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.
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).
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.
>>I have yet to see a union that would support management firing an underperforming employee, but have seen many that would protect underperformers.
What unions almost always do is require management to follow the procedures in place in the negotiated contract. A well negotiated contract lays out what underperforming is, what qualifies as appropriate notice, etc.
People find it hard to say "your performance is not great in these ways, you need to improve in these ways" and then follow up over weeks or months. That's often what union negotiated contracts require. Employers, obviously, would prefer to be able to say on a Friday "hey you're fired go home" and pay no severance.
In grad school, I taught recitation and lab sections of physics courses. Some of my students were local school district teachers. Two of them I remember.
These two, in different years, had one thing in common. Both were functionally illiterate.
Neither one could read at the level one would need to in order to take the non-calculus version of physics. Math was simply beyond them.
I asked my advising professor what I should do about this, as it was obvious that the right thing to do was to report this, get the person some help, and get them out of the classroom.
I was told to drop it. That the teachers union was simply too powerful, and would protect their own. That if I made noise, it would hurt the university, this program, etc. That I should find a way to pass them.
I have yet to see a company without "underperforming" employees that have been around for ages and payed more than "over performing" new hire despite having never worked in a union shop.
> I have yet to see a union that would support management firing an underperforming employee, but have seen many that would protect underperformers.
Much like a defense attorney a union must defend everyone--even the crappy ones.
Because most of the time, the employee really isn't that crappy and simply annoyed management by doing something silly like--oh, demanding the safety equipment necessary to do a task and told management to pound sand when they didn't provide it. Yeah, seen that one in person.
It is up to management to make the case that the shitty employee actually is so. And, if they can't, well the employee really isn't that bad then.
For example, everybody bitches about the crappy teachers, but I have seen numerous cases where the school superintendent never even tries to make the case because that would affect his ability to get his next job. Why does nobody ever complain about the superintendent not doing HIS job and putting together the case to fire the teacher?
> I've also never heard of a union that supported performance pay
Not true. However, the union almost always demands that the performance criteria be objective or that the union gets to determine who falls into which categories. Funnily, management never seems to want to agree to "performance pay" that they can't hand out arbitrarily.
> 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.
You will find interesting that there is a link between high unionization and unemployment.
> 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.
If you dont vote for the union, you dont get hired or get fired. You as a worker now are subject to the whims of a new master, one that is worse that the previous one.
Also justifying the bribes is pure robbery. You should be ashamed of thinking that.
>>You will find interesting that there is a link between high unionization and unemployment.
Yes, and there's a link between high unionization and higher wages/better benefits/better working conditions. Of course there are trade-offs. Look at the history of labour movements in the west. Why do you think we have weekends, overtime pay, etc
>>If you dont vote for the union, you dont get hired or get fired. You as a worker now are subject to the whims of a new master, one that is worse that the previous one.
That's completely untrue - if you vote against unionization you don't get fired. The union (almost always) doesn't choose who gets hired or gets fired; they often offer protection against undue termination. You may (depending on jurisdiction) be required to join/pay dues. Also, unions have elections - you have a regular chance to choose who negotiates on your behalf. How exactly is the "new master" worse then the previous one?
>>Also justifying the bribes is pure robbery. You should be ashamed of thinking that.
Not at all what I said. I said owners keeping 100 rather than keeping 95 and bribing with 5 is no better for the worker; both situations are shitty. But when the union leadership is being bribed they can be voted out by the union members.
>>>You will find interesting that there is a link between high unionization and unemployment.
>Yes, and there's a link between high unionization and higher wages/better benefits/better working conditions. Of course there are trade-offs. Look at the history of labour movements in the west. Why do you think we have weekends, overtime pay, etc
No, the point the parent was making is that there is a well understood and accepted link between increased unionization and increased unemployment.
>>>If you dont vote for the union, you dont get hired or get fired. You as a worker now are subject to the whims of a new master, one that is worse that the previous one.
> That's completely untrue - if you vote against unionization you don't get fired. The union (almost always) doesn't choose who gets hired or gets fired; they often offer protection against undue termination. You may (depending on jurisdiction) be required to join/pay dues. Also, unions have elections - you have a regular chance to choose who negotiates on your behalf. How exactly is the "new master" worse then the previous one?
