Unions work

https://werd.io/2023/unions-work

by benwerd • 3 years ago

156 200 3 years ago

xnx• 3 years ago

I'm conflicted about unions, but it would be truly amazing if they brought us the 4-day work-week the way they got the 8-hour workday and weekends.

timbit425• 3 years ago

Have you looked into worker cooperatives? Ocean Spray is an example in the US. Mondragon is an example of one in Spain that has tens of thousands of workers and has existed for many decades.

umrcumrcu42• 3 years ago

This is not correct. Ocean Spray is not a cooperative of workers. It's a cooperative of private farmers.

Aunche• 3 years ago

I wouldn't characterize any agricultural co-op like Ocean Spray as the same category as a worker co-op like Mondragon. There is a very distinct line between a farmer, who's an owner, and a farm worker, who handles most of the day-to-day operations.

hgdfhgfdhgdf2• 3 years ago

I suspect you are not familiar with farmer cooperatives. They are not employee cooperatives. They are corporatives of private farmers.

morelisp3• 3 years ago

It's "they" because it's people in the past. If you want unions to win new rights today, you'd better start using "we".

charcircuit• 3 years ago

Weekends and 8 hour work week is not necessarily a good thing. There could be benefits to switching to 996 work week to compete better with China.

n4r93• 3 years ago

Benefits to whom?

renewedrebecca• 3 years ago

Not for the workers, no.

toomuchtodo3• 3 years ago

Competing with China is easy when their working population is compressing and getting old rapidly due to structural demographics [1]. The competition is between the extremely wealthy and the people who perform the actual labor that generates the value being vacuumed up by the former. I am no fan of the CCP, but at least they gave Jack Ma (a big supporter of 996 [2]) the boot [3] and overall, are a lot more adversarial with their wealthy system participants.

[1] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/chinas-shrinking-populati...

[2] https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/15/business/jack-ma-996-china/in...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Ma#Disappearance_from_the...

asoneth• 3 years ago

First, there are obviously diminishing and eventually negative returns to increasing work hours past a certain point. At the extreme end, 168h/week is clearly less productive than 40h/week despite being more than four times longer. At some point an additional hour provides zero marginal benefit, and past that point an additional hour lowers a worker's weekly productivity. That point may be 72h/week as "996" Chinese companies suggest, 40h/week as Henry Ford suggested, 32h/week as some 4-day workweek experiments suggest, or something else.

Second, even policies that provide some benefit to companies may backfire for society if they increase mental health problems, lower social cohesion, prevent family formation, and/or cause their best-and-brightest to leave. At some level the best way to "compete better with China" may be to focus on maintaining sensible policies focused on maximizing an individual's "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" alongside overall national productivity and let short-sighted competitors burn themselves out. (Similar to the strategy adopted during the Cold War.)

londons_explore3• 3 years ago

A good chunk of employers will let you work a 4 day workweek in return for a 20% pay cut.

For most people here on HN, you could probably survive on a 20% pay cut - you'd just have to have the kids share a bedroom rather than having one each and a guest room.

Downside: Those on a 4 day workweek really struggle to get promoted to senior positions.

toomuchtodo3• 3 years ago

The 4 Day Week movement is to not take a pay cut, as workers are already productive enough (and that productivity can be maintained in a shorter work week, proven by several pilot/trials [1]). It's incredibly disingenuous for folks opposed to a 4 day week to say workers need to be even more productive [2] to obtain a shorter work week to maintain existing pay (at least in the US, where pay has been stagnant for almost half a century [3]).

If a 4 day week is codified into labor law and regulation, there is no game theory consideration vs some orgs with 4 day weeks competing with those with 5. Would you work 6 days a week today (for example)? Probably not, unless you're an outlier of some sort, and you don't see many orgs with a mandatory 6 day work week (because they wouldn't be able to retain talent). This is about pulling a policy ratchet to reduce the work week at scale for everyone, because the productivity already exists (it's just been funneled to the top wealthiest population, traditionally).

"It always seems impossible until it's done."

[1] https://www.4dayweek.com/ | https://www.4dayweek.com/research

[2] https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/

[3] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/19/heres-how-labor-dynamism-aff...

avgcorrection• 3 years ago

Maybe some unions will let the shareholders get a 20% profit-cut[1] and the workers a four-day workweek in return for not starting a strike.

[1] In reality less than that; see the autoworker strike in the US where they are demanding (among other things) a 40% pay increase, meanwhile those companies could really afford to pay the union members 100% more.

hn_throwaway_99• 3 years ago

A good chunk of employers will let you work a 4 day workweek in return for a 20% pay cut.

