Comment by hawkice | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hawkice | Hacker News Reader

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> Right to work and its ilk have a very expressed intention of neutering unionization efforts.

So, I know very little about Right to Work legislation (essentially I know what the topic being discussed is from the first paragraph of Wikipedia).

Without scrying after the motives of those in favor or against, what is the actual concrete problem with Right to Work legislation? What is the concrete benefit?

I think it's fair to say a good default is "people can negotiate anything they want", but negotiating monopoly supply of workers seems like it has the potential to be a useful exception (as are most monopoly situations). Like many policy issues, it seems like it'd come down to the details.

[Edit: to wit, one question I'd like answered is whether union monopoly supply effects only employers with large numbers of employees or also employers looking to hire only a couple people. I think it is the former, but if, by whatever means, it is all firms, that might be worth stopping.]

"Right to work" undermines collective bargaining -- which itself is an attempt to redress the structural imbalance of employer-employee negotiations -- by introducing free-rider incentives to employees.

In short, it's an end-run around Wagner Act protections by preventing unions from mandating "union shop" or "agency shop" conditions of employment, in which employees must either join the union (in a union shop, which is uncommon) or must contribute union dues but do not have to be members of the union (in an agency shop, which is the most common arrangement). So-called "closed shops," in which union membership was a precondition of employment, have been illegal since Taft-Hartley.

The obvious intent here by employers is to create an incentive for employees to "free ride" by enjoying the fruits of union negotiations without having to contribute dues or participate in union actions. More generally, right to work laws are part of larger parcels of anti-union legislation such as WI's Act 10 (https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2011/related/acts/10.pdf), which basically forces unions to hold expensive elections each year in order to continue their existence, resulting in about 50% of the public sector unions in the state folding due to either an inability to afford elections or by failing the electoral test. When coupled with aggressive "union busting" tactics by law firms and security companies, state lawmakers have been extremely successful at helping companies shut down labor organization in many jurisdictions.

(Parenthetically, Governor Walker specifically exempted police and fire unions, and there is some evidence that those public-safety unions that endorsed him have had significant success in negotiating pay raises; although state workers have seen on average a greater than 10% reduction in take-home pay, the Walker-supporting Wisconsin Troopers Association negotiated a 17% pay increase.)

Genuine question: how is it possible that a union couldn't arrange an election once a year? Over here they can do it, and routinely do it annually or bi-annually (mine does bi-annual).

That's a good question. The law in question looks nasty: it requires them to hold an election annually, and if they don't get 51% of the votes of all employees "affected general municipal employees may not be included in a substantially similar collective bargaining unit for 12 months from the date of decertification". However, the vote is effectively only binding in one direction: even if they do get 51% of the vote, when it comes time to negotiate the employer can claim they don't represent the employees and refuse to negotiate with them until they hold another election to prove they do.

So I can't find any provision that makes it expensive to hold elections, but it does seem to be basically pointless since they've rendered unions so ineffective. Even if they do manage to jump through all the hoops the only thing public sector unions are allowed to bargain over is base wages, not overtime pay, benefits like health insurance, working conditions, or anything else.

A union negotiates a contract with an employer. The employer freely enters that contract, and by signing that contract is giving the written intention of following through with that contract.

That contract is mutually beneficial. As employer, you are provided with a pool of selected professionals. As a worker, you are provided with fairer compensation and benefits.

Right to work comes in and says those contracts do not have to be honored by the employer and they can break that contract because the law says so. Anyone they employ now enjoys the benefits of that the union spent time and money on negotiating, but the worker does not have to pay dues to enjoy that privilege. Without the union, those privileges wouldn't exist.

Any "rational actor" can see that the rational decision is to enjoy the benefits a union brings to the table, without having to pay dues.

The counter to this is the argument of freedom of association, saying employers can hire who they want. This sidesteps the fact that employers made the free decision to entire such contracts and chose to stand by its stipulations.

Unions do not hold a monopoly on workers. Workers are free to entire and exit contracts with unions or negotiate on their lonesome. Employers have a variety of unions and individuals to pick their employees from.

Yeah, I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure this is totally wrong under US law. According Wikipedia, in the U.S., once a union is certified at an employer that union is the only entity that can "negotiate conditions of employment." That means that employees are at best highly restricted in their ability to negotiate individually with a unionized employer.

It depends on the union. Some allow for up negotiation and others have a scale which you can negotiate from.

But bonuses and supplementary pay are up to negotiate for.

Do you actually believe that someone like Julia Roberts or Tom Cruise is going to have the Screen Actors Guild negotiate their salary? No, SAG just sets a scale and people can be paid more than scale. The same goes for the various sports leagues where all the players are members of an a players' association of some sort. This sort of arrangement could very well work for developers.

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