Comment by photochemsyn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by photochemsyn | Hacker News Reader

Employers want cheap labor, and firing older workers who've climbed a ways up the salary/wage ladder and replacing them with new hires is one of the most consistent methods for doing this.

The only way to avoid this in the merciless capitalist culture we live in is to get a contract, and of course employers don't want to hand out contracts (unless you're in the executive suite, where everyone gets a contract).

Indeed, it's a fair argument to say that the artistocrat-serf divide under medieval feudalism is mirrored in the contract employee / at-will employee division under investment capitalism.

A key element in unionization efforts is the promise that all employees become contract employees, thus if the corporation wants to do a mass round of layoffs and re-hires to cut labor costs, severance pay under contract makes this an un-economical option for the executive suite.

For some mysterious reason, this reality is never taught in high school economics courses.

I want at will employment for myself and to offer my labor with less termination friction. What you mean by "all employees" is to say, take away the bodily autonomy of the employee to enter mutually consensual arrangement and instead smash them with third party imposition of the union.

A great deal for certain union barons, no doubt, who can act as a middleman cartel .

Traditionally, that kind of arrangement would classify you as an 'independent contractor' - but notice, you're still getting a contract, it's just a contract for something like a finished product. (Here I am ignoring the con game of corporations attempting to reclassify employees as independent contractors so they don't have to pay taxes into SS or provide health care etc.).

> is to say, take away the bodily autonomy of the employee to enter mutually consensual arrangement

No union ever forced someone to accept a job they didn't want. If you had a contract you'd know exactly what the terms are and you'd be entirely free to accept them or not.

Also, while I'm sure your default position is "union bad!" and that you're unlikely to change that view, I'd remind you that union employees are not powerless slaves to "union barons". If a union isn't serving the needs of its members they can vote out union leadership or in extreme cases even disband the union and form a new one that will better support them.

What if I consent to performing labor but don't consent to membership in or contract with the democratic system of the union? I don't see how the vote of third party is relevant here. I'm fine if all the other employees want to be in the union and I can undercut them to get a job.

What if my company consents to selling widgets to a new customer, but doesnt consent to the exclusivity clause they have with the another supplier? I dont see how the vote of the third party is relevant here.

You see how ridiculous that sounds when you don't treat unions as some special form of supplier that doesn't get to negotiate in groups, right?

It sounds ridiculous because your example isn't a imposition of a third party but rather a contract the counterparty signed to and thus asking something the counterparty doesn't consent to doing.

And can a company and union not sign a contract for only exclusively using union labor, sort of like some exclusivity deal?

Sure, then it's no longer third party dissent but counterparty dissent in hiring non union. Obviously competitors will emerge to varying success to employ these excluded persons.

So then you don’t have a problem with being required to be part of a union to work at certain companies.

I’d also like to point out that you needed to have this framed in the context of a union negotiating the same way as a company before you were ok with it. Why the visceral reaction to unions but none for companies?

The initial premise was 'all' employees.

If the company and employee have choice to choose union/non union I have no problem with it. The visceral reaction was to denial of employment by mutual consent.

Come on. You can be pro union and also recognize that many unions have had extremely poor, corrupt, self-serving leadership and that changing them isn't trivial. Eg look at what happened to the hilariously corrupt UAW when Fain got in and actually did his job.

While in theory union employees can change their leadership, in practice, that appears to be extremely difficult, and I don't think you can make a case that the UAW was serving the needs of its members for at least the 20 years preceding Fain.

That's not to say unions are bad, but it's a more complex picture than you're painting.

> in practice, that appears to be extremely difficult, and I don't think you can make a case that the UAW was serving the needs of its members for at least the 20 years preceding Fain.

I can't say that I'm intimately familiar with the UAW although on the whole it seems to have been an extremely successful union. Was there a large effort to oust Rory Gamble before the corruption scandal came to light?

There's no denying that union leadership was corrupt and that members were hurt by that. The last 20 years saw some major concessions to the auto industry, some of it due to self-serving leadership that was caught colluding with industry executives and some of it due to the failing industry itself which needed a massive government bailout in that same time period.

I will say that all of that didn't stop many people from claiming that the union was being far too good for the employees, so good that the workers were supposedly "highly overpaid" and responsible for driving the industry into the ground. Even trump complained at the time of the bailout about autoworkers getting raises ("They get their little five percent. They get another two percent. They get another three percent, four percent ... and all of a sudden they're making more money than the people that own the company.") Even a union at its worst and weakest is still too good for some people I guess.

We don't let people sell themselves into slavery even though that would "take away the bodily autonomy of the employee to enter mutually consensual arrangement and instead smash them with third party imposition...", no "union baron" needed.

Your race to the bottom can affect others, regardless of wether or not you recognize negative externalities exist.

I don't see a compelling reason why I shouldn't be able to act as a slave for as long as both parties consent to it. If you want to create lovich 1840s era cotton picking slave service with the full historical recreation it's not clear why that's anyone else's business but you and the masta'.

Man you literally just had the whole but about race to the bottom and negative externalities woosh right over your head.

There are some behaviors that are banned because paradoxically by allowing you the liberty to do that, everyone’s liberty is negatively affected.

Whos liberty is effected if you and I play slave farm until one of us screams uncle?

Everyone who now has to deal with that being an option on the negotiating table. It being banned removes it from the discussion.

I am having a hard believing you’re acting in good faith if you’re arguing it’s immoral that you can’t sell yourself into slavery

That some may agree to slavery-until-i-say-uncle is far less threat to liberty than some democratic oppressor that picks and chooses what consenting adults may agree to based on what hypothetical options might end up on the negotiating table of other consenting adults.

Respectfully, no it’s not. Go read up on game theory

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