In some US states, unions are allowed to agree on so-called "union security" rules in their negotiations with employers. These require all employees covered by the union's agreements to be members.
Other, so-called "right-to-work" states have outlawed the practice.
The clauses make sense for the union and their members because you cannot restrict the benefits of union representation to only members. That creates "free-rider" problems. The opposite argument is about freedoms of contract and association.
I'm unsure if you are typically allowed to make your own agreements with the employer when there's union representation. That's probably defined in negotiation, and whatever has traditionally been agreed upon for steelworkers etc. may not be the best model for tech workers.
> I'm unsure if you are typically allowed to make your own agreements with the employer when there's union representation.
No, in closed shop contracts, this is expressly prohibited. Violating this and negotiating with your employer directly could be considered grounds for termination of union membership (ie, termination of employment). The employer would also face consequences as well.
> whatever has traditionally been agreed upon for steelworkers etc. may not be the best model for tech workers.
That's true - unfortunately, the NLRA (the law which regulates union operations) is very rigid, and it does not provide different stipulations for different industries.
There's a reason that virtually all NLRA-regulated unions in each state enact the same corporate policies for membership, the same contract structures, etc. - those are the ones which turn out to provide a stable (in the literal sense) balance of power under the laws.
It's very unlikely that an NLRA-regulated union in the tech industry would operate differently, in the long run, from the NLRA-regulated unions in every other industry.
At my last job(not tech), our wages were negotiated with the union at a much lower rate than our competitors and owed dues. We had no control because the union was "representing" us and we could take it or quit.
Yes. Mandatory unions (And be careful about how you define that, because many would claim they're not while still requiring their pound of flesh[1]) are signified by their monopoly on labor.
By maintaining a chokehold on who can supply a vital resource (labor) to businesses, Unions have a history of strangling their patrons - See Detroit. From a distributed systems perspective, Unions represent a single point of failure.
I'm entirely in favor of groups banding together to request, nee, demand, rights, pay increases, healthcare. Once they start having 'management' tiers of their own, they're no longer representing you - They're a corporation you work for, contracting to your nominal employer. Just being clearer about it doesn't work - Microsoft hires an army of 'contractors' who are abused in precisely the same way. Nor does having multiple competing pseudo-unions - There's dozens of headhunters to go through to work for microsoft, but they all compete on 'price' and drive wages down[2].
[1]http://www.nrtw.org/required-join-pay-teacher/ - "educators cannot be required to do more than pay a union fee (typically called an "agency fee") that equals their share of what the union can prove is its costs of collective bargaining, contract administration, and grievance adjustment" - Which is to say, you don't have to join the union, they just get to negotiate for you, take a cut of your pay, and be the intermediary that represents you - While you've proved your disloyalty to them by not choosing to 'join' them, so they have no actual incentive to do so. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrichs_v._California_Teach...
US jurisprudence requires unions to represent non-members whether they want to or not. I don't like agency fees, but they're a response to a free-rider problem.
Yes, a union is pretty much a corporation that supplies labor. The biggest difference is how they're governed. Nobody bats an eye if a supplier negotiates an exclusive contract.
Agreed. I think exclusive supplier contracts are pretty dumb, too - At least without clauses for 'Price match or get out'. And the solution to the former should be (and I'll admit this is a stretch) to fix that problem, or better yet: simply to make your union's services so attractive and obviously a public good that the significant majority want to be sure it sticks around. Yes, the free rider problem is universal - Unions cause it as much as suffer from it (ever heard of unions suffering from deadweight because of seniority rules? No, nobody else ever has either :P)
Whatever you or I think about exclusive supplier contracts, is there a single state that forbids them except for unions?
Seniority rules are something unions negotiate for. Contracting firms stick warm bodies on projects all the time. That's between the supplier and the customer, not imposed by the federal government.
I agree it would be better to fix that, but as you said, it's a stretch. Good luck getting Republicans or Democrats to go for it.
> US jurisprudence requires unions to represent non-members whether they want to or not. I don't like agency fees, but they're a response to a free-rider problem.
They get around that by structuring all of the benefits in the employment contracts to cover only their members, and by negotiating exclusive employment contracts with employers (so that there are no non-members).
Put another way, 94% of people who are represented by an NLRB-governed union never had the opportunity to vote for or against union membership in the first place. Most of those are employed by employers with exclusive contracts ("closed shop"), and because the union itself is not required to stand for reelection (its representatives are, but the union basically guaranteed permanent representation[0]), it means that free-riders are a non-issue.
[0] The process of decertifying or deauthorizing a union is very strictly regulated and unions have very broad leeway in preventing it, so it almost never happens except in cases of criminal misconduct and the like.
The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation considers anything but "open shop" to be "forced unionism" and lists 28 states as free from that scourge.[1] No exclusive contracts, no agency fees.
> The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation considers anything but "open shop" to be "forced unionism" and lists 28 states as free from that scourge.[1] No exclusive contracts, no agency fees.
I think you're conflating open shops and right-to-work laws, but besides that, the point is that there is no free rider problem even in states with right-to-work laws, because the union can structure their contracts with the employer so that non-members don't receive any benefits. Sure, they'll represent non-members, but there aren't any reasons the non-members would ever need them to, because the benefits literally would not apply in the first place.
Unions don't really talk about this, because the free-rider problem is a convincing argument to use in favor of mandatory dues withholding, but in reality it's an issue that they already have the tools to avoid.
Plenty of unions and associations don't do this. A reasonable method for this would be for a union to negotiate per level salary bands, and yearly merit increases.
Within the band the company pays whatever they think you are worth.
Other, so-called "right-to-work" states have outlawed the practice.
The clauses make sense for the union and their members because you cannot restrict the benefits of union representation to only members. That creates "free-rider" problems. The opposite argument is about freedoms of contract and association.
I'm unsure if you are typically allowed to make your own agreements with the employer when there's union representation. That's probably defined in negotiation, and whatever has traditionally been agreed upon for steelworkers etc. may not be the best model for tech workers.