Ask HN: Would you support a unionization effort at your company? - MangezBien
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hackermailman
I'm already in 2 unions. Pros and cons, with the biggest con obviously being
pay since now you have to collectively bargain and most union leaders are
selected based on popularity and political ambition and not their negotiating
skills, so your wages and benefits will go down though your overall job
security will increase, and they will have to pay you overtime.

A pro is the work environment is much more honest, you are free to speak your
grievances about management in front of everybody without worrying about them
trying to fire you or scheme to make your life hell. You will have employees
elected as shop stewards to handle all employee disputes instead of bringing
in the heavy hand of management to deal with petty personal issues. Anytime
you are summoned to a meeting room for discipline you get to bring a
representative, and you get to appeal every single bullshit disciplinary
action they take and almost always win, managers have no clue of the
collective agreement.

Your job also changes to being a contractor, as you are contracted to do
specific things which of course means if you finish them early, you can leave
and still get paid 8hrs. You can also refuse work you have not been contracted
for, and this is of course the major complaint about union employees how
'they're lazy and won't do what I ask' but if you asked the plumber you
contracted to install a dishwasher to also mow your lawn for free they
wouldn't do it either. That's how a collective agreement works, you have
entered into an agreement to do X, unless there are special provisions for Y
you don't do it. One of my collective agreements has provisions for extra
work, and every day we push software on time in a research lab without some
manager hovering around.

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lilbobbytables
"to also mow your lawn for free"

But it's not free, you just said they're paying you for at least 8 hours no
matter what. Sounds like you're saying certain things are below that plumber
and he won't do them, but still wants to get paid.

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jeffreybaird
Absolutely. I love where I work, and I love my coworkers. I want to make sure
that the culture of openness and transparency stays that way. I believe that
the best way to do this is to form a union and give the employees formal power
in the corporate decision-making process.

~~~
natalyarostova
While ymmv, in my experience regarding all human systems, if you love
something, injecting massive entropy into the system structure in the hopes
that you will love it a little more, is not worth the risk that you'll break
the whole thing.

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sethammons
Nope. I'm in the US. I have never seen benefits come to employees from unions.
I've been in the teachers union. My wife has been in the grocery union, and my
brother works at a place where the union started in a warehouse (Teamsters?).
I've not seen anything work out for the employees, but lots of process and
rules that mostly benefits the union leadership and the union as an org at the
expense of everything else.

Edit. There is one case where I have seen benefits. My brother in law is a
heavy machinery operator and works similar to a contractor does in tech. He
goes in, does some work til the job is done, and leaves. He likes that he can
get jobs through the union and that his wages were way higher in the last
recession.

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davismwfl
No, and I'd advise people not too. Unions had a purpose, and sadly still do in
some isolated instances, but tech (professional work in general) is not one of
them. I say sadly because businesses should have matured to the point by now
to make unions unnecessary, and employees should have evolved further to see
the problem. But some business/industries have a lot of bad actors and the
union does fill part of a need, but it isn't what employees think it is.

I have dealt with unions as a leader, I have dealt with a union trying to
unionize employees that worked in my teams and I have dealt with union based
employees in a plant and non-unionized employees in a different plant within
the same company. Guess who got better benefits and pay? Wasn't the union
employees, too much money had to go to pay the union dues, legal fees and
unnecessarily inflated benefits, so we would fight every penny and ask on that
side. And yes some states in the U.S. have rules around union employees can't
be paid less than non-union doing similar jobs, but trust me large
corporations know how to work those rules properly.

While I have lots of opinions based on my experiences, in the end what I
learned is that unions are honestly not there for the employee, they are there
to raise employee wages/benefits so that the union can collect more in fees
(generally a percentage of total compensation, so salary + benefits). The sad
fact is they honestly don't care about you, your family or making it better,
they get paid more by making the business pay more wages whether the market
and work demand it or not.

There was a good reason unions existed in the past, and I am a fan for their
reasoning at the time, not today. They are now nothing more than a big
business putting their hands in your pocket to take money from you. By the
way, did you know in many states, if your fellow employees unionize but you
opt out that you can still be forced to pay union dues? Yea, this has been
litigated in the recent past and some states changed that law, but just beware
of what you ask for or support.

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maxxxxx
" I say sadly because businesses should have matured to the point by now to
make unions unnecessary, and employees should have evolved further to see the
problem."

Without a counterforce it's just a matter of time until we regress to ever
worsening conditions for workers. Capitalists never gave anything away
voluntarily. We need unions or other workplace regulations to keep things in
balance.