It's quite true. Here in Michigan, until we regained our sanity recently and went right to work, there were closed union shops. You could get hired if and only if you were a member of the union. Which you couldn't get into without being hired. The entry fee into the union ranged depending upon the union, but it was most definitely a pay for play scam. So if you were poor, and couldn't afford the entry fee ... how would you get in? How is this not a monopoly?
On those union elections ... Do you believe for a moment that the elections were either free, or fair? Do you not believe that there were corrupting outside influences?
This new master became rent seeking, drove costs up, quality down, caused higher unemployment by driving costs up, and eventually drove much of the work to lower wage locales.
Yes, this is the reality of what unions have wrought.
As for this
> But when the union leadership is being bribed they can be voted out by the union members.
um ... no. The people in power in their rent seeking ways have a habit of building up a support system of similarly minded folks. Trickle down. Bribes paid supported large union machines that existed for the sole purpose of keeping their officials in power. These elections are rarely ever free, and are most certainly never fair. There are entrenched interests that wish to not rock the boat, as that introduces uncertainty. Be this from management, external groups that want to dip into union coffers, etc.
>>well understood and accepted link between increased unionization and increased unemployment.
Yes, I know what point the parent was making, and I agreed with that; my points also stand. Unemployment isn't the only consideration - if we had no labour laws or minimum wage I bet unemployment would be lower too.
>> closed union shops
You need to look at your history more carefully. Closed union shops have been illegal in the US since 1947. The Supreme Court decided in 1985 that a union member can resign from a union at any time (and keep employment). Unions are able to collect "agency fees", but THAT IS ALL - they cannot enforce membership. No forced membership, no entry fee (if you don't join), no closed union shops, no fines imposed by the union (if you don't join). You can get a job at a unionized shop, pay the agency fees, and never join the union.
>> Unfair, unfree elections
Absolutely there are some corrupt unions with shitty elections, bribes, rent seeking, etc. Same is true for any hierarchy or any democratic process. Saying no one should unionize because some are corrupt is like saying countries are a bad idea because Putin rigs elections.
Looking at history, and some recent (2010) articles before we changed. See [1][2][3]
The laws to which you refer ar the Taft-Hartley act, and the NLR act.
As for the "no forced membership", it was seemingly easier for local companies to bend to outrageous demands of unions in their contract language, than it was to actually enforce the law as written. There are quite a number of lawsuits apparently about the closed shop nature of many Michigan companies with unions, up and until that right to work was passed. After that, not so much.
> Absolutely there are some corrupt unions with shitty elections, bribes, rent seeking, etc.
I've not seen counter examples where the unions were not corrupt, rent seeking, etc. I'd love to. This ranges from 11yo me caught in the nastiest teacher strike in the US, where my own teachers were throwing rocks at me in my school bus, though 32yo me being told not to move computers my company was trying to sell to Ford because that was a union job, and there would be consequences to that.
So yeah ... in my entire life, currently north of 50 years, 39 of it with experience with unions, I've not seen an example of a positive force a union plays. Anywhere.
Many people are in my position, many have seen the corruption, the violence, the rent seeking, etc. personally.
> Same is true for any hierarchy or any democratic process.
Power has a tendency to corrupt. This is why there must be competing forces for the power, each jealously guarding its interest.
> Saying no one should unionize because some are corrupt is like saying countries are a bad idea because Putin rigs elections.
This is a poor analogy. The two are not comparable. Also, I did not say "no one should unionize because some are corrupt". I said "unions are corrupt". There may be a vanishingly small number of counterexamples. But I have not personally encountered any.
Putin is as Putin does. If he really invested $2M in the ads that no one saw on FB and TWTR, and that swayed the US election ... yeah, I'd be pissed.
[3] http://www.nrtw.org/union-discipline-and-employee-rights/ which details the purposefully misleading way many of these membership agreements, collective bargaining agreements, etc. were constructed, as well as the language and insinuations on the part of union officials to the workers.
Wrong in most aspects. Right to work effectively ends most labor monopolies that unions have erected. By removing the monopolies, workers have far better choices about whom to work for, and how to negotiate wages.
Here's a simple example of the power of monopoly and oligarchy. The recent wage fixing kerfuffle over at google, apple, FB, and others resulting initially in depressed wages for workers. Upon breaking up that oligarchy, and putting those companies on notice ... what has happened to wages?
