
The New Yorker has formed a union - knuththetruth
https://www.newyorkerunion.com/
======
zackmorris
Just for another data point: I live in Idaho, which is a right-to-work state:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-
work_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law)

Here we tend to call it right-to-work-for-less. The gist of it is that
employees aren't compelled to pay union dues if their workplace pays union-
negotiated wages. If you think of union protections as something like a
private form of OSHA, or say private car insurance, then opting out of paying
for them while still receiving benefits is self-evidently not sustainable. Not
enough people pay (essentially the same as having too many scabs) so unions
can't maintain their bargaining power. The end result is that there are almost
no unions in Idaho.

My experience with this was when I was moving furniture as a non-technical day
job in the early 2000s. It was $10/hr for warehouse work and $12+/hr working
for private truck drivers (you could negotiate your own rate). But if you went
across the border to Oregon (a non-right-to-work state), it was at least
$15/hr. I had several drivers from California pay me $20/hr for the same
reason.

Our warehouse charged $34/hr. In a business where the work is done primarily
by laborers, it's hard to understand how it's fair to pay them less than 1/3
of gross income. That's because it's not. Many businesses here charge
$75-100/hr or more and pay their employees the going rate of $15/hr. The end
result is that Idaho now has some of the highest wealth inequality in the
nation:

[http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/business/article209332734...](http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/business/article209332734.html)

I mention all of this because I get the feeling that non-right-to-work states
are enjoying the benefits of unionization without realizing it. It's one thing
to argue the nuances of liberty and another to make 1.5 to 2 times as much
money (or more) and provide for yourself and your family.

Unionization isn't about raising prices. It's about paying better wages so
everyone is better off rather than one millionaire at the top. I think of it
as "the person doing the lion's share of the work should receive the lion's
share of the income". I feel it's important to really stress this on a site
like Hacker News whose readership prides itself on being informed and rising
above propaganda.

~~~
conanbatt
This mental model of an economic system leads to disaster.

> The gist of it is that employees aren't compelled to pay union dues...

This is always the argument unions make to get mandatory contributions from
employees. The risks of doing so are the following:

1) that all employees regardless of their individual contribution get the same
salaries, meaning that over-achieving workers will work less, and under-
achieving workers will not work more. (a.k.a. elimination of incentives)

2) That employees that do not like how the union is managed cannot work in
that place, either because the union would not allow them, or because they
have to pay for an organization that they do not belong to voluntarily

3) That the union, having sole negotiation power for all workers, takes
kickbacks from the company for lower compensation for all workers.

4) That even if the union is incorruptible, its optional but its subscribed by
most employees, that it actually manages not to decrease productivity, then,
there is another company that does not have the same problem, will attract
more capital since it gets bigger returns, and the company fails anyway.

Unions are not economically efficient organizations. They are politically
efficient, so they serve a great political purpose, but their work in the
economic sphere is only destructive.

~~~
patmcc
1) Lots of unions and guilds don't operate like this; maybe you get more based
on seniority, education, performance reviews, by hitting targets, or some
other measure. Maybe the guild (think of the hollywood ones; writers and
actors guilds) sets a minimum pay but you're able to negotiate for more.
Union=same salaries is far too simplistic, there are lots of ways this can be
negotiated.

2) Same is true for non-union workplaces - you don't like how a place is run I
guess you're going to be unhappy there. With a union (that you can take part
in, vote for your leaders, vote on your contract, etc.) maybe you can change
that.

3) Sure, if your union/leadership is corrupt. Vote the bastards out then. With
no union...the company just keeps that money that would have been used to
bribe a union official. Not clear to me that's better for the worker.

4) Maybe. Maybe the union attracts better employees, improves retention, etc.
and leads to a better and more profitable workplace. Maybe the whole industry
gets unionized so it's an even playing field and the owners of all companies
lose (and workers gain).

I certainly think it's possible unions reduce the total amount of wealth
generated from a system. But so what? I think society would be better of if,
for example, Walmart made $90b instead of $100b and the workers gained $9b.
(Numbers completely made up, of course).

~~~
legostormtroopr
I have yet to see a union that would support management firing an
underperforming employee, but have seen many that would protect
underperformers.

I've also never heard of a union that supported performance pay, because by
the law of average most of their members will be under average, and they
wouldn't want to irritate them.

