Hacker News Reader

Comment by baron816 | Hacker News Reader

I disagree. Professional sports leagues are both monopolies and monopsonies (meaning they’re the only ones hiring those specialized athletes). So the market dynamics are very different from that of tech. If you’re a NFL linebacker, you don’t really have an option to switch leagues if you’re unhappy with how it’s run. If you’re a software engineer, you can switch companies very easily.

View on HN

If this was the only reason to have a union, you would only expect unions to exist in sports leagues that have a monopoly. Yet that isn't what we see in practice. The WNBA and the MLS both have unions. The NBA G League is moving to form a union as we speak. These are all leagues that face stiff competition from abroad and it is common for American athletes to go play in those foreign leagues. However that competition between employers isn't enough to give the athletes the negotiating power that they can command with a union.

what if apple, google, intel, adobe, pixar, lucasfilms all conspire to suppress your wages? great you can switch to another company that doesn't pay you your worth.

https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-tech-jo...

It’s already illegal for them to do that. The solution to collusion by firms is not collusion by workers.

what's the worst thing that happens to a big business by breaking the law? paying a small fine?

I brought up professional sports unions in the context of having a highly competitive group of workers who make large salaries, and that a union can still be useful in that environment as far as negotiations.

That professional sports are monopolies and monopsonies isn't particularly relevant to this point.

The fact that tech workers can find a job elsewhere is even more motiviation to unionize because you have even more bargaining power and there are smaller risks.

> That professional sports are monopolies and monopsonies isn't particularly relevant to this point.

What are you talking about. That’s entirely relevant. What’s not relevant is that the workers are rich. Market dynamics are the entirety of what determines your compensation and working conditions. Being able to leave for a competitor is pretty all the leverage you’re ever going to have.

If that was true, Kickstarter wouldn't have fought it as hard as they did. The workers just gained additional leverage. What's the evidence that these workers have zero additional leverage?

There’s no evidence that they do have additional leverage either. I could argue that they acted against their own self interest in many ways, but still don’t know for sure how things will work out in one way or another.

There's absolutely evidence that unions increase wages. 100%.

I suppose you could argue that's happening out of employer generosity? And that they're more generous when there's a union?

> There's absolutely evidence that unions increase wages. 100%.

Does that hold for unprofitable VC-subsidized companies? They might go bankrupt if VCs are turned off by a unionized workforce in the next round.

Yes there is evidence that unions increase wages. But none for this specific case.

There can't be evidence of unions increasing wages in the tech industry because, as this article points out, prior to today there were no unions in the tech industry. Ever.

However, there is significant evidence in blue-collar and white-collar industries, and in artistic and athletic fields, that unions increased members' earnings.

Tech vs non-tech. Blue-collar vs white-collar. That’s not what matters. What matters is market dynamics. That’s all I’m saying here.

It's really not a fair comparison: we think of athletes as making large salaries, but beyond the stars, many who make the highest level professional league will make a league minimum salary over a relatively short career, as opposed to white collar workers who typically make 6 figure salaries over multiple decades.

That sports leagues are actually very relevant. See for example from https://theundefeated.com/features/all-22-why-decertificatio... :

>Counterintuitively, the owners benefit from the existence of a union as well. The existence of unions allows leagues to operate under rules that are in violation of federal antitrust law, which is why decertifying has been the most impactful threat to leagues.

That same article goes on to explain how unions actually in some ways have acted against the interest of athletes in some way, since the collective bargaining agreements that they entered in to have locked in conditions for years that would not make sense in a more free floating market.

Anyone who thinks that players' unions are suppressing athlete salaries doesn't remember how little athletes made before the unions negotiated higher scales.

Even the best NFL athletes used to have day jobs. The 2014 minimum base salary for MLS players was just $48,500 (which increased to $7x,xxx in 2019 as a result of the union renegotiating pay scales). On average (median or mode), a professional soccer player will make less than an entry-level programmer in the valley, despite a significantly smaller potential workforce.

I agree that unions have done a lot; the point is that the evidence shows it to be a double edged sword. Following the link I posted, it explains how one effect of current collective bargaining agreements enables owners of sports teams to cap the percentage of the overall revenue going to players. For example, collective bargaining has given us free agency in baseball, which has been great; it's also given us a system in which players don't hit free agency until they've been playing for 5 or 6 years, at which point they're usually in their late 20's or early 30's, and have missed prime earning years on the free market (having to settle for whatever comes out of the arbitration process).

Some of the increase in pay is due to the union, and they should be applauded for that, but part of the increase in pay in all these leagues also is due in part to the increase in revenues from media deals

Another thing worth pointing out from this link: when the NFL players were last trying to get serious about negotiating with the NFL owners, they decertified the union. Their ultimate threat wasn't "you can't do this to us, we're part of a union," it was "if you don't give us concessions, we'll get rid of our union so you're on the wrong side of regulations." This is a completely different scenario from what software engineers would face. The analog with sports is just really not very good (whether one is in favor of unions for white collar workers or not).

It actually wasn't until baseball unions that players actually started getting paid well.

Then look at movie stars instead of athletes if you feel the analogy isn't apt. They're all card carrying members of SAG-AFTRA.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com