[random5634]

The propaganda unfortunately also comes from folks direct experience with unions. In the US, most unions are public sector. So folks see that

Police unions may protect bad apples via union.

Teachers unions may care more about teachers including bad ones then teaching kids. We had a famously terrible teacher at my school - unfirable - as kids we thought it was hilarious. As a parent now - not so cool. Non unionized schools seem to be coming up with innovate workaround during pandemic (outside / park / hiking classrooms etc).

Absolutely horrendously drafted laws that make life miserable even for folks trying to do right (AB5, schools not allowed to keep reserves) that are union drafted, and require endless exceptions and modifications.

Google employees unionizing and striking and walking out and otherwise throwing very highly paid fits over things that don't connect with average person.

When you call what people have first hand experience of "propaganda" they may immediately will discount everything else you are saying.

The real rule should be all poorly compensated folks paid $14/hr or less should automatically be in unions. That's where the real need is.

[pmoriarty]

The problem is when anecdotes about isolated abuses are used to reject unions outright rather than looking at whether unions as a whole would benefit society.

You could argue from personal experience that you went to a bad school therefore all schools are bad, or you had a bad experience with <insert skin color, ethnicity, or religion> therefore all people of that sort are bad.

It's just not very convincing.

[rayiner]

It’s not “anecdotes about isolated abuses.” Even parents I know who are solidly on the left are outraged by how completely inflexible teachers’ unions have been during the pandemic. Even people I know who are ardent Democrats in states like Illinois grumble quietly about the government having no money because they’re crushed under pension obligations.

The problem is that, in the US, most peoples’ experiences with unions is with public unions, which are the worst kind of unions: https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2019/10/29/coolidge-and-...

> For decades, that was the mainstream Democratic view, too. “The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service,” President Franklin D. Roosevelt affirmed in 1937.

[quadrifoliate]

> Even parents I know who are solidly on the left are outraged by how completely inflexible teachers’ unions have been during the pandemic.

As a dueling anecdote, I know plenty of libertarian/right-leaning folks who privately tell me that they totally understand that teachers (regardless of unions) should not have to face a highly infectious disease in classrooms just so a bunch of double-income parents want to keep doing their office jobs over Zoom. The current problems have almost nothing to do with unions directly.

[aetherane]

Though you don't need unions for that. Enough teachers at a local school refused to go in individually that the administrators were forced to make sane policies.

[guerrilla]

"It's not only anecdotes" and giving more anecdotes isn't an argument.

[dahfizz]

They said "It’s not anecdotes __about isolated abuses__". At a certain point, anecdotes become universal experiences, and therefore inform general political views.

[boomboomsubban]

>At a certain point, anecdotes become universal experiences, and therefore inform general political views

In reality though we just went from one anecdote to two. We are unable to tell when something is universal experience just by hearing more anecdotes.

[ardy42]

> In reality though we just went from one anecdote to two. We are unable to tell when something is universal experience just by hearing more anecdotes.

And even if we somehow got to negative universal experiences, those very well could be:

1. Part of a conscious tradeoff (e.g. firms being less profitable due to higher labor costs). A lot of anti-union rhetoric seems to amount to complaining about not being able to have one's cake and eat it too.

2. Artifacts of law (either direct or indirect) that could solved through legal reform. My understanding is that at least some of the "adversarialness" of US unions derives from the requirements of US law, and German unions (for instance) operate very differently (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany).

[dcolkitt]

Well, if you look at large-scale carefully controlled data, unionized firms tend to be at least 10% less productive than their non-unionized counterparts.[1]

The most defensible thing you can say about this is that the cost is primarily borne by the shareholders rather than the consumers. Thus you tend to see that the best unions for workers tend to be in large, established, highly profitable firms with little to no competition. A prime example are the American automakers before the 1980s when foreign competition kicked in. Working on the GM assembly line in 1970 was a very good job.

However Amazon is barely profitable as it currently stands. Since there's essentially no room for lower profitability. The only give is either higher consumer prices or deadweight loss, i.e. fewer customer and therefore fewer (but higher-paid) employees. That might not necessarily be a bad thing, especially to the extent that the average Amazon customer is wealthier than the average Amazon warehouse worker. But given Amazon's extremely thin profit margins, I don't really see anyway that consumers won't end up paying for the sizable bulk of the unionization costs.

[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/001979399204600...

[TeMPOraL]

> unionized firms tend to be at least 10% less productive than their non-unionized counterparts

That's not entirely surprising. Unions aren't optimizing for company productivity, but for the conditions and pay of the workers. And conversely, a company can abuse its employees to a large degree while reaping productivity gains from it.

> However Amazon is barely profitable as it currently stands. Since there's essentially no room for lower profitability.

Amazon is "barely profitable" because of clever accounting. They rake in tons of money, and reinvest it into growth. There is plenty of buffer to eat the unionization costs. But of course Amazon may opt to pass these costs to customers instead.

[Retric]

That sounds like Unions doing their job really well. The entire point is for workers to better capture the value they create. From a combination of lower risks and or higher compensation.

