[Zeyka]

I will never understand how some working class Americans can be against unions, maybe they just see themselves as embarrassed millionaires that would want to crush their workers to squeeze money out of them? It's probably my European brain, but I cannot understand how someone, say Jerry, 60 year old factory worker from idaho, can be against unions...

[wallawe]

If this is your take, you're not being honest about the downsides of unions.

Here is a list of reasons for not wanting a union[1]:

- I want my underperforming colleagues to be fired quickly. It's unfair and annoying that laggards are protected and free riding off their colleagues' (my) effort, and it leads to ineffective orgs.

- I don't want seniority or rank to be rewarded. It's unfair to young people (me) who are more competent and ambitious, and it leads to ineffective orgs.

- I want to negotiate individually because I believe I will make more money as an outperformer. I don't want a centralized handicapper to blunt my compensation.

- I don't like that unions are rent seeking in nature.

- I don't like that unions often are exploited by organized crime.

- I don't like that unions interfere in the broader political process and democracy via activism and political pressure (e.g look at the fact that the new EV subsidies will be going to everyone except Tesla, it's a perversion).

- I think people should be free to organize, but I don't like that the state grants special asymmetric powers to unions.

- I don't like especially public sector unions that I believe are doing significant damage to society broadly. For example police unions that shielded Chauvin after a large number of complaints.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28958674

[winkeltripel]

I don't think you quite understand how the unions work.

-in most cases, the employer is able to fire with cause. The union keeps the employer from using layoffs as a weapon.

- pay scales reward loyalty and keeps the workplace stable.

- without the union, you have almost no bargaining power. The union usually gets a better rate for everyone than any one person could have negotiated. This is in fact the point of collective bargaining. Even the presence of a union job site can lift wages across industries. I see this in Oshawa, where the CAW jobs making car bits helps waitresses and sales associates draw higher wages.

-the employer is rent-seeking on their capital. The union balances this.

-unions are not criminal organizations. The teamsters have done some things in the past. If we didn't have so much union busting, there would be more unions competing for workplaces, and this would drive bad unions out of business.

-unions are political, and need legal protections for workers. Tesla will eventually have to deal with a union or treat their workers better than the UAW.

-I don't like that the state grants asymmetric privileges to the employer class, like never prosecuting white collar crimes, and not clawing back exec severances during bankruptcy, and giving them a lower tax rate than their employees.

-there are many things wrong with policing in the us, but all could be fixed with fedral legislation. The unions are aligned with their membership, and doing great work. The wider outcomes are horrible, but that's a good union doing good work.

[credit_guy]

> without the union, you have almost no bargaining power.

You absolutely do. The most powerful bargaining power of all: the power of the alternative. It's also called "pay me, or I leave" (most often accompanied by "I have an outside offer"). I exercised this power a few times in my career. I did not need any union to bargain for me.

[krainboltgreene]

You're describing a bargaining power that unions have, except instead of "pay me or I leave" it's "pay me or we leave".

Why would you want a less powerful version of the same thing? Even if you don't involve your union, you can still do what you're describing.

You've gained nothing unique by avoiding the union.

[credit_guy]

> you can still do what you're describing.

I doubt you can. Your boss will tell you he can't pay you more than what's on the grid negotiated with the union. My wife works in a place with a union (and is a member of it), and there is such a grid. Nobody even thinks individual bargaining is a possibility.

[krainboltgreene]

So you leave, like you said.

[dehrmann]

> pay scales reward loyalty and keeps the workplace stable.

The tech industry has arguably developed quickly because people move around a lot, taking best practices with them. Workplace stability might appear locally great, but it hurts the industry as a whole.

[mcguire]

The tech industry is flooded with money, but is enormously inefficient. How many projects are you familiar with that got trashed, often after key people moved on?

[mcguire]

You forgot the part where they are all founded on organized crime.

/s

[ceres]

All great points. To add: As someone who's worked blue collar jobs, it is all too common for unions to protect assholes from getting fired. This leads to a hostile work environment created by the "high seniority" workers.

Something I don't like whenever these discussions come up is the condescending tone, from white collar workers. "Don't these poor people know what's good for them????"

Working class people are capable of thinking for themselves and it's not that uncommon for people to move from a union shop to a non-union shop due to the reasons outlined above.

[7sidedmarble]

All the things you dislike about unionized working environments are things that can go wrong in any working environment. If we had more unions, you'd have more of a choice, instead of the situation now where only the most corrupt survive.

[ditonal]

Poor people? I think rich techies are crazy - or rather, badly misinformed- not to start a union.

Exhibit A of poorly informed: grandparent poster seriously thinking he has more individual bargaining power against trillion dollar corporations than a collective bargaining agreement would.

Exhibit B: grandparent poster thinking collective bargaining _must_ entail many aspects like seniority based compensation that are totally optional.

Tom Brady is in the NFL players association. Tom Cruise is in the Screen Actors guild. Naive techies think being good at leetcode hard gives them bargaining power. A lot of ex Tweeps are getting a wake up call.

