The New Yorker has formed a union

Unions are permitted to refuse representation to non-members, as long as they don't include them in the bargaining unit. If they do, then they are required to represent them.

So far, unions have ignored this and pretended that they are forced to represent non-members, because it makes it easier for them to "demonstrate" that they have to have exclusive representation over all members of the bargaining unit. In other words, they intentionally sabotage unions in right-to-work states, because they don't want to admit that they have the legal ability to engage in members-only contracts in right-to-work states, because then they'd have to admit that they have the ability to engage in members-only-contracts in all states.

The easy alternative is for unions in right-to-work states to require membership (and fees and dues) for inclusion in the bargaining unit. They would then have no obligation to represent people who don't join the union or don't pay fees and dues.

You could say the exact same thing about wages in rural areas vs urban areas.

> 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.

The problem is, the best response I can come up with is "tough luck, find another job". Which could be the same response one could give to someone unhappy with their (non-unionized) working conditions.

It's hard to take this last comment seriously when all that's been provided is 15 year old anecdotal evidence about wage rates and an article about income equality which itself poses a different explanation for its cause.

Idaho has shown healthy growth and Boise has been the fastest growing city in United States. In general economic outlook in Boise is much better than a holes that Oakland or Stockton have become.

I'll hold my opinion on California ;)

It is not propaganda to state very basic economics here. You budget X for a years wages for your team of N people, on average paying them Y = (X/N)/12 per month. They form a union, and demand a wage increase of delta per person. So, now, you are paying Y*(1 + delta). X hasn't changed. Number of months in a year hasn't changed. What can possibly change to allow the company to do this?

N. The number of people employed.

So yeah, you can get fewer workers more money. What are you going to tell the folks who were let go, in order to make room in the budget to pay this?

This is where politics starts rearing its ugly head, and you see people referred to as "evil capitalists". You know, the ones who know they can't really raise X, without directly materially impacting the companies bottom line.

Their choices are hard. 1) let people go. 2) raise prices. 3) report lower profits (assuming profits), or increase debt to cover.

Which of these 3 options would you pick?

In recent years, thanks to globalization, a 4th option has opened. 4) move work to a lower cost locale.

It is not rocket science to understand that this has been what has been happening since the early 90s.

Now with the push to 15, as it is sometimes called ... the $15/hour minimum wage, a new option, thanks to tech, is opening up. 5) automate as much as possible, and reduce the workforce to keep costs low.

So, in all those nice locales where the wage is being pushed to 15$/hour, companies are exploring how quickly they can automate those jobs out of existence.

None of this is propaganda, all of it is reality.

https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/observatories/eurwork/articl...

If we took a snapshot of capitalism in the 19th century, with children working in mines, ridiculously long hours, and so on, we could similarly say "capitalism is terrible because x, y, z", but that was just a particular implementation at that time.

I'm not advocating for or against unions, just trying to make sure we're arguing for or against them for valid reasons.

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

Are you saying that growth is the only legitimate business goal?

I'm not sure that's true in Germany. (It does seem to be the general trend, I'll agree.)

It's a great idea to older workers. Every union I've been part of sacrificed the benefits of younger or future workers for the benefit of the older ones.

> 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.

Why would we pay a subscription for a magazine full of ads?

I'd rather support independent journalists, writers, etc than those working for establishment media. The only reason writers/journalists needed media companies was because they needed a delivery platform. Now they have the internet, maybe they should strike out on their own.

There are differences in how this works between public and private employers — the changes your mom is concerned about are specific to public employers.

For folks like your mom, teachers, and other public employees, that case may fundamentally change the nature of the profession. The folks finding and pushing the case have a pretty transparent agenda to break public unions.

It is a nuanced issue that tends to draw lots of fire. There are certainly lots of problems with public sector costs (mostly driven by stratospheric healthcare cost increases) that unions have been able to protect members from. If you work as a rank and file, non-political public employee, not unionizing is an incredibly stupid thing to do, but people will do anyway to make their extra 2% a week.

Or put another way, your mother is concerned that she will no longer receive money forcibly taken from others through the exercise of state power.