~~~
conanbatt
Any union worth a damn should always fight any performance based pay because
it goes contrary to their interests.

~~~
legostormtroopr
Except they don't.

------
TheMagicHorsey
Unions always look like a good idea to workers. But to me a union is a sign of
an industry in stasis or decline. There are no dynamic organizations that are
adaptable, that are also Union shops. Everywhere and always unions are a force
of conservation. They conserve the status as it exists today. Roles,
processes, relations, all are frozen in time.

Unions work best for workers in places like the public sector where the
employer is a government that literally cannot go out of business and where
the state grants the union a monopoly so that other companies cannot enter the
market and displace the union workers. Teachers, police, postal workers,
firemen ... these are roles where no market competition is allowed and
consumers are not given a chance to chose alternatives when service gets
really bad. That's where a union is most beneficial to workers because they
can extract a pound of flesh from the public and the public can't do anything
about it.

But at a place like the New Yorker, where people can get news anywhere, and
there are upstart competitors nipping at your heels, a union will just hasten
the decline.

Now management will have to go through protracted union negotiations to make
changes to the labor force at the company or to adjust roles and
responsibilities.

I love the New Yorker. I hope enough rich urbanites are willing to pay a
subscription to keep the magazine going even if times move on.

~~~
knuththetruth
>There are no dynamic organizations that are adaptable, that are also Union
shops

The entertainment industry and professional athletes are all unionized. I
can't think of more competitive and dynamic industries than those outside of
tech.

~~~
TheMagicHorsey
Hollywood, California, is unionized. The film industry as a whole is not. And
Hollywood, California is not a dynamic part of the film industry. I would say
the rest of the world is a lot more dynamic than Hollywood.

Indie film is largely non-union.

You can't with a straight face say US professional sports are dynamic. The NFL
is one of the worst government-supported cartels in America. The players, I
would argue, are screwed over by the NFL, despite having a union.

~~~
rhizome
Can you define your terms a little bit? It seems like you're assuming we all
have the same sense of what "Hollywood" means, but you're relying a lot on
synecdoche to make a point here.

~~~
TheMagicHorsey
The part of the film industry that is unionized is precisely the part of the
film industry that is not adaptive and dynamic.

~~~
knuththetruth
Writers? Actors? Animators? Various skilled trades? All or most are unionized.

You seem to be shifting a lot of goal posts to suit your narrative.

------
dopamean
Good for them. I hope that this works out well for both parties (labor and
management).

I'm curious about the details. I believe that in New York if a union
negotiates your contract you are legally obliged to be a member of that union
and incur whatever costs are associated (dues). My mother is a labor relations
specialist for NYSUT (New York State United Teachers) and she is very
concerned about a coming SCOTUS ruling that would remove that legal
obligation. How does The New Yorker's new union plan to deal with that if/when
it comes?

~~~
dibstern
Forced membership of a union!? Seriously!? How awful. I’d rather quit than
have it forced on me. If I was at the New Yorker I’d almost certainly join,
but only if I could do so willingly. Ugh.

~~~
vkou
Collective action doesn't work when free-riders can benefit from the work of
the collective.

Unfortunately, most US labour laws are set up in such a way that most gains
made by a union are extended to non-union-members. The only viable response to
that is a membership requirement.

~~~
gowld
Why are laws that way? On the face it seems like overstepping.

I can see how union gains might be _naturally_ extended to non-union (safety
improvements in a factory, say), but I can also see that the union could
negotiate for higher wages to cover the cost of running the union, which avoid
free-riding concerns.

The issue I would expect is that mandatory membership (or at least mandatory
partial-dues for partial benefits, as is common in some municipalities) is
required because the union simply wouldn't work if half the labor force opted
out and the employer could simply hire all non-union workers; and the Law
decided that unions deserve a right to exist, similarly to how the Law decides
that a State or City government is mandatory for all residents.

~~~
chrisseaton
> the union simply wouldn't work if half the labor force opted out

Can't you see how weird this is? 'The law needs to make people be members of a
union, because if they didn't the union wouldn't exist and people wouldn't be
able to be a member of it.' That's so circular!

Just let people be in a union if they want to be, and not if they don't want
to be, and let the union live or die based on people voting with their feet
like that.

If your union isn't effective because people aren't joining then you need to
change what it is your union offers them.

