Forced membership of a union!? Seriously!? How awful. I’d rather quit than have it forced on me. If I was at the New Yorker I’d almost certainly join, but only if I could do so willingly. Ugh.
As an employee, you're already implicitly a member of an unofficial union whether you "join" it or not. Your employer will routinely treat you collectively, mandating extended hours during crunch periods, or changing the equipment they issue your team, or altering your health benefits package.
The only question is, does the employee collective you belong to have any collective bargaining ability or not?
You’re right,but you are a member of one or more implicit unions, not a single.
For example, the dev group could be treated differently than ops than sales than content than mechanical. And you can have different groups even within devs for example. So being able to choose as an employee before joining or through career is important to me.
I have never looked at a union’s value proposition for me and chose to join. Either through not joining a firm, or through not joining an optional union. But I’m a programmer-type and likely others will feel differently based on their conditions and principles.
If the majority of your co-workers join the union, at what point do you feel that you would be scabbing by not joining the union that is fighting for better standards for you?
> at what point do you feel that you would be scabbing by not joining the union that is fighting for better standards for you?
But what if I don't like the union's goals or the way it tries to achieve those goals? Not joining them isn't 'scabbing' it's standing up for my own principles.
People talk about unions as if they're some kind of benign force for unquestioned good. In your mind they're simply 'fighting for better standards' without any qualification of what they think those better standards are, how they're fighting to get them, what their end-state is, what other political campaigns unrelated to the job they support, and so on.
The the UK most unions aggressively support one of our main political parties. If you don't want to support that political party then don't join any union because your money will be going to them!
It's not 'scabbing' to stand up to not join a union.
I don't think it's the literal definition that's being debated. The question was about 'do you think you're doing the wrong thing', because saying someone is a scab is a moral judgement, not just a factual one.
Most unions support Labour because like in most of Europe the Labour party was literally founded by and for the labour movement and the unions. Hence the unions are also represented in the governing organs of Labour as well, as is the case in most Labour parties in Europe.
Of course there certainly are people in unions who do not support Labour, but the historical connection is there because the Labour parties were largely formed as an extension of the work started in and around the unions.
I get the historical connections, but when you present it to a person today and tell them 'and some of your money will go to the Labour Party' and they say 'well why on earth would I want to fund those people?' it all starts to seem like a bad idea.
All arguments seem to circle back to a vague idea of 'but they represent you', for both unions and Labour. I'm sure that's what they think they're doing, but the Conservatives and the Greens also offer to 'represent' me. It's not convincing.
I would evaluate the union and choose to stay and join, stay and not join, or leave. There are lots of factors so it’s hard to say.
I think I wouldn’t feel too bad if I was in a position and co-workers joined a union, but I didn’t. But I would feel kind of scabish if I joined a majority union org and didn’t join the union.
Kind of like if you live in a house and your neighbors form an HOA and you choose not to join. I wouldn’t feel bad at all, as I bought the house with the expectation of no HOA.
I feel like I would be scabbing if I ever joined a union. The minimal Workers rights are something that society should collectively bargain for; anything beyond that is selling out the rest of humanity for the in-group. You should collaborate with your coworkers, sure, and make sure accurate (if aggregated) salary information is available, but getting a union to represent you basically screws you - the union has leverage on you more than it gives you on your employer. A union is a corporation that you've given a monopoly on your time - Do you expect that to work out well in even a slightly employer-favoring market?
The labor market always favors employers. Ideally, one would love for market conditions to also be favorable to wage-earners, but the market is never not favoring employers because it is laborers who must sell their labor time or starve/die. There is no labor market in which laborers are even mostly favored, or happily surviving and living without selling their labor time. Unions exist as a means to ensure the labor market is not entirely employer-favoring because laborers must sell their labor time or starve—which places them at an automatic disadvantage and maintains employer power in the market. Employers want to pay as little as possible for labor, while maintaining their power over laborers—which is why they’re either openly hostile to unions or (if they’re smarter like, say, tech companies) act in their own best interest by treating employees in ways they believe will prevent unions from being seen as necessary.
How much are you forced to PAY your employer when they choose to pay you $120,000/yr instead of $130,000/yr? Those kinds of decisions get made collectively (and often arbitrarily) by employers all the time, and you have no recourse other than to the market for a better job.
The right way to think of a union is as a force with similar (but radically reduced) power over your work conditions, but one with different incentives and for which you have some (depending on how healthy the union is) representation.
Unions can obviously be a bad thing! But the idea that they're intrinsically coercive is a little overwrought. All of employment is coercive; the median union simply peels off some of the coercive forces that apply to your job and hands them to the employees as a collective to manage.
Just curious if you’ve ever worked in a union job?
I have and my experience was that you will never get paid what you’re worth - if you’re talented.
So if you want to argue that people with less talent can make more money with unions, I would agree... in the short run.
