Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by blueterminal 2090 days ago
Unions are absolutely detrimental to the society. Thank god we'll never have one for Software Engineers.

Great short explanation from Milton Friedman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzYgiOC9cj4

4 comments

Yea Europe is a workers hell hole because of this. /S
It is. 50% of youth unemployment in Spain for example.
Oh I wasn't aware that was purely caused by Unions!! And you chose the EU country with one of, if not THE highest unemployment rate.

Every country has issues. To say that Unions don't work when the EU has a strong union culture, and then scapegoat other issues in random EU countries is intellectually dishonest.

Spain has insane unemployment rates because of generations of poorly thought out policies, not unions. They basically had a similar setup to Greece where tons of people don't pay taxes, and it survives heavily off tourism and produces few other things to make up for the tourism economy. Any country that generates MOST of its economy from tourism is going to have a rough time. We've seen it time and time again.

None of this proves the EU is a hell hole, and it has no inherent relation to unions.

He's largely taking examples from public-sector unions, which have particularly problematic legal framework in the US.

Private unions can be essentialy seen as corporations, very much like any other firm, that sell labor. Such unions can in principle specialize, compete and offer unique advantages. Again – just like any other market firm. It's just that the US law makes that hard by setting them up for a narrow antagonistic role of fighting with labor management for goodies.

Do you support child labor laws, weekends off, and reasonable working hours? Because if you do, I got news for you...
God, how dare workers collectively demand a safe working environment!