------
mal10c
I've never been part of a union and really don't know much about them. Could
be a dumb question, but could someone describe the pros and cons in layman's
terms? I usually hear the terms "workers rights", "wadges" and "unions" in the
same sentence, so I assume unions are a way to ensure members are all treated
the same - in terms of salaries, PTO, etc. If I had an opportunity to join a
union, would I accept the wadges that were previously agreed upon by the
union/administrative reps? Or, would I have some wiggle room in my salary? For
instance, let's say I feel that I'm worth $40/hr, but the union is only paying
$30/hr, could I negotiate the higher rate? Sorry for my lack of understanding
on this, but I appreciate any helpful comments.

~~~
wpietri
One way to think about it is in terms of economic theory. Negotiations are
fairest when both sides have equal power. But you have approximately one job,
and a company typically has way more employees. It's more painful to lose a
job than to have 1 employee quit. So the negotiation is fundamentally unfair.

So when it comes time to negotiate your annual raise, it's not you alone
dueling with your boss (and the whole corporate hierarchy backing him up).
Instead it's you and all your colleagues getting together, sending in some
representatives, and saying, "Profits are way up this year, so we all deserve
decent raises. Let's talk numbers."

(This is less interesting to tech workers, in that we already have a ton of
salary negotiating power due to supply/demand differences. But personally I'd
still like to see more collective action to deal with other issues. A good
example is the way employees recently forced Google to get out of military
contracting. Or imagine how different Uber might have treated employees if
they'd had a union that helped keep awful managers in check.)

~~~
rayiner
Is there economic theory supporting unions? Asymmetric negotiating leverage is
not generally recognized as something that undermines market outcomes.

~~~
pron
But you don't care about market outcomes, but about your own personal outcome
(and I assume the economic theory alluded to wasn't macroeconomic but micro).
The market can converge to fair non-union wages, or it can converge to fair
union wages, which would be higher. Capitalists claim that unions reduce
overall profit and harm the market, but workers shouldn't care about that
(i.e. lower stock performance and higher wages are better for workers, at
least in practice, given actual wealth distribution).

~~~
slavik81
You are forgetting about customers. I own no companies and work for one
company, but I am a customer of many. A personal cost/benefit analysis like
the one you're describing would have to take that into account.

~~~
pron
The way it works is that management involves the union in its decisions, and
they reach compromises. After all, it is also in the union's interest that the
company stays viable. If all the increase in wages gets is paid for by an
increase in prices, and management isn't willing to cut profits, then that's
unlikely to be acceptable to the union. The goal is to keep the company
performing well, but to even the playing field when negotiating the
distribution of profit among management, shareholders and employees. This is
called co-determination: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-
determination](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-determination)

------
projectileboy
I’m always wary of unintended consequences, but I hope this works out for the
staff, while not sinking the magazine. The New Yorker has been consistently
producing some of the best long form journalism, as well as some of the best
public policy thinkpieces.

~~~
twooclock
I couldn't agree more. Some of their stories are masterpieces of journalism
and they cover broad spectrum as well (style, tech, finance, literature...). I
guess they are really unique.

------
yasp
Increasing labor costs and reducing employment flexibility at companies that
already have notoriously poor business fundamentals? Can't wait to see how
that plays out.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
The reduced flexibility worries me far more than the cost. I've worked in
union workplaces. There's always some instances of doing nothing (or doing
busy work) because the nobody who's allowed to do whatever needs to be done is
available and the other people who could do it won't because they're not
allowed to do that job. When that happens regularly there's ripples through
the workplace culture and work ethic and quality nose dive. I hope the union
treads lightly and carefully. If they go full on public transit rail-workers
union on day one it's gonna end badly.

~~~
stnmtn
Forgive me for being flippant, but yes, if a union of writers acts like a bad
example of how unions are supposed to act, the union of writers will be bad

But why would you say that? It feels very defeatist to me to do something like
that

------
sli
> Our decision to unionize comes at a moment when much of what defines The New
> Yorker—its atmosphere of deliberation and care and its devotion to factual
> accuracy, careful prose, and expert design—is vulnerable to competing
> priorities from our corporate parent, Condé Nast.

This is something that reddit users should also probably keep in mind as they
use the site, as Condé Nast owns reddit as well.

~~~
Mononokay
Actually, Condé Nast hasn't owned reddit for a long time.

~~~
baud147258
Who is the owner of reddit?

