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I have pretty mixed feelings on unions. I spent most of my early career as a non-union blue collar worker embedded into mixed teams (union + non-union members). The general experience I walked away with was that unions seemed to attract the worst employees. I remember one individual in particular who, having worked with him for two years, never once actually did any work. He was actually one of my first mentors and I vividly recall riding in the truck with him as he explained "the game" to me about how to make good money while basically doing no work, and how it was "unfortunate" I couldn't play because I was "working for the man."

This might not seem so annoying, but in the Bay Area where I worked, the unions had lobbied to secure work that could _only_ be done by union members. For example, I was a controls technician, and I legally couldn't wire a 12v controller because it was considered protected work. Which means I had to try to convince the same people who were not incentivized to be productive to help me.

So yeah, after a few years of that, I left with a pretty sour taste in my mouth. That being said, philosophically I like the idea of unions. I've had my own share of experiences being abused by "the man." The retirement plans offered in particular were always alluring. But, despite being invited to join, I never felt compelled because I just couldn't find myself enjoying working with the people they attracted.

The experience which I had which sums up the negatives about unions was when I was working at the then 4th largest printer in the U.S., and the largest privately owned print shop, when I pulled up in my then several years old Chevy Cavalier and parked next to a one year newer one --- an erstwhile union rep then pulled up in a brand new Lincoln Town Car and got out and asked me if I was interested in unionizing the company --- I pointed to the car I was parked next to and stated, "That car belongs to the owner of the company, it's the first new car he ever purchased, previously having driven company vans which had such high mileage that the company auctioned them off. Why would I give money to someone who is driving an even nicer car?"

The flip side was when the company owner retired from active management to the board of directors, and a management consultant was brought in to make the company more profitable --- he opened the curtains of the boardroom where he was making his pitch, pointed out at the parking lot filled with nice cars and trucks in good repair and stated, "You're paying too many people too much money."

An uncle of mine in the coal region of the northwestern Virginia mountain once noted that a local union organizer was noted for having 3 things in his trunk:

- a mimeograph

- a fifth of whiskey

- a sawed-off shotgun

Any discussion of unions needs to include a history of the Pinkertons.

Similar life experiences. Like the idea of unions - especially how they are explained at a textbook level. I fully believe labor needs as much leverage against capital as possible for the scales to be balanced at all.

But US unions seem to exist nearly exclusively to protect people who don’t want to work.

Not my thing. At all. One should be able to be rewarded for hard work and productivity when you are expending more effort than the guy clocking in and doing everything possible to avoid it.

I’ve often thought you solve this via old fashioned guild based systems. The guild trains and provides labor while guaranteeing skills, quality, and honesty. They vet their members and cull the losers - a poor performing member should be seen as a liability for the rest of the pool of labor and very quickly corrected or removed from the guild.

That way employers know that even if they are paying more than they would like, at least the labor being supplied is going to be top tier and the job will done done to a high standard and on time.

Unions devolving to simply protect the lowest common denominator is a problem.

There are some trades unions in local chapter formats that work somewhat like this today. I’d just like to see more of it and more formalized with local competition between different union groups.

The same behavior displayed by union workers occurs at a level where people can hide behind a title (Vice President, department head, whatever). Yet people rarely look as critically at senior management as they do at union workers.

I also find it that people who are critical of union workers never seem to be critical of police or fire fighters, both of whom are unionized.

My dad was a union worker for 19 years and I don't think ever displayed any of the negative characteristics assigned to unionized workers.

This is usually one of the arguments made against unions, and I find it an interesting phenomenon.

Philosophically unions benefit the majority and are probably a net good on a social construct level. But they are likely a net loss to the top percentage of workers who are extremely motivated to move up and probably hurt innovation overall.

Unions exist to benefit the median and bring up the floor, but it stifles competition among those who really do desire to be at the top. And in doing so while it brings up the floor, it also brings down the ceiling because people who would normally be motivated enough to move up would not have much incentive to do so anymore.