Eventually talent will seek other means and leave the unionized industries. The brain drain will have two negative results, reduced overall productivity and a union demanding more and more for its members who produce less and less.
Ultimately, the company produces worse product and recieves less revenue. Less money to pay the hungry union members who demand even more.
Finally the company says fuck this and moves its production to another country where people will work harder for less.
The whole thing will be blamed on corporate greed and will be used as a rallying call to socialism. ‘Cause that’ll fix it.
Just curious, have you ever worked in a non-union job?
I have and my experience was that you will never get paid what you're worth --- unless you're ruthless and prioritize gaming review systems over working with your team.
So if you want to argue that people who work exclusively to maximize their short-term outcomes without developing skills or, for that matter, any actual software can make more money without unions, I would agree... in the short run.
Am I fairly characterizing corporate jobs? About as fairly as you're characterizing collective bargaining, is what I think.
I’ve only ever had one union job (at a young age) and that told me everything I need to know about unions.
Ultimately if you’re not getting paid what you’re worth, that’s on you. Or you’re wrong about what you’re worth.
I guess our difference is that I’d rather myself to blame for poor negotiating than some union boss, making twice what I make, telling me what I’ll be getting with no ability to negotiate.
Free services and better terms from a union that you don't pay for because you know that you will most certainly get all the benefits of the collective bargaining, ugh!?
Because unions need lawyers (and other professionals) to litigate on their behalf. The Venn diagram between lawyers and iron workers/developers/journalists etc. is very slim. So money is required to hire this skill set.
However workers who represent the union are often unpaid. Or paid very little for their efforts.
There was a very recent Supreme Court decision that impacts this - employers can insist (as a condition of employment) that employees use arbitration only for these kind of claims. Which makes class action suits impossible, and leads to more and more wage theft - since stealing $1000 from a bunch of employees would be enough to warrant a lawsuit if done collectively, but not if each individual has to go through arbitration.
> Always wondered why aren't (some) unions free, staffed with elected volunteers? Perhaps like a floss project.
In the US, unlike in most other countries, unions usually receive exclusive rights to representation. Decertifying a union is technically possible under the law, but almost impossible in practice, so there's no competition between unions for membership the way that you see in most other countries.
That gives the union very little incentive to keep its fees in check, because there's no risk of members defecting (they're legally required to pay) and essentially no risk of its members choosing to be represented by a different union.
What, so in the US people doing a certain type of job at a certain company can only join a single union if one is already recognised by their employer?!
> What, so in the US people doing a certain type of job at a certain company can only join a single union if one is already recognised by their employer?!
Yes.
There are a few exceptions, but by and large: once a union is granted authorization over a bargaining unit, the union exclusively represents all employees included in the bargaining unit (whether or not those employees voted for the union or are members of the union).
Unions usually do more than just bargain and organize, including setting up funds to buffer the members in the event of a work stoppage, and getting insurance benefits for the members.
I believe the law is that you cannot be forced to join a union but, in non "right to work" states, you can be required to pay the union dues depending upon the collective bargaining agreement.
Why wouldn't unions only negotiate for union members? Seems silly to call someone a free rider if the union willingly lobbies on everyone's behalf. Maybe there's something else?
> Why wouldn't unions only negotiate for union members? Seems silly to call someone a free rider if the union willingly lobbies on everyone's behalf. Maybe there's something else?
In the US, unions have two options:
1) Define a large bargaining unit which includes both members and non-members, collect fees from everyone in the bargaining unit (whether or not they are a member), and provide representation to everyone (and also have control over everyone in the bargaining unit).
2) Define a bargaining unit to include only members of the union, collect fees and dues from members of the union, and provide representation to members (and have control only over members).
In both cases, the union has full, exclusive control and representation of the bargaining unit - it does not compete with other unions for representation of members, and it is free to define the bargaining unit pretty much as it wishes.
In the US, unions have typically preferred to do #1, because it allows them to collect money from a larger pool of people, and it gives them a greater degree of control. In most other countries, unions either aren't allowed to collect fees from non-members or have to compete with other unions for representation of members, so they can't rely on exclusive representation laws to give them the right to represent (or control) people who decline to join.
> In the US, unions have typically preferred to do #1, because it allows them to collect money from a larger pool of people, and it gives them a greater degree of control. In most other countries, unions either aren't allowed to collect fees from non-members or have to compete with other unions for representation of members, so they can't rely on exclusive representation laws to give them the right to represent (or control) people who decline to join.
a major difference between unions in the US and for instance, western europe, is that the political foundations of unions is far better represented politically in western europe.
in western europe, social democracy and socialism are political powers who can influence the goverment, and unions usually use that to their leverage. There is very little competition between unions, because they are all part of the same political ideology.
Essentially, sure. On the other side of the power equation, disrupting unions is a way to maintain the company's power. It's just a question of who you think should have how much power in that dynamic.
