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Comment by Pfhreak | Hacker News Reader

Where does the money from to fund those amenities? The surplus generated from their wage labor. You can pay someone $300,000 a year and expect to make $400,000 from their contributions.

It can absolutely be the case the workers are well treated and still be losing their surplus value.

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As I replied in another comment, the moral justification for unions is to prevent mistreatment of workers, not to transfer as much of the wealth created by a company to its employees as possible.

I'm not sure who defines 'the moral justification for unions' but I see a moral justification just from balancing the power dynamic between the company and the individual worker. Negotiating as a single worker against a company one has profound disadvantages.

> prevent mistreatment of workers, not to transfer as much of the wealth created by a company to its employees as possible.

The wealth is created by the workers, not the company. And some would argue that keeping too large of a share of that wealth is, in fact, a mistreatment of workers.

Moreover, I'm finding this notion that some economic actors have more "moral" right to a big slice of the profit-pie than others really hard to pin down. As in, it sure seems like the idea collapses as soon as you breathe in its direction, unless I'm missing something big.

[EDIT] that is, I don't follow why it's fine (presumably) for companies to seek to maximize returns, negotiating as a large block of people pooling their labor and capital, but not for workers to do that.

I own a business. I have undertaken lots of work and risk to get this business off the ground. Why should someone else, who has risked nothing, be entitled to anything other than a reasonable work environment and wages that both parties agree to if I decide to hire them?

Why shouldn't they find a way to negotiate from a stronger position and gain a higher price for their time, if they can? Wouldn't you, negotiating a contract for your businesses services with another? Entitled's got nothing to do with it.

If unions are just about extracting higher wages and not about combatting injustice, then, IMO, labor organizing should not be protected by law, since it's desired end is to use the threat of financial harm to force companies and individuals to enter into arrangements that they would not obtain otherwise. Should a company's suppliers enjoy legal protection so that they can band together for the purpose of using threat of financial harm to extract higher prices from the company and preventing the company from doing business with other suppliers?

There's an information imbalance. Free markets only function correct with complete information. You as an employer have access to data on market trends that I as an employee do not. One function of unions is to remove that imbalance, either by removing the ability to negotiate entirely, or by providing employees with more complete information. This leads to a more efficient labor market. Presumably an efficient allocation of labor is what you want, right?

Employees don't ever look at job boards?

Unions require a moral justification for the legal protections they enjoy because they are a cartel of employees who use the threat of financial harm to prevent employers and individual workers from freely entering into mutually beneficial work arrangements. Generally speaking, some special justification is required to curtail the freedom of an individual or group in order to benefit some other individual or group. In the case of unions, that justification is that some employers held so much power in their relationship with employees that they were able to make the employees suffer to an extent that we find unacceptable. The justification was not merely that there was an extra 10% of salary that could be extracted from the company.

Just because some companies choose to be nice does not mean that they don't still maintain an unequal amount of power.

Similarly, just because some jobs produce more value doesn't mean the companies arent otherwise misbehaving.

You are assuming that companies somehow hold more power in negotiating with their employees. But it's not at all clear to me that that's the case. Both parties are able to walk away from negotiations and fulfill their needs with other parties. There is a symmetry there that speaks against there being any power imbalance. What is the mechanism by which you think companies wield more power than employees?

That is one moral justification. Parent just provided another.

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