Break up bad companies; replace bad union bosses

https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/15/class-war-labor-peace/

by hn_acker • 7 months ago

72 109 7 months ago

I raise this because a general strike is back on the table, likely for May Day 2028 (5/1/28):

I say this as an out socialist, member of the DSA, and strong advocate for unions: No it's not. I love Shawn Fain to death, I am a huge fan of his work and strategies, but the idea that an American General Strike is two years away? Most americans won't join a union despite having extremely positive opinions of unions.

JKCalhoun2• 7 months ago

Why is that?

outside12342• 7 months ago

There has been decades of propaganda about how unions destroy jobs in the United States and most software engineers have grown up in those decades.

I'm not trying to argue that Unions are exact right answer (perhaps something like worker's councils would be better) but the underlying issue is that collective action in the United States has been effectively demonized for a very long time (going back to blaming unions for our uncompetitive cars vs. Japan).

dylan6048• 7 months ago

A lot of states are right to work states, so joining a union is just giving your money to someone else with no protections if they can just fire you regardless of union status. At least that's something I've been told before

philipallstar4• 7 months ago

Unions are not perfect. Indeed, it is possible to belong to a union that is bad for workers: either because it is weak, or corrupt, or captured (or some combination of the three).

It's also possible to belong to a union that's bad for customers as well, as they entrench the status quo or raise prices by blocking automation.

Or to ones that donate against your politics[0], which seems particularly galling.

[0] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/teachers-unions-pour...

lawlessone• 7 months ago

which seems particularly galling.

Is it that galling they supported the party more likely to give teachers a favorable outcome?

The idea unions shouldn't be political when some politicians want to destroy unions is silly.

If the billionaires can donate to support politicians that serve their interests more than others why not workers?

philipallstar4• 7 months ago

Of course workers can. But workers can be from different political stripes, and might not want people donating their money to the opposing cause. This shouldn't something you file under "it's only bad when they, the baddies, do it to us, the goodies"[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_position

OkayPhysicist2• 7 months ago

Unions are political entities, because their existence in their current form (i.e., not throwing dynamite at the cops, blowing up bridges, kneecapping scabs, or dragging the foreman out of his home in the middle of the night and killing him in the street) is a legal construct, that the bosses would love to eliminate.

If you're disjointed enough to belong to a union, benefit from a union, and yet hold political views that want to eliminate unions, then it really shouldn't come as some shock that your union is supporting politicians you don't.

dylan6048• 7 months ago

Not sure disjointed is the right word though. Just as a company without a union can have Norma Rae types pushing for a union, there's nothing to say that someone working in a place that requires union membership to be employed can't have their anti-Norma Rae types as well.

danaris10• 7 months ago

Well, the right wing also wants to destroy education, which is pretty bad for teachers in or out of a union.

The teaching profession also has a tendency (far from a universal rule) to select for people with higher compassion and empathy, which has been outright called a "sin" by the right wing.

So yeah, if you're mad at teachers' unions for supporting left-wing political causes & politicians, you're, uh, kinda barking up the wrong tree. Or upset at water for being wet. Or something.

philipallstar4• 7 months ago

Unions are political entities, because their existence in their current form (i.e., not throwing dynamite at the cops, blowing up bridges, kneecapping scabs, or dragging the foreman out of his home in the middle of the night and killing him in the street) is a legal construct, that the bosses would love to eliminate.

Those things are covered by law enforcement already. Unions didn't invent thou shalt not kill.

dabockster• 7 months ago

I think the big takeaway here is that unionization can sometimes be just trading one bad manager for another. It's not a silver bullet to fix a workplace.

That being said, though, I do encourage unionization in general. But you have to be aware of which union you'd be entering into a relationship with as well.

daft_pink2• 7 months ago

In the United States, unions should be used to advocate for higher wages and that’s it.

OSHA and the US’s high litigation costs make most work places fairly safe.

The unions have been failing for advocating for unrealistic benefit packages where most workers would rather have the salary.

The unions have also been destroying companies by imposing restrictions that limit operational flexibility like arguing against automation, specifying minimum operational hours for a factory etc.

They should adjust unions so they are only arguing for increased total wages and not all these other things that are incredibly destructive.

awkward• 7 months ago

Unions are useful because they are a counterparty to negotiations with management. They have leverage because they are able to represent labor as a single entity. If they are only able to represent labor on one axis, but not on issues that represent quality of workplace, they lose leverage in negotiation that allows them to win larger salaries.

pdonis5• 7 months ago

they are able to represent labor as a single entity

They'd be even more able to do that if they were actual corporations, owned by all the workers, selling organized labor as a service. Then they would only have to negotiate the prices of the services they sold, instead of having to negotiate all kinds of other things. The workers themselves, as owners of the corporation, would be determining things like benefit packages, retirement, how to bring new workers in, etc., etc.

oersted5• 7 months ago

high litigation costs make most work places fairly safe

I don't understand this. High litigation costs give an unfair advantage to those with capital to spare. It makes it harder for harmed workers to sue and have the stamina to succeed. An important role of unions is actually to pool worker capital to level that playing field.