Amazon’s warehouses for example have some serious safety issues which they largely ignore. One example being heavy items being stored in such a way vastly increase the risk of back injury. Stuff can be good for efficiency and a really terrible deal for workers.

[Jochim]

> Well, if you look at large-scale carefully controlled data, unionized firms tend to be at least 10% less productive than their non-unionized counterparts.[1]

It's not large scale or even necessarily generalisable. I don't think a study limited to 83 "Sawmills in the Western U.S." can be presented as an example of unionisation in general.

> However Amazon is barely profitable as it currently stands

Amazon actively avoids profitability... Modern economies do not reward profitability, they increasingly reward the promise of potential future profitability. Amazon is perfectly capable of earning a healthy profit, but it is actively incentivised not to in favour of chasing further growth. Uber, WeWork, and Doordash all exemplify this attitude; although it could be argued that they are incapable of profitability at all.

Companies are actively choosing to remain in the red in order to stack the house of cards that little bit higher, steal a little bit more of their market before they turn around and exploit the fragile and artificially inflated position they've bought their way into.

> The most defensible thing you can say about this is that the cost is primarily borne by the shareholders rather than the consumers.

Surely the most defensible thing is that the workers are fairly compensated and work in humane conditions? We seem unable to convince Western corporations to not use child or slave labour, but at least we don't attempt to justify it by saying "Iphones would be more expensive without Uighur work camps".

[jjj1232]

Honestly, 10% is less than I would have thought, and is something I’d trade in a heartbeat for greater benefits.

[orzig]

Thank you for a well reasoned argument, and linked evidence. I do want to point out for anyone who does not click through the link that the study is focused on just one industry (sawmills) in one year. It may well be a solid contribution to a bigger story, but it should not be represented as necessarily generalizable to a very different company in a very different world

[6gvONxR4sf7o]

I think the point should have more nuance. Nobody looks at enron's abuses and says corporations are blanket bad (okay, many do, but not most). Nor do they say enron's abuses were fine because corporations as a whole benefit society. Most look at enron and say corporations have the potential to do good or bad, so let's figure out how to keep them from going bad.

It's not unions good or unions bad. The focus should be on how to get unions that don't lead to the abuses people are afraid of. When it comes to unions, the discussion seems to be much more take-it-or-leave-it.

[iratewizard]

People do look at multi-level marketing schemes and label them as blanket bad. Unions are an organizational strategy just like MLM schemes are. One relies on the Shirky principle to stay alive, the other relies on people wanting to be fooled. Both are a con with opportunists hovering overhead.

[asdff]

For every anecdote of an isolated case of union abuse, there are probably hundreds of unheard cases of corporations abusing their workers. But that doesn't matter for most people, simplistic logic says therefore all unions are bad and capable of corruption, and ignoring that most of the time, the status quo is far, far more exploitative for the average worker. Once again, perfect becomes the enemy of good, and conditions do not improve.

[quandrum]

Wage theft is the most common crime in the US, is estimated to occur to ~20% of all employees and equal tens of billions a year, and no one talks about it.

How many union members do you think experience wage theft?

[stretchcat]

The US Department of Labor takes wage theft very seriously. If you report it to them, at no cost to yourself, they will investigate it and almost certainly scare your boss shitless so he'll never try it again.

Probably they could do a better job of advertising this to workers. Many workers experiencing wage theft probably are not aware of their options, and that's a problem. But when used, it works. I've seen it work.

[kieselguhr_kid]

If they take it so seriously, why is it so underused? I don't think this is a lack of information; people who are highly precarious can't take these kinds of risks, even if they're just percevied.

There are all kinds of de jure considerations that purport to protect workers, but they fail without an organization by and for workers to actually ensure they're enforced.

[stretchcat]

The first real job I had was the first time I saw the efficacy of the Department of Labor. I was working at a bean processing plant; semi trucks with trailers full of fresh green beans from the fields dropped beans off at the plant where they were cleaned (my job was to pick out the bits of small animals the harvesters chewed up), chopped, cooled, and loaded onto another truck. The entire operation hinges on the trucks arriving just in time.

Well sometimes a truck is late, that's just the way the world works. In one of those cases, my boss asked us to stay at the plant an hour late; the truck driver was on the phone and said he'd be there shortly, but we had nothing to do but sit around on our asses twiddling our thumbs. One of my coworkers, more experienced than me, asked if we'd get paid while waiting. My account of the conversation that followed:

Boss: "Well uh, we're all just sitting here doing nothing so.."

Coworker: "The Deparment of Labor says..."

Boss: "WHOA WHOA WHOA! I was just kidding of course you'll get paid!"

Immediate backtrack. He turned on a dime as soon as he realized there were workers who knew their rights. I think information is the key. There is no substitute for workers knowing their rights.

[dragonwriter]

> The US Department of Labor takes wage theft very seriously.

As, often, do state labor authorities.

[masonic]

  How many union members do you think experience wage theft?

Essentially all do, when "dues" are mandatory.

[ryathal]

For some union members the dues achieve the same result.

[yourapostasy]

It is a matter of incentives.

To substantiate and engage PR over abuse of workers by a corporation, the livelihood of individual workers who give witness to the allegations are at stake.