~~~
davismwfl
I agree there has to be a counterforce to protect workers from the early days
of the industrial revolution where factory workers died and/or were mistreated
because of no regulations, no safety and there was little if any oversight to
give workers a recourse.

Today in the US there are at least 4-5 agencies that oversee companies and
their behavior. Laws are now on the books to protect workers. Workers can now
sue their employers for violating their rights. Workers have protection of
whistle blower laws. Are any of these perfect, no, but these are the true
reasons unions existed. It was to protect the worker from abhorrent conditions
and treatment. That has happened through the new laws and agencies in place.
What we should be doing is forcing the agencies and politicians to use the tax
money they took from us to clean up the areas which are not good enough still,
not giving away more money to a union which is just another business there to
take their share of your earnings and the companies earnings. Unions are a tax
on everyone, they are not free, so you are taxed twice for 90% of the same
protections, and the other 10% I would argue are not protections but limits on
your rights.

I still see places we need it to be better, but that doesn't mean tech is a
place for unions. Can you imagine all these 2-3 year post grad engineers
getting the title of Senior software engineer and getting the equivalent high
salaries or out of turn bonuses for great work now learn they have to wait 20
years to be called senior, can never again get an out of turn bonus or special
treatment for going the extra mile. Unions equalize by taking everyone down to
the lowest level of commonality, you are no longer an individual you are a cog
to be used to further the union leaderships goals, not yours. Sure, you get a
few extras for that but I for one don't want to hand someone else my freedom
to earn and advance at my pace so they can get what they feel is important.

* edited a few words to make it clearer.

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maxxxxx
Without unions employers will be lobbying relentlessly to weaken current laws.
You can argue about what unions should be doing or not or how they should
operate but they are absolutely needed to give workers a voice.

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jrowley
I work at a 5 person startup, so wouldn’t want to endorse that at this stage
but maybe if we get to 200 or 2000 employees it’d make more sense. I highly
value protecting workers and ensuring fair compensation.

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gtsteve
I'm a co-owner of a company so you can imagine I wouldn't. I don't know what
I'd do if I discovered something like this was going on to be honest, I'd be
really disappointed that people apparently felt that working here was that bad
and they couldn't change it except effectively by force.

I don't expect it would happen at my company or at others as the job market
for software developers in London is excellent; typically if people don't like
the work they just leave.

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jeffreybaird
I mean, you have power over their lives with force. You can decide at a
moment's notice that their livelihoods could be taken away. Or, you could sell
your company to someone who would do that. A union just levels the playing
field.

~~~
gtsteve
From my perspective, they have power over me. I need to keep them happy or
they're going to find other jobs. Sometimes this means changing plans to
ensure they're not overworked or to ensure that they get to work on
interesting stuff after something reasonably boring like UI development (none
of them really enjoy it but it has to be done). The business fails pretty
rapidly without my development team and I know how lucky I am to have them.

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mcv
Sure. Well, there's no pressing need, for me because I'm self-employed (I'm
member of a sort-of/kinda union for self-employed people, but it's not quite
the same thing thing), and I'm currently contracting for a bank, and unions
for bank employees already exist. Anyone who wants to join a union already
can.

But in general, sure. I think it's good for employees to organise and be able
to present themselves in a united manner to the concentrated power of
corporations.

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toomuchtodo
Absolutely, without any hesitation.

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maxxxxx
Obviously it depends on the nature of the union but in general I think unions
are good.

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eli_gottlieb
Yes, absolutely. I support the current unionization effort in my workplace.