The only reason techies had the illusion of negotiation leverage is that they were generating such absurdly high revenue for their employer, the slice they got seemed huge compared to the rest of the country’s gutted middle class. Factor in inflation, housing, and that Wall St is now gunning hard to bring tech compensation down, and you’ll realize techies are the last gasp of Americas dying middle class, and that really pisses off activist hedge funds . See Elliott Managements recent takeover of Pinterest so they could “re-level” employees.

Read the emails between Steve Jobs and Sergey Brin w.r.t high tech class action lawsuit. Read about Google hiring union busting consultant firms.

If unions didn’t work, tech execs wouldn’t be so terrified of them.

Yes, poor people should also unionize. And yes, unfortunately a lot of their options are as broken and corrupt as their employers.

That doesn’t change the fundamental fact that collective bargaining is the _only_ answer .

[deepsquirrelnet]

> Read the emails between Steve Jobs and Sergey Brin w.r.t high tech class action lawsuit. Read about Google hiring union busting consultant firms.

Worse still is that these firms have been caught collectively bargaining against workers through illegal secretive non-compete clauses. Wage suppression has been going on for years, even while these companies have been at the very top of thriving businesses.

It’s simply not a question of affordability. These companies did it because they could.

I’d also like to point out that much of the union activity of a hundred years ago was also about poor working conditions, and not just compensation. Much of that was quelled by increasing government regulations that protected workers against exploitation. Is the government adequately performing this job?

[UncleEntity]

> Tom Brady is in the NFL players association. Tom Cruise is in the Screen Actors guild.

You think that has anything to do with their compensation? Tom Brady has won how many Super Bowls? Tom Cruise has had how many blockbuster movies?

The opposite should be true if unions were the great equalizers, no single actor/athlete would be making hundreds of millions a year and all of them would be making enough to buy a house in Beverly Hills.

[krainboltgreene]

> The opposite should be true if unions were the great equalizers, no single actor/athlete would be making hundreds of millions a year and all of them would be making enough to buy a house in Beverly Hills.

This makes no sense. Two people that are in unions are doing the thing you say they can't. What in the world?

[ubercore]

I think you have a very US-centric lens on unions. In the Nordic countries, for example, unions operate entirely differently. So you need to be clear where your points come from.

[BobbyJo]

> So you need to be clear where your points come from

They were responding to a post specifically asking about Americans' feelings toward unions. That made it pretty clear to me where his points were coming from.

If they were responding from Finland I'd be a little confused why they were responding at all.

[ubercore]

Because Finland is a great example of unions working for the benefit of employees? Why are we constrained to only discussing how (some, not all) unions are in the US?

[jasode]

>Why are we constrained to only discussing how (some, not all) unions are in the US?

In general, nobody is constrained to just discussing USA unions but the particular subthread[1] that you're in which was started by gp (Zeyka) was asking specifically about America. And that's probably because this thread's article is about American unions.

That's why your clarification (to poster wallawe) was perceived as redundant and out of place.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34028480

[Jensson]

Because in USA every union is a battle. There isn't much to talk about with respect to Scandinavian unions, if you don't want to be in one just don't be, if you want to be in one just join, it is much simpler, while in USA one side forces the other side to take the same route, so you can't choose union other votes for what union you are in etc.

[ensignavenger]

The above comment was clearly in response to another comment about how Americans feel about unions, thus it is obvious it was looking at American unions.

[otikik]

> It's unfair and annoying that laggards are protected and free riding off their colleagues' (my) effort

With your unionized coworkers that might be a possibility. With the business owners that’s a certainty. Do you feel differently about these two groups of people?

[onetimeusename]

The way that many union bosses have become part of the political class is something I rarely see discussed when talking about union benefits. The bosses seem to be well removed from the rank and file members and can have completely different goals and priorities. The definition of a union does not really seem like it should have anything to do with politics either. I am sure that people will defend union bosses by pointing out that union leadership jobs have a different nature than what the members do which may be so. But I would like to point out that it seems pretty rarely people talk about exploitation and corruption of and by union bosses themselves as if this can't possibly exist. I would argue there is potential for union leadership to be exploitative of union members and this is worth discussing.

[larksimian]

Beautiful sentiments. Young programmers in the hottest job market in history don't need a union.

Fortunately for your ability to empathize with the plebeians in the regular world, Musk has shown that software companies are probably employing at least twice as many programmers as they need, so this job market should be turning south soon.

After ten-twenty years of being employed half the time and your salary going down with every new job I'm sure you'll be mentally broken down enough to empathize with the blue collar pro-union perspective.

[dragonwriter]

> Musk has shown that software companies are probably employing at least twice as many programmers as they need

No, he hasn’t; he hasn’t even shown that Twitter was doing that.

[larksimian]

He's shown enough for the tech elite hive-mind to trample workers into the dirt for a few years. It's not like the amount of staffing SV companies have makes any sense anyway.

