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Comment by empath75 | Hacker News Reader

> There are guys that my brother would love to promote

Manager complains about unions. I’m absolutely stunned.

Does that make the account no longer valid? His problem is not "lazy union members," he has folks he thinks are getting screwed over that he would fight for a promotion for.

And yet presumably the union would be quite happy with across-the-board raises, so the complaint tries to casually gloss over the implied conflict with management about who deserves a more limited supply of raises.

I'm sorry, are you suggesting there should be no pay differentiation for performance at all?

No, I'm suggesting that management and the union seem to disagree on who exactly has the higher performance in this situation.

The only union experience I have was that the whole concept of performance based compensation was something to fight to the teeth (in France, 12y ago). The pay structure was almost exclusively seniority-based.

No, you aren’t arguing the union has a different idea who has higher performance. You are arguing the case that everyone should be paid more regardless of performance.

No, I'm not. I raised the "across-the-board raises" example to point out that the union obviously would not be opposed to more money for everyone, so there must be a reason they oppose more money for only the specific people chosen by management.

Why should the union decide who gets raises, rather than the manager whose job it is to monitor and grade the performance of his employees?

Well the manager could decide that the best performance is the people who does their work and don't make a fuss. Those who go to work even when they are sick, do a little extra without expecting compensation. If you reward those "performing" employees you get everyone trying to do the same. The reward then might even be very small but it would be presented as "this year the general pay increase will be 0.69%, but you have broken your back for the company so you will get almost double that, 1.18%". Just to create a divide and something to strive for. Im aware that this is the American Way and as a swede we value the collective more, as a culture. But a divide work force is an obedient work force.

When it comes to Swedish soccer players, it looks like the top players are valued 5x more than the average.

Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/867492/leading-swedish-n...

I worked with a software team once where the manager let the team divide up the raise pool. And they didn't divide it evenly. There was consensus about who deserved more each year. Of course that could still be a cultural value of working long hours or working when sick.

If the management gets to decide who gets raises, why wouldn't they give it to themselves. You've never seen companies do layoffs right before the end of the quarter so management can get raises, and then immediately go on a hiring spree when the new quarter starts so they can get the work done again?

I haven't, that sounds like a massive waste of time and energy, so those managers are doing a very bad job if their goal is to get stuff done. Most well functioning companies that I've seen act very much the opposite. I could believe that some companies are crappy enough to do that, though.

Their goal isn't to get stuff done. No one in management other than maybe founder's have a goal to get stuff done. Their goal is to make money and getting stuff done is one possible way to do that. Well run companies manage to properly align the interests of the company and the management and the workers all towards those same goals.

A lot of companies are not well run

He's talking about a promotion. Presumably, that would come with a raise. But not every member of the union would be "promoted".

I think you missed my point, which is that management and the union seem to disagree on who exactly most deserves a promotion.

if unions were not actively trying to sabotage their own companies most of the time, maybe the sentiment would be different. There are several cases when unions actively push to destroy companies just to get short term benefits.

Why would an organized labor force try to sabotage the company they work for? If their company goes bankrupt, they all lose their jobs. I've yet to see a union contract that guarantees the type of golden parachutes that executives routinely line up for themselves (and only for themselves) when their firm goes bust or they start to run for the door.

In general, when a company fails, the rank and file have to find new jobs. Executives, on the other hand, never have to work again. We observe this trend over and over again (unionized workforce or not).

Given this trend, which side is more likely to be the one that blows the whole thing up?

Unions: we think we are getting screwed over and want better pay and a safe work place.

Company: that seem expensive we will shut down and move the capital to another town and try to hire people that will accept this state of affairs.

Company fails

Innocent bystander: how could the union be so evil!?

Are contractors, consultants, etc also trying to "sabotage companies" by negotiating for the best possible contracts for themselves?

When businesses do it, we say "it's just business." Not when workers do, though.

If that’s the case then please list them. I can find many more examples of executives destroying companies and employee livelihoods for short term gain.

> There are several cases when unions actively push to destroy companies just to get short term benefits.

And there are many-fold more cases where managers and execs have ruthlessly driven companies into the ground for their own personal short term gain. That's unequivocally worse than workers trying to protect their livelihoods.

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