When a union fails to represent its members, they should form another union. If they do so, they will be forced to renegotiate their contracts - which allows the employer to influence a "best contract" thereby choosing a winning union; thus a union can't fall too far out with the employer for fear of being supplanted by a new union. Even though the employee remains the voting piece, they lose an awful lot of power.

The Janus ruling will only impact fee payers in "right to work" states. These union members are more politically diverse, and a large percentage do not want any portion of their dues going to liberal or Democratic candidates (even though they will continue to receive equal representation and benefits from the Union).

My situation is such that the union together with the employer negotiate a base agreement. It might detail things like making sure you received compensation for overtime, what the requirements for termination are, rights in regards to parental leave, minimum annual wage adjustments, etc. My country has very little legislation in regards to workers rights, because we've traditionally had very strong unions instead, so workers rights could be mandated through agreements rather than law. To give you an ideal, the standard collective bargaining agreement within my industry is a few hundred pages. If you are not part of such an agreement, it is instead on you to make sure that your employment contract covers all those aspects.

The benefit for the employer is that they have to deal with less legislation, don't have to negotiate a complex contract with every employee (i.e. we already agree on the vast majority of issues, and can focus on the few things where I want individual adjustment), and finally, as long as the employer follows the agreement, the workers through their union agree not to go on strike.

Now, to your question, just because you have an agreement through your union does not mean that you cannot exceed that agreement. You can certainly negotiate a higher salary, for example. It only ensures the minimum level.

There's plenty of unionised workplaces (especially when it comes to professionals) that have large variation in pay, and there's other examples where pay is based on some formula with no variation (this is vastly more common when it comes to labourers and tradesmen).

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.)

I've never had to contact my union (though I've benefited from it indirectly), but my sense is that they're useful as advocates for their members interests, especially in larger organizations. Often, this can even be for simple "common sense" proposals that are not controversial, but are difficult for individual employees to make happen. Navigating the bureaucracy of large organizations is not easy, and unions help with this (by creating an additional bureaucracy admittedly, so they're not a perfect solution).

The best way to think about a union is using the collective power of workers to set a floor on wages and labor conditions, not a ceiling. And best of all, they're democratically controlled, so they're members can create whatever structures and rules they think best serve their interests.

The questions you are asking likely have different answers for every union out there. The pros are collective bargaining. The cons are variable.

Cons: Union dues to pay for the above, possibility for corruption

It's basically like joining an additional, tiny government.

Some unions have rules where you can get more pay based on performance, holding certain certifications, or experience. Other unions have rules where pay is related to tenure, and employees compensation is directly proportional to their tenure.

The concept of white-collar unions is really interesting. I know a lot of white-collar workers think unions would mean that their crappy coworkers would abuse the system to make the same money while doing just enough work to avoid being fired.

I can understand the argument behind that, but I think unionization could help certain white-collar workers force their employers to support changes that improve quality of life and reduce burnout and stress.

For example, a sysadmin union might be able to dictate only a certain number of on-call nights a month, or prevent companies from calling sysadmins while they are on vacation. A developer union could mandate a certain number of hours a developer could work before getting comp time or paid overtime. A union could give developers who are worried about what they are being asked to do might be illegal or immoral the ability to say no without being punished (think the VW scandal).

A lot of white collar fields already have a body performing the role of a defacto union because they have licensing bodies. I can see why techy types don't have a licensing body, since techy types are a bit more rebellious than engineers as a whole, and we haven't had any 'major' disasters to force regulation of the profession. That being said developers are constantly working in environments that hurt their productivity and the quality of their work and at some point we need a way to enforce better working standards on organizations.

The biggest "upside" is that there is usually more stability in terms of work rules, benefits and compensation, and when there are changes, you know about them. There are defined work rules, disciplinary procedures, etc. Your health insurance doesn't randomly change every year, etc.

The union itself is at least a nominally democratic institution. The downsides are that shitty employees can work the system. And just like how you have bad IT, HR or other teams, some unions suck. Dealing with a shitty union is difficult.