[BHSPitMonkey]

> - (e.g look at the fact that the new EV subsidies will be going to everyone except Tesla, it's a perversion).

If you mean the federal tax credit, it was the OLD one that stopped going to Tesla (due to the per-model caps in place; caps that any competitor could also reach after enough sales, mind you). The new credit that was signed into law this year does not exclude Tesla (instead, it excludes cars manufactured overseas).

[underbrush]

Take your reasons, which are really more opinions, and insert "free speech" instead of "unions" (after the appropriate changes) and you might understand why people would disagree.

[leereeves]

How does "free speech" reward seniority, protect underperforming colleagues, prevent negotiating individually, etc?

[underbrush]

That is why I said make the appropriate changes.

- I don't want free speech because it is unfair to award lazy thinking free riding off established publications.

- I don't want free speech because it is often exploited by terrorists.

- I think people should be free to say things but I don't think it should grant them special protection from the government.

etc.

It isn't an exact comparison but that also isn't the point.

[xboxnolifes]

You're right, it's not a comparison at all.

[underbrush]

It is it just isn't an exact comparison which is also what I said.

[tgv]

tldr: I think I can get more money, and screw the rest.

You’ve proven the point about inequality.

[joshlemer]

Thank you for articulating this so well!

[jasode]

>It's probably my European brain, but I cannot understand how someone [...] can be against unions...

America unions are structured differently from Europe and some can become as distrusted by the workers as the corporation.

Your viewpoint is common but it's based on the mental model of "Unions are good. Period end of story."

But for voters like your proverbial Jerry against unions, the mental model is more about tradeoffs like this, "the proposed union by these particular set of organizers has made some promises and wants to charge me $$$ per year to negotiate with the company. Things may turn out better -- or they may turn out worse (e.g. no job)."

As an example, the Amazon union vote in Alabama failed and many blamed Amazon propaganda. No doubt that Amazon crafted many negative messages about unions. But outsiders forget that many voters had older relatives from Alabama coal mines telling them that "the union just took our dues money and didn't do shit for us".

How can pro-union advocates counter those disillusioned union coal miners spreading negative information like that? These are the kinds of scenarios Europeans are unfamiliar with.

[zip1234]

There are also public sector unions which appear to only serve a special interest group at the expense of everyone else. Teacher unions are an example--they appear to protect bad teachers, stifle innovation, and it isn't even clear that they are great at getting pay for teachers.

[BurningFrog]

> unions which appear to only serve a special interest group at the expense of everyone else

I mean, the intended purpose of unions is to serve their members, at the expense of non members.

[ubercore]

Not necessarily. As I understand it, in the Nordics, employment conditions and benefits are protected by unions, regardless of an individual's membership.

[BurningFrog]

I see how you read it that way, but I meant non members in a wider sense, as in the employer, and the general public.

[britch]

Mind elaborating on what you mean by innovation?

Is it new/unique curriculum? Something else?

[toomuchtodo]

> How can pro-union advocates counter those disillusioned union coal miners spreading negative information like that?

Because coal mining is in no way the same as Amazon’s retail business? Now, I will say, some of these folks are beyond hope. In an energy transition documentary done by one of the HGTV property brothers, they interview a coal miner dying of black lung in Appalachia, and they believe that’s the job their kids and grandkids should do versus renewables or “new tech” even when considering there are other options available. [1] Belief systems are deeply ingrained and have defense mechanisms. Persuade the open minded whenever possible, of course, but ignore those who aren’t. The effort is better spent elsewhere. As Max Planck said, “a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” Same deal.

[1] https://youtu.be/MgRa5spkfXw

[argiopetech]

Both involve manual labor acquiring, packing, and shipping valuable good for use by others; in enclosed areas, surrounded by large, dangerous equipment; where workers are paid below the perceived value of the position, and with top management who grow richer daily while ignoring the plight of the "little man"...

I'd rather work in the warehouse, personally, but I can certainly see how the positions are analogous to the level we could compare expected results of a union.

[thepasswordis]

Because some people take pride in their work, and being essentially forced to do a bad job hurts them psychologically.

I want to get up early, set big goals, work hard on them, and then see the fruits of that hard work. I take immense pride in that, and seeing the output in some sense is a big part of the payment.

Unions don’t allow for this attitude, at least none of the ones that I have ever interacted with. They’re not pro worker, they’re anti work. These people seem to believe that work is bad for workers.

So some people don’t like unions. I don’t like unions.

[softfalcon]

I find this is true for some unions but not all.

We have a union at my company and it’s for our creative writing and video production folks. We’re in the media space. These are some of the most effective and driven people I’ve met or had the privilege of working for.

People being lazy (or not) and wanting to do a good job (or not) is mutually exclusive of whether they are in a union (or not).

I do see why you would think this. Many media outlets and corporations spend lots of time making sure everyone thinks unions are just for lazy people. That’s not true, but after decades, many people think this now.