~~~
DougBTX
[https://redditblog.com/2013/08/06/reddit-myth-
busters/#indep...](https://redditblog.com/2013/08/06/reddit-myth-
busters/#independent-reddit-inc)

~~~
baud147258
Thank you.

------
DanBlake
My first instinct reading this was to think about the gothamist/dnainfo
kerfuffle.

However, Checking the new yorkers revenue shows around 200 million/yr, I
definitely did not expect that and likely means it can easily support a union.
(unless the new yorker is loaded with debt, which it might be)

~~~
philipodonnell
Not taking a position either way, but revenue is not the important number
here: its excess margin, which in publishing is extremely low.

~~~
heyyyouu
And the New Yorker has a history of being notorious for expenses -- at its
height it had writers paid on contract for a full year that write one story
(an excellent story, but still), expense accounts through the roof, and an
editorial staff that none could rival. Those specific days are gone but its
cost structure is still above what many other publications have, so I suspect
the margins are still well below average. I love the New Yorker (it went off
track for a while, but it's gotten much better in the past 10 years) and what
they do takes serious investment and talent, but there's also ways to do it
smartly. Although it looks like all of this is preemptive so we'll have to see
where it goes.

~~~
philipodonnell
That may be true, but if the margins were low because the excessive expenses
were due to paying people too much (per your example), then a union trying to
raise wages might be the last thing they need to survive. :-)

~~~
hpcjoe
Back in my day, you raised wages when you could demonstrate success in your
endeavor to drive more revenue/margin. You got paid _less_ when you drove
costs higher.

Seems like this is a basic law of economics or something. Monetary rewards for
success, monetary losses for failures. Unions have a tendency to be out of
sync with this, which means their objectives aren't aligned with managements.
Which ... never ... ends well.

------
prepend
I wonder if they considered an employee buyout. It seems like Union v
management can be counterproductive, but all workers owning the company seems
to put all workers in alignment. It’s kind of weird with New Yorker as there
isn’t “labor” per se, as it’s writers and editors and publishers and whatnot.

~~~
donohoe
No. That would spell the end. The magazine relies on economies of scale for
sharing costs of print and digital infrastructure across its other Conde Nast
titles.

------
stealthmodeclan
I am not very knowledgeable about this subject. So please mercy for my dumb
questions.

How does union work in Germany or other European countries. How are they still
able to keep up their economic competitiveness. Is it because of small
population or that they've built a moat around their patents etc... Or they've
access to cheap workers from poor neighboring nations or if their unions are
all fake scheming together with the owners to raise the productivity for
workers and give them false sense of security? I've never seen non German
union leader for a German company even tho I've seen lots of non German folks
working for them. I never understood why

~~~
gsnedders
I'm sure someone who's actually worked in Germany and has more direct
experience than I will come along and correct me, but…

* The corporate culture is very different to the US, and there's much less of the antagonism you often see between employers and employees in the US. This manifests itself in various ways, most obviously with employee representatives on the board. There's lot more recognition that both losing staff (especially en mass) is hurtful to the company even in "replaceable" rolls (because there's always job specific knowledge) and that driving the company into the ground isn't good for the employees (because then they don't have a job).

* If it's obviously cheaper to move manufacturing overseas (or decrease labour through automation, etc.), the unions are less likely to fight it than they are in the US, but rather negotiate with the company some agreement either moving employees to elsewhere in the organisation or giving them training so they have the skills to be able to find another, safer job.

* An extreme example is a union negotiating a pay _decrease_ for its membership in exchange for increased investment in the company to ensure job security (i.e., valuing the long-term outcome of consistent income above short-term income).

So, in short, a lot of it simply comes down to a willingness to compromise.

------
notananthem
I've found most people who hate the idea of unions have never had any exposure
to them. I've actually never been in a formal union but have used "collective
bargaining" and even did union organizing and helped a couple of labor
negotiation disputes because the unions benefit me as a non member.

I think it's hilarious when people's only exposure to unions is textbooks or
being put in charge of managing union employees and they scream bloody murder.

Unions are fantastic and being eroded solely through lobbying efforts of
billionaire Koch suckers.

~~~
hpcjoe
My union stories. TL;DR definitely not fantastic. Quite the opposite.

In grad school, early 90s, we were getting this brand new ethernet installed.
Originally they were going to run thin-net, and decided instead to run UTP to
the offices.

