
Unions in the 21st century: A potent weapon against inequality - smacktoward
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/09/03/unions-in-the-21st-century-a-potent-weapon-against-inequality/
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legostormtroopr
I've been invited to join unions a number of times over my career and despite
supporting collective efforts, and have declined every time.

In manual labour industries where the difference between a good worker and a
poor worker is a similar unions make sense. For example, a new bricklayer may
lay 10 bricks an hour, while a quality bricklayer may lay 60 bricks an hour.
But there will still be a limit on how much 'better' someone can be than
someone else.

However, in white-collar jobs the difference in out put between a poor worker
and a good worker can be astronomical - hence the myth of the 10x programmer.
Personally, I am pretty good programmer to the point where I'm now running a
start-up and doing quite well. When I came across management that treated me
poorly, I left and found a better job - I didn't need a union.

However, far too often I've seen in white-collar jobs where there are unions,
they protect people who shouldn't be protected. Poor workers whose output is
well below the median, or whose behaviour is professionally terrible. Or they
focus on niche issues while ignoring the needs of everyone.

So for me, joining a union would have offered nothing to me, while they can
boast greater average output or higher memberships. So why join at all?

If union, especially white-collar/knowledge worker unions, want to become and
remain relevant they need to get comfortable setting _minimum_ performance to
stay in the union and up hold those performance targets and even pre-emptively
sanction underperforming workers _before_ management does.

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pizzazzaro
Manual labor Unions set productivity standards to qualify. They demand the
appropriate training, where applicable, before such an individual can even
join the union.

"The 10x programmer" is a myth, as you yourself acknowledge - there is still a
limit to practical human productivity. But I see no acknowledgement of such
protections which ensure workers' productivity, and keeping unskilled scabs
out of skilled-workers' unions.

Skilled Worker Unions have weathered genuine attacks against such unskilled
scabs with audition periods, training requirements, and rigorous professional
quotas.

In those cases where Union Coders genuinely suck, it is because the Union was
organized without regard to _how such Unions work._

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squirrelicus
I'm concerned with the a priori assumption that inequality of outcome is bad,
partly because it leads directly and necessarily to idealistic, and frankly
unequivocally unacheivable, communism.

But I'm not trying to argue here, I'm trying to understand. People here that
think inequality of outcome is a thing to be fought, help me understand when
enough equality of outcome is enough. At what level of outcome distribution
will the fight be won? When is the fight concluded and victory acheieved?

Note: it's important to distinguish equality of outcome, which is a belief of
the modern left, from equality of opportunity, which everyone on the political
spectrum has been in favor of for at least a generation.

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harimau777
One possibility might be equal output for a given situation. For example, if a
business increases profits then everyone who contributed should benefit. I'm
not saying that a factory worker should make as much as the CEO, but they
should both share in the reward since they shared in the work

~~~
whb07
And yet I’ve never heard the counter outcome being discussed. What do you do
when the business goes on a down period and there’s just enough money to pay
the employees but not the owner(s)?

Assuming the employees don’t get let go (to have a simple example here), do
the employees have to get a negative delta on their salary?

If an owner’s pay is the true net post expenses, what if that net amount is $
< 0?

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danaris
I think the answer to this is a bit more complicated, and requires
demonstrating how the other answer is also a bit more complicated.

When the business goes up, the first thing that happens should be neither
giving money to the owners nor giving money to the employees. It should be
putting some money in the bank. The most salient reason for this is that just
because the business is up this quarter (or over whatever short-term period is
being considered) does not mean that is a stable increase.

Similarly, when the business goes down, the first thing that should happen is
neither reducing the pay to employees nor reducing the pay to owners. It
should be dipping into savings. That is, in fact, why the savings should be
set up in the first place.

With this stated, it should become clearer what the answer to your question
really is. Because neither employees nor owners should see an increase in pay
until there are _stable_ increases in business over multiple measurement
periods, similarly they should not have to see a decrease unless there is a
_stable_ decrease in business. And if there is a sustained decrease in
business, then there are likely other efforts going on to combat it, both in
terms of cutting staff and in terms of finding out why the decrease has
happened and trying to reverse it, so any decrease in compensation would not
be happening in a vacuum.

The shorter statement that increases in business should result in employee
wage increases is not (generally) meant to indicate that every temporary
fluctuation in business should ripple to the employees, but rather that they
should be given some of the long-term increase, _as opposed to_ the owners
getting the entirety of it and the employees getting nothing.

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amai
In good old europe 30 days of vacation per year are considered normal. Thanks
to unions.

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zwirbl
It's more like 20-25 paid vacation days per year in most countries. Except
Andorra I think

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Geforce8472
Standard is 25 days but that doesn't include public holidays... So 30 days
total is pretty normal.

