[shubhamjain]

> I live in a country with a very strong union movement and the only reason I'm able to sit here typing this message is because my parents and grandparents unionised rather than live off of slavery wages. That may mean nothing to Americans where it's every man for themselves, but don't think yourselves so lucky that you got to the position you're in without workers uniting with one another and ensuring they get a fair share against the greed of the few.

There is another side of this coin too. I just finished reading The Box, a book on the advent of containerization, and it's appalling how unions fiercely fought any sort of mechanization. A job that required only 1-2 longshoremen mandatorily needed many more because unions said so. Days, and sometimes weeks, were wasted on strikes when a consensus couldn't be reached. Jobs that weren't needed anymore were still forced to be kept because any labor-saving innovation was undesirable. In the end, it was more cost-effective to compulsorily retire the longshoremen with a guaranteed income than to fight them.

I don't deny that the unions serve a purpose but the exploitation of their dominance can surely set back innovation by years. I wouldn't want to part of an organization that mandates that I can't touch PHP code because I am a Frontend Engineer.

[gaius]

Unions in the UK and US are antagonistic to the point that they will gladly destroy a company or even an entire industry rather than give an inch (union bosses don’t care, they are very well looked after, strangely). But unions in France and Germany are far cleverer, they would never kill the goose that laid the golden eggs. That’s why Germany is strong in manufacturing AND has superb working conditions... and the UK has a service economy and zero-hours contracts

[conanbatt]

Smart unions everywhere do that, but because of that they also regularly sell the workers.

In argentina, unions are constitutionally protected. Union leaders are defacto politicians, as they cannot be arrested for many crimes without congress approval. What is unique about argentina is that unions are right-wing and shut the left-wing parties out. And the left parties (socialist, communist) always denounce that the unions are constantly selling off the workers.

Today, the strongest union leader is getting indicted because it used union's funds to sustain his own soccer club.

[mdekkers]

That’s why Germany is strong in manufacturing AND has superb working conditions... and the UK has a service economy and zero-hours contracts

Bravo, well said. Solid working conditions, meaningful employee input to company decision making processes, and excellent remuneration for all doesn't really impact the bottom line but significantly improves quality and productivity in most cases.

[gambiting]

In my experience Unions in Poland will sooner let the company close than give an inch, to a point where the government is bailing out private companies just so they wouldn't get a massive strike by the unions.

[TheCoelacanth]

Unions in the US and UK are antagonistic because businesses have been trying to destroy them for over a century. Many companies actually had striking workers murdered in an attempt to control unions.

German unions are less antagonistic because they are required by law to get representation on the boards of all companies with more than 500 employees.

[willbw]

And France has...?

[telchar]

High productivity, great worker protections, and high unemployment. Seems to be a mixed bag but the workers who have jobs wouldn't trade it.

[pm90]

France is a very interesting country. I would really like to know details about labor conditions there before making the default judgement that I used to when I was younger, that unionization and over-regulation had basically killed the French economy, causing the high levels of unemployment. They seem to have a system of protecting their workers, now if there was a way to also increase innovation/employment so more people could benefit from this system ...

[realusername]

At the moment it seems to be a choice in the developed world for high unemployment or high ratio of poor part-time workers , there's not enough work for everybody anyway so I'm not sure which one is the worst.

[conanbatt]

"The only way a union can effectively increase the wages of its workers is by reducing the amount of workers" - Milton Friedman

[gaius]

I like Friedman but this manifestly isn’t true: it’s about the ratio of capital (and management) to labour. Any profitable company can set this ratio to whatever they want.

[themistocle]

A decent way of life and some semblance of culture.

[gsnedders]

> There is another side of this coin too. I just finished reading The Box, a book on the advent of containerization, and it's appalling how unions fiercely fought any sort of mechanization. A job that required only 1-2 longshoremen mandatorily needed many more because unions said so. Days, and sometimes weeks, were wasted on strikes when a consensus couldn't be reached. Jobs that weren't needed anymore were still forced to be kept because any labor-saving innovation was undesirable. In the end, it was more cost-effective to compulsorily retire the longshoremen with a guaranteed income than to fight them.

To be fair, that's a failing with those unions, and in a sense part of the systemic problems with US unions; plenty of unions elsewhere saw automation as inevitable and got training for their members to find jobs in other areas.

[pm90]

> To be fair, that's a failing with those unions, and in a sense part of the systemic problems with US unions; plenty of unions elsewhere saw automation as inevitable and got training for their members to find jobs in other areas.

Do you think this is because the Unions are different, or perhaps maybe the people/culture are different?

[gsnedders]

> Do you think this is because the Unions are different, or perhaps maybe the people/culture are different?

What is a union if not a collective of its members? i.e., is there a difference between unions being different and people/culture being different?

[peoplewindow]

Which unions? I grew up in the UK and unions there were antagonistic in the same way. French farming unions regularly pull stunts like dumping cow shit on the roads:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2822120/French-farme...