If I believe the pro-union folks here, then they have fallen dramatically, and workers are at a disadvantage in negotiations.
However, I believe in market economics, the invisible hand of the market, and see it in action here. Wages have risen dramatically, as the market distortion due to the oligarchy has been removed, and labor is free to discover its price.
Had there been a union ... this would not have happened. You would have a floor and a ceiling. More productive workers would not seek to increase their wages by working harder, or switching companies. Demand would be distorted.
If you want to be able to negotiate wages, you need leverage. Leverage in the form of a union is well understood, and has consequences for locales. Leverage in the form of demand (get multiple job offers, create a market making enterprise for selling your labor, select the highest/best offer).
The class action was done via antitrust mechanisms as I understand it[1][2][3]. If you want to assume that a class formation is a union, albeit a temporary one to effect good, I FULLY support that. This is how a union should work. It should come into being frictionlessly, and upon completion of its mission, or a specific timeout, it should be destroyed.
Otherwise we get the rent seeking behavior, corruption, etc. which appears to be the normal for unions.
Those "labor monopolies" were negotiated voluntarily in environments that were already actively hostile to unions. Right to Work laws interfere with the right to association idea that libertarian capitalism champions as a absolute good.
Paraphrasing that economic philosopher Inigo Montoya ... You use that phrase "negotiated voluntarily" ... I do not think it means what you think it means.
Right to work laws limit the power of unions to form labor monopolies, opening up the market for labor. You may form a union or not. You may join one, or not. But you can no longer coerce someone to pay dues/fees for something they do not wish to associate with.
That is, fundamentally, the breaking of a monopoly over labor. Everyone has an inherent right to negotiate on their own if they so choose. Or not, they can join the union if they so choose. But they are no longer coerced into funding activity that they may not wish for on their own behalf.
Right to work does exactly what it says on the label.
"Right to work" makes it illegal for unions to form exclusivity contracts with businesses. That denies them the ability to freely form contracts that every other type of organization is allowed.
If a business wants to hire people who aren't part of a union, then they shouldn't have signed a contract saying that they won't.
This is incorrect. Right to work, prevents a monopoly on labor that a business must consume via a union, from using its power to preserve its monopoly.
Previously, businesses, even if opposed in principle to a union forming, had little recourse but to deal with the labor monopoly once formed. NLRB specifically went after businesses opposed to union formation, or who wished to purchase labor on the free and open market.
They had little choice in signing of the contracts. Blaming them for acquiescing to unreasonable demands in order to avoid further material harm ... isnt ... a win, for anyone.
This specific action, that unions so happily crow about, costs employers more. Which drives them to look at investing in new sites where costs are lower, and automation. You are seeing exactly this in the rush to $15/hour areas.
1. People in a shop voluntarily associate with the union or not
2. If the shop hires non-union workers, the union workers stop working
3. Mgmt decides whether or not this is worth it to them to hire non-union workers
No one is coerced or forced into an involuntary association. A "union shop" is just a shorthand for the process above.
Incidentally, who is lobbies/bribes politicians for "right to work" etc.? Is it management or individual, non-organized workers? (If you think it's the latter I've got a bridge to sell you...). Why might management be interested in promoting the "right to work"? The interests don't seem to line up.
> No one is coerced or forced into an involuntary association
That is provably false in at least some states, because joining some professions in certain states required you to pay agency fees whether or not you chose to be a member of the union at all.
That's been the case since 1977, and was decided with __Abood v Detroit Board of Ed__[1], hich compelled teachers to pay union dues, no matter their stance on the union.
To whit:
> A Michigan statute authorizing union representation of local governmental employees permits an "agency shop" arrangement, whereby every employee represented by a union, even though not a union member, must pay to the union, as a condition of employment, a service charge equal in amount to union dues.
That issue is currently up for dispute in __Janus v American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31__[2]
> because joining some professions in certain states required you to pay agency fees whether or not you chose to be a member of the union at all.
You can't work at a private school or as a tutor or private instructor in Michigan without being part of the teacher's union? I dispute your characterization of the "profession" compelling union membership, at least in the case of teachers.