Additionally most companies arguments against unions make the assumption that EVERYONE wants to be part of that top percentage, that everyone is extremely motivated to move up the ladder, etc. Also they bank on convincing everyone they could be part of that top percentage that moves up.

But statistically only so many can, and there is no universe where everyone can be that top worker who is successful because only so many can move up anyways.

Edit: Adding that this is from my perspective on US views of unions. I don't know much about how it differs elsewhere since many point out it seems to be done differently here vs elsewhere.

i like my union because they force the management to actually take care of our equipment. every non-union job i've had involves a lot of making fucked up shit kind of work. that's what i want from a union, tangible benefits to my working conditions. it's not a social club, and i'm not one to be worried about the caliber of people i associate with.
> never once actually did any work

I work at a company creating wealth, and heirs who own stock collect dividends from the company. What work did they do? You're talking about the guy sitting near you who you don't feel is working hard enough, and nothing of the parasitic heirs expropriating the product of unpaid surplus time of those working and creating wealth. Which unions are formed to rest control back from.

There were many tech companies I've worked at where lifers got paid top dollar to sit around and do nothing. And had to be convinced to do any work or help you.

I remember non union non tech jobs where the entire workforce were lazy and useless too.

Seems like an American thing or a human thing. Not a union thing.

Similar mixed opinions. I think labor absolutely has an ability to make collective decisions but I also believe business should have the ability to fire at will and I am not convinced that unions should be protected from that.

I have only been exposed to unions like dock workers where who you know or the color of your skin matter more than your ability to execute on the job.

Very similar experiences here. My first job was in a union shop, but you could not be forced to join. Whether you joined or not, though, you had dues taken from your pay. I refused to join initially because I could choose to join at any moment, it wasn't a locked decision. I immediately had people trying to convince me to join, while within months of working there I realized how little pride or effort anyone took in their work. I worked at that company for three years and never joined the union, which apparently made the management think I wanted to be in management because they kept trying to promote me. I never wanted to be in management (then). I was easily 6x as productive as anyone else there, and I saw lots of really ridiculous petty corruption take place amongst the union members. Really soured me on unions, despite the general high level idea being something I agree with. I can't imagine ever joining a union.
It's rather arbitrary to monolithlize "union members" based on this limited experience.
My wife is in a Union and she has been getting info that has nothing to do with her job. Some unions cross pollinate with whatever cause someone in the union is interested in. She wants a raise but can't because of collective bargaining, but the union isn't doing anything about that. However they are talking about other political issues. So her dues are not helping her but whatever political issue is being promoted.
I’ve had just one job where I was in a union and it was the only time in my life where the boss had ever had to bend to me on anything. The only place I’ve ever had a shred of power beyond my ability to walk out the door. I’ll take all the downsides that come with it over the feeling of being in the palm of management’s hand.
My first job out of college was a government union job (optional to join). I was pretty appalled by the behaviour I saw from older colleagues and the union reps. Government unions should be illegal in my opinion. Becoming the head of these unions is insane money, the union fees can run up to $50-$100 per month per member and if you look at the union salaries it mostly goes to the leadership sometimes earning $100-$200k or more on their part-time job on top of their actual job. Also the union organisers make pretty solid money setting it up. I think if you have more competition and more competing companies than wages stay competitive and employers have to be good to attract labor, it’s probably the best option. Humans are too dishonest to be trusted with such organisations. Invisible hand forces are harder to manipulate.
It feels like a systems problem. It seems like the same theme that we see in for say, startup to corporate transformation. I think ultimately it comes down to size. They become too big and the power consumes. And they become what they once fought.
There are a lot of people who are not in unions who do no work.

It is a plague in the programming field.