To substantiate and engage PR over abuse of the public weal, customers or the corporation by a union, usually no one's livelihood is threatened by giving witness.

It isn't surprising abuses by unions are easier to publicize and and more commonly substantiated. This dynamic will not change until workers have the equivalent of FU money. Or like in one sci-fi story I read, a genetic mutation causes everyone to fix chlorophyll in their pigmentation and get all their minimum bodily energy requirements by standing around in the sun for a few hours each day, and have to be convinced to work. I suspect a more near-term, practical direction is some solution along the lines of an intentional community co-op.

[ekianjo]

> isolated abuses

It's not isolated abuses, it's a feature of unions.

[yowlingcat]

> The problem is when anecdotes about isolated abuses

What makes you jump to label that complaint an "anecdote" and an "isolated abuse" rather than evidence of structural rot and public union corruption?

[conanbatt]

The plural of anecdotes is called data.

There are plenty of examples of unions being really bad in the US, the burden of proof is now on the other side of the court.

[boomboomsubban]

So you need a handful of people to tell you anecdotes of how a union helped them?

[conanbatt]

I'd welcome the testimony to cross-examine.

[ATsch]

I totally agree with your concerns about people being kept in their job for unjustified reasons. I think it's something we've all had experience with.

At my first job, I had a horrible boss. A friend tried to speak up against him and was promptly fired. Turns out he was a relative of the CEO and was thus unfireable.

Just a few weeks ago I also spoke to someone who told his experience of reporting someone for sexual harassment at a major tech company, just to learn that they were well aware of it but refused to do anything because of good performance.

We should absolutely consider the role uninions can play regarding unfirable employees. Being able to push the company to get rid of them can have a huge impact on the well-being of workers.

[bluGill]

If sexual harassment really exists a lawyer will be glad to help. Companies that don't take care of it end up in big trouble - to your lawyers advantage.

Sexual harassment is one of several things that the legal system takes seriously.

[TheCoelacanth]

That's just objectively false. Look at all the cases of sexual harassment coming out where the perpetrator had been doing it for decades to dozens of people without any consequences.

Getting sexual harassment claims taken seriously is an uphill battle and often harms the careers of the people who complain.

[bluGill]

I agree, but staying silent is not the answer.

[ATsch]

I think the fact that you read that message and this was your conclusion is kind of concerning.

Either way getting a restraining order or whatever on someone you work with is definitely not going to improve your situation, if you can even prove it in the first place.

[stretchcat]

Surely the lawyer would be for pursuing a lawsuit, not a restraining order.

[pwinnski]

Many/most supporters of unions argue that police should not be able to form or join unions. "Cops are not workers" is a common phrase I've seen.

[munk-a]

Given that the police budget is formed by public allocation and the nature of the job I think that policy absolutely should have the ability to form unions. Being forced to work long shifts in dangerous work environments (whether dangerous to you or others) is pretty unsafe. The issue is that, whether intentionally or not, the public has bargained away some pretty valuable things over the year to the union including employment record availability and retention requirements.

That union needs some serious reform and it isn't going to come from the inside, but there are some really good reasons for police to have good bargaining power.

Honestly, this probably all comes back to the US massively underfunding public services as a general rule - if the policing budget had been slashed like the education budget regularly is then we'd have nothing but vigilantes in the police force.

[masonic]

Where, specifically, has the per-student education budget been "slashed"?

[koolba]

I take it a step further and reject all public sector unions. Teachers, cops, firemen, dog catchers, you name it.

There’s just too many perverse incentives for politicians to give in to union demands in exchange for buying votes. Unlike the private sector, the ones agreeing to the union demands care little about the long term costs associated since they’re not the ones paying them.

[nicoburns]

> There’s just too many perverse incentives for politicians to give in to union demands in exchange for buying votes

If politicians were looking to maximise votes, wouldn't they target parents not teachers: there's a lot more parents than teachers.

[thatguy0900]

Teachers are alot more likely to be single issue voters over important aspects of their job than parents will be about things they might not even know about, I'd imagine

[moate]

I don't understand. Unions, private or public, represent a massive special interest voting bloc. Instead of "I will be able to directly raise your pay if you vote for me" it's "I will directly benefit your company/industry if you vote for me".

Why do you think Mitch McConnell cares so much about coal?

[opinion-is-bad]

Why only cops and not all public sector employees? I don’t see how you can make an argument that police work isn’t work.

[worik]

True.

The right to strike is tricky for essential services.

Perhaps a underlying problem is the adversarial nature of many of our social relationships.

[spiznnx]

The argument that cops are not workers, in a Marxist sense, is because they work to protect the interests of capital, rather than do "productive" work that is useful to the rest of the working class.

It's not a broadly held view, even among communists.

[munk-a]

As a worker I appreciate the fact that when I was burgled a decade ago there was someone to call to inform about the burglary.

I also very much appreciate the fact that "having police" (even vaguely, and even ineffective ones) is a pretty good deterrent to (most) random folks murdering other folks[1].