The Detroit Board of Education is a "shop", not a profession. Police officer would perhaps be a better illustration of your point, as one can't really be a "private police officer" but shrug the state has a total monopoly on that law-enforcement profession, so you've got more than unions to contend with there. (Why can't I start my own police department?)
You point out that I made a misrepresentation, which I did do by exclusion of a better example and citation.
In Harris v Quinn, the plaintiff quit work to care for a sick relative. Finding out that Illinois had a program to assist home health care workers to help defray the costs. She enrolled in the program and was awarded a grant to help her take care of her relative. According to the Service Employees International Union, this made her an employee of the state of Illinois. Because the state of Illinois was a "union shop", it meant that all people of this sort were de facto "home health care employees of the state", and all home health care workers who received grants of this sort were compelled to pay union dues, whether they were employed by the state, the individual to whom they were providing health care, or whomever else.
In this regard, anyone who the union deemed to be in the home health care profession, and who availed themselves of state assistance, were members of the union, and obligated to paying dues.
Management is not allowed to fire union people and hire non-union people in their place.
Once the union is created, nobody has any choice but to join it.
Thats the law. Once the union is voted in, they now represent all workers, and it is highly illegal to just decide to fire all the union people. There is nothing voluntary about that.
When a company agrees to a contract, they are expected to abide by the terms of that contract. Why should unions be disallowed from forming exclusivity contracts when every other type of organization is allowed to?
If a union is allowed to make such an exclusive contract, then management should be allowed to fire everyone for starting the union, before such a contract is made.
The rights work both ways. Either everyone should be allowed to make exclusive contracts, INCLUDING a contract that disallows unions, or nobody should be allowed to do so.
Employers can't fire people for being in unions. That's illegal.
Either everyone should be protected, ie you can neither be fired for being in a union or for NOT being in a union, or nobody should be able to be fired for these things.
> 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)
Union representation doesn't inherently flatten compensation. Managers and companies can still promote, hire, and fire employees. Also differences in compensation in non-union workplaces is typically determined by the employees negotiating skills more than merit.
> 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
Yea the point of unions is to have collective bargaining power, that power is sapped when workers don't participate in the collective part. Also a union is typically run by employees, and union leaders are elected. If things are bad you have the power to change things. You're much more empowered to change things in your union than you are to actually change things in the running of your corporation.
> 3) That the union, having sole negotiation power for all workers, takes kickbacks from the company for lower compensation for all workers.
Unions do have a tendency to corrupt with age, mostly because corporations who are saddled with a union typically find it easier to corrupt its leaders than to actually negotiate. I'd argue that even in a corrupt union you're better represented than without a union. You at least have the structure in place to do things like strike and organize. Often when union leaders are corrupt or just not effective workers will take action outside of the union. Most of the recent teacher strikes were "wildcat" actions taken without the union's consent.
> 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.
This is the same argument people make against raising the minimum wage. "Conform to exploitation or be replaced". A lot of workers worry that fighting for better lives will lead to worse lives, like losing your job, or your company going under. This isn't really shown to happen in reality, but corporations keep pushing the point.
This entire comment reeks of corporate propaganda. Unions aren't a silver bullet against worker exploitation, but having union representation is a hell of a lot better than not.
> Union representation doesn't inherently flatten compensation. Managers and companies can still promote, hire, and fire employees. Also differences in compensation in non-union workplaces is typically determined by the employees negotiating skills more than merit.
If unions dont get a say on who gets fired or not, they have no power. The company could retaliate at any point on an employee making a demand, and the union can only stop it by threatening to strike. Thus, the union is an association of power to control who gets fired or hired.
The fact that the union and the company sit down together to make a guideline can only mean workers get shafted: neither the union leaders nor the company will lose in a voluntary arrangement.
> Yea the point of unions is to have collective bargaining power, that power is sapped when workers don't participate in the collective part. Also a union is typically run by employees, and union leaders are elected. If things are bad you have the power to change things. You're much more empowered to change things in your union than you are to actually change things in the running of your corporation.
Its a structure of power like any other, but you are missing out on many things: that workers that havent joined yet do not get a vote. So unions have this clever economic way to increase their wages: prohibiting others from doing their job. Thats why unions that are powerful advocate for higher minimum wages (that dont affect them directly) and tariffs.