Do you mean that the amounts that companies need to pay when they loose are high enough to disincentivize taking those risks? I'm not sure that's true, it may be to a degree.

dylan6048• 7 months ago

Why only focused on wages? What about treatment of employees in general from maximum hours, minimum down time, workplace safety, and many other things that unions are meant to address?

daft_pink2• 7 months ago

Because wage growth is too low in the United States, but these other factors introduce weird effects that hurt the competitiveness of our companies and our industry.

I don’t think that work in the US in general is unsafe and things like OSHA and insurance really manage safety well. It doesn’t seem like unionized industries are any more less safe than non unionized industries.

I think most workers actually want wage growth. Things like hollywood writers banning ai or auto workers preventing plant closures just don’t make sense.

danaris10• 7 months ago

If you would rather have an extra, say, $3k/yr* in salary, rather than having that exact same amount of money go toward an employer-provided health plan that would, if you tried to obtain it on your own, cost $10k/yr, then I think you might have a problem with math.

Note that I don't just mean the math of $10k > $3k, because I know some people think that they can save money by just not having health coverage. This is also being bad at math: specifically, statistics. You won't win, especially since you need regular checkups to make sure you aren't starting to develop something that's cheap to nip in the bud, but massively expensive to treat later.

* No actual numbers were harmed in the making of this post. If you think these specific numbers are unrealistic, feel free to substitute other actual values, but the rough ratios should still be in the right ballpark.

jdross3• 7 months ago

I would love to address unions in public and semi-public (e.g. teachers' unions, dockworkers, police and fire unions). They are able to hold the public hostage by preventing automation at ports, stopping teaching (often doubling as daycare for children), or withholding public safety.

The counterbalance to a union and to management needs to be customers, but customers aren't able to vote no here. That's fundamentally undemocratic.

And you end up with terrible outcomes like collapsing literacy rates through the prevention of teaching phonics, which leads to parents opting out of public education entirely. There needs to be a feedback mechanism in unions for them to work.

rcbdev2• 7 months ago

What are you talking about? >99% of all Austrian employment contracts are based on and negotiated by the unions here.

Is our school system failing? No. Is our public infrastructure somehow inferior? No.

The U.S. is much less unionized and much worse off for it.

jdross3• 7 months ago

Specifically in the US context, this is failing. And 70% of our teachers are unionized, with unionized districts seeming to underperform equivalent non-unionized districts (despite researchers repeatedly trying to find the opposite, the stats just are what they are)

You need to be able to explain this better than “look at Austria”. Nearly everything about Austria is different than the US.

harvey9• 7 months ago

Are you referring to public sector teaching jobs in both cases?

taylodl• 7 months ago

Winston Churchill one quipped 'You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they’ve tried everything else.' I suppose that also applies to managing their societal affairs as well. The upside to falling so far behind the industrial world? There are plenty of proven solutions to copy to which they'll loudly proclaim as their own stroke of genius.

JKCalhoun2• 7 months ago

FTA: "Thankfully, union workers figured out that the answer to this problem was firing their leaders and replacing them with militant, principled leaders who cared about workers, not just a subsection of their members."

Looks like bad companies are what is left.

nickff• 7 months ago

Have you seen how and what the Longshore Workers negotiate (mentioning them because the grandparent did)? They falsely claim many things, such as that port automation is dangerous (when it isn't in Europe), to increase the number of members employed at West-coast ports, and are able to hold downstream customers hostage, because they have a monopoly on stevedore-age across the West coast. If one company obtained a monopoly the way the LSW did (through gradual horizontal integration), they would have been stopped under anti-trust.

Sector-wide unions in general seem prone to anti-competitive practices (including, but not limited to extortion).

vkou• 7 months ago

They are able to hold the public hostage by preventing automation at ports, stopping teaching (often doubling as daycare for children), or withholding public safety.

The legislature can and has ordered them back to work without a contract. Check out how well that went for the railworkers' union. Biden ordered them back to work, and most of them still don't get the sick days they were striking for.

It's interesting that they are so critically important to the nation that they aren't allowed to strike, but not so critically important that they shouldn't be treated like shit.

It's fun to try to square that circle.

jdross3• 7 months ago

Not getting everything everyone wants is a pretty common outcome in negotiations. Some people got more sick days. Some didn’t get more sick days. Maybe the ones who didn’t will leave to find work elsewhere with a better schedule?

toomuchtodo5• 7 months ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_States_railroad_la...