As one of the major users of modems to dial into the university ISP, in order
to run our code on supers, I was quite eager to get my connection. They
prepped the wiring, and then scheduled us for a month or two out.

The reason for this was that they needed one specific union person to cut the
hole in the wall for this, and they were busy.

Ok, this is just silly.

So I asked, "hey, can I help out here? I know how to do this, and can do it in
my advisors and my office."

We were told that if I did

a) they would charge us $3k USD (quite a lot to a poor grad student) PER HOLE,
to fill it in.

b) they would then charge us another $3k USD to cut a new hole.

Because, union.

I've got other stories when I was at SGI, and we were setting up systems at
Ford ... we couldn't simply carry our computers ourselves ... oh no ... that
was verboten. We would get written up, and disallowed back on campus.

No, unions are not fantastic. They mostly evolve from being useful constructs
to being rent seeking monopolies on labor, opposed to any measure that reduces
their ability to seek/collect rent.

In grade school, we had a teachers strike[1]. I remember being on a bus, being
attacked. By teachers. Who yelled and screamed at us. They threw rocks at the
windows. Cracked a few. Police were called, but none of them suffered
consequences for their actions. Even though quite a number of us saw them do
this, while the only crime we had committed were being small kids on a school
bus.

My experiences are not aberrations ... I've heard quite similar stories from
many others, be they schools, or where ever they've encountered unions.

I do have to point out that you are tipping your political beliefs with your
last sentence. I've experienced first hand, the violence, and rent seeking
behavior of these groups. The lakeland strike was written up in a book a few
years ago. Longest and meanest strike in the country by teachers. It made for
a fairly shitty 6th and beginning 7th grade for me.

It is certainly your right to believe whatever you wish. Me, and many others,
whom have suffered from the downsides to unions ... their rent seeking, their
monopolization drive on labor ... are opposed in principle, without any
goading on behalf of Koch or others.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/1977/09/07/archives/430-teachers-
str...](https://www.nytimes.com/1977/09/07/archives/430-teachers-strike-
lakeland-schools-opening-due-today.html)

~~~
Frondo
it's a little difficult to extrapolate a broad picture of union benefits or
costs from these anecdotes, just because one of them is, well, a kid's story
from a lifetime ago...

------
mkirklions
I didnt think HN needed a downvote button until this thread.

Quick Union story- Was an engineer at a factory. Foam pieces were blocking my
path to the process room. Like, there was a tiny pathway, probably not
shoulder length wide that I'd turn and squeeze in, and that was the path to my
room.

The floor was a wreck, something bad happened with the temperatures + wax or
something. The floor was a mess, foam everywhere. This was my job and I was
failing tonight. Messing with temps and wax constantly, checking if chemicals
were weird. Pretty much grasping at straws to fix this issue.

Well back to the blockage. I couldnt get to my room without either clearing
the foam or walking around the factory.

So I took the piece of foam and tossed it into the garbage bin behind me.

Oh what a mistake. The next morning my boss was swamped with last night's mess
and citation/form/write up that I was doing Union Jobs.

I was punished by having to take 2 days off unpaid. They paid a worker an
entire day's salary, and I got some sort of negative mark on my record. My
boss wasnt happy about this despite him being understanding of the silliness.

This was one of many many things that got to the point of hating unions. 95%
of people just wanted to work. Then you had people that abused the system to
the point that it didnt work.

~~~
hpcjoe
Funny how the union abuse anecdote gets downvoted, while the pro-union
propaganda doesn't.

My stories are similar.

Its not a right or left issue. Unions, with very few counterexamples ... to
the point where I am unaware of any ... devolve into rent seeking constructs,
which increase costs, decrease quality, etc.

I'd love to be wrong about this, but I've not yet seen counterexamples, where
unions are held up as paragons of what we can be if we work together.

Many may have started to provide an offset to the asymmetric power of the
management ... but pretty much all of them eventually are corrupted by the
power that they yield. So much so that they can negatively impact people whom
are not part of their union, wish no part of it, and yet have no choice but to
join and pay dues.