[dr_dshiv]

Hypothesis #1: European unions aren't like American unions in this way: they are far less oppositional to the objectives of the companies.

Hypothesis #2: This is a result of European unions having an origin as trade guilds whereas American unions have an origin as political organizers.

[BurningFrog]

As a Swede who emigrated to the US:

# 1: Swedish unions are very different from US ones. They understand their companies and the country needs to be competitive on the world market. I have my problems with their power and policies, but they're vastly better for society than the US version.

# 2: The Swedish unions formed the Social Democratic party, that's been the main political power center of the country for a century. Don't know what relations they may have had with guilds in the 1800s.

[jltsiren]

European unions have their roots in revolutionary communism. They then evolved towards social democracy, which is effectively a compromise between socialism and capitalism. This social compromise, where the unions accepted market economy and private property and the employers accepted moderate unions, made the unions what they are today.

American unions evolved in another direction. Because there was no serious risk of a communist revolution, the employers had no need to comromise. Both the employers and the unions remain more confrontational than in Europe.

[ljw1001]

I think your characterization of unions is a propaganda driven falsehood, and your argument ignores the fact that Most people see less and less of the fruits of their labor.

[Devasta]

> I want to get up early, set big goals, work hard on them, and then see the fruits of that hard work.

You might see the fruits of your hard work, but it's your boss who reaps them.

[nineplay]

I used to work with UAW in the 90s and it was excruciating. I'd be on the floor with one of our machines and I wasn't allowed to even take a panel off with a screwdriver. There was one guy whose job allowed him to unscrew the panel and he was somewhere else, or on a smoke break. I spent so much time sitting around twiddling my thumbs, waiting for this or that person. It was the opposite of having a productive day, I'd never want to work like that.

[CPLX]

> I want to get up early, set big goals, work hard on them, and then see the fruits of that hard work.

Perhaps you could serve as an example and role model that could inspire union members like Michael Jordan and Tom Brady to work harder.

[mikem170]

> I will never understand how some working class Americans can be against unions

I've wondered if this is because unions in the U.S. are considerably different than unions in other places?

This was an interesting article [0] I bumped into titled "Europe could have the secret to saving America’s unions".

It said that in the U.S. unionization happens at the enterprise level, leaving unionized companies at a disadvantage relative to their competitors, so individual companies are very much incentivized to fight against unionization. In other countries when a certain amount of workers call for unionization negotiations happen between the union and a federation representing all employers in the sector, and the entire sector unionizes at once, not individual companies.

The article also talked about employees receiving benefits from their unions in some (fewer) countries, like unemployment insurance, instead of from the government. This incentives workers to join the union and pay union dues, instead of forcing them to do so. The idea was thrown out there that things like health care and retirement plans could also be included with union dues for people in gig-work jobs that would otherwise not receive these benefits.

I'd add that the article didn't address a concern many in the U.S. have about unions protecting under-performing workers, to the detriment of others. I've heard that this is different in other countries, at least to a point, but the article did not get into this. Also in the U.S. there have been a lot of corrupt unions, and public employee unions that receive (expensive) preferential treatment by law, I don't know if these problems exist in other countries.

[0] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/17/15290674/u...

[Zeyka]

Thanks for the interesting read, I think that US unions should definitely change, and this is still in line with my original comment, because of course you can dislike the way unions work right now, but still be pro-union in the long term.

Opposing unions is just going to lead to no changes on the union side and it's going to let the companies be as harsh on workers as they want, even on the "hard workers", because in the end, companies just care about the value that you are producing, not what you once produced. If you aren't valuable now, they'll just throw you out.

All the comments on here that say "well i don't want my lazy coworker to get paid more" highlight how well the "hustle"/"grind" and meritocracy propaganda worked on US workers. The other type of comments that talk about the bad side of unions just seem like bad faith arguments, It's just like the police violence in the US, there are a lot of bad actors and the system is ultimately flawed, but does that mean that there should be no police? No, of course not, so why is that in this context, they are actively against unions and against workers right? It quite literally makes no sense, but then again we're talking about the USA here so the notion of logic just goes out of the window.

[musictubes]

You say you will never understand why some American working class workers oppose unions. Well then I guess you will need be able to convince them otherwise. If your starting point is that the union experience is obviously a good one and you must be stupid to not see that, you have lost any chance of a serious conversation. People have reasons for feeling the way they do. Dismissing them as falling for propaganda is once again just calling them stupid.

I'm an American and I admit to having a very negative view of modern unions. When the word union comes up I immediately think of:

1) The Teamsters and their ties to organized crime 2) Police unions that shield officers from consequences 3) Teacher unions that prevent awful teachers from being fired 4) Ridiculous rules around duties on film/theater sets 5) The UAW is seen by many former workers as letting them down. Many other people feel the UAW bears some responsibilities for plant closures. 6) As supermarkets in my area started to unionize the service noticeably suffered. 7) Several friends were Verizon workers and felt that they were screwed by their union. 8) It is common for unions to fund candidates that many workers do not like.

