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Comment by twblalock | Hacker News Reader

Unions shot themselves in the foot here. Some of the new construction projects would have been run by union shops. Now, they won't happen at all. Net result: fewer union jobs than there could have been.

At some point, the unions will need to realize that stuff is going to get done with or without them. They can be part of the process, or not. If they are part of the process, they get some jobs out of it. This should have been a no-brainer.

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Also, support for unions is waning. Here in Philadelphia, union support is at an all time low. They were rendered toothless in recent elections for the first time ever, and a series of bad press (arson, assault, and destruction of property by union members) and continued ties to organized crime have worn thin sympathies.

I also imagine that in difficult economies like ours, the "right" to a job or work over someone else is not looked at favorably when so many are un/under-employed.

At this point, unions seem to be the only ones around here that still support unions around here.

50 years ago, they could have gotten away with this.

Now, the demand for housing is so high that the unions can only delay the inevitable.

Ironically, the NIMBYs and the unions have ended up on the same side of the housing issue. Most union members I know would be unhappy about being on the side of the privileged and established, and against the working-class people, for whom home affordability is of primary importance in CA and NY.

>Now, the demand for housing is so high that the unions can only delay the inevitable.

The unions agree with you here, that's the whole point. The demand is so high that the developers will soon agree with the unions' requests in exchange for a slightly smaller profit.

No, the developers will agree with everyone else except the NIMBYs and the unions, because union workers are a minority of workers, and they don't do a better job than non-unionized workers. In fact, they often do a worse job, because unions protect bad workers who could not survive outside of a union.

The days when unions could get their way in these kinds of matters through outright bullying are long gone, and good riddance to them!

For good reason. They prevent accountability among police: http://reason.com/blog/2014/08/14/police-unions-produce-rule....

They also prevent educational innovation: https://www.amazon.com/Special-Interest-Teachers-Americas-Sc... and pr event urban schools from even functioning.

As the topic article points out, construction unions are attacking the housing supply.

Should it be a surprise that anyone who pays attention is unhappy with unions?

I generally agree with what you are saying, but I should point out that private-sector and public-sector unions are very different animals.

Maybe its because the public looks down upon unions that the middle class is slowly sliding into destitution? [1] [2]

I'm definitely not a fan of unions, but besides the movement to push minimum wage up to $15/hr across the country, I don't see any organized groups continuing to push the salary threshold at which overtime pay is required, reducing the number of hours in a work week (which is f___ing insane we're still working ~40 hours a week with how much productivity has grown since the 60's), and so forth.

Either unions or political activists must fight for these labor protections; pick your poison.

[1] http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/12/09/the-american-middl...

[2] http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/12/09/459087477/...

The 40 hour work week isn't a productivity related number... It's a cultural construction born from early 20th century union political efforts.

For instance in Denmark, the work week is typically 32 hours and has been this way for decades... Works fine for them... Not sure how well it would work in a culture like America where working as hard as possible is considered a good thing... Regardless of how stupidly obvious it is that this screws up work life balance, individual stress levels and by extension individual health, in the country with the most fucked up health care system in the western world...

37, not 32.

http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/observatories/eurwork/compara...

There are particularly many part-time workers in Denmark, and flexibility of labour market is high (including close to zero protection from layoffs), and this has resulted in Danes working fewer hours per worker than other Western nations (1490 hours per year per employee on the average) but on the other hand the labour marker participation rate is very high, so Danes work more hours per capita than any Western nation.

When I interned for the Federal Government in Canada my wages were for 37.5 hours per week (7.5 hours per day, 30 min unpaid lunch was the implied structure).

It's the same 37.5 hours with all office jobs where I live, Finland. Blue-collar jobs are 8 hours per day (1 hour unpaid lunch implied), they then accumulate more holiday days so that the annual working time is roughly the same.

> The 40 hour work week ... [is] a cultural construction born from early 20th century union political efforts.

This is unabashed union propaganda.

Which isn't to say that unions weren't involved, but there were plenty of other factors involved. I refer you to work such as The Shortening of the American Work Week: An economic and historical analysis of its context, causes, and consequences (Whaples, 1990) which place the shift in a broader context of "wages, gender, ethnicity, religion, age, urbanization, unionization, and legislation" issues, to say nothing of "industrial structure and technology".

One should treat it like the pronouncement that Al Gore created the internet: definitely give the unions some credit, while taking their self-serving praise with a few grains of salt.

The $15 minimum wage push by unions is shockingly unethical when they also include a clause allowing for a wage to be negotiated lower than minimum wage as part of a union contact.

It's basically an effort to force the lowest paid most vulnerable workers to have no choice but to join a union if they want to be able to work at all.

Your own source [1] says the middle class is not slipping into destitution at all (look at the graphs, not the mood affiliation). It's slipping into the upper class. We have become wealthier than ever before, it's just that some of us have experienced higher growth rates of wealth.

> We have become wealthier than ever before, it's just that some of us have experienced higher growth rates of wealth.

Wealth inequality in the US is at its greatest levels ever since recording began six decades ago; the top 3 percent of Americans control 50 percent of the country's wealth.

You aren't disagreeing with me at all.

I think any discussion of the good and bad side of unions needs to distinguish between public and private sector ones.

In the private sector, union negotiations are naturally constrained by the knowledge that if the company isn't profitable, everybody loses. I think there are cases in the private sector where unions make a lot of sense (e.g. mining towns where there's one dominant employer).

In the public sector that doesn't apply. The union's incentive is to demand all that it can. You're not going to put the government out of business.

Unless it's Detroit. Or Puerto Rico.... or....?

I suggest you watch John Oliver piece on Puerto Rico.

Detroit is still there. And so are unions.

That's exactly correct. Public unions aren't as easily accountable to the market. The incentives are disaligned. While private union incentives are generally aligned with business except in more extreme cases such as subsidized industries.

There is also the point that most of the big battles have been won, now. The workplace is incredibly safer than it was 100 years ago. Workplace and wage laws are much more mature. There is welfare for the sick and the aged (to varying degrees depending on country). Apart from squabbling over the exact dollar rate for work, there isn't much in the way of big ticket items for unions to get solidarity over.

My own personal experience with unions:

    'I have a wage problem I need your help with'
    "You're only a part-time employee. We have to rate the full-time employees more, and we don't have the resources to help you, so no"
    'But I pay the same as anyone else. There is no discount for being a part-timer'
    "(crickets)"

So much for solidarity.

They obviously are a part of the process. And, assuming this stuff will get done with or without them, their strategy is the right one - get as much as possible out of it. In this case it's wage guarantees.

People who kill the process entirely cannot be considered a part of it. The next laws that pass regarding this issue will circumvent the unions. If they wanted a seat at the table, they would not have taken such extreme measures.

There is a difference between hardball negotiating, and destroying the very thing the negotiation pertains to.

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