There is a hell of a lot wrong with American policing but they do productive work just like managers (that don't produce anything themselves) and HR and all the other "non-productives" people like to point out. I think it's perfectly fair to question just how much value police (and other "non-productives") are actually producing and a lot of businesses could do with trimming a bit of labour out of middle management - but there are reasons these jobs exist and they can add a lot to team and societal productivity.

1. I don't ascribe to theories on anarchist utopias where if everyone can kill everyone else no one does out of politeness, I've played Rust.

[geofft]

What did informing the cops about the burglary do, precisely?

One specific feature (at least in the US) is that a police report is required for an insurance claim - but there's no fundamental reason this system requires a police report, as opposed to, say, a sworn statement to a clerk of court or a public prosecutor. And even so, that's about getting some form of recompense after the crime happened, not stopping the crime (the burglary still happened to you, did it not?).

Along the same lines, I don't believe that the presence of the police prevents people from killing others. I certainly believe that the presence of the legal system does, by imposing strong penalties against murder. I'd believe that detective / investigative work (which a small fraction of the work the police do now, yes) aids the legal system by making those penalties actually happen. But I think you will find that there are very few potential murders where a cop is around and able to respond (by shooting first, I guess?) in time to prevent the murder from happening.

Even if you think of the favorable portrayal of cops in, say, Law and Order, they're generally investigating a crime that already happened, and it's pretty rare that they end up in a position by the end of the episode to stop a crime in progress and find themselves in a shootout.

[munk-a]

> What did informing the cops about the burglary do, precisely?

It mostly just made me feel better - the chances of recovering items after a theft or burglary is nearly nil. However, after having my home invaded by a stranger and my personal belongings rifled through it was quite cathartic to report the crime, give all the information I could to try and make sure the criminals were eventually caught, and help restore my sanity by just seeing a system in place for these issues.

I received no recompense for the crime and, at the time, I wasn't insured, but I was also dirt poor and didn't have much to lose except my privacy.

On the topic of murders I agree that detectives and investigators are the ones that will end up catching murderers and beat/patrol police do very little to apprehend criminals but they do make the system dramatically more visible and do a lot to de-escalate situations[1] from becoming as dangerous. The chances that you will be mid-being-murdered and be rescued by the police are nearly zero - the chances that someone who may have murdered you decides not to do so is more significant and, I think, aided by a visible patrol police force - even if they don't significantly contribute to resolving justice.

So I both agree with you that police are pretty useless when it comes to dealing with crimes after the fact - but disagree with you about their general efficacy. They should exist to de-escalate situations before they become real problems and make visible the rules of society that we should all abide by.

Oh, this is all very much my opinion so I've not got a lot of sources or references to pull on as to how to make police into a force that does that.

1. In this point I'm speaking as a now-Canadian - I don't really feel qualified to speak on the US system as 1) I'm white and 2) I haven't lived there in over a decade. So please do excuse this statement if you (the reader) have personally suffered unreasonable escalation of force.

[kortilla]

What a profoundly disconnected notion of what police do. Stopping violence and reckless behavior (e.g. driving drunk) has nothing to do with protecting the interests of capital.

[_Qeomash_]

I'd say they are allowed to have unions, local governments just need to be able to exert meaningful oversight even with the unions.

[munk-a]

Well I think the issue is that the policing unions form state and national agreements but local governments are left to negotiate on their own. The DOJ (or something at the national level) really needs more oversight when it comes to policing so that we can have collectivized bargaining on both sides. Local councils can't realistically stand up to police unions in a meaningful way since the national charter can drop a ton of money on elections to get troublesome members ousted... Again, another side effect of terrible election finance laws.

[R0b0t1]

The situation with police union contracts in the US is so bad I think it will lead to courts needing to overturn them as they are not in the public interest.

[biztos]

> Police unions may protect bad apples via union.

I think it's pretty clear that at least some police unions work strongly against the interests of society -- but I haven't seen any evidence that they work against the interests of their members.

Sure, if you're an honest cop it probably stings that a murderer can collect his pension like nothing happened; but on the other hand, you know the same protection would be available to you if you were accused.

Or consider that, famously, the NYPD doesn't consider itself beholden to the Mayor. I can't believe that attitude would work without the union. And the unions can also very publicly take political positions that are contrary to their employers' or even the majority of the citizenry -- which looks to me like a serious demonstration of power.

At least in the case of police unions in the US, I can't see how they are a negative example from the point of view of people who might end up as union members.

[tehjoker]

All workers should be in unions. With few exceptions, workers collaborating forms the basis of their power vs management. Management has money and the ability to wait out vs an individual that needs a job. Only groups of employees can successfully negotiate for major concessions outside of rare circumstances. An older tradition that would be even better is unionization on an industrial/sectoral scale so you don't even need to unionize your current workplace and workers across the industry can enforce demands.

Your politicians do nothing, your bosses do nothing. What do you have to lose? Fight for what you need together.

[dumbfoundded]

Unions are absolutely necessary but I think the situation is more complicated. From the perspective of the company, dealing with unions is expensive and time consuming. It'd be better just to give employees fair benefits and pay without dealing with a union. But if there's no union, only the threat of unionization incentivizes actually following through.