If someone like myself has a negative view of unions it is up to people like yourself to change that perception if you want unions to gain traction in the US. Distrust of unions in the US are not always (usually?) driven by ignorance or propaganda. Unions themselves have done a very good job of alienating workers.

[rejectfinite]

Here is how Swedish unions work :)

Maybe urs are just shit :)

https://www.unionen.se/in-english/this-is-unionen

[faitswulff]

Ironically you’re being downvoted by the same folks who would benefit from unions. American Twitter employees, for instance, would have done a lot better with European labor protections. European Twitter employees probably have a sizable comeuppance on the horizon.

[logicalmonster]

If the European standards are so good, where are all of the influential European tech companies?

To properly weigh all of the tradeoffs, you might consider asking if those Twitter jobs would even emerge in the European system and if there's a link between European labor standards and the lack of influential European tech companies. Europe is a large market that is filled with many capable and educated technology workers, yet almost always all of the tech companies we're ever talking about are American. Why is this?

[BigRedDog1669]

Good company to work for is not the same as big company everyone is talking about on hacker news. Those are two different things. Why should people optimize for computer nerd prestige? I might not care to work for Amazon, Microsoft, etc. Influential can be a bad thing if they are negatively influencing society.

[logicalmonster]

> Why should people optimize for computer nerd prestige?

The thing I'd like to focus on isn't nerd prestige, but good jobs, as the article was about inequality as nothing fixes social alienation and inequality more than lots of people having a good income and being part of society. These big tech companies, whatever major negatives they provide to the culture in many ways, at least employ a lot of people and give them a path to being part of that comfy middle class.

If the concern is inequality, then is a pile of great paying jobs with worse labor standards better than a few ok paying jobs with great labor standards? See where I'm going with that?

These are complex issues...I don't think I have all of the answers, but I just want to point out that there might be some tradeoffs to the good sounding things like unions and much better labor protections.

[faitswulff]

A simple answer is that being able to abuse workers allows businesses to move faster.

[bombolo]

> Why is this?

Because EU is a puppet of USA and doesn't have strong enough protections to stop USA companies to acquire every single startup that exists in EU.

Most of that amazing USA made software is not done in USA. For example some of that is made by me… a guy who has never been in USA.

[rejectfinite]

Spotify, Skype, Minecraft, Battlefield, Ericsson, SAAB

oh and the Linux kernel.

Is your brain broken?

[bombolo]

Saab makes mostly weapons. And yes some software here and there.

[formercoder]

I really don’t understand the push for white collar tech employees to be in unions. It’s my understanding that in most union jobs, compensation and benefits are strictly based on time in role, not performance. I try and excel in my role and others are less interested in doing so. I should be promoted faster and compensated higher.

[throw0101c]

> It’s my understanding that in most union jobs, compensation and benefits are strictly based on time in role, not performance.

That is one structure, and it probably was predominant in the past because unions were historically in factories where workers were more interchangeable and had set tasks at a production line station.

Another is more 'guild-like': Jane Smith who is Waitress #2, and Tom Cruise who plays Ethan Hunt in Mission Impossible, are both part of the same union/guild, but one is able to negotiate a much higher salary. But they have the same 'base' level of protection with regards to working conditions, pension, health care, etc.

Certainly Tom Cruise can go above and beyond those 'base' levels, but the union/guild simply provides a floor which everyone is entitled to.

There's no reason why a union contract could not negotiate things like working conditions, health/child care, pensions/retirement funds, etc, but leave salaries out of the collective agreement. Or perhaps have pay bands, with retention/performance bonuses that are out side of the scope of the agreement, and are 100% discretionary to the company: everyone gets a floor, but there's no ceiling.

[wpietri]

Unions can be what the workers want them to be. The industrial time-in-role thing can be a reasonable match to industrial industrial jobs. But collective bargaining can include performance-based pay. E.g., the union negotiates the overall base raise and the size of the performance-based raise pool, and then managers decide on raises and promotions. They can also help you resolve situations of individual managerial unfairness, something that HR is supposed to do but is very rarely effective at.

[jtolmar]

A union is a democratically-run tool. Every tech employee I talk to hates the idea of compensation being based purely on time in role, why would they democratically vote for that to be the rule?

[missedthecue]

Because not every rule is up for vote. Ex: Majority of Americans want weed federally legal. America is a democracy. Why is that not the law? It's not up for vote.

[klyrs]

There's two ways to unionize: roll your own, or UaaS. Rolling your own requires a lot of work, time in committee meetings, and has a risk that you'll overlook common issues or flub negotiations due to inexperience. But there's a lot of flexibility, and it can be done on the cheap. A lot of people pick the second option: a big union can send a rep, draft a contract, negotiate with your employer, etc., in exchange for the dues it pays its employees with.

[sambull]

Probably the people who have had a boss tell them they believe minimum performance for a salaried position was 70+ hours a week.

[thepasswordis]

Generally the people who are advocating for a union are doing it to level the playing field for themselves against you.