Where?? This has not been my experience, especially in tech. I've seen that work for "shift work" type jobs, even highly paid ones like doctors, but for "product work" type jobs like most tech, where there is essentially an infinite amount of possibile future work to do, companies are, generally, much less amenable to having people less than full time.

mitthrowaway23• 3 years ago

For a sense of scale, the difference in pay for the same hours and same role (and same individual), just for moving 200 km between Seattle and Vancouver, is something like a 40-60% cut in total comp before tax. 20% is small potatoes.

gumby2• 3 years ago

I built my house using union labor. Having seen the quality of welds from some non-union welders it was a no brainer. Overall quality of the rest of the work (carpentry, plastering everything) was worth it.

VancouverMan2• 3 years ago

Is there something that such unions in your area do to ensure that a worker's skill and ability matter far more than, say, who their relatives happen to be?

zeroonetwothree7• 3 years ago

Although unions fought for a long time for 8 hour work days it seems the biggest push came after Ford switched to 8 hour days (and doubled pay) and saw productivity and profits rise. It’s hard to give all the credit to any one group.

tim3332• 3 years ago

Regulation on work hours, holidays and the like is better handled by government legislation on the whole. I mean it works ok in France for example.

dleslie4• 3 years ago

By AI guardrails they mean: AI cannot be used to write or rewrite scripts, and cannot be source material; but writers are free to use it if they wish.

Reminds me of how elevators originally had operators, until everyone realized how wasteful and silly it is to have someone whose sole job is to press elevator buttons. As AI improves, we will come to feel the same about writers.

marcinzm• 3 years ago

In theory can't they basically have a single writer use an AI to write every script for every movie and TV show? At least with elevators they needed a person in each elevator.

morelisp3• 3 years ago

how wasteful and silly it is to have someone whose sole job is to press elevator buttons.

That doesn't seem like the right cause, since it's the people who seem most concerned with seriousness and economic efficiency who still have elevator operators today.

MiguelX413• 3 years ago

Who still has elevator operators today?

mjr00• 3 years ago

If that comes to fruition they'll just have one writer who is responsible for putting their name on a ton of AI-generated scripts.

But at this very moment, AI generating anything suitable for something other than SEO blogspam isn't possible anyway. It might be right around the corner, or it might be "right around the corner" like self-driving cars were in 2015.

babypuncher4• 3 years ago

I'm not convinced LLM's are capable of any truly original thought, which is necessary for good compelling writing.

LLM's spit out derivative nonsense. Highly convincing nonsense, but derivative nonetheless. Any true originality in the output still comes from the human engineering the prompt.

Basically, LLM's know how to follow the rules, color within the lines. A real artist understands those rules well enough to break them and create something novel.

megaman821• 3 years ago

The source material ban seems like it is just closing a loophole. I have a vague idea about a time-traveling cowboy and robot, tell ChatGPT to write a script, script is terrible, so tell a writer to fix it up. Now that writer has different rights than if it were an original script, even though it is basically an original script.

Guvante2• 3 years ago

Elevator operators were not replaced by buttons.

Elevator operators were replaced by very complex computers with many redundant censors.

You had elevator operators for safety not convenience...

Similarly you seem to have the common misconception that the purpose of a writer is to churn out random text which can be replaced with LLM vs building a coherent story and guiding it through the creative process in support of the other people involved.

The writers strike was primarily about streaming having terrible residuals and while they were striking they took back the inputs into AI from studios which makes sense given writing has always been for a particular project.

dleslie4• 3 years ago

That's the metaphor to a T: at one time it was necessary to have an operator, until technology reached a point where buttons would suffice.

In the future, script production and revision will still occur via committee, but the actual writing will not be done by humans.

AlexandrB• 3 years ago

As AI improves, we will come to feel the same about writers.

There's no purpose to many forms of media if it doesn't have a human author (besides making money, of course). You're describing content "grey goo" here. I'm not sure why anyone should feel positively about such a development.

ler_• 3 years ago

I seriously don't get this argument, which I see far too often. Meaning, writing being simply a means to an "end" of a product. I like a good piece of fiction especially because it was written by a human being. It is that human's way of communicating something to me / the audience. Do people out there really want to read something written by a machine? Of course, if you have some bottom of the barrel corporate-approved fiction, it may as well be written by AI. But that isn't what I seek to consume and I would wager there are many others who feel the same way. What is the appeal of AI-generated fiction?

timbit425• 3 years ago

They do but an even better option is worker cooperatives which bring democracy and fair profit sharing to the workplace.