This is a problem. A union should be a temporary construct, something that can
be brought into existence quickly to offset/blunt bad management. Just as
quickly, once it succeeds in its mission, it should deconstruct itself. To be
formed only when needed. It should not persist. When it persists, it starts
with nest feathering by officials at the top, rent-seeking behaviors, etc.

~~~
Frondo
You might not be getting a lot of counterexamples because you're obviously
coming at this with such a deeply held belief that no one wants to
bother..."water? is it wet?? I surely don't think so..."

------
andrewl-hn
> The New Yorker has been a vital force in American journalism for nearly a
> century.

I'm honestly very surprised that there wasn't a union in a company with such a
long history. The lack of unions in tech industry always seemed like an
anomaly to me, but I attributed it to a fact that most tech companies are too
young or too small.

------
EarthIsHome
> Our decision to unionize comes at a moment when much of what defines The New
> Yorker—its atmosphere of deliberation and care and its devotion to factual
> accuracy, careful prose, and expert design—is vulnerable to competing
> priorities from our corporate parent, Condé Nast. We are determined to do
> everything we can to protect the health and the integrity of our publication
> from staff cuts and reorganizations handed down by corporate management
> without warning or transparency.

It seems like one of their worries is about Condé Nast taking a more direct
role over the publication.

> We are asking Condé Nast to recognize our union, and we look forward to
> beginning an amicable collective-bargaining process.

~~~
donohoe
> It seems like one of their worries is about Condé Nast taking a more direct
> role over the publication

Condé Nast has been doing exactly this over the last 5 years as they got
better organized. They'd be in worse shape had they not done this. The biggest
impact has been in product, engineering, and design.

The New Yorker has always been well run for the most part so when Conde
managed across the board cuts it was The New Yorker that was often exempted
given they never threw money around like others.

------
sonnyblarney
Nice story, but the issue with 'the press' is not 'fat cat owners', it's 'the
bad business model'.

I'll bet the New Yorker would pay better + healthcare if they could. But they
probably can't. They are probably facing 'going out of business' just like
every other publication.

So I'm not sure if the union will matter, sadly.

------
microdrum
Hah [http://newyorkerdumbdumbs.com](http://newyorkerdumbdumbs.com)

~~~
microdrum
"Dear New Yorker Writers,

You recently formed a union. Congratulations on that. We hope that you receive
all that you desire. But because of the argument in your open letter
announcing the union –– an argument that proposes that you should receive more
money because you want to have more money –– we are concerned that your
intelligence, considerable though it is, is in this case unable to grapple
with the actual reality of the world. Your magazine comprises both fact (sort
of) and fiction. When you’re asking for money, it’s typically best to focus on
the fact world, not the fictional world."

------
the_seraphim
As someone from the UK I find a lot of this hilarious, our employment laws are
strict as fuck, unions are optional even in unionised businesses and no one
gets fucked over if you don't join

------
49531
There is a lot of anti-union propaganda going on in this thread. I call it
propaganda because most of it has no root in reality.

Having an organized workforce should be the cost of doing business. If you can
only survive as a corporation that does the bare minimum to take care of
employees you have no right to be an employer in the free market. Most
corporations _can_ function with organized labor, but would rather not because
it cuts into profits.

~~~
jblow
As a customer, I _hate_ interacting with unionized industries. Try, for
example, having a booth at a trade show. It is completely awful, and most of
that is because of unions.

> If you can only survive as a corporation that does the bare minimum to take
> care of employees you have no right to be an employer in the free market.
> Most corporations _can_ function with organized labor, but would rather not
> because it cuts into profits.

Think about this from a systems perspective. If you are a country that
requires businesses to take a certain amount of overhead, then some percentage
of businesses will just not be viable. Therefore your entire economy is x%
smaller (at least). You can claim that this is offset by the economic well-
being of the employees, but that's not at all obvious and would require a lot
of justification. (If it were true, you'd expect countries like France to be
more healthy economically than the USA, whereas in fact France is quite
stagnant). If your economy is x% smaller, it means you are not competing
effectively with other countries and have less leverage when dealing with
them. And the shrunken economy has real consequences on the standard of living
of people living in the country. etc, etc.

If you think of this only from a lens of "capitalists are evil people who
deserve to be taxed to support the good workers" you are going to be missing
most of the picture.

~~~
49531
If you are using economic growth as the key indicator of a healthy economy you
are missing most of the picture.

We hyperfocus on growth at the expense of other aspects of our economy. If you
create consumer goods but systematically depress the wages of the consumers
who buy the goods, eventually you've cannibalized your source of revenue.
Similar to how cancer cells are hyperfocused on growth at the expense of
working within the systems they're assigned.

I don't see how the economic wellbeing of workers is in need of justification.

