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Comment by jawns | Hacker News Reader

Unions can be tremendously helpful when there is a wide disparity in bargaining power between employer and employee. In the late 19th and early 20th century, labor unions made tremendous strides in improving worker conditions and pay/benefits.

Among the criticisms I've heard ...

Sometimes market forces can get you adequate conditions and pay/benefits without the need for collective bargaining. For instance, software engineers tend to be well paid even without needing to unionize. So if you don't feel that you need a union, but you're forced to be in a union (and pay dues) against your will -- as happens in many industries -- you may feel those dues are taking money out of your pocket unnecessarily. In fact, the union leadership might actually be making decisions that benefit them or the members collectively but that don't benefit you individually.

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> For instance, software engineers tend to be well paid even without needing to unionize.

Compensation for the majority of software engineers has not kept up with cost of living increases, inflation nor the amount of revenue they generate for their employers.

Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm and eBay all colluded with one another[1] to keep tech worker compensation below their market rates.

> So if you don't feel that you need a union, but you're forced to be in a union (and pay dues) against your will -- as happens in many industries

No one is forced to work a union job. If your employer makes a decision that you don't like, you aren't forced to work for them, either. If a union makes a decision you don't like, you aren't forced to work for it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

Under Agency Shop, hourly workers have to pay full union dues whether they join the union or not (workers who preceded Agency Shop can opt out).

No one is forcing you to work for an agency shop against your will like the GP is claiming, though. If you don't want to pay dues, then you're free to quit and find another employer. Similar to if your employer decided employees needs to pay for uniforms or whatever, you're free to quit and find a job that doesn't require that.

> No one is forced to work a union job.

This is technically true, but this is also an argument against unions. It's true that if you don't like that your company is unionized you can go work for a company that's not unionized, but it's also true that if you don't like that your company is not unionized you can go work for a company that is.

Union proponents are not arguing that they're forced to work for non-union employers, though.

The union workers I know generally are annoyed to hate the union, both for the dues unceremoniously rippéd and for "protecting lazy co-workers". It's usually held to grumbling but they always have an eye out to grab a higher-paying non-union job if one shows up.

Statistically, white collar union workers have higher compensation[1], better benefits and more time off. They also report higher rates of life satisfaction[2].

[1] https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/04/art2full.pdf

[2] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0160449X16643321

>both for the dues unceremoniously rippéd

I mean, yeah, you owe dues. How else should it work? When I was part of a union it amounted to 2 hours of wages per month, not exactly onerous.

Counterexample: the nascent Google employees union is taking 1% of total comp.

That’s pretty ambitious when the employees are Googlers.

>> itsoktocry 2 hours ago [–]

>> When I was part of a union it amounted to 2 hours of wages per month, not exactly onerous. reply

>> elefanten 2 hours ago [–]

>> Counterexample: the nascent Google employees union is taking 1% of total comp.

Not sure it's really a counterexample as there are - in theory - about 200 work hours per month, so 1% of comp is pretty much equivalent to 2 hours of wages per month.

> I mean, yeah, you owe dues. How else should it work?

It's a bigger problem in non Right to Work states, where you can be forced to join the union (and have dues taken from you).

In places where joining the union for their benefits is voluntary I don't see the problem.

There are also places where you don't have to join the union, but they still take some of the wages (at a lower rate than full members) for nebulous "benefits" the union offers. Those are especially contentious because not all the employee believe they get any benefits at all.

The US should shift to the European model where multiple unions are available at each employer, and they compete with each other for membership. I believe joining a union is required there, they don't have any non-union jobs, but a European union is not the same as a US one.

Taft-Hartley banned the "closed shop," where you must join a union to work at a business, in 1947. You will never be forced to join a union anywhere in the US to work at any given employer.

That's not true. You misunderstand the rules.

Google: "closed shop vs union shop" and you will see.

Basically you cannot have a business that only hires from a union, but you can have a business that requires you to join a union after being hired meaning the union cannot prevent you from joining them.

Or in other words in non-right-to-work states you can be forced to join a union.

Under the NLRA, you are never required to join a union. You may be required to pay union dues, and the union will still represent you in collective bargaining, but that doesn't make you a union member.

Could unions be ad-supported? Maybe you put a TV monitor playing a continuous stream of ads in the employee break room. It's win-win.

The lazy worker argument applies to any job. I work in a F500 and have 'lazy' coworkers. I can't just go to my manager and get them fired.

The difference is that with a union not even the manager can fire them if he notices that they are lazy

The union workers I know generally are pleased by their union, especially if they worked in their location prior to organization. They are able to remember and appreciate the difference between how management treated them before and after. Even my friends who worked as management in union-shops appreciated what the org was able to do for the people they supervised (even if it was frustrating during 2018 strikes to have to manage entire hotel restaurants short staffed).

Out of curiosity, what field are your union friends in, and do you happen to know what union represents them?

Mainly government jobs - I don't know the union.

> but you're forced to be in a union (and pay dues) against your will...

If it's a "closed" union shop, then I'd consider the union-dues as simply part of the job-offer and treat it the same as employee-side health plan copayments: a minor unpleasantry but nothing worth raising a fuss about - assuming the union dues were in the typical range of $300-800/yr - obviously the more they cost the more I'd be inclined to ensure they're being spent responsibly and that I felt like I was being represented well.

Though I want to say the sentiment (or mental-connotation) you're expressing with language like "against one's will" w.r.t. union membership hints of a reductionist Ayn Randian influence on your opinion. That statement is not an incorrect assessment, but it's overstating the problem - it reminds me of sayings like "taxation is theft".

Sincere question: what do high-quality surveys of union membership (across all industry sectors in the US) suggest about opinions held by closed-shop employees of their unions - and their employers? I feel there's too much reliance online on anecdotes about the excesses of certain named unions when it comes to forming opinions about them, so I'd prefer to see some "big data" about union membership.

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