ShrigmaMale• 3 years ago

I agree. I'm kind of surprised more unions haven't taken responsibility for opening up co-ops. They have lots of money to do it, it's pro-worker, and it enables them to own the means of production.

Unions ironically act very conservative these days. They could take some bold steps to potentially create very worker-friendly, worker-owned shops, which would create a voluntary, non-coercive path towards the "market socialist" structure many people advocate.

Even in large industries like automobiles where this is hard, they could probably start doing something like smaller-scale parts production and sell those.

Jensson2• 3 years ago

I'm kind of surprised more unions haven't taken responsibility for opening up co-ops

Because that requires skillsets they don't have. People with the skills to start, manage and run companies usually aren't workers so not a part of the union, and I doubt the union members would be happy if the union spent lots of money to hire managers to bet on a startup.

treis3• 3 years ago

Because the real title should be Unions Work For Union Members. Unions became unpopular for a reason. Some were (and I assume still are) outright criminal organizations. The better ones were happy to sell out future workers with two tiered pay structures and by rotting out the companies they worked for.

In practice they have just been another layer of economically unproductive people siphoning off value.

nonameiguess• 3 years ago

There are film studios that are run as cooperatives. They tend to not have a lot of access to capital markets and don't make the kind of bland, inoffensive to Chinese censors nostalgia puffs that bring in a billion dollars globally and fund the Disneys of the world, so the Disneys of the world are still going to employ more writers.

specialist6• 3 years ago

...opening up co-ops.

Word.

IIRC: SEIU, or equally large org, has been funding employee co-ops.

Also IIRC: Richard Wolfe coined worker directed social enterprises (WDSE) to encompass all the democracy and co-op notions.

Having done some (very modest) workplace democracy, and seen the results, I'm very bullish. I read Wolfe's book Democracy at Work when it came out. It was a (very modest) good start. But needed a lot more work developing the ideas. Especially wrt governance and operations.

Enough time has passed, I should circle back and see how things have progressed.

Unions ironically act very conservative these days.

In multiple ways.

In the US, the transition from representing predominately white middle class blue collar workers to representing all workers has been very bumpy.

Labor in the US would be so much further along today if unions had also abandoned their commitment to the Cold War Consensus when Capital did. Anti labor measures like NAFTA should have been wake up calls.

openthc• 3 years ago

Any pointers on how to turn an existing company into a worker co-op or employee owned company?

chaostheory• 3 years ago

Historically, co-ops arise from the ashes of a dead or dying company where the workers know the process inside and out.

Edit: the other instances (much fewer) are when the company founders either start with a co-op in mind or want to transition their company to one as part of their legacy

dismalpedigree• 3 years ago

Get together with other employees and buy it from the owners.

umrcumrcu42• 3 years ago

How do you define "fair profit sharing" and what are the owners' "fair share" in your definition?

timbit425• 3 years ago

To start, every worker is an owner in a worker cooperative. Mondragon requires a financial investment in the cooperative upon hiring. A fair share would be based on the size of each worker's investment in the company. How it is regulated is set by each cooperative so there is no real answer to your question.

thebradbain2• 3 years ago

WGA is a guild, technically, not a union — because most writers are 1099d by studios, not actually full-time employees. Hence the need for collective protections, as contractors in the US have much less guarantees than W2 employees, and thus a co-op structure is almost infeasible any way you look at it.

TheCoelacanth2• 3 years ago

WGA as a co-op obviously wouldn't make sense. The studio itself is what should ideally be a co-op.

ocschwar2• 3 years ago

I have my doubts about unions in our particular industry sector, but out in the real world there are many, many jobs that you would have to be insane to take up without a union at your back.

Woshiwuja3• 3 years ago

Unions are fundamental in every line of work. Not having them is a huge problem. In Europe there isnt a single job without an union behind, wonder why in America that doesnt happen

braza4• 3 years ago

In Europe there isnt a single job without an union behind

Not correct for the whole Europe.

In some places in Central Europe you do not have a Union but instead Work Council that intermediates and oversees the management and acts in the interest of employees.

Personally I like the idea, but at least in some counties it became an instrument of job protection for old employees that sometimes has a different agenda than other employees.

nxm• 3 years ago

As a result of this, there’s a less dynamic job market and lower wages. Companies essentially take on additional risks when hiring there where if it the hire is bad, as they’re unable to or it’s very costly to terminate the employee. This results in a risk premium that is offset via lower wages. I’ll take the U.S. tech sector without unions anyday.

nonethewiser6• 3 years ago

Unions are fundamental in every line of work.

Fundamental in what sense? In most of the world, most of the industries are not unionized. And where there are unions, they came after the line of work started. Which makes unions seem not fundamental at all.