Similarly for workers, no one wants to have to work harder to be treated fairly along with paying the overhead of unionization. What you end up with is an unstable equilibrium for the creation and destruction of unions.

[slantaclaus]

“All workers should be in unions”: as the owner of a business with 2 employees, I respectfully disagree.

[galfarragem]

After summing all factors unions are still a positive influence.

It's undeniable that sectors with strong unions provide better working conditions to employees than comparable sectors without unions.

[conanbatt]

> The real rule should be all poorly compensated folks paid $14/hr or less should automatically be in unions. That's where the real need is.

This way they get to be compensated at 12/hr

[Dma54rhs]

Schools have been kept and are largely opened during the pandemic in Europe. I think the common understand is that kids need to go to school, there's no way around it.

[deeeeplearning]

Ironically or perhaps not your entire comment reads like pure anti-union propaganda. Sure unions protect bad apples but it also protects decent people from being treated unfairly by employers who in this country have overwhelming power over their lives.

Would you also throw out all welfare systems because a handful of people abuse the system?

[ardy42]

> The propaganda unfortunately also comes from folks direct experience with unions. In the US, most unions are public sector. So folks see that

That's like arguing against private business by citing anecdotes about people's direct experiences with car dealerships and Comcast.

[konjin]

How are any of those things bad?

You need to look after your interests first. Your anecdotes do that. It's not your job to make sure everyone has a "fair" life. You job is to make sure you get as much as you can. That's what capitalism is.

[underseacables]

Unions are awful. They come in the guise of protecting people, and protecting employees, but they quickly become a weapon against non union employees - if you don’t join the union can’t work here. Which pressures people to agree with union groupthink in order just to have a job. To hell with unions. All unions are bad.

[Thlom]

How can the union stop the employer from hiring non-unionized workers?

[s1artibartfast]

In most union workplaces, one of the first contract demands is exclusivity, where the employer can only hire members. This is referred to as a " closed shop" [1] When a closed shop forms, works have a choice to join or leave. Some places allow non-union workers, but they must pay part of their salary to the union. This is called and "agency shop" [2]

For example, if you become a police officer and do not choose to join the union, you must still pay fees which are spent by the union on political lobbying.

I am generally pro union but think that all unions should be optional to the workers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_shop

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agency_shop

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/free-books/employee-...

[Thlom]

Interesting. I believe this would be illegal in my country (Norway). There's often only one union, but membership is entirely voluntary (and you don't have to pay fees if you are not a member). I think the only trade where membership levels is close to 100% is the elevator fitter union which is known to be a very strong and "militant" union.

But I think the main reason why we have higher unionization rate in Europe especially northern Europe/Scandinavia is that the relationship between labour and capital is almost legalized. There's rules in place that dictate when tariffs should be negotiated and how they are negotiated, what kind of leverage the parties can use and when they can use it. In other words, the relationship between labor unions and employer organizations are regulated. Seems to work quite good, but it is a product of history and can probably not be emulated directly somewhere else.

[Frondo]

Well, since the Taft-Hartley act of 1947 banned closed shops, I'm not sure that that's really the first of contract demands anymore, at least in the US.

[username90]

It demands that all members pays a fee to the union, which is essentially the same thing. The big problem is that there can only be one union per workplace in US if at all, so workers have to vote etc. You can't just pick the union fitting yourself best and keep the union as you move between companies, instead USA ties your union to your job like it does everything else. Why tie healthcare, union and a lot of other unrelated things to your job? Doesn't make sense, and as we see unions in USA where they have this nonsense rule are much less popular than unions in Europe where you mostly stick to the same union your entire career.

[s1artibartfast]

You’re right, I mixed it up with union shop, which is very similar

[jariel]

Unions are like corporations - there is good and bad, benefits and drawbacks.

One thing I've noticed, is that where 'new unions' are forming, there is' probably a good reason for it.

[SpicyLemonZest]

I tend to agree, but the flipside is that we need trust the workers' judgment when a new union doesn't form. I see a troubling tendency among union organizers to assume that anyone who's thinking clearly would want to be in a union - if a unionization vote fails, that can only mean the company must have tricked or bullied people into casting the wrong vote.

[wrsh07]

Please keep in mind that sometimes employees are punished for considering unionization, so it's possible that them not unionizing is a reaction to that.

Assuming no external pressure, though, I absolutely agree: if workers don't see the benefit in unionizing, they should not unionize.

(Of course, I would also like to see them able to unionize if they do see benefit from it)

[SpicyLemonZest]

True, and I definitely don't mean to deny the existence of illegitimate union-busting efforts.

[lawnchair_larry]

I used to think that, but then some new grads at Google decided to start one. I think the head of their union has only been in the workforce for about a year.

[underseacables]

There is no good reason for it. Employees at top companies are forming unions because they think that will allow them to say whatever they want on the job, and if Google says no don’t talk about politics at work it creates tension and conflict, they will say sorry where are union you have to listen to us now. It’s spoiled, overpaid techies upset they can’t use work time to preach political and social issues.

[jjulius]

>There is no good reason for it. Employees at top companies are forming unions because they think that will allow them to say whatever they want on the job... It’s spoiled, overpaid techies upset they can’t use work time to preach political and social issues.