[bombolo]

Yes for example an immigrant that is under threat of being deported might want a more level playing field.

[ThrowawayR2]

Historically, unions in the United States have been strongly anti-immigrant because they were seen as competitors who lowered wages. Anyone who has been on HN long enough has seen the undercurrent of anti-H-1B sentiment whenever the topic comes up and a union would bring that nastiness and racism out to center stage.

No, no immigrants in tech are going to want to vote for a union because a lot of its members think immigrants are part of the playing field that needs to be "leveled".

[fallingknife]

It's not racism to oppose policies that lower my salary

[dantheman]

Unions are anti-immigrant.

[wpietri]

Do you have any current data on that? I think it was true of the "Reagan Democrat" variety of union worker in the 1980s, but I suspect it's an outdated stereotype now. For example, SEIU, one of America's largest unions, represents a lot of immigrants and is strongly pro-immigrant: https://www.seiu.org/justice-for-immigrants/

[bombolo]

And companies are pro-exploitation-of-immigrants… and not very pro-immigrants.

[bombolo]

Nobody has any idea how to properly evaluate that. So they just pick the person who works the least and talks the most, using random jargon to seem smart.

[pxmpxm]

Ha, if anything Twitter's the paragon of a European tech company. Overstaffed, politicized and unable to make money, all while their top talent flees to competitors in sf bay area.

[Zeyka]

Exactly, and I'm not trying to devalue their beliefs, I'm just trying to understand how they can be against something that would benefit them.

[mhb]

Is it that hard to understand that someone might be in favor of something in principle, but object to its particular implementation? Or that someone could act against their own self-interest because of a belief in a broader principle? Maybe everyone's motivation isn't to blindly follow their own micro-self-interest.

[ohCh6zos]

Any time I hear the claim that people are against their best interests it does not quite make sense to me. My own observation leads me to believe that everyone is good at optimizing for their own priorities.

[bombolo]

They think "oh no my lazy coworkers might get a bigger bonus!" rather than realising that their boss is the former lazy coworker.

Basically the american idea that deserving people (aka myself) will magically prevail.

[Zeyka]

But that's the thing, meritocracy isn't a thing, and saying no to more protections (from unions or from pro-worker laws) just doesn't make sense. Granted there was some things I didn't know about how unions worked in the US, which I learned more about in this thread, but the same questions remain for pro worker and worker protection laws, why do Americans oppose them so much.

[danaris]

> meritocracy isn't a thing, and saying no to more protections (from unions or from pro-worker laws) just doesn't make sense

You know that, and I know that, but the right wing has been pushing anti-union, anti-worker, pro-corporate propaganda for several decades now. That propaganda also dovetails with the preexisting Protestant work ethic and labor theory of value that have been pretty solidly in the American consciousness since...well, basically before its founding as a country.

All that combined means that for people who aren't raised in a progressive, pro-union environment, and who don't encounter such an environment until their belief systems are fairly well-established, the default background noise is pretty much "Unions? Why would you need that, you pansy? Real Men are islands unto themselves, work hard, and are paid exactly what they're worth for that work. That's how you know the poor deserve to be poor!"

[yucky]

   > meritocracy isn't a thing

One of many examples I can give to disprove this as I'm sitting here watching Croatia & Morocco in the World Cup, is looking at some of the contracts some of these players get from their clubs. Wide disparity and definitely seems to be based on a meritocracy. Taken further, why are none of these fans in the stands, many of whom who also play for fun not equally compensated or even compensated at all? After all, they can kick a ball too.

So now that we've established that meritocracy is obviously a real thing, we have to ask what evidence you have that a meritocracy wouldn't exist in other fields, like programming for instance.

[bombolo]

> So now that we've established that meritocracy is obviously a real thing

We have? Because… a football match was played? What did it prove exactly?

[ww-picard-do]

You are being very patronizing. Other people in this thread have given reasonable explanations for not liking unions.

You are free to disagree, of course, but being smug about it is rude.

[bombolo]

Like the one "office workers don't need unions because meritocracy"… if you think that's reasonable… I can only think of it as reasonable if you start from made up facts to reach the conclusion.

[ww-picard-do]

I never said that just like no one said "oh no my lazy coworkers might get a bigger bonus!". You seem to insist on mischaracterizing what people say. Why?

[thepasswordis]

It won’t benefit them. Maybe you should try to understand their perspective from a place of you being ignorant of the subject and wrong about unions.

[throwaway6734]

But American tech companies would be even less likely to be created in the first place under European labor laws

[pjmlp]

Spotify, SAP, Skype, Unity, Sitecore, OutSystems, Bayer, Pfizer, Nokia, Ericson, Vodafone....

Managed just fine.

[throwaway6734]

Do you think tech companies are more likely to come out of Europe or the US?

[pjmlp]

Moving goal posts, but yeah, Europe lacks a SV with venture capitalists raining money on every crazy idea, with Tony Stark like feudal lords pushing their minions to sleep in office with promises of free drinks and pizza, hoping to capitalize on the startup being sold.