Yeah, but when the union head starts paying themselves 300k and despite good living wages and benefits still maintain a large/expensive organizational structure and offices, etc... you still have to be a part of that union- you have very little sway to try to change anything.
Forcing people to join a union is not all that much better than preventing one in the first place IMHO.
I'd rather pay the union head 300k then the union members get 300k less pay or whatever.
By the logic above, working for a corporation where the head starts paying themselves 300k (or 3M!) and maintains a large/expensive organizational structure and offices is not all that much better than preventing incorporation in the first place.
Yea, the idea that individual workers somehow benefit in these types of situations if there's no union in place is weird.
The Worker Vs. Company conflicts that come up always favor a Company because they have more time, resources, and connections than an typical worker. The union's goal should always be to represent the needs of most workers most of the time, but there obviously will be situations where that puts an individual worker and their union at odds. This doesn't seem like a fatal flaw in the system any more than people will be elected to federal office who don't share your worldview.
Delta flight attendants aren't unionized (my step mother is one) and they are very anti union. They believe pretty strongly that they have a good relationship with management and do no need a union. From what I gather it's pretty unusual at least in the (US) airline industry.
I just want to point out that when my mother was president of her local teachers' union prior to joining NYSUT her stipend was at most a couple thousand dollars for the year.
Forced unions are especially bad when it's for public servants.
That means you, the citizen, will have less power to fire them and you'll also have to pay them more out of your pocket through taxes (think how the police keeps settling for millions of dollars at a time for wrongful murder of suspects, just as an example).
You are working at a place where you are as forced to take orders from bosses employed by the Newhouse heirs. People work all day to get their wages and refurbish ongoing capital expenses, then at night they work for free to kick up expropriated surplus time profits to SI Newhouse IV.
Conde Nast, without consulting you, as they do for most decisions, has theoretically come to the agreement with a union that they represent you as a bargaining unit. This , of all the things you are forced to do seems to be the only one you have a problem with, the one giving you more autonomy and money.
It's a bizarrely convoluted logic where you have almost no say in Conde Nast's decision about your own management, revenue disbursement etc., but in solely this decision that they made, you are being "forced".
From the point of view of an employer, the easiest way to crush a union is to pay all employees according to the union contract even if they're not members of the union. That way, there's no incentive to join. So the way the union will combat that loophole is to specify in the contract that the employer agrees to only hire union labor or to charge agency fees to anyone that is paid according to the union rate. "Right to work" laws just make those kinds of agreements illegal.
Collective action doesn't work when free-riders can benefit from the work of the collective.
Unfortunately, most US labour laws are set up in such a way that most gains made by a union are extended to non-union-members. The only viable response to that is a membership requirement.
The equilibrium that I would like to see is the opposite: no forced membership and no requirement to represent non-members. I imagine after the impending Janus SCOTUS decision, this is something unions will have to push for as a last-resort (versus what they seem to want, which is forced membership and required representation).
> The equilibrium that I would like to see is the opposite: no forced membership and no requirement to represent non-members.
There is no requirement to represent non-members. There is a requirement to represent all members of the bargaining unit. The union is free to define a narrower bargaining unit that only includes non-members.
In the US, unions choose not to do this because they can always define a larger bargaining unit and collect fees from non-members, and there's almost no downside for them to do so. In other countries, unions aren't allowed to redefine bargaining units unilaterally, or aren't allowed to collect fees from non-members, or aren't allowed exclusive representation over non-members.
I thought that a bargaining unit always had to be all workers in a particular job class, such as all software developers in a company (but not designers or hardware devs). But this wasn't based on anything other than observation of US unions. So I guess that's not true!
Do you know of any unions that have atypical bargaining units, like covering everyone in a particular line of business or people in 2 very different jobs?
> I thought that a bargaining unit always had to be all workers in a particular job class, such as all software developers in a company (but not designers or hardware devs). But this wasn't based on anything other than observation of US unions. So I guess that's not true!
Nope, they definitely can do members-only bargaining. It just doesn't happen often, because the large union syndicates dislike or prohibit it.
> Do you know of any unions that have atypical bargaining units, like covering everyone in a particular line of business or people in 2 very different jobs?
Offhand, no, but I'm sure I could think of some. Again, in the US, the strategy taken by the major syndicates is to go for an all-or-nothing approach, in which it's preferable to have no union at all than to have a union that doesn't cover everyone (including non-members).
That's not the case outside the US, where unions don't have that legal right.
> Unfortunately, most US labour laws are set up in such a way that most gains made by a union are extended to non-union-members. The only viable response to that is a membership requirement.
This is 100% backwards.
In most states, unions are able to extract fees from employees, even if those employees are not members, as long as the employees are included in the union-defined bargaining unit. In exchange for this, the union is required to provide representation and benefits for all people in the bargaining unit from whom they collect fees, whether or not those employees are members.