... you do realize you're making those broad, blanket statements in the comment thread of an article that's about the unionization of Amazon's warehouse workers who aren't "spoiled, overpaid techies", yes?

[tyre]

Read anything about amazon working conditions.

[frakkingcylons]

There are many people working at Google that are not full time employees. They are treated completely differently when it comes to their pay, sick leave, vacation, or even just certainty that they will have a job when their contract expires. The benefits for them from being unionized are a lot more important than you’re making them out to be.

[Frondo]

Just one comment on this:

> Teachers unions may care more about teachers ...

That's precisely the point of a union. It's an organization to protect its members. It's the purpose of the school system overall, including principals, school boards, and so on, to care about teaching kids.

[stretchcat]

Maybe if student unions weren't a complete joke, the situation would improve. As it stands, teachers unions keep terrible teachers employed, against the interest of the students, while the students have no real representation or organization to provide balance by looking after student interests.

My mother was a middleschool teacher when I was in highschool, and drove me to highschool in the morning. Because she was a teacher, she had to get there before the school obstensibly opened, which wasn't a problem for me or my brothers because the administration of the highschool was reasonable and let us sit quietly in the office until the school opened. A handful of other kids had this arrangement too. It worked fine until my junior year, when the teachers union decided to throw a hissy fit. The result of that was all students being made to stand outside in the cold until the school was officially open. The teachers Union said that allowing students into the building before school hours unfairly saddled them with more labor... never mind that we were all quietly sitting in the office receiving compliments from the secretaries for being well behaved.

[worik]

I find these stories from the USA about teachers unions fascinating. My prior is strongly pro union, so for a long time I disbelieved them. But I hear them so often from so many sources...

We had problems back in the day here (Aotearoa) as the union movement became the battle ground for the larger social class conflicts, that whilst meat hook reality overseas, made less sense here (here it was racial conflict and colonisation that mattered, another story, another day).

The union movement was smashed in the conflict. Too corrupt and ossified to fight back against a revitalised state in the 1980s and 90s. But the public sector unions survived, and were are strong now. The teachers union here is mighty.

But we see none of the problems (bad teachers defended, stupid rules enforced arbitrarily - well some, there is still bureaucracy). The unions campaign very effectively for their members, some political agents try to stir up concern (American issues leak through here) but mostly no body really cares. When my children were at school I never gave it a thought.

Good luck to the Amazon workers, I hope it goes well.

[Thlom]

Sorry, but are teachers employed by the union who then sells the teachers labor to the school? Or do I misunderstand?

[grumple]

> teachers unions keep terrible teachers employed

Are there a bunch of would-be teachers clamoring for those jobs?

I think the lack of desirability is what keeps terrible teachers employed. There also aren't great ways to measure how good someone is at teaching.

[zdragnar]

If you were to ask the teachers and people who went to school for education that I happen to know, all of them would tell you there is absolutely more people who want to be teacher than there are open positions.

My best friend gave up on getting a teaching job and went into industry work, while my sister in law has gotten multiple certifications to be able to teach different subjects and is still only able to get part-time substitute teaching work.

[kritiko]

There are cases like NYC's "rubber rooms"[1] where teachers are paid to sit in a room and not to teach.

1 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/08/31/the-rubber-roo...

[stretchcat]

> Are there a bunch of would-be teachers clamoring for those jobs?

Emphatically yes, particularly at nice well funded schools. I have numerous long-term friends who have become school teachers, many of then had to move quite a distance just to find schools with openings. Most states have teacher certification reciprocity with Pennsylvania, which gave them a leg up in this regard. Even so, searching for open positions was clearly stressful for them. But for them it was worth it; the work is rewarding and socially important. They like working with kids, and they like getting several months of vacation every year. There is no other job quite like it.

[munk-a]

> Emphatically yes, particularly at nice well funded schools.

I emigrated up to Canada a while back where teachers are paid very well[1] and the bad teachers get weeded out really quickly since there are plenty of enthusiastic replacements. I am sure that at well funded schools in the US teachers do great - but most US schools are terribly funded[2] so I'm not surprised folks are willing to move across the country if a well reimbursed position opens up.

1. https://www.blogto.com/city/2020/09/average-ontario-teacher-... [TL;DR 108k including benefits] - also they've got great pension options.

2. Taking New York as a random counter example since cost-of-living is probably pretty close to Toronto https://www.glassdoor.ca/Salaries/new-york-state-teacher-sal... [TL;DR 42k probably excluding benefits - which were about 12k for toronto teachers]

[kritiko]

The url says New York State. NYC teacher salaries are publicly available - ~$60-125k USD based on education and tenure. It's a solid upper middle class living (as much as you can say that in a HCOL city with insane real estate market, but it starts higher than the median household income for the city) with great benefits, pension, and job security.

https://www.uft.org/your-rights/salary/doe-and-city-salary-s...