The only country I've ever seen held up as an example of productive unionisation is Germany, and unions there don't seem to bear much resemblence to unions anywhere else. Possibly because of its unique history with respect to socialism.

[gsnedders]

> The only country I've ever seen held up as an example of productive unionisation is Germany, and unions there don't seem to bear much resemblence to unions anywhere else. Possibly because of its unique history with respect to socialism.

There's several other Germanic examples, including Sweden/Norway (and I'd be surprised if Denmark wasn't the same here) and Austria, and I believe Switzerland.

[ubernostrum]

What I think is interesting is the different standards applied by people like you -- and even whether you realize you're doing it!

Concentrated power in the hands of capital has had utterly devastating effects on millions if not billions of people. It has easily cost 7-digit numbers of lives. Yet in general, capitalism is taken for granted as a good, discussions of problems always get tons and tons of "yeah, but even if it did that bad thing here's a bunch of good that outweighs it", and at best people suggest only very moderate restraints as a remedy.

Putting even small amounts of power in the hands of labor... does not get that kind of pass. Instead, the focus is almost exclusively on harms, flipping the story to "I guess they did some good, but..." and then bringing up criticism after criticism, either implying or outright saying that unless labor unions manage to somehow be perfect angels at all times it won't be worth allowing them to exist.

What's even more ironic is that a labor union is just a legal form that pools a resource, for the benefit of those who provide that resource, in ways that wield more power than any of them could individually. The only difference between a labor union and a for-profit corporation is the resource being pooled.

[Barraketh]

Actually I think that you're just looking at the situation from a different angle than many of us. The reason I have some distrust of unions is that they sometimes seem to promote inefficiency as a policy. The distribution of money problem is actually orthogonal to the problem of "how do you do task X most efficiently". If a machine can do the work of 10 men, then to have those 10 men doing the work of the machine is literally wasting their lives.

I wish that unions pursued more contracts of the form "we get X percent of revenue/profits" and then distributed those profits amongst their membership the way they saw fit. This way decreasing the amount of work per person does not decrease the amount of money per person and business and union interests are aligned. I'm sure there are practical reasons why that's difficult though.

[guelo]

I can think of a thousand examples of capitalists pursuing inefficiency as a policy. First thing that came to mind is when food companies change packaging to hide the fact that they reduced the amount being sold.

[ubernostrum]

No, I really think there is a double standard for corporations versus unions.

Witness the complaint about unions pushing back on automation -- yet how many companies and corporate cartels have attempted to quash, or even outlaw, new technology they saw as a threat to their revenue streams? Why do we not simply say that we live in a greed-driven system, and this is the consequence, and try to address the root of it? Instead we get endless "well unions do some bad things" comments, imposing a far higher standard of perfection than we'd ever apply to a corporation.

[GuiA]

How is this "the other side of the coin"? This story makes it sound like the union did its job (= protecting the interests of individual workers over the interests of the company) exactly as intended, and technological progress went on forward unimpeded, as we can attest to today.

Sure, some executives would have rather not paid for the retirement of the longshoremen. Without unions, they would have fired all of the longshoremen in one fell swoop, and made a few millions more in the short term (for the exact same results in the long term). But what happens to the longshoremen in that universe? Do they tend to commit suicide more than the average? Develop an opioid addiction? etc.

I don't think a fair society is one where it is acceptable to fuck over an entire subsegment of the population for the profit of "investors", "the market", "technological progress", or whatever you want to call it.

[danmaz74]

In other words, both unions and capital owners will abuse their power if they have too much of it...

[themistocle]

Who is automation for? What end does the technology serve? If the economy doesn’t serve humanity then to hell with it. Offer people decent lives, or at least don’t act surprised when the luddites come to smash your precious “labor-saving”.

[austenallred]

> Who is automation for?

All of us.

I, for one, am glad that I'm not sending this message via pigeon by the light of a candle, because I wouldn't be sending it - I'd probably be spending my days plowing some field somewhere were it not for "job killing" technological innovation.

50% of the United States used to be farmers, now it's 2%. We sure as hell don't have 48% unemployment, and I'd guess that nearly every American has it better now than they would have in the same social strata then.

Tesla saw the promise of electricity and automation as a magical force that would free men from toiling away doing things they actually needn't do. And I think he was largely right! Think of where we would be if Tesla, Edison and Westinghouse refused to work on electricity, lightbulbs, and electric motors because it would put the people that stoke fires for a living out of a job.

What happened when tractors came and took all of the farming jobs away? Food became much less expensive, and we all ended up doing different things - the vast majority of which are much better than farming. And the luddites would have smashed the tractors?! What a counterproductive way to try and help people.

It's not always beautiful in the short-run, but the economy cures itself relatively quickly, and the people that fill the gaps are handsomely rewarded. To fight innovation for the sake of jobs, so far as I can tell, is almost always short-sighted.

[themistocle]

> What happened when tractors came and took all of the farming jobs away?

