[ZeroGravitas]

Hey, if they don't like it, they can get a job somewhere else, no need for authoritarian governments preventing people freely entering contracts with groups with much more power than they do individually.... wait, this reminds me of something?

[josephcsible]

Unions having the power to force employees to join is what's authoritarian. If I want to work for a company, and the company wants to hire me, we should be free to enter into a contract. A third party shouldn't have the power to say "you can't unless you pay us dues".

And before you say "well not if the company and union entered into a contract that said the company would only hire union workers", that's not how it works today. The laws we have today give unions the power to unilaterally say that without the company agreeing, and this is what's bad and needs to go away.

[rileymat2]

> The laws we have today give unions the power to unilaterally say that without the company agreeing, and this is what's bad and needs to go away.

Can you give examples? My impression was closed shop and union shop was negotiated, not dictated by law.

[hedora]

The US is closed shop. If a subset of employees don't like their union, they are not allowed to form their own union.

Put another way, if employees disagree with something the union does, they have no recourse other than founding their own union and trying to get all their coworkers to vote to force every one to switch to the new union.

In particular, employees are not able to call strikes in the US. In some sense, unions solved the "problem" of employee walk outs by redirecting grievances away from employers and to large unions that are (in practice) unresponsive to employee requests.

When they do get things done, it's unclear what constituency they are serving, or who made the decision.

For example, the California statewide teachers union managed to block vaccine mandates for teachers. All the teachers I've talked to in Silicon Valley are vaccinated and support mandates.

Those teachers have no hope of joining a union that's not controlled by anti-vaxxers.

[salawat]

Stop.

Employees can strike. Taft-Hartley illegalizes wildcat or secondary striking.

I still disagree with it because I don't think the Network Effect pruning was equal between Capital and Labor, but Strikes can absolutely be organized by private employees/unions.

Public sector unions are a different beast as far as I'm aware. See the Air Traffic Controller strike and how that flopped. But you've had some teacher's Union successes recently too.

[josephcsible]

The issue isn't that there's no contract at all. The issue is that the contract isn't freely agreed to, since once 51% of workers decide they want a union, the company isn't allowed to walk away from the negotiating table.

[salawat]

Unions don't have that power last I checked, and there is nothing that requires an employer to sign away their ability to seek unaffiliated workers.

Just as there is nothing forcing a worker to join a Union. The only thing is, if you don't join, you don't get the benefit of collective bargaining.

[josephcsible]

> Just as there is nothing forcing a worker to join a Union. The only thing is, if you don't join, you don't get the benefit of collective bargaining.

This is only true in states with right-to-work laws.

[ZeroGravitas]

Didn't California stop companies from preventing their ex-employees from working for competitors?

Sounds like they're doing exactly what you want.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-compete_clause#California

[josephcsible]

What does that have to do with unions?

[ZeroGravitas]

> If I want to work for a company, and the company wants to hire me, we should be free to enter into a contract. A third party shouldn't have the power to say "you can't unless you pay us dues".

Seems like you only want to prevent unions from doing this, but not employers. You also want to prevent them entering into contracts with employers. It's not really a consistent argument is it?

[josephcsible]

I'm okay if a union gets someone else to voluntarily agree to a contract that requires employee membership. I'm not okay with a union unilaterally forcing this without agreement.

[ZeroGravitas]

Isn't it the authoratarian government that's enforcing these laws? Why are you blaming the poor unions, they're only doing what they legally have to do to maximise the returns for their shareholders.