Thankfully.

[bartart]

I am curious, is putting up with the occasional self-obsessed ceo not worth it?

For example Tesla has a market value greater than every European carmaker combined, having gone from approximately 0 annual car deliveries to over a million in just a few years while revolutionizing electric travel. Or with space x developing reusable rockets that have utterly transformed the industry. These companies will contribute to economic dynamism and wealth creation for years and decades.

Macron said of American space companies, “Unfortunately they’re not European, but they took a bet”. Perhaps at a certain level you need people with lots of money who are willing to risk it

[throwaway6734]

Not moving goalposts. Read my original post.

[AS37]

A bunch of those started 150+ years ago, when European unions essentially didn't exist.

[pjmlp]

Ok, lets remove those from my list.

Spotify, SAP, Skype, Unity, Sitecore, OutSystems, Vodafone, ...

[ChuckNorris89]

Even though it was founded in Denmark, Unity is a US HQ company now, and Vodafone is basally a body shop now mostly (what's their latest successful product?).

Plus, naming 6 random European tech companies doesn't prove anything. Every country has tech companies. How many exactly doesn't really matter in this comparison, what matters is revenues and market cap.

Consider that the US tech sector is worth significantly more than the tech sectors of EU + UK + Switzerland + Norway combined. It blows the entire EEA out of the water. To put it simply, the US hosts most of the largest tech companies by market cap and revenues.

If you take the top 50 tech companies in the world by market cap[1], the only European companies on the list are ASML, Booking, SAP, Schneider Electric and Dassault Systemes. 6 out of 50 for Europe, while the US has about 40 out of 50, while also claiming the highest six spots at the top.

Ouch! That's not even a competition. It's why American tech workers get paid so much. Not because they don't get government mandated PTO and sick leave, or can get fired more easily, or don't pay more taxes for unemployment and socialized healthcare, as is the common myth, but because the companies they work for are so obscenely rich compared to European ones and a lot more numerous.

/QED

[1] https://companiesmarketcap.com/tech/largest-tech-companies-b...

[missedthecue]

Why are European wages so low? Why aren't their unions extracting more meaningful pay? Why do the non-unionized US workers make so much more money?

[surement]

> maybe they just see themselves as embarrassed millionaires that would want to crush their workers to squeeze money out of them?

What a lazy take. Unions only protect their current members. It's common for companies to hire fewer people or hire more people at only part time schedules because full time employees are required to cost exaggeratedly more or are harder to fire due to union contracts. What organization represents the people who are unemployed or underemployed because of unions? These people are much worse off than if the unions didn't exist.

[JustSomeNobody]

I think it in part comes from being trained generation after generation that if I work harder than you, I deserve more than you. So if people want to make things more equal, I will have worked so hard for nothing and that makes me unhappy.

* Note: I used "I", but I don't personally feel this way. If I found out a fast food worker made more than me as an engineer, I wouldn't care. In some ways they work harder. Also, I don't think CEOs bring as much worth to a company as engineers do and they make way more, so...

[defphysics]

> see themselves as embarrassed millionaires

I see this "embarrassed millionaires" line a lot. It seems unbelievably cynical. Do you really think a meaningful fraction of workers are thinking "I'll oppose unions because even though I'm hurting workers, it'll be good for me when I'm rich"?

[danaris]

It's rarely a specific and conscious line of thought during the decision-making process. The more common case is making the working class feel like they're "just like" the wealthy—playing on the narrative that "anyone can get rich in America"—and then selling them on policies that actively work against their own interests, and for the interests of the wealthy. This step often looks like talking about things that would primarily affect the very wealthy as if they would hurt everyone. Things like "taxation is theft", "increasing taxes punishes success", "government small enough to drown in a bathtub", etc.

[jccalhoun]

Because all they see is "that union is taking money out of my pay check!" and they don't see the positives.

And there actually are bad unions. I worked in a casino and out union was a non-striking union so even if the casino gave use some shitty contract we weren't able to strike. So what was the point?

[Zeyka]

Replace the word unions with cops (in the us) and then see if you come to the conclusion that there should be no cops because the system isn't working right now. The answer is most likely "No, of course not". So why do so many come to the conclusion that since unions aren't working well right now, you should just get rid of them altogether?

[stri8ed]

For the same reason that people oppose monopolies. Unions are effectively a monopoly on the labor market.

[missedthecue]

With specific exemption from federal anti trust legislation.

[Aunche]

A lot of people have had bad experience with unions. Often times, it's only people with high seniority that see the most benefit from unions. This is why the railroad unions negotiated for more pay instead of paid sick days. Pension payouts are based on the average of the highest 60 paying months. Senior employees who are due to retire in a few years just need bear a few more tough years to enjoy their significantly fatter pensions.

[danaris]

Have they really? Personal bad experiences?

Or is this just the prevailing narrative that's been sold to us over the past 30-50 years, and there are too few actual unions and union jobs left to effectively counter it?