In general, if there are a bunch of people around you doing the same things, the company is making money, and you'd like long tenure, a union probably is a net benefit. If you work for a mega-org or .gov, it's essential. If you're in a high-growth business, or a profession where you expect to bounce from employer to employer, it's not a good value.

Everyone on HN is a 10x employee making a $500k/year, so it's not a good value in that situation either. ;)

However, I did have to sit though the day long session where the union told everyone how they were there for the members and what that meant in terms of their interaction with the employer. Most of it was around insuring that I knew what things the union had negotiated and that I should not feel bad about demanding the employer honor their commitment when that happened. For example there were two 20 minute breaks (10AM and 2PM), there was 50 minutes for lunch including time to get to and from the lunch area, and if I was asked to work more than 40 hours a week it had to be paid at 1.5x my hourly rate, weekends at 2x my hourly rate, and holidays 3x my hourly rate. There were medical benefits that I pretty much ignored, and a formal grievance process if I felt I was being asked to do something outside my job scope.

The big message was that if my manager didn't live up to their obligations, the big union would make sure that the manager was made to understand what they could and could not do.

Every other job I've held I was not in a union. The difference in experience was pretty stark. Managers at non-union companies had no problem with intimidating employees to work additional hours to meet an unreasonable deadline that they had set, I've known managers who played head games on their direct reports to instill confusion and obedience, and have known managers who have gotten away with grossly unfair pay discrepancies between people they liked and people they disliked with little to no regard to their performance at the company.

Is it all managers? No of course not. And I have been extremely fortunate that if things were ridiculous and I couldn't influence change within the company I could leave and work somewhere else. That is much easier in the technical/engineering world than it is in a more trades oriented type of job.

On your question of wages, of the unions I've been in direct contact with, and the ones we've read about their negotiations in the news (Transit, Teachers, SEIU, etc) the wages are negotiated. You get what you get. Although at least some people augment their salary with overtime (for example a member of law enforcement providing security for an event).

Unions can also create definitions of when someone can be fired, which would be different for tech workers in California. Most employment in tech is "At Will" which means you can quit for any reason at any time and they can fire you at any time for nearly any reason. Unions often replace 'At Will' with contractual terms which define what it takes to fire someone and what their recourse is.

One of the most amazing things about unions I found in my career is that talking about organizing one at a tech company will get you fired faster than having relations with the CEO's spouse. It is a really touchy subject.

The way we see it, unions are best used when there is a power discrepancy between employer and employee. In the end, your value as an employee is how much it costs to replace you. Simple as that.

So if you are educated in a specialized field, you have bargaining power (and you don't need a union). If you are working in a more generalist area, you have none whatsoever - it is an illusion (exception being if the demographics means 100% employment).

What the union does is of course to band generalists together so they have strike power. That sucks for the company. But what the Danish unions tend to do is demand eduction, lifting the generalist work into a more specialized position. You can always get good at a job.

This means that the company may have to pay a more expensive salary, but get a much improved worker and/or product. Paying 50% extra for twice the productivity is a good investments, even if you have to pay for some of the education of the former generalist.

So rather than just demand more pay, the unions demand more education and higher standards. They also demand better pay, of course - but in the end they are interested in many members working rather than few members getting ridiculous payments.

Mature unions are good for the economy. Corrupt or immature unions can be a terrible ball-and-chain for a society.

Usually, the best pros of the best unions are: Strong representatives negotiating for better PTO, healthcare, work practices, wages/salaries, etc. Some recourse besides quitting or suing if your manager is treating you badly.

The cons can be: Fixed salary ranges and benefits - want more money as a star employee? Want to try to negotiate a different benefits package? Too bad, you get what the union negotiated. Pay and promotions may be based on time in role rather than productivity or skills. It's usually difficult to fire poor workers.

Essentially, unions foster an environment of distrust between management and workers, so they generally try to remove any way for management to affect your work. Management evaluation of who is a good and bad worker is not to be trusted, since they are presumed to want to use that power to stop the union. Management is less encouraged to care about giving the workers a fair shake - that's the union's job now, management isn't expected to push for anything but more money for themselves.

* 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.

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...

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.

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.

Heh.

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."

> 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.