[stretchcat]

Anecdotally, the schools with the worst funding also have the most troubled students. I think many new teachers are up for a challenge and low pay at first, but are disturbed by the reality of what they find and seek better schools for their own mental wellbeing. From what I've heard, these schools get a steady supply of freshly minted young teachers straight out of college, who burn out after a few years. Their teacher supply problems come from a failure to retain teachers, not an inability to hire them in the first place.

[aerosmile]

The point that the OP is making is that the negative propaganda against unions is not just entirely made up, but also something that many people with kids in school have experienced first-hand. This does factor in when that same parent then goes to their workplace and is pitched to form/join a union. I am not saying they won't agree to it, but they might remember the negative aspects of dealing with the concept of a union in another aspect of their lives.

[Frondo]

You can find a million more horror stories related to corporations abusing workers than you can of unions keeping bad workers employed, yet one of these types of organizations is always under an existential attack.

If I didn't know about the sustained US corporate anti-union messaging as a thing, I might wonder why that is.

[rileymat2]

It is very rare that the best propaganda is made up. The best is true but incomplete, anecdotal in this case.

To hold up it must be true, but misleading.

[soperj]

What are you basing this on? For years the Nazi went on and on about the Jews being the inferior race, about how it was science based, they indoctrinated the youth.

[rileymat2]

I don't particularly want to go on hate sites to find examples at this moment.

But the gist is, there are statements that are not falsifiable, like that "inferior race" that is not fact, it is the conclusion, but it is not falsifiable easily because there is no clear metric being used for that judgment.

If you look at U.S. race based hate sites that are easiest to find now, you will see things like accurate references to crime rates and such. The number is true, but it is missing all kinds of context and correlations and such.

For example, I have seen many references to lower IQ scores for certain groups. There are many ways to interpret this, but the racists use it as evidence. The "number" is true.

Also, the anecdotes they tell are largely true, but to pick and choose emotional one off examples is misleading.

By warping "true" things, you maintain credibility.

Look at some of the election stuff. For example, if someone said "They were bringing suitcases into the polling place" (I can't remember the exact details) There is video it is true, but it is not nefarious. But it takes a long time to rebuff the implication and explain proper procedure.

Now, I may have overstated "best", because the best is emotional, and a lot of that is art, nothing to do with fact, and portrayal of the enemy. You see this in a lot of the Nazi imagery. It has nothing to do with facts, true or false.

[Aunche]

Teachers and police officers are public servants. If they want to bargain, they should be negotiating with the public, not government officials. Otherwise, it's just collusion.

[dxdm]

If not with government officials, i.e. the executive part of the system taking care of public concerns, how should they negotiate with "the public"?

[Aunche]

Any negotiated increase in salary or pensions should require a vote unless if there is a budget surplus. Municipalities are incurring way too much debt without taxpayer knowledge, let alone approval.

Government workers already have a lot of job security, so I don't think unions should be allowed to affect that.

I do think that public servants have a right to negotiate safety and other technical issues without public approval.

[dragonwriter]

> Any negotiated increase in salary or pensions should require a vote unless if there is a budget surplus.

Generally, they do require a vote of the appropriate governing body, with all the associated public information and opportunity for input that goes along with that.

> Municipalities are incurring way too much debt without taxpayer knowledge

If true, its because taxpayers don’t actually care. Because if they did, even if they were too lazy to find out themselves, it would be too convenient a lever for opposition to whoever the current majority is in the relevant governing body to use with the public to unseat them to go unused.

[Aunche]

> If true, its because taxpayers don’t actually care.

They do care when they're forced to pay extra taxes to cover interest. Your average voter doesn't have time to audit their city's finances. Both the unions and public officials knew that public would not agree to tax hikes, so they decided to go with unfunded pensions instead. Even though it's technically transparent, they're still abusing an information asymmetry, much like pyramid schemes.

[worik]

I want to vote on your salary.

[Aunche]

The difference is that my salary doesn't force you to take on debt.

[midasuni]

The government are the public’s representatives.

Or should a developer negotiate with a shareholder for a bonus?

[Simulacra]

With the public for ransom.

[seibelj]

The #1 concern with a school should be the children, not the teachers. Public schools bend-over-backwards to help the teachers over the students. Public schools have remained essentially unchanged for 120 years - one teacher divulging knowledge to a room of kids in silent observation. Nothing will change when unions are in control - they have absolutely no incentive.

[wrsh07]

I'm honestly kind of surprised to see the teacher union hate in this thread.

The teachers that I know work tirelessly, don't make very much money, and do literally everything they can to help students. This is doubly true during the past year when they've had to re work plans so that they work over zoom or in person.

I think perhaps the point of friction is that all of this is true and the city can't afford to pay them more, so they get other concessions.

I fundamentally disagree with your claim about lack of innovation - in a public high school 15 years ago your story doesn't ring true, much less seeing my friends who are teachers talking about lesson plans today.

[moate]

>>I'm honestly kind of surprised to see the teacher union hate in this thread.

I mean, have you seen the American Education system? Millions of people thought Betsy Davos was a good idea. MILLIONS. The DOE under her tenure was basically a full on assault against public education in favor of charters/private schools. I've had hours-long, in-person arguments with people who are CONVINCED teachers have the easiest jobs on the planet and we pay them too much.