In February 2023, CSX announced a deal to provide four days of paid sick leave annually, plus the option of converting three personal days into additional paid sick time with two unions.

Is it enough? No (they were striking for 15 days). Does it help until the ratchet can be pulled further for better working conditions? Yes. Next time they strike, they should ensure they're in a better position of power to obtain their desired outcome.

vintagedave2• 7 months ago

customers aren't able to vote no here. That's fundamentally undemocratic

Union workers _are_ voters and citizens and the disenfranchised. There is almost nothing _more_ democratic than organised action.

If they cause inconvenience through that action, that is intended to be political pressure. If you dislike them because of those effects, that is removing their right to effectively collectively act and bargain.

vintagedave2• 7 months ago

I see I was very rapidly downvoted. Let me expand: the history of labor rights, environmental protests, and many others have all been through disruption.

Take a completely difference example: anti-logging. Logging protesters march through the streets, disrupting traffic and making people late for work. (Legal marches.) Or they sit up trees and chain themselves, preventing the trees from being cut. (Usually illegal.) Both these get significant attention.

Democracy is rife with examples like this.

How did the suffragettes get the vote? By protest.

Yet many other groups would have -- and have tried -- to prevent these protests and actions, just like the 'customers' cited in the comment I replied to. That's my point: to call being able to prevent that 'democratic' is outside the past century and a half of modern Western democratic history.

Aurornis5• 7 months ago

If you dislike them because of those effects, that is removing their right to effectively collectively act and bargain.

Disliking a group does not remove any of their rights.

Everyone has the right to dislike or disagree with another group. Nobody has to agree with you or support your different opinions. That's fundamental.

jtbayly3• 7 months ago

They are a minority of voters, though. And they get to unilaterally declare things that the vast majority don't get to vote on. I don't think you're making a good case.

jaredklewis3• 7 months ago

I’m fine with the right to collectively act and bargain in some abstract sense.

In practice, I observed that police unions, for example, seem to be too effective at protecting their members’ interests at the expensive of the public’s. They seem more like a mafia.

If tech or game workers or whoever wants to unionize, fine with me.

ryandrake• 7 months ago

They are able to hold the public hostage by preventing automation at ports, stopping teaching (often doubling as daycare for children), or withholding public safety.

It takes two to tango. If they're striking it's because they are not bending and management is not bending either. Why are management always off the hook when a walkout happens? Only the union gets the blame. They both failed to come to agreement.

Aurornis5• 7 months ago

Why are management always off the hook when a walkout happens? Only the union gets the blame.

I haven't seen this as a general rule. Most news outlets publish headlines about "failed to reach an agreement". If you go to news outlets and sites with a political lean it's predictable which side will be blamed. Visit Fox News and it's all about the union being bad. Visit Reddit and everyone is angry at management.

toomuchtodo5• 7 months ago

People who do the work should be able to exert power against those who demand their labor. Otherwise, they are simply slaves to consumers and shareholders "because that's the way the system is, and we're not willing to change it". Based on the evidence in the US, is that working out? It is not. Whether you believe change is necessary are components of some combination of either empathy for your fellow human and their experience having to work to support themselves and how exposed you are economically to the dumpster fire.

This is the ideal time for labor to exert power at this part of the demographics cycle [1], as surplus labor will only decline into the future as labor shortages [2] from the rapid fertility rate decline [3] become structural and irreversible.

[1] https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jesusfv/Slides_London.pdf

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

[3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Aurornis5• 7 months ago

People who do the work should be able to exert power against those who demand their labor. Otherwise, they are simply slaves to consumers and shareholders

Hyperbole like this is hard to take seriously. Nobody is a "slave" when they apply for and accept a job offer where they're paid wages and can leave for another job at any time.

littlestymaar3• 7 months ago

collapsing literacy rates through the prevention of teaching phonics

Is that even a true thing?

I'm asking because in my country (France) this has been a talking point of the conservative party for the past 2 decades and it's also 100% a urban legend. So I wonder if they just imported a (real) US educational controversy or if it's a urban legend there as well and they just imported the bullshit.

danaris10• 7 months ago

The switch away from teaching phonics, and the consequent drop in literacy, is real.

It is not particularly something that was pushed by teacher unions.

The "three cueing model" was being pushed for some time as being more effective due to widely-promoted misunderstanding and misinformation by one guy whose name I'm afraid I've forgotten (I was reading about this a few months ago, and don't have the references to hand). It correctly recognizes that highly adept readers do not mentally sound out every word, but rather recognize known words very quickly from a few individual aspects of the word. However, this skill absolutely 100% requires having first learned the fundamentals of reading through phonics, and its proponents thought they could skip that step.

givemeethekeys• 7 months ago

As long as executive compensation continues to be many multiples higher than rank and file employees, I will support unions holding whomever they want hostage in order to get better pay and benefits.