In Europe there isnt a single job without an union behind

Not true at all. Most professional service oriented jobs are not unionized. Even in places like Germany where unions are relatively common.

em-bee3• 3 years ago

the easiest difference to notice is that in the US creating a union inside a company needs to be voted on, whereas eg in germany a council elected by employees is mandated for any company with more than 50 employees. unions are not created in the company but exist outside and any employee is free to join them at any time. if a company has enough union members they can take action there.

which means growth of unions is just a matter of individual choice of each employee. and there is nothing the company can to to stop it.

mikecoles• 3 years ago

Americans are smart enough and strong enough to not have to hide behind a 'powerful union'. Unions are nothing more than legalized mob. The are worthless for productivity and a disaster for those who are eager to work.

hooverd• 3 years ago

In two words, Taft–Hartley.

ocschwar2• 3 years ago

Unions are fundamental in every line of work

They are fundamental in that they blunt the threat I face if I fell out of my present line of work and had to take something that would rough up my baby soft laptop jockey hands. If they have a better bargaining position, I have a better bargaining position because it's less of a loss if I have to join their ranks.

AlbertCory2• 3 years ago

Where does that amazing 59% come from? Oh yes: a survey the AFL-CIO conducted, with no details provided:

" In the early 2000s the AFL-CIO Department for Professional Employees started conducting survey of tech workers across the country found. In 2004, the survey showed that just 33% supported unionizing their workplace. By 2016, that had grown to 59%."

The only "survey" that counts is the actual election for union recognition.

1propionyl• 3 years ago

You would think so, but there tends to be pretty significant bias in union card campaigns and authorization votes. Strike authorizations tend to be even higher.

People who don't support the campaigns tend to just not vote, but there's also a significant number of people who just don't find out.

A better "survey" would be the number who actually sign union cards in workplaces with mandatory union orientations (meaning every employee is necessarily "surveyed"). This also means agreeing to pay dues so there's a "money where your mouth is" component.

(Source: I've helped with running a few.)

AlbertCory2• 3 years ago

You want to abolish the secret ballot election. Not a good look for you.

braza4• 3 years ago

Kudos for the WGA for the achievement.

I partially agree with the statement that unions work. From what I see Unions are great and the current model works in situations where there are 2 monopolies, a monopoly of a work place and monopoly of workforce.

In this case the WGA is the monopoly of workforce and the Hollywood is the monopoly of workplace.

Along the history I saw that this dynamic worked and got advancements for the workers (especially during the industrialisation phase of several countries).

However, when this dynamic is broken what happen is that the “losing side” in a negotiation will start to see alternatives to reduce the dependency of this monopoly.

One clear example is the automotive industry that invested in high amount or automation, offshoring, and in a streamlined supply chain to reduce that exposure. I do not have any number but I would bet that Tesla today can have a high operational margin in comparison with Ford or GM.

For IT I think several companies, specially in this down market, are starting to do the same thing doing offshoring or nearshoring of SWE, hiring folks abroad to avoid the risk of unionization due to the fact there’s no monopoly of SWE as a workforce.

andrei_says_• 3 years ago

Are you implying that it is unions that cause corporations to seek offshoring, automation etc.?

From where I stand it’s a constant race to extract more from workers and unions and possibly legislation are some of the very few forces impeding it.

Spivak3• 3 years ago

Are you implying that it is unions that cause corporations to seek offshoring, automation etc.?

Well that's at least the spooky scary threat that companies use to get people to not join union so my bet is that it's total bullshit and if they could already offshore their workers and factories they would have done so already. Milk those higher wages and benefits while they're still here because they won't change the calculus at all when compared to workers who will work for single digit dollars a day.

braza4• 3 years ago

Are you implying that it is unions that cause corporations to seek offshoring, automation etc.?

Not for this _single_ reason. The decision for offshoring/nearshoring is a multifaceted one.

Companies that have the risk to be locked in a workforce monopoly and does not have the capability to offshore/nearshore work positions, will fight with nail and tooth attempts for uniontization

specialist6• 3 years ago

Yup. Capital pushes to commodify skills and labor.

We as "knowledge workers" know this in our bones.

Now that we've digitized and automated blue collar work, we're tackling white collar work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros

zeroonetwothree7• 3 years ago

Inasmuch as unions increase the cost of labor, employers will have a stronger incentive to replace it with capital.

It’s one reason we haven’t seen much advancement (until recently!) in automated food preparation (vis-a-vis industrial factories)—the labor has been very cheap.