Have you heard of “The Grapes of Wrath”?

No one is talking about fighting “innovation” for the sake of jobs. I questioned to point to the central conflict of who benefits from all of this. The old socialists were the most technologically hopeful, because they believed new technologies would spare workers from drudgery. Yet if you look at the vast interior of the United States, almost every community is worse off now than it was 25 years ago. Old, bad jobs at least gave people dignity and a sense of place.

Your naïve faith in high school economics fails to address a key question of our times: as technology races ahead of social ability to adapt and integrate it, how will people manage? Leave behind Ayn Rand and look to history: this same crisis has played out in the 1st century BCE in Rome and the 18th century in France just to name two famous examples. Depriving common people a decent living leads to disaster.

People need to make a living. Immigration alone has provoked widespread resentment. When self-driving cars and the like displace more workers at an unprecedented pace the outcome will be violent. Rhetoric and greed will not stem the high tides of blood.

[austenallred]

> Your naïve faith in high school economics fails to address a key question of our times: as technology races ahead of social ability to adapt and integrate it, how will people manage? Leave behind Ayn Rand and look to history.

We don’t need to look to Rome for that. It’s happened a dozen times in the United States. This isn’t a new scenario. Though it certainly is simple to call anything that disagrees with your understanding of the world “high school economics.”

And you can quit it with the Ayn Rand strawman. Just because someone is discussing economics doesn’t mean they’re Randian any more than it makes you a Marxist.

[pm90]

> We don’t need to look to Rome for that. It’s happened a dozen times in the United States. This isn’t a new scenario.

I think you're being too optimistic. The only time I can think of where the US made the switch successfully was when creating entirely new job sectors. e.g. from Agriculture to Industry meant there were similar numbers of jobs in Industry, and then to the Services. But Automation seems to be a dead end: one worker is so productive he/she can manage an entire fleet of autonomous trucks (e.g.)! So there will most certainly be a lot of people losing their jobs and the kind of jobs opening up for them... don't seem to be many.

[peoplewindow]

A few decades ago the most common job title in the USA was secretary. It certainly isn't anymore. Now it's truck driver.

Secretary went away (and wasn't simply replaced with a new title like admin assistant) because of IT. We don't have a secretary shaped hold in the economy. They mostly got other jobs, or retired.

[austenallred]

That was literally the argument people made about electricity, tractors, steam engines, etc.

[themistocle]

What I referred to as high school economics are sentimental rhetoric like:

> Who is automation for? All of us

Your arguments have largely been innocent either by design or accident from the terrifying reality of daily life under our glorious economic system. I meant no personal insult to you of course. Your words reflect a broader notion that questions like automation are problems to be solved – a fine mindset from a technical perspective. But these are not just technical questions, they are grave conflicts where millions of lives hang in the balance. Slate Star Codex has a better exposition of this difference[0].

> Think of where we would be if Tesla, Edison and Westinghouse refused to work on electricity, lightbulbs, and electric motors because it would put the people that stoke fires for a living out of a job.

This is nearly identical to the plot from Ayn Rand's book "Anthem"[1].

[0]: http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/01/24/conflict-vs-mistake/ [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthem_(novella)

> The next day he presents his work to the World Council of Scholars. Horrified that he has done unauthorized research, they assail him as a "wretch" and a "gutter cleaner" and say he must be punished. They want to destroy his discovery so it will not disrupt the plans of the World Council and the Department of Candles.

[eecc]

The Luddites smashed machinery because the ownership was using it to drop their cottage industries off the map without a moments notice. No negotiations, no winding down, retooling, retraining or nothing, just pack your shit and go starve out of sight. Can’t see how that wouldn’t happen again

[dredmorbius]

Political economy, considered as a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator, proposes two distinct objects: first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people, or more properly to enable them to provide such a revenue or subsistence for themselves; and secondly, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the public services. It proposes to enrich both the people and the sovereign.

-- Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, introduction to Book IV.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/...

[chrischen]

Depends if you work to live or if you live to work.

If the latter then fake busy work is good for society, regardless of why it’s being done.

[djrobstep]

Why should anybody support "innovation" in a system that subjects you to brutal poverty when you lose your job?

"I might lose my job and watch my children starve, but at least my bosses will be making more money and I might get marginally cheaper consumer goods in a few years time?"

[ageofwant]

Who owns the 'innovation', and who benefits from that ownership? Did the advent of containerization mean the longshoremen could now only work 2 days a week and explore the fine arts with the 3 days they now gained ?

[acct1771]

No, 3/5 of them simply became milkmen. Wait.

[debt]

There needs to be a balance. They do become powerful but also are major forces for raising the standard living overall.

[wolco]

If you are a frontend engineer perhaps you should leave the php code to the backend developers who understand it. If you are a full stack living in a frontend world that's different. A union could help enforce that. Now your company is forced to hire a backend developer or relabel you full stack with addional pay.

There is a reason why developers need to leave a place ever few years.