Why? Because it will translate to better pay and benefits for everyone else.

csb62• 7 months ago

And you end up with terrible outcomes like collapsing literacy rates through the prevention of teaching phonics, which leads to parents opting out of public education entirely.

What is your evidence that teachers’ unions are causing these issues and not state/federal education policy? Do teachers’ unions have a big role in developing curriculums or setting educational policy? It seems like state legislatures and superintendents have more to do with that.

Aurornis5• 7 months ago

Several Teachers' Unions publicly oppose phonics curriculum as part of a larger goal to shift curriculum choosing power to the teachers unions.

If you want evidence, look to the Teachers' Unions own efforts to oppose phonics education: https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/why-some-teachers-u...

miltonlost• 7 months ago

And you end up with terrible outcomes like collapsing literacy rates through the prevention of teaching phonics, which leads to parents opting out of public education entirely.

Did the teachers unions also cause you to make this leap in logic?

IAmBroom5• 7 months ago

They turned me into a newt.

Arainach5• 7 months ago

The counterbalance to a union and to management needs to be customers

What do you even mean by this? Customers want everything as cheap as possible as fast as possible, and to hell with the employees. Go watch a supermarket checkout section for an hour if you don't believe that.

Customers are not a valid check on labor-capital relations.

andrekandre• 7 months ago

  > They are able to hold the public hostage by preventing automation at ports, stopping teaching (often doubling as daycare for children), or withholding public safety.

if instead of being in conflict with capital/management, the workers owned the companies/schools etc (iow a cooperative), i wonder if they would be against automation and the rest of it in that case? perhaps in that structure automation would be welcomed relief from drudgery and fear of being let go...?

  > The counterbalance to a union and to management needs to be customers, but customers aren't able to vote no here.

they can vote if its a consumer cooperative, no?

https://ncbaclusa.coop/resources/co-op-sectors/consumer-co-o...

ronsor• 7 months ago

Customers have the power to destroy both bad companies and bad unions.

teeray2• 7 months ago

Yes, they can take their dollars away from one bad company and bring them to the other bad company instead. That will show them.

oersted5• 7 months ago

Or they can create a new good company and take all the customers, that's the fairytale at least.

It does actually happen quite often, but then the good company predictably goes bad once its dominant, which may or may not be premeditated.

Indeed, often the only way the good company can afford to be good is the prospect of eventually being able to be bad, worse even, to pay back that speculative investment. And on-and-on we go.

worik• 7 months ago

That is a sweet thought, it would be nice if it were true, it is false.

"Customers" are barely holding on in a very precarious position

jfindper4• 7 months ago

Missing the "when there's a choice" part of your sentence. Often there isn't.

jaredklewis3• 7 months ago

Any tips on "destroying" my local police union?

tolerance• 7 months ago

Does this guy lift?

BrenBarn• 7 months ago

The article calls out "bad" union bosses as being those who push things like two-tiered contracts, prioritizing more senior members and creating inequality within the union. But in my perception (and I don't think I'm alone in this), an equally troubling problem is that even "good" union bosses prioritize members of their own union and create inequality among the broader class of workers and citizens.

Egregious examples include union advocacy for various kinds of licensure or "fossilizing" regulations (i.e., "we must keep doing things in this way we've been doing them to preserve the jobs of the people who do them that way"). These just raise barriers for other workers, increase competition for coveted union jobs, and increase the separation between "good" (aka union) jobs and the rest.

The old-school unions a la the Wobblies were more focused on improving the lot of all workers, everywhere. Many of the labor reforms that were passed in the early 20th century (like minimum wage) followed this model: everyone gets the minimum wage, everyone gets worker safety guarantees, everyone gets the benefits of the labor policies. But nowadays I don't see so much of that from unions or labor activism in general. To a large extent I see the reverse: advocating for special minimum-wage carveouts (e.g., for hotel workers or fast-food workers); advocacy for special work-condition requirements; and yes, things like two-tier systems where benefits or pensions are differentially allocated based on characteristics internal to the union/job.

I hate fat cat capitalism and large corporations more than almost anyone I know, but many unions (especially public employee unions) have lost a lot of my trust because of these things. The sad reality seems to be that many unions, just like the corporate bosses, are just in it for themselves. Being in it for everyone in the union is better than being in it for just the union bosses, but it's still not good enough as long as they're not in it for everyone who isn't super wealthy. If unions want to attract people they need to forcefully advocate not just for better stuff right now for these few people (union members), but for a wholesale societal overhaul to upend the entire economic system that makes such small-scale negotiation necessary.

Break up bad companies; replace bad union bosses

Related Stories