawyer add over an individually hired lawyer here?
  - smackfu 13y ago
    You don't need to have money to pay them right at the point that you need to save money the most.
- yummyfajitas 13y ago
  Yes, theoretically my employer could slander me. They could also just move from slander straight to murder, I suppose. So I guess I was wrong about what the worst case scenario was. Incidentally, in the US the deck is stacked so far towards employees that even if I was grossly negligent, the employer is unlikely to say anything other than "he worked here from $START_DATE to $END_DATE."
  - 13y ago