[vkou]

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.

[neuland]

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).

[chimeracoder]

> 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.

[neuland]

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?

[chimeracoder]

> 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.

[chimeracoder]

> 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.

[neuland]

Do you know what the rules are around defining a bargaining unit? Is this completely up to the union? Or are there rules?

[chimeracoder]

> 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.

[donkey-hotei]

> Collective action doesn't work when free-riders can benefit from the work of the collective.

Can you elaborate on this comment?

[vkou]

That would be the Exclusive Representation rule.

https://www.flra.gov/exclusive_representation

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.

[chimeracoder]

> 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.

[vkou]

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.

[chimeracoder]

> 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.

[gowld]

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.

[chrisseaton]

> 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.

[JamesBarney]

> 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.

You'll have to explain why this gets rid of free-riding concerns?

[s73v3r_]

"Why are laws that way?"

Because the company wants to weaken the unions as much as possible.

[vkou]

> Why are laws that way? On the face it seems like overstepping.

To bust unions. Especially when you combine it with right-to-work legislature.

The end result is that theoretically, unions have a right to exist, as long as they don't actually do anything meaningful.