Not having unions is not a silver bullet for that problem. So maybe it is a false attribution/bias on your part

Another issue with unions is that they should be symbiotic but often transition to parasitic. What I mean is there are times despite it being obvious the demands will drive companies into either re-org or bankruptcy proceedings they’ll go full steam. The demands also at time accelerate offshoring or sending some of the work over-seas. Obviously all these scenarios are detrimental to the future of the workforces they represent.
I had similar experiences as a former unionized worker. Unions definitely solve some problems, but they're not a panacea, and a lot of company BS just gets replaced by an equivalent amount of union BS. The most miserable people I've ever worked with were people at my former union with 10+ years on the job (I remember one lady was in the process of suing the company AND the union, lol); they couldn't leave without losing all their seniority and benefits, couldn't be fired, but still had a long way to go before retirement.
Typical HN war story about how one’s coworkers are incompetent or chronically lazy. I guess this is the HN version of hard-hatters being vehemently against immigrant labor.

Meanwhile the concern for being abused by people with actual power is just an emotionless throwaway scare quote. “The man”.

It'a worth noting shareholders also provide no value. We need to fix both ends of the equation to move forward as a society.
Your anecdote is useful and will be upvoted
Your probably a normal guy making a comment in good faith, but I can't help but think this is the exact sort of dark marketing that I would do if I was an anti union commenter/marketer. Attack the vague made up values of union members because you can't attack the fact that large companies have been anti-worker for awhile and most people believe that. I'll also add onto here that if this comment gets down voted into the dirt, I'm likely right. Also let me be clear, I'm not attacking your comment but what sort of comment would be most-likely amplified by anti-union forces.
Unions only exist because there is a huge power imbalance between employer and employee. They attempt to balance the field.

In doing so, companies may lose their leverage and are forced to actually negotiate. This is often painted as blackmailing, but it's the same thing they do to employees. Bosses often go with "we're doing you a favor. If you don't want this job, I have a replacement for you".

When their power and leverage vanishes, they see it as being blackmailed, when in reality they are just being forced to play a fair game.

This thread has several stories of unions "keeping lazy workers", etc. I can't deny your experiences. But what about the thousands of companies that violate Labor Laws? Why are we not talking about these stories? e.g. https://www.epi.org/publication/unlawful-employer-opposition...

When you push people hard enough, they will fight back. In fighting back, the corporations that had the leverage will feel attacked by losing their power.

While 68% of workers approve unions (https://news.gallup.com/poll/694472/labor-union-approval-rel...) there are only 9% of them that actually belong to a union. That's a huge discrepancy. It can be explained by the immense difficulty in forming one due to illegal corporation practices and laws that make it difficult.

This is an adversarial process. Unions exist to fight employers. Unions spend about 23 billion a year in total. Only spending 1.5B to defend against 23B looks like a bargain.
A way to exit the adversarial process is by ending the separation between owners and workers, through things like worker cooperatives, employee ownership, and workplace democracy.
yeah but how much are employers spending to lobby, etc, and is that not a significant force-multiplier on their 1.5B direct spend against unions?
They have the lawmakers on their side.
It’s clearly a more effectively spent 1.5B too, seeing the majority of comments on this post.
> 23 billion

source pls

Because its ultimately cheaper to suppress unions than it is to pay the workers the fair salary.
I'm generally pro-union and certainly fair wage, but it's important to keep in mind that unions will grow into their own power centers and have leadership with its own internal goals which are not aligned with either their working members nor the employers.
I wonder if that's actually true - unionbusting is mostly an emotional issue for leaders and owners so I wonder if there's any calculation involved.

I've seen corporate HR got to insane (illegal) lengths to "stick it" to people trying to unionize - to the point of being severely fined.

So I wonder if anyone actually calculated financials here.

It's cheaper to try and block other workers from getting a union card in your union to limit supply than trying to up your skills, as well.
Recently the LIRR (Long Island Rail Road workers) went on strike. The NYT has covered it, including this interesting fact:

> For instance, if an engineer drives a diesel train at the start of a shift but is asked to switch to an electric train in the same day, the M.T.A. must compensate that worker with two days’ pay. If, on the same day, the engineer is also asked to switch from driving passengers to driving a train back to a yard for maintenance or storage, that worker is entitled to a third day’s pay.

Take from that what you will.