VancouverMan2• 3 years ago

The impact of unionization on the customers/consumers should be considered, too.

My experiences dealing with unionized workforces in Canada as a customer/consumer have generally not been good at all.

Such workers often exhibit tremendous inefficiency, a lack of care, and disinterest. This results in low-quality service/work, and a bad experience for the customers/consumers involved.

This is particularly noticeable when dealing with government employees who are unionized, such as public school teachers, some public hospital staff, the police, public transit system staff, and bureaucrats.

Unionization in such cases creates an environment where there's no incentive to perform well, as there's pretty much no downside to the unionized worker for providing terrible service.

While private sector unionization can result in a similarly-bad customer/consumer experience, at least there's often some degree of competition involved, which can give customers/consumers an alternative when service is remarkably awful. The bad service isn't as unavoidable as it is in the case of the public sector.

The content out of Hollywood matches this pattern, too. I've found it to be among the least-entertaining, least-interesting, and lowest-quality content around. I've had much better results with content from small, non-unionized, independent creators.

specialist6• 3 years ago

In what ways would non-union government employees be better?

Keegs• 3 years ago

The things you attribute to unionization are, I think, a bit of a stretch. Hollywood especially. Actors and writers have been organized for a long time. Smaller studios like A24 with a reputation for making good movies when larger studios milk existing franchises still use organized labor.

supertimor2• 3 years ago

I mean, Hollywood unions have been a thing since the 1930’s, pretty much since the inception of the “Talkies.” So any loss in quality that you claim will have not been due to the unions.

In fact, the most likely culprit of any loss in quality is likely do to the studios and producers who have cut down on budgets, prep time, filming time frames and staffing which makes the existing workers have to constantly scramble to make a good product. And because of the staffing shortages, workers don’t have the same opportunities to learn the ropes from more experienced workers, so the ladder has effectively been broken. The unions are actively fighting the studios on these points because they care about the future of the industry. Without the union backing up these workers, the loss in quality would have likely been even worse than it is now.

Not every union is the same. Hollywood union members are incredibly hardworking, regularly working 60-90 hours a week in very physical and stressful jobs. Many of these workers are highly skilled and take their job very seriously. And they would be much worse off without the union advocating for them.

Bad customer experiences happen in all type of businesses regardless of union status. That shouldn’t distract us from the fact that many people that would otherwise be exploited would be far worse off if they didn’t have a union to represent them.

bko2• 3 years ago

I disagree that unions work. It's mainly due to the fact that it treats everyone more or less the same based on some formula. For instance, they make decisions based on an observable set of factors like how long someone has been there and what education and training they have. But anyone that's worked in the workforce knows this is very limited. People aren't the same. Sometimes someone has been in an org forever but is utterly incompetent. Or someone may have all the certifications in the world but be completely useless. So its a dehumanizing sausage factory. Everyone knows two people may have the same title but one is much more productive at their job.

The rigidness also extends to other factors. For instance, working at a bank we were not allowed to move our monitor to another desk. That was a union job. You had to put in a work order have someone show up eventually and move the monitor for you and get paid some fee. It introduces rigidity and inefficiency and there are constant turf wars. Person A can unplug the monitor but person B has to move it, etc. Or they may have to mandate things like "moving is dangerous so you need a supervisor watching as the person move the monitor.

Finally even if they do succeed at paying above market salaries, that introduces a new question: who gets the job? Paying above a market salary will necessarily result in a lot more workers than available positions. So you have gatekeeping. That leads to cronyism as above market jobs are dolled out to friends and family.

A clear example of how destructive unions can be, take a look at police unions that regularly protect bad police. You see that across the board. I've known teachers in the teachers union that obviously phone it in every chance they get (i.e. showing educational videos during class time). This wouldn't fly in a normal work environment, but due to the over-formalization of hiring, you can't just let someone go for being incompetent or just not very good at their job. You have to jump through hoops

phone86753095• 3 years ago

It's mainly due to the fact that it treats everyone more or less the same based on some formula.

The beauty of a free market system is that if you feel that way, that the union bring mediocrity, you're not forced to deal with them. Start your own company that does not deal with the unions and bring in talent however you see fit. If unions really make things worse then congratulations, you've just created a more agile company that will certainly dominate in the marketplace.

Finally even if they do succeed at paying above market salaries, that introduces a new question: who gets the job? Paying above a market salary will necessarily result in a lot more workers than available positions. So you have gatekeeping. That leads to cronyism as above market jobs are dolled out to friends and family.

This is not inherent to unions - this happens every day in non-union gigs. Not sure why you think non-union jobs are immune to cronyism and gatekeeping.

