I think everyone understands the historical good unions did for the average worker. But, particularly for workers who most often frequent sites like HN, unions have not had much of a positive impact, contemporarily.
Perhaps that’s less about unions becoming less good, and more about the collapse of unionization rates? Union membership is at an all time low, Occam’s razor says that the fact that most people aren’t in a union is the most likely explanation for why unions haven’t don’t people anything good recently.
Possibly, but since we’re hypothesizing: it could potentially be that unions are better suited for aiding those working in some professions and not others.
Perhaps highly educated knowledge workers can better manage salary/benefits and quality of work life better than a slate of hired guns?
Maybe because the skill sets and work output is generally more unique, knowledge workers can more easily move jobs than those who work in traditional union shops?
> it could potentially be that unions are better suited for aiding those working in some professions and not others.
Possible, but unionization rates are also down in industries that used to be unionized, such as manufacturing. This strongly implies that the issue is less “unions are bad” and more “unions were good, so bosses fought to get rid of them”. Companies wouldn’t need to hire anti-union firms if unions weren’t at least attractive to laborers, right?
After all, it’s not like life in those sectors has gotten so comfortable that laborers don’t think they need unions anymore.
> Perhaps highly educated knowledge workers can better manage salary/benefits and quality of work life better than a slate of hired guns?
Huh?
I think you’re calling union reps “hired guns”, which is deeply ironic given the history of bosses hiring actual men with actual guns to actually shoot labor activists.
> Maybe because the skill sets and work output is generally more unique, knowledge workers can more easily move jobs than those who work in traditional union shops?
I mean, unequal professions do unionize all the time. Take a look at professional sports. Unions are extremely useful in negotiating between labor and capital about things other than just pay. Length of contracts, benefits, safety regulations, etc.
Regardless, it’s pretty silly to argue that unions are useless because “they’ve had no impact” for this crowd when this crowd has never really had the opportunity to join a union. Hell, even quitting software and finding a union shop to join would actually be very hard in any field, given the low rates of unionization in this country.
> unions were good, so bosses fought to get rid of them
It's also worth noting that "unions were good" doesn't necessarily mean "unions are good". It's entirely possible that most of the things unions can do to help works has already been accomplished and enshrined in law (osha, breaks, overtime, etc). While I believe that there's still good unions can accomplish, the cap on how much good is much lower than it used to be.
That’s plausible if you ignore pay. Pay is the one area where it’s self evident that something has gone horribly awry, which makes it hard to accept the “labor won” argument. Obviously other factors can be at play here, but it’s certainly not the case that everything is honky dory and that’s why workers stopped unionizing. The decline of union membership over this time frame is not conclusive, but it’s something worth investigating!
Well that and there’s Frito Lay workers striking to end “suicide shifts” that literally killed people from exhaustion. It’s kind of hard to argue that labor won these issues when they’re dragging the corpse of a worker off the assembly line of the potato chip factory after working 12 hour days for weeks on end without a day off finally killed them. That it took a strike to fix that also implies that labor law needs some more work.
Workers didn't "win". It's just that the conditions for workers are MUCH better now than they used to be in the past. So unions are able to do less for workers. That doesn't they're obsolete, just that the line for the decision for "are they worth it in _this_ situation" has moved.
The Frito Lay workers issue is a prime example of "in _this_ situation" mentioned above. Some places are greatly benefited by unions, some are/would not, some are gray areas. And, to a large extent, there's a personal opinion component to it, too.
> Workers didn't "win". It's just that the conditions for workers are MUCH better now than they used to be in the past.
Only if you ignore pay. Most workers pay has remained flat adjusted for inflation, while housing, education, and medical costs are growing faster than inflation.
> So unions are able to do less for workers. That doesn't they're obsolete, just that the line for the decision for "are they worth it in _this_ situation" has moved.
You’re ignoring the other possibility: the fear that unionizing will draw retaliation from the bosses that’ll make life worse. It’s not like we haven’t seen plants close down and move in response to unionization before.
Of course if that’s true, it implies that unions could help and bosses fear that.
> The Frito Lay workers issue is a prime example of "in _this_ situation" mentioned above. Some places are greatly benefited by unions, some are/would not, some are gray areas.
Right, but the original thesis was “labor activists got all their non-pay related demands codified into law, making unions less desirable”. The frito lay situation obviously disproves that.
Most highly educated knowledge workers also get stock options, which at best compensates them for business success, but at worst can trick workers into thinking that the business’ interests are the same as their interests.
I think there’s a persuasive story to be told about the slow change of how startup options work and the changing mood of the tech scene.
I don't think Occam's razor says any such thing. I see, all the time, first hand accounts of unions acting in ways that cause harm to nearly everyone except those in the union, and only actually benefit a select few. Examples like
- not being allowed to plug in your monitor at conference center or vacuum your area; instead needing to pay a union member a minimum of 30 minutes of time for 2 minutes of work.
- union members verbally and even physically abusing people that are just minding their own business, trying not to get involved; you're either with them or against them.
Unions have done great good for the American worker, and continue to do so in many cases. But they also do great harm and, when leadership is looking out for itself over it's members, can provide very little practical benefit.
It's a rough topic because it's VERY polarizing. It seems like the vast majority of people fall into 1 of 2 camps; they either love everything about unions and can't see the negatives, or vice versa. It's very hard to improve on the situation when that's the case.
I’m sorry that you’ve had some bad experiences, but a few personal anecdotes are not persuasive about such large scale concerns. Obviously seeing someone physically abused by a union member is bad, but “unions are bad” does not logically follow from that experience.