~~~
hpcjoe
Wow ... relating management to cancer.

In a free market, workers would be able to find other employment if their
company treats them poorly. In reality, the demise of the free market here
hasn't been hastened by "cancerous" management, determined to "screw the
workers over" ... it has been hastened by rent seeking behaviors of the
unions, driving costs up. Which has resulted in said management looking for
ways to control/lower costs.

Such as moving labor intensive work to a) lower cost areas, and now b)
automating to the point of which you no longer need many workers.

Those are all cost based decisions. No one, that I am aware of in management,
is twisting their mustaches saying "if only I could find some way to screw my
workers over even more". Everyone in management is being asked "how can I
increase productivity as measured in producing more widgets per unit cost, or
reducing the unit cost to produce each widget?".

Unions do not reduce cost per widget. They do not increase productivity in
terms of more widgets per unit cost. They simply increase costs. Which drives
the conversations on how to reduce costs. Move factory. Automate.

Take an industry with net margins of a few percent at best (most industries),
and have one portion of their cost structure increase to remove a material
fraction of that margin. The company owners (stock and bond holders) would be
all over that board to find a way to reduce costs.

The darkly ironic aspect of this, is that 401k's and/or pension funds (defined
benefit is going away in favor of defined contribution) that may be part of a
comp program for union and non-union folk, are likely investing in these
companies, making these demands upon them, to increase their profitability.
That is, the union worker has competing antithetical goals at play that cannot
be simultaneously satisfied.

Yeah, it would be nice to pay everyone a wonderful wage, have no poverty, no
hunger, etc. The moment an industry player says "yes we are going to raise our
prices to pay our people more money", is when their competition comes in and
says "but we will charge less" and takes their business.

If you don't cannibalize your own revenue, your competitors surely will.
Amazon is doing an incredible job of this, in they find niches which become
profitable for some, which they then enter, leveraging their buying power. And
they have largely cannibalized Walmart, who used to do the same to others
(don't feel bad for them as they get a taste of their own medicine).

Denial of reality and the way economics actually works is a recipe for
disastrous consequences. The free market is there, whether you want it to be
or not. If you refuse to grow, your competitor will. At your expense.

If you increase your costs in one column without being able to decrease them
somewhere else without harming productivity, you are increasing your risk. Not
paying people better. But betting their jobs on something that isn't based
upon sound economic theory.

------
fallingfrog
Hell yeah. I'll subscribe just to support them. Also the New Yorker is very
high quality journalism.

------
CryptoPunk
I imagine this is going to affect their journalistic impartiality.

~~~
epicureanideal
For better, or for worse? It could be argued that whatever bias a union leads
to could also have been happening in reverse in a non-union environment. Job
insecurity, lack of benefits, etc. such as the article mentions, also could
affect impartiality.

~~~
CryptoPunk
I think for the worse. They will now have a major bone in the individual
liberty vs enforced collectivism fight.

Their benefits are directly derived from their employer not having the
freedom-to-contract/full-control-over-their-private-property.

~~~
lovich
> freedom-to-contract/full-control-over-their-private-property.

Ah yes, I forgot that employees were private property of employees. These damn
uppity workers thinking they could band together to negotiate. Why wont they
just negotiate one on one with me so I can pay them less?

~~~
CryptoPunk
That's an absurd straw man.

I'm referring to their company, and their right to offer any terms of
employment they want, which is restricted by federal law stating that you
cannot have employment terms that discriminate against unionized workers,
enable the company to refuse particular demands by unions (e.g. collective
bargaining), or fire an employee for particular types of activity, like
staging a strike.

Union-privileging labor laws usurps an employer's control over their own
company. They replace contract law with central planning that regiments the
acceptable range of employment relationships between consenting adults.

~~~
lovich
You referenced freedom over private property when discussing union-employer
negotiations. Maybe that was a mistake but your phrasing implies to me that
you view the employers rights as greater than all others.

Why are the employers rights being trampled here if the union is a bunch of
employees who agreed to negotiate together? The employer can refuse the unions
deal, and then its on them to figure out how to run a company without
employees.

The employers dont have a right to divide and conquer the employees so that
they can get better terms.

>They replace contract law with central planning that regiments the acceptable
range of employment relationships between consenting adults.

How is this even replacing contract with central planning? Are you trying to
connect the bogeyman of communism with unions? Consenting adults are the ones
who decided what the employment relationship was

~~~
CryptoPunk
>>Why are the employers rights being trampled here if the union is a bunch of
employees who agreed to negotiate together?