A clear example of how destructive unions can be, take a look at police unions that regularly protect bad police.

Do you honestly think that the situation would be any different if police were non-union? This is a serious question - I really want to know if you think that the non-union police department would shoot fewer people than an all-union force.

blindhippo• 3 years ago

Unions are meant to be effective in situations where the balance of power between capital and labor is heavily tilted towards the former.

In a situation where there is an actual competitive market and people can leverage their skills and experience towards better salaries on their own, the effectiveness of a union is much lower, though there is still industry wide benefits such as normalization of health insurance standards, anti-cartel advocacy, general working condition standards, etc.

I think the police union example is a bit of a bad faith example - there is more to that one than just "union bad, mmmmkay" - it's institutionalized power and would NEVER be a market driven situation.

Teachers, generally speaking, work in a single employer market, meaning the power dynamic is again tilted towards the employer. Without a union, teachers would likely have even worse conditions than they currently "enjoy" in the USA (and frankly Canada). Hell even now they basically work overtime for free due to expected "extra curricular" workloads outside of school hours and in many cases have to supply their own materials just to be able to do their own job.

Yes, there are disadvantages (as there is in all things). But these do not mean that unions are fundamentally broken.

braza4• 3 years ago

A clear example of how destructive unions can be, take a look at police unions that regularly protect bad police. You see that across the board. I've known teachers in the teachers union that obviously phone it in every chance they get

But I think the counter argument here would be that for every bad cop/teacher that get away with something due to some shenanigans of a Union, there’s cases also that the same Union provides a platform for someone innocent to not get fired.

Let me place another perspective regarding why some unions are necessary that is for airline pilots.

This is a classic case where you have a monopoly of workforce (qualified pilots with specific knowledge with low job transitivity) and workplace (exists in some specific location just a few airlines).

In a hypothetical situation where the airlines start to enforce increase in working hours, reducing rest, and place strain on the workforce; the Unions has the organisation and power to balance that relationship and in some of the cases to help to shape the minimum regulation for the work conditions.

In those situations with dual-monopoly and low job transitivity of the workforce I think make sense to have Unions.

em-bee3• 3 years ago

this is a very US specific problem. i don't believe any other country in the world allows unions to get away with such nonsense.

tehjoker2• 3 years ago

Unions are democracies. If they are rigid, that's because that's what the majority wants. If they are flexible, likewise.

Police unions are basically the worst example of a union. Cops are not "workers". They are on the side of capital, policing its boundaries (literally) that's why they are so rotten!

callmeal• 3 years ago

I would bet that Tesla today can have a high operational margin in comparison with Ford or GM.

Of course they can, and we know where that margin comes from:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/18/tesla-wor...

    Ambulances have been called more than 100 times since 2014 for workers experiencing fainting spells, dizziness, seizures, abnormal breathing and chest pains, according to incident reports obtained by the Guardian. Hundreds more were called for injuries and other medical issues.

...

    “I’ve seen people pass out, hit the floor like a pancake and smash their face open,” said Jonathan Galescu, a production technician at Tesla. “They just send us to work around him while he’s still lying on the floor.”

dehrmann• 3 years ago

the “losing side” in a negotiation will start to see alternatives to reduce the dependency of this monopoly

Really, it's that you can't hold back the invisible hand forever. If the deal was actually too good for workers, it leaves room for a foreign competitor to move in.

It's fine that the use of AI will be limited in TV and movies, but once it's good enough to actually write shows, a new AI-driven studio will do that, and Hollywood doesn't control distribution well enough to stop them.

nonethewiser6• 3 years ago

I can see why workers are most concerned with their own benefit but total productivity is important to the health of a business and economy, which is important to workers as well. And no, working 32 hours is not as productive as 40 hours.

NoMoreNicksLeft2• 3 years ago

Remember, when someone says "X works", what they mean is "X is effective at accomplishing what I want to accomplish, and I don't give a shit what you want to accomplish".

In this meaning, when the headline says "unions work", it is being 100% honest.

everybodyknows• 3 years ago

Second sentence of the article: "This is a great example of how unions can really work for their members."

dividedcomet• 3 years ago

If I was incentivized to care about business productivity (almost no IC is) why should I care if I’m more or less productive? My quality of life only goes up the fewer hours I work so unless there’s some incentive pushing the other way. It’s fine that business and workers have different incentive directions. We’ve been making workers more and more productive with computers and automation. Why shouldn’t I work a little less?

benwerd• 3 years ago

That's why these are two forces: the interests of the business, and the interests of the workers. The idea is that they negotiate and compromise, and a good balance is found.

nonethewiser6• 3 years ago

I agree with the additional clarification that the interest of the business is somewhat the interest of the workers (and vice-versa).

