Comment by frostmatthew | Hacker News Reader

Comment by frostmatthew | Hacker News Reader

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> nonsensical propaganda that we've all swum in for the last few decades

It doesn't sound like you have any actual first-hand experience with unions. I'll admit unions played a significant role in improving the workplace for everyone, and we should all be thankful for their contributions 50+ years ago. But they are now primarily self-serving organizations that exist for the benefit of the union itself.

Before becoming a developer I worked in hotels (as a banquet manager), let me give you some examples of the types of things unions now fight for:

* a dishwasher cannot wash pots and a potwasher cannot wash dishes

* only an electrician can change the batteries in a TV remote or change a lightbulb

* when it's busy your manager(s) cannot help you

* re-hiring of employees who were terminated because they were caught stealing or physically assaulting other employees

The better an employee is the less they benefit from a union. It results in good employees not getting paid as well as they could be and bad employees sticking around because it's difficult (or impossible) to fire them.

We could certainly benefit from the types of professional association lawyers[1] and doctors[2] have, but those are quite different than unions.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Bar_Association

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Medical_Association

I'm calling bullshit. Post a source for your examples. Also, the ABA and the AMA agree unions for lawyers and doctors. They have a government sanctioned monopoly on top level legal and medical talent. You can't even train lawyers and doctors without the approval of those organizations. The only reason those unions get a pass on the standard union rhetoric is because they are powerful while collar unions. Nobody with any credibility is saying the AMA residency matching is a detriment to the rights of workers, for example.

> Post a source for your examples

My "source" was in the sentence prefacing my bullets: Before becoming a developer I worked in hotels (as a banquet manager)... In response to another comment I went into a little more detail on each bullet[1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9249449

s/union/management/g

And your post is still true. So I think its time to do away with management roles too.

Unions do not fight for any of the things you listed.

Frankly, you don't seem to know what a union actually does. Let's take your last example:

* re-hiring of employees who were terminated because they were caught stealing or physically assaulting other employees

If a person in the company physically assaulted another person then how could they be rehired? Were they working from prison after criminal charges were brought? Were they allowed back into the building, ignoring the restraining order that was obtained?

Ohh...what you mean is that the business didn't bother with any of those legal niceties and thought they could accuse someone of assault and fire them, without involving the law. Yeah, you don't get to do that. And most people would be glad of that if some manager decided to fire them due to a personal grudge and gave the reason as assault, with no evidence at all.

you say "with no evidence at all" and yet you ignore 3 of the 4 examples and construct a strawman to dismiss the other. why don't you just ask for some backup for the examples rather than fabricating narratives.

unions do get out of line, here's another example:

http://www.legal-island.com/union-seeks-redress-for-lower-pa...

He presented no evidence at all for any of his examples. If you want backup, you ask for it.

I have no idea why you think your link is showing "unions getting out of hand". It shows people being hired at a certain pay for certain hours and then having this retroactively changed. Why would you think this is even remotely acceptable?

the union is claiming for payment for the time involved in cashing non existent cheques.

> Unions do not fight for any of the things you listed.

My first bullet is part of the union contract for stewards in NYC hotels. The second and third are part of the union contract for Boston hotels. The first part of my fourth bullet happened at a colleague's hotel who [twice] caught an employee stealing, the second part of that bullet happened at the last hotel I worked at (and perhaps "physically assaulted" was a bit strong - for accuracy purposes you can reword it to "throwing an object heavy enough to hurt someone had their aim been better").

> Were they working from prison after criminal charges were brought?

Unless you have the encounter video-taped it's not worth bringing criminal charges against someone for stealing $100 or throwing a walkie-talkie. Especially since it benefits the hotel to let the union "convince" them to re-hire the person because that cost the union in future negotiating capital (i.e. at the next contract's negotiation the union will be reminded how "forgiving" the hotel had been).

I'm going to take your word for it that you have screwed up unions and that those are the only kind likely in the USA. It's no doubt a political thing.

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