The easy alternative to forced membership is for unions to define the bargaining unit to be the union members, which is analogous to what happens in almost every other country. However, unions in the US have taken an all-or-nothing approach for the last half century, in which they gamble that, if they can't use expanded definitions of the bargaining unit, they won't have a union at all. That worked for a few decades, but it's come back to bite them in the last 30 years or so.
> Do you know what the rules are around defining a bargaining unit? Is this completely up to the union? Or are there rules?
The union can basically claim whatever unit they want, within reason (and then some). It's completely legal to define membership as a requirement for inclusion in the bargaining unit. Beyond that, the boundaries are usually drawn by things like job title, role/responsibility, geographical location, etc.).
Unions can also retroactively redefine bargaining units after elections and use that as an argument to invalidate elections that they lose. In theory the NLRB is responsible for judging this, but they tend to favor the unions heavily, which is one of the reasons that decertifying a union is nearly impossible in practice - even if the employees win the election to decertify their union, the union could claim that the bargaining unit is different, and that they didn't get a majority of the new unit.
The tl;dr of it is that if 50% + 1 of a workforce unionizes, the union bargains collectively for everyone. Even for free-loaders who don't pay union dues.
This is like being able to opt out of paying taxes, while still receiving all government benefits. If that were legal, then our public services would collapse by next week.
> The tl;dr of it is that if 50% + 1 of a workforce unionizes, the union bargains collectively for everyone. Even for free-loaders who don't pay union dues.
There are no freeloaders. The union defines the bargaining unit, and they can choose to define it to include only members. They typically don't choose to do this, because they prefer to make the bargaining unit as large as possible, and they are legally allowed to collect fees from non-members in the bargaining unit.
This is a quirk of US labor law; most other countries don't permit unions to do this.
> Right-to-work laws prevent them from collecting fees from non-members. That's the whole problem. Exclusive representation is fine. Right to work is fine. The two together destroy unions.
That's a weird conclusion, given that in, most other countries that are considered to have strong unions, unions actually don't have the authority to collect fees from all non-members in a bargaining unit.
Why are laws that way? On the face it seems like overstepping.
I can see how union gains might be naturally extended
to non-union (safety improvements in a factory, say), but I can also see that the union could negotiate for higher wages to cover the cost of running the union, which avoid free-riding concerns.
The issue I would expect is that mandatory membership (or at least mandatory partial-dues for partial benefits, as is common in some municipalities) is required because the union simply wouldn't work if half the labor force opted out and the employer could simply hire all non-union workers; and the Law decided that unions deserve a right to exist, similarly to how the Law decides that a State or City government is mandatory for all residents.
> the union simply wouldn't work if half the labor force opted out
Can't you see how weird this is? 'The law needs to make people be members of a union, because if they didn't the union wouldn't exist and people wouldn't be able to be a member of it.' That's so circular!
Just let people be in a union if they want to be, and not if they don't want to be, and let the union live or die based on people voting with their feet like that.
If your union isn't effective because people aren't joining then you need to change what it is your union offers them.
Why is it that conservatives, when faced with any other aspect of a job (pay, working hours, safety conditions) offer the defense of, "You know what you signed up for going in." But when it comes to workers organizing together to increase their bargaining power, it's suddenly the worst thing ever, and it should be banned from all jobs?
The opposition is not to unionization per se, but government laws giving unions special powers and privileges. Freedom of association doesn’t require employers to continue associating with workers who try to form a union to the employer’s detriment.
As a conservative, I fully support the right to unionize. It's a bedrock of free association and the free market. I happen to also believe unionization is wrong for many industries, but folks should be able to make those choices on their own. Many conservatives I know believe the same.
I believe people have a right to unionize so long as that is balanced out with a company's right to not hire anyone from a union. Free association has two sides.
I just want it to be equal, whatever the situation is.
Either it is legal to negotiate union shop contracts, like you suggest, AND it is legal for companies to fire all union people, OR it is illegal to do both of those things.
It sounds like a bad idea for everyone except the union leaders, but I’ve seen other non-union based agreements like this where companies completely outsourced HR.
As a Union leader though, I now have a rather captive audience where I serve as the gatekeeper to any job someone might want at the company and gatekeeper to any employee the company might want. That seems like a recipe for abuse.
Low and behold, there are lots of examples of abuse by union leaders which a quick google search will show.
Please don't put words in others' mouth, and please don't ascribe bad motives to posters (even if they disagree with you). Even if that's how you normally post, don't do it here.
I fail to see why it's a bad thing to give people heads up to what the actual outcomes of their positions lead to. Saying that employers should be able to not hire union workers means that they won't hire any union workers, meaning that the union won't be able to exist.
The only question is, does the employee collective you belong to have any collective bargaining ability or not?