My point is there exist many things that workers might want for their immediate benefit but shouldn't want because ultimately it will be bad for them via an unhealthy business and/or economy.

bastardoperator3• 3 years ago

Studies have shown time and time again that a 4 day work week results in higher productivity and happier employees. Happy employees also do better work.

hgdfhgfdhgdf2• 3 years ago

If that were true, why isn't every company adopting 4 day work weeks?

nonethewiser6• 3 years ago

No they have not. Studies by motivated parties show in some cases there are diminishing returns.

It's a non-sensical argument. If a 4 day work week is more productive than a 5 day work week it means the 5th days is producing negative work. You could literally do nothing every Friday and you would not be less productive than a 4 day work week.

spacemadness2• 3 years ago

Ah yes, the economy. The thing we all need to endlessly sacrifice our lives for out of fear something terrible will happen otherwise. A fear that those in power yield continually like a stick that is very rarely backed up by facts and sensible ideas. The same economy that is leading to massive wealth inequality regardless of how much people work to stop being beaten by the stick.

wilg3• 3 years ago

It’s not crazy to suggest you need to balance labor demands with the demands of efficiently running a business.

eric_cc3• 3 years ago

working 32 hours is not as productive as 40 hours.

Absolute statements like this on this topic are invalid. It’s relative and fluid and not something you can prove scientifically and definitively.

nonethewiser6• 3 years ago

It's safe to say 32 hours of work does not produce more than 40 hours.

The gray area is the point at which there are diminishing returns. Is that between 32 and 40 hours, or more? And how much do they diminish?

LindeBuzoGray3• 3 years ago

And no, working 32 hours is not as productive as 40 hours.

By this logic, working 48 hours is more productive, working 54 hours even more productive, 62 hours even more productive. It can be cranked up even more - the English did and took meticulous records on it.

Dialecticaly it created a strong Labour party which took power in 1945 and nationalized coal, the bank of England, hospitals, telecommunications, national rail, iron and steel - the commanding heights of the economy.

say_it_as_it_is• 3 years ago

Unions also kill companies when executives refuse their demands: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archie_McCardell

sundaeofshock• 3 years ago

Hmmm… that’s a very interesting take an article that suggests the hubris of the CEO ended up destroying the company he was hired to lead.

Steltek• 3 years ago

That particular example seems to be entirely the fault of a CEO who was terrible at his job.

aldousd666• 3 years ago

I'm not a business owner or a CEO, and I can say wholeheartedly that I do not believe unions are good for anybody. It's just like rent control that gives renters lower prices but it destroys the supply eventually. Unions that get wage hikes by stomping their feet and yelling in public are not making the economy better. The detriment is that over time, it makes it harder to hire new workers because the union will get all up in your business if you try to fire someone for non performance. Union shops also make it harder for individual workers who stand out to negotiate higher salaries for themselves. On balance I think unions are a big bad.

tehjoker2• 3 years ago

if you try to fire someone

Sounds like a manager lol

knewter2• 3 years ago

When I was learning to walk, my dad was installing conveyors for an automotive factory - he was vp of engineering (later robotics) for a large engineering firm that Siemens ultimately bought.

He was trying to get the job finished and get home to his family, so he was working late one night double checking the fit on all the nuts, bolts, anything he could check to ensure the job was successful. He did this all the time, I learned how to successfully deliver product from seeing him do it.

A gang of union guys came up to him and threatened to beat him if he continued to work because he was taking a union job away from "the pipe guy", call him Frank.

My dad says "that's fine, can frank come help?"

"Frank's out sick"

And that was that. He either stopped getting the job done or they would visit violence upon him.

I'll never side with people that think this is acceptable behaviour.

TheCoelacanth2• 3 years ago

With that criteria, you have ruled out siding with any form of organization that humans have ever created.

Businesses, governments, churches, sports teams and probably even Girl Scout troops all have a history of committing violence when it serves their aims.

sershe5• 3 years ago

For most organizations, this behavior is incidental to their incentives. For unions, it's a primary motivation. Throughout their history, unions would always be maximally exclusionary to the degree it wouldn't backfire in terms of PR (and sometimes beyond that, e.g. Cesar Chavez conducting anti-immigrant border raids), because that is their whole point.

LindeBuzoGray3• 3 years ago

So the union and company came to a legal agreement about work and your father chose to do work breaking that agreement.

What would happen if I began installing or moving pipes at my company that management and ownership told me not to? A "gang" of security guards or policemen would visit violence on me to stop.