Not to mention many HN commenters in general tend to strong pro-management stance which pushes them anti-union in general.

[Ericson2314]

You all realize half the reason we have "bad schools" is that families home lives have been falling apart for decades, and schools are the only government agency (except for maybe the police...) interfacting with those families on regular basis?

That and hyperlocal funding.

We can't like society as a whole fall part and expect schools to keep on performing well.

[pwinnski]

Non-union private schools can innovate at will, but so far it's not clear whether any of them have found a solution that works better than the one in place at public schools, while also satisfying the legal requirements put on public schools to accept all students, etc.

[worik]

Last I heard (twelve months ago) the results for "charter schools" were statistically no different than any other.

There are anecdotes to support the point of view they are bad, and anecdotes to support that they are good.

The source of funding does not seem to be the problem. The quantity of funding, definitely.

[rileymat2]

And unionized cannot? Maybe my children’s school is unique but the teaching there is radically different than my own.

A couple of years ago there was endless complaints about new ways to teach math.

[jandrese]

It's a strange system we live in where teachers get fired at the drop of a hat for seemingly innocuous offenses like teaching evolution or breaking up a fight, while also being absolutely untouchable.

[kube-system]

That's because it's not "a system", schooling in the US is thousands of systems.

[maya24]

That is a failure of the public education system not unions. It is not as if the governments are trying to push innovative teaching methods and investing more in public education especially for the underprivileged.

[WalterBright]

There is pretty much zero chance of being elected to the public school board without the union endorsement.

[Frondo]

Untrue and a little absurd.

I've personally known three people who got elected to their local school boards without any endorsements at all. They all had big families, literally just a lot of people knocking on doors evening after evening, no prior political experience even.

[KorematsuFred]

> Teachers unions may care more about teachers ...

Teachers union is easily one of the worst Unions in USA which has turned public education system into a wasteland of incompetent teachers protected at the expense of competent and unemployed. It has turned our education system into a soviet styled "jobs program for adults" instead of a schooling system for children.

If Americans ever wanted an example of how much damage unions can do, look no further than Teachers union.

[dimitrios1]

And if you want the second best example, take a look at the MTA union. Rife with corruption for the union managers at the top, projects delayed by years to decades, cost overruns in the billions, etc.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...

[Hickfang]

> .. That's precisely the point of a union. It's an organization to protect its members ..

That's just it, the union is there to represent the interests of the senior officers and no one else.

[omegaworks]

Google employees walked out to protest the golden parachute offered to two serial sexual harassers on their executive team and the conditions that allowed people like them to rise consequence-free through the ranks at the company.

That you believe it's a "fit" thrown for causes that "don't connect with the average person" is reflecting pretty poorly on your priorities. Nobody wants to believe your boss is skipping over you for promotions because you rejected their sexual advances.

[kortilla]

The most recent drama was about a researcher having her quitting ultimatum called by a manager. It wasn’t anything to do with sexual harassment or anything about underpaid or unsafe workplaces.

[dragonwriter]

> The most recent drama was about a researcher having her quitting ultimatum called by a manager.

No, it wasn’t. Even to the extent that might be considered a superficially correct description of part of what happened, its not the center of the “drama”, which is more centrally about the treatment which led up to that.

[kortilla]

But that’s the point. The “treatment leading up to that” was a mid 6 figure income and nearly free reign to do research in her field of interest. Not relatable to most of the lower or middle class in the US.

[dragonwriter]

> The “treatment leading up to that” was a mid 6 figure income and nearly free reign to do research in her field of interest.

No, the proximately preceding treatment was restrictions on her research that were inconsistent with those imposed on other Google AI researchers (the extent to which that is due to its subject matter, the extent to which it is due to her internal advocacy on gender and race issues, and the extent to which it is due to her own race and sex is unclear.)

> Not relatable to most of the lower or middle class in the US.

Being singled out for adverse treatment either for raising issues related to gender or race equity or for one’s gender or race are, actually, quite relatable to lots of the lower and middle class in the US, certainly including those in that group who are also black and/or women.

[kortilla]

It being about her gender was heavily disputed even inside of Google. The only thing that can be agreed on was that her research publication was restricted by Jeff Dean and co.

The fact that there isn’t really any direct evidence of gender bias in this case is why this is so unrelatable.

A likely millionaire being asked to defer a last minute publication is not even something that would register as an annoyance to the huge portion of the US workforce that doesn’t give two shits about their job.

[omegaworks]

Google has a white supremacy problem. The James Damore incident was a highly public display of that internal tension. It's a sign they have made little progress resolving it with the firing of Timnit Gebru, an eminently qualified data scientist that focused her work on that exact issue.

A union is not just about how "highly paid" employees are, it can help protect employees from those kinds of institutional deficiencies.

[tenpies]

And this is the problem with the Google Union. The ideologies already commanding way too much of the discussion are going to be hyper-empowered by the union.

By 2025 I imagine that if you Google "conservative" you'll instantly have all your Google Services wiped, get banned from the platform, and be reported to the Progressive Thought Technology Alliance Union, so that Twitter and AWS can do the same to you.