My view is that -- with some exceptions -- unions today are mostly bad, and worth fighting.

Considering the annual revenue of Fortune 500 companies is near 20 Trillion, that is a much smaller amount than expected.
Not sure if that is a bad thing - labor unions can have too much power. Its not as if the employers agree to everything that they will go away.
Think about the recent tech layoffs - we spend a lot of time comparing one set of severance concessions to another. Wouldn't it be better if this were a matter of contract instead of your great corporate overlords deciding how much they deign to give you as they take away your job?

This may be the moment to start thinking about unions seriously in tech. The large employers have, themselves, acted to suppress worker power in the past: https://journals.law.unc.edu/ncjolt/blogs/wage-fixing-scheme...

This will not work until unions deal with the reality of globalization, and push to form a worldwide union, which ensures compensation has no more than 2x difference based on one's country. This is the multiplier where people will not want to transfer work for cost vs skill level.

This is unpalatable to HCOL engineers, because their pay will significantly compress in this union to support the growth of compensation of similarly skilled LCOL regions/countries.

QED: Unions will not happen.

The word "fight" is doing way too much work in this Guardian headline, because that money includes labor relations work employers do to try to stave off the incentives to start unions. You can feel any way you like about it, but logically if you're going to argue that you have to argue that every dollar above median a non-unionized shop pays is also an effort to fight unions.
They're just spending all they money they saved from the wage theft.
1.5B seems kinda low, no?
That HNers like unions “in theory” reads to me like a thirty year old closeted gay guy that insists that he likes women. Sure, I love women. I just haven’t found one that arouses me yet.
thats less than the cost of a bloodless American coup.
guys I figured it out: play people not to unionize <insert galaxy brain meme>
Imagine a world where they just paid that $1.5B to the employees instead. Probably wouldn’t need unions at that point.
I live in a Right-to-Work (for less) state:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law

Loosely that just means that if you work somewhere with a lot of employees, you'll hear that the same job in a neighboring state pays 1.5-2 times as much. And that they have a harder time firing you. And that you'll be more likely to get compensated if you get hurt or whatever. Etc etc etc because unions.

It was pitched as a way to avoid paying union dues and possibly make it easier to move around the job market. And especially avoid working with "those" people.

If you sensed the ick factor there, that's why I think it's hard to have a rational debate around unions. It's become a divisive word like liberal due to deep-rooted disagreements going back to the founding of the (cough) union.

I prefer to use a term like representation. Do we want an advocate between us and the bosses when the next round of layoffs comes? Of course. Do we want our own form of human resources (HR) that has real teeth when something violent or inappropriate happens to a coworker? Of course. Do we want to have our voices heard when it comes to the quality of our work environment? Of course.

When people agree on principles but not on the umbrella term that covers them, it makes them vulnerable to political manipulation so that they can be divided and convinced to vote against their own interests.

I understand that a free market where people can switch jobs easily might be seen as more ideal than unions. But do we live in that market really? How many cities in America have a handful of large companies propping up the local economy? How many of those companies would take us in if we got fired from the other companies? How often do we hear about people moving to another city because they can't find a job?

There seems to be quite a discrepancy between the ideal and the actual. Another way to make people vulnerable to political manipulation.

I think maybe it comes down to how we see ourselves as blue collar or white collar. I understand how unions might be against the interests of white collar workers who tell blue collar workers what to do. What I can't understand is why blue collar workers would be against unions. What is the rationale there, really?

Without logic, we're left with bad faith arguments. Unions don't exist much these days for the same reasons that people on food stamps vote for billionaires. There's an irony there that their hope for opportunity gets used against them in a negative reinforcement loop. It's plain to see, and yet no help is coming.

If companies decide who gets hired instead of the people doing the work, that would seem to open the door to corruption and prejudice. So it's interesting that we might associate unions with mob activity, but not the existing corporate status quo. Why is that?

> Employers spent company money

Wow! How dare they.

Wow, what are they so afraid of? Treating people with dignity?