In any case, saying a union only works if it is applied by forced unanimity should be a red flag for a certain kind of organization.
> This is the same argument people make against raising the minimum wage. "Conform to exploitation or be replaced". A lot of workers worry that fighting for better lives will lead to worse lives, like losing your job, or your company going under. This isn't really shown to happen in reality, but corporations keep pushing the point.
The unions make the same argument! Because they want all the workers in a field, for all companies, to unite!
They do know that the power of a local union is very limited if another company is not bound by it.
> This entire comment reeks of corporate propaganda. Unions aren't a silver bullet against worker exploitation, but having union representation is a hell of a lot better than not.
More like reeks of someone from a country that has constitutional protections for unions and have worst productivity, highest prices, high unemployement, tariffs and low purchasing power.
I wonder if it is the case that society can benefit from having organizations installed in economic instrumentation that act as a bulwark against the creep of the economic sphere. Perhaps market forces alone a detrimental to well-being and organizations that are in opposition to those are a necessary function of a larger social economy.
>I wonder if it is the case that society can benefit from having organizations installed in economic instrumentation that act as a bulwark against the creep of the economic sphere.
We do. Social mores have been doing this, for good and ill, for basically forever.
Part of the pernicious effects of neoliberal Thatcherism has been the slow removal of the idea that companies have any social role or responsibility aside from maximizing shareholder value.
The ethic has crept in everywhere and it has had seriously destructive effects for important public institutions whose primary social value is non-economic (such as journalism, the arts, or academia).
Many of you points are solid reasons why mandatory union membership/dues can cause problems.
However this is quite clearly false:
> 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.
Unions can be quite economically productive and at their best can provide productivity bonuses to companies that work with them.
The problem is balancing the power between the union and the company to get cooperation and increases in productivity. When Unions get too powerful, they start looking out for their own interests rather than those of their members, to the detriment of the workers and the company. When companies become to powerful, they can suppress union membership and the collective negotiating power of their workers, to the detriment of the workers and the market.
Unions in effect are powerful only when they can change their income without affecting their productivity. Voluntary unions can achieve productivity gains by being another form of organization, that I grant and thats why I see value in freedom of association.
But that is not the union people imagine or want when bernie Sanders calls for them. They imagine the power of changing wages at will.
> 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)
Why does everybody always assume that they will always be the overachievers? This seems to be a particular fault in the HN readership.
The problem is that you WILL have some off times. You will get sick and you will age. You will be "merely average" at some point.
Should the company be able to fire you after 20 years because someone new might be more productive?
This was far more critical in places like the steel mills where the work itself guaranteed that you would get sick. "Nobody ever retires from the car shop" was one of the mantras at Bethlehem Steel--you wound up dead of something caused by working around toxic crap all your life.
You are missing the point: when wages are negotiated by power, productivity is a secondary goal if any.
As soon as productivity departs wages, you will see it go to any direction, and most likely, down. And if productivity goes down, you better be damn sure wages are going down as well.
> Should the company be able to fire you after 20 years because someone new might be more productive?
That will be desired if by union negotiation you are forced to pay both equally. But if you allow for different wages that can be re-negotiated at any point.
This is a cartoonishly naive idea of the operations of a union.
1) Unions set wage minimums and working conditions. You're free to negotiate for more. Underachieving workers receive more, and overachieving workers also receive more because the floor for their negotiations are raised.
2) Employees who do not like the operations of their union have a democratic stake in changing it, or can run for leadership positions themselves. Without a union, their only option for a grievance is to work elsewhere, which is not always feasible (location, family, accrued benefits).
3) Workers have skin in the game and union dues to pay. It's not unheard of for workers to threaten union leadership with non-payment to force a radical leadership change, and there's always the more measured approach of union elections.
4) This is a critical mass problem. There was no decrease in productivity when unionized workplaces were the standard. Without unions you have skyrocketing productivity but wage stagnation. Eventually the wage stagnation turns into a drag on productivity, but in the meantime the company gets rich. It depends on what you prioritize.
EDIT: patmcc has a much better response than my own.
Each union has its own organizational structures, rules, and contracts that can sometimes including a ban on union members negotiating for higher pay for themselves. None of the unions that I am familiar with have such a restriction except for one union for civil servants.
> 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.