You are aghast at the people actually doing the work and creating the wealth enforcing their rights, but make no mention of the heirs who own Siemens and their "gangs" working to expropriate surplus labor time and profit.

throwawa14223• 3 years ago

So the union and company came to a legal agreement about work and your father chose to do work breaking that agreement.

Adding value deserves to be met with threats. This is a stunning argument against unions you're making.

tshaddox3• 3 years ago

That just sounds like humans committing assault. Really awful, but to me it doesn't indicate much about the concept of unions. I bet there was a firefighter once who murdered someone, but likewise that doesn't indicate much about the concept of firefighting.

adamrezich5• 3 years ago

I bet there was a firefighter once who murdered someone, but likewise that doesn't indicate much about the concept of firefighting.

exceedingly terrible analogy, because the hypothetical firefighter hypothetically committing a hypothetical murder, wholly unrelated to firefighting, is a completely different situation than union guys threatening violence on a worker for union-related reasons, in the pursuit of union-related ideals.

pydry• 3 years ago

There's a long and storied history of anti union violence that is far, far worse than what your dad suffered:

For instance, when a company

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain

By August 29 the battle was fully underway. Chafin's men, though outnumbered, had the advantage of higher positions and better weaponry. Private planes were hired to drop homemade bombs on the miners. A combination of poison gas and explosive bombs left over from World War I were dropped in several locations near the towns of Jeffery, Sharples and Blair. At least one did not explode and was recovered by the miners; it was used months later to great effect as evidence for the defense during treason and murder trials.

Or the anti union assassinations in Columbia:

https://prospect.org/features/coca-cola-killings/

After the leader of their union was shot down at their plant gate in late 1996, Edgar Paéz and his co-workers at the Coca-Cola bottling factory in Carepa, Colombia, tried for more than four years to get their government to take action against the responsible parties. Instead, some of the workers themselves wound up behind bars, while the murderers went free.
I'll never side with people that think this is acceptable behaviour.

It sounds like you are implying that you would never side with any union ever. Not even these.

Is that accurate?

knewter2• 3 years ago

Yeah I meant I wouldn't side with anyone that thinks it's acceptable to do what they did to my dad. I still mean that. Showing me some other examples does nothing, and modern unions largely think more of what happened to my dad should happen.

sershe5• 3 years ago

So a guy is walking down the street and he sees a worker along the road; the worker digs a hole in the ground, then waits a little bit and fills it back in. After that, he walks 10 feet and repeats the process. The guy asks the worker what he's doing. "Planting trees." "Why don't you put the trees in though?" "Oh, I am from the diggers union; the guy from the planters union is out sick today."

sershe5• 3 years ago

People are really not liking this joke. I think it's because it strikes (see what I did here?) too close to home.

Or is it because it's not realistic? Ok, actually there are two digger guys, one to dig the hole and one to fill it in, pursuant to union agreement of 1953 when they were using shovels; now they have an excavator, but... jobs! So they take turns, or maybe they have two excavators pursuant to union agreement of 1979 so that they could each have their own workplace after that one guy wanted AC on and the other wanted AC off and the AC on guy had a heat stroke. Also the planter guy is not out sick, he was suspended from the job because he was putting trees in the holes upside down; he's now sitting in the "rubber room" with full pay pending 11 months of union arbitration. Also when the passer-by offers to help them put the trees in, the diggers beat him up.

zeroonetwothree7• 3 years ago

Did the WGA really “win”? Studios can train models on writers work, which means they will eventually replace them. This might be seen as a pyrrhic victory 20 years from now.

doubleg722• 3 years ago

Yeah UAW just locked in the inflation we have experienced. I do not agree that they are being paid what they are actually worth. Unions are ruining this country.

snapplebobapple• 3 years ago

The only correct statement in this article is that there needs to be a counterbalance to corporate power and even that is only correct if I give the writer the benefit of the doubt and assume they mean market power and not a corporation's right to run itself as shareholders see fit (and fail into bankruptcy if that way is a bad idea).

A correct heading for this article would be "Unions also abuse market power for the benefit of their members at the cost of dead weight loss to society"

The correct counter balance to corporate power is strong antitrust law that is enforced (similar but not quite to the extreme of how it was pre Rehnquist supreme court).

tim3332• 3 years ago

Unions can work but can have downsides as well. I mean take Detroit which used to be a booming place and the world center of the motor industry. In the good times when they were making a lot of money the unions negotiated high wages, conditions etc. Then when things turned down a bit, instead of being able to cut that companies just moved elsewhere and it's been downhill ever since.

Unions work

Related Stories