Because federal law forces the employer to negotiate with the union, and
prohibits the employer from negotiating with any other party.

This violates the employer's rights by giving unions special rights to the
employer's private property.

>>The employers dont have a right to divide and conquer the employees so that
they can get better terms.

Yes they do. In a free society, you can negotiate with whoever you want. You
unionizing shouldn't impose any restrictions on me negotiating with a third
party, or obligations to negotiate with you. Laws that impose these
requirements are oppressive.

>>How is this even replacing contract with central planning?

The laws that regiment employment relationships are decided by a central body,
and restrict the contract freedom of millions of people.

~~~
lovich
The federal government doesn't make employers have to continue working with
unions. Scabs are a real thing. The unions are able to force companies to
negotiate anyway because it is difficult to replace a large number of
employees at once, especially if they have any skills.

>The laws that regiment employment relationships are decided by a central
body, and restrict the contract freedom of millions of people.

By this argument any employment law is central planning. That's hyperbole

~~~
CryptoPunk
If the majority of employees in what federal law defines as a work unit
unionize, and vote to collectively bargain, the law prohibits the employer
from negotiating individually with any employee in that work unit, even if
they did not vote to collectively bargain:

[https://www.nlrb.gov/sites/default/files/attachments/basic-p...](https://www.nlrb.gov/sites/default/files/attachments/basic-
page/node-3024/basicguide.pdf)

>>The Employee Representative. Section 9(a) provides that the employee
representatives that have been “designated or selected for the purposes of
collective bargaining by the majority of the employees in a unit appropriate
for such purposes, shall be the exclusive representatives of all the employees
in such unit for the purposes of collective bargaining.”

>>What is an appropriate bargaining unit. A unit of employees is a group of
two or more employees who share a community of interest and may reasonably be
grouped together for purposes of collective bargaining. The determination of
what is an appropriate unit for such purposes is, under the Act, left to the
discretion of the NLRB. Section 9(b) states that the Board shall decide in
each representation case whether, “in order to assure to employees the fullest
freedom in exercising the rights guaranteed by this Act, the unit appropriate
for the purposes of collective bargaining shall be the employer unit, craft
unit, plant unit, or subdivision thereof.”

There are numerous violations of the employer's freedom of contract in federal
law, enacted at the behest of unions and their supporters.

>>By this argument any employment law is central planning.

Any labor law that violates the freedom of contract, by regimenting the range
of employment contracts that may be entered into by consenting adults, is a
form of central planning.

>>That's hyperbole

Why?

~~~
lovich
What is the "freedom to contract" that you keep bringing up. Contracts are
legal instruments defined and enforced by the government, so if the government
says you can't do x in a contract then you can't do x.

>That's hyperbole Because you are stating that anything other than absolute
freedom is central planning.

Beyond all of this, you started off this thread by saying that you think this
will bias the journalists and affect their integrity. You've moved the
goalposts multiple times and it's obvious you just don't like unions. If you
want to have a discussion about that then put you're argument all out on the
table instead of shoving it in after saying something provocative

~~~
CryptoPunk
The freedom to contract is what I described. The prohibitions you bring up
violate the freedom to contract.

You're making an appeal to legality to claim that freedom to contract doesn't
exist, which is an intellectually weak argument.

>>Contracts are legal instruments defined and enforced by the government

A contract is defined by the parties that sign it. It is an agreement.
Agreements between individuals are not defined by the government.

In other words, agreements do not exist only by virtue of the govermment
willing them to exist. They are private arrangements that we have delegated
the enforcement of to govermment.

>>Because you are stating that anything other than absolute freedom is central
planning.

I asked you 'why' because I don't see what's hyperbolic about that. Any rule
that supplants free choice with a rule imposed by a central authority is an
expansion of the scope of central planning at the expense of personal freedom.

This is absolutely undeniable and I don't understand why you're trying to make
it out to be a controversial statement.

>>Beyond all of this, you started off this thread by saying that you think
this will bias the journalists and affect their integrity. You've moved the
goalposts multiple times

How could you possibly accuse me of that, when I was only answering the
questions posed to me?

You're not treating me reasonably at all.

