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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

Union, Yes.

The US has weak unions because labor law enforcement is so weak. No administration has done much about that in decades. 11% of US employees belong to a union. 32% in Canada. Read "Confessions of a Union Buster" for background.

In theory, whether to organize a union in the US is entirely up to the workers. The employer has no say in the matter. Few people even know that. Employers try hard to maintain that ignorance and keep workers from organizing.

In many European countries, McDonalds is unionized. The SEIU is trying to unionize it in the US.

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Unions are implemented differently in the US and elsewhere. IMHO the case law around unions in the US sets up a perverse incentive structure that results in an antagonistic relationship between capital and labor, ex: Supreme Court ruling requires that unions protect all of their members from firing, even the obviously terrible ones, this has resulted in huge inefficiencies for workers AND capital alike. Other countries like Germany have better union implementations, such that the union usually has a seat on the board of directors and is able to better set company policy in a non antagonistic non zero sum way.

> Supreme Court ruling requires that unions protect all of their members from firing, even the obviously terrible ones

What is this ruling?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_of_fair_representation

> Supreme Court ruling requires that unions protect all of their members from firing, even the obviously terrible ones, this has resulted in huge inefficiencies for workers AND capital alike.

This is one of the reasons I never liked unions - they protect the low performers and smooth out the pay scale regardless of performance. I believe in them now though. They are a sorely needed check between capital and labor. The concentration of capital has gotten out of control. Unions force some of the distribution back to the workers.

Let's not forget that unions can also become detrimental to employees' working environment. In France unions are very powerful and unionists when going on strike, prevent non-unionists from working, and retaliate against folks who do not agree with their agenda - this goes against individual employee freedom and becomes another form of coercion. And unionists, no matter how piss poor a job they do, can never be fired (in theory they can, but in practice it never happens).

> And unionists, no matter how piss poor a job they do, can never be fired (in theory they can, but in practice it never happens).

Do you mean union leaders or regular members? Because if it's the latter, then you have a counterexample in every 100% unionized company that ever fired anyone.

> Do you mean union leaders or regular members? Because if it's the latter, then you have a counterexample in every 100% unionized company that ever fired anyone

This is an interesting point. In countries with well functioning high organization such as Sweden (but unlike France) the key to the situation is the peace agreement (yes it's literally called that) between unions and employers.

Basically: unions promise to work during the whole contract period. So when strikes happen, it's when the contracts are renegotiated, which happens e.g. every two years. If the parts can't reach a new agreement, unions go on strike. Unions don't just strike willy nilly in the middle of the contract period. Employers actually quite like this: it gives them stability and a competitive edge over countries where production might be disrupted by a strike at any point.

Strikes that happen in the middle of a contract period are called "wild strikes" and are usually not sanctioned by unions. These are very rare, compared to e.g. Denmark and France.

The union's power is tremendous when it's actually allowed to use it. For example, it typically blockades everyone from working. Even if a non-union member would want to work, the employer usually doesn't dare letting them. And even if the employer would want to keep operating with other employers, the union usually gets help from all other unions to ensure the employer can't do anything (deliveries don't work, garbage collection doesn't happen etc).

One example of the power of Swedish unions is that Sweden has no minimum wage law. Sure an employer could pay less than the union rate by why wouldn't the worker go to a union shop instead?

> Sure an employer could pay less than the union rate by why wouldn't the worker go to a union shop instead

They couldn't. They would be blockaded. Unions demand that all shops pay union rate, regardless of whether employers of the other shop are happy to not be union. So unions decide rates for all employers and all employees.

He means "delegates", kinda like union leader but not exactly.

But they can absolutely be fired, they are simply a protected class of workers, meaning they cannot be fired because of their delegate status, but can be because of anything else. It's very similar to the US protected classes of workers.

A very simple Google search will show you they do get fired from time to time, e.g just 3 month ago: http://www.courrier-picard.fr/32021/article/2017-05-22/le-de...

The guy got fired for cause after 26 years in the company, because of a coffee break that lasted too long. Due to his protected status, a court has to validate the firing, and in this case they did.

@ekianjo is simply dwelling on the common French entrepreneurs narrative that the law is anti-business, etc.

Its not because you find an exception it means the rule does not generally apply.

More specifically union leaders, who have the whole weight of the union behind them.

That's the incentive to form unions.

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