[2devnull]

You don’t know many working class Americans or you could ask them. I do and have and they report exploitation and misaligned incentives. Unions are like corporations, they can have poor leadership with goals that are incongruous with the goals of the members. Union dues can feel like you pay a lot of your hard earned cash to just have your money siphoned off to a politicians that literally hate you. But usually they have agreed that in general it’s good that unions exist. Better to have them around than to not have them, in the abstract.

[JasonFruit]

In my experience, what they oppose isn't unions as such, but compulsory union membership. They consider that a union should arise from the expression of worker needs, and a union that they are forced to join and that exists whether they want it or not might lack incentives to represent their needs instead of the needs of the union. It's kind of like the saying about organizations in general: eventually they come to serve the needs of the organization instead of the purpose for which they were originally created.

[nverno]

> compulsory union membership

Yea, it can be frustrating be barred from jobs, like construction, being a non-member, or being forced to pay union dues to a union you feel is doing nothing for you.

Small, company-sized unions have always been a lot more appealing to me than the huge behemoths the US currently has.

[swearwolf]

When I was younger, I worked in the theater industry. We all knew that the IATSE stage hands were making great wages, but the options we had to join were:

1.) A grueling apprenticeship period in which you would work very long hours for very little pay. I could be wrong but I think this was a several year long process.

2.) You could skip that process if you were vouched for by an existing union member. In practice, this often meant that membership was passed down through families.

I understand that it’s similar for firefighters.

[omnibrain]

I think that's part of the problem. In germany for example, we have Unions and we have working councils in the companies. And while unions are "just" associations/clubs working councils are are regulated by laws and get elected by the workers of the company. Of course there is some realtionship, but it is not unheard of, that in a working council are members from more than one union (though usually only one has negotiating powers for tariffs, but that's another topic, because usually unions negotiate with associations of companies for the whole sector. And those unions without negotiating power are sometimes not even considered real unions...), and even independent members.

[kelseyfrog]

That's been my experience as well. It's pure reactance psychology. From the first paragraph of the wiki page

> Reactance is an unpleasant motivational reaction to offers, persons, rules, or regulations that threaten or eliminate specific behavioral freedoms. Reactance occurs when an individual feels that an agent is attempting to limit one's choice of response and/or range of alternatives.

When I think about the people who I know who are anti-union, they all have high reactance as a trait. If I were to try to change their mind, it would be to frame their non-union environment as more freedom-limiting than the unions alternative re: workplace democracy etc.

[i_am_toaster]

The lack of empathy and unfavorable labeling of opinions that differ from your own is not something you should get in the habit of.

[kelseyfrog]

Rather, it is precisely an empathic explanation. It attempts to find an underlying basis for such an opinion rather than writing it off as unfounded. People with high reactance have an emotional response when compelled to action and this emotional response is what I'm empathizing with.

Any reading of my response as judgemental is a perversion of intention and I'd encourage anyone doing so to get curious and assume positive intent rather than reading it with malicious subtext. Something is only pathological if it negatively impacts someone's life.

[i_am_toaster]

That is not empathy. That is labeling them based on what you think their perspective is and using that label to reason why you understand their point of view. Characterizing another persons mental reasoning by putting it into some generic box is, by definition, NOT empathy.

Edit: I can’t help but feel like I’m being trolled, so this is where the conversation ends.

[kelseyfrog]

Please try to put yourself in my shoes and give me the benefit of the doubt.

[JasonFruit]

You say "loves freedom" like it's a bad thing.

[kelseyfrog]

"Loves freedom" isn't as clear of a maximum of utility as it's sometimes made out to be. Again, the association with those of high reactance strong.

I'm fully aware that there will be attempts to naturalize "freedom loving." That's the interesting thing about psychology and I suppose in this case sociology, particulars are often universalized into a neurosis. It's funny how this pattern holds.

[JasonFruit]

Let me put it in a less-fun way: "high reactance" is in this context just another way of saying "values freedom". Describing it using a wording that expresses psychologically-educated disapproval verbally pathologizes that preference, but it doesn't constitute a supported value judgment. In neither of your comments have you offered any support, so just like my "loves freedom", it remains an empty weasel-word.

[Zeyka]

I think that's fair enough, but it's not like workers in the USA have a lot of protections or are getting fairly compensated for their work. So unions, whether compulsory or not, still benefit them in one way or another.

[dantheman]

I mean Americans are paid far more highly than Europeans, so I don't see how this is correct.

[mftrhu]

Are they, really?

How did they end up not having enough cash on hand to cover minor emergencies, then? How are they going bankrupt over healthcare costs - even when insured through their job - while having to worry about not being able to take a day off?

[Zeyka]

Only highly skilled workers are paid more. Compare fast food workers and you'll see what I'm talking about.

[nverno]

This isn't just uniformly true, though. As a worker you may be better off without the union you're a part of- it depends as much on the union as the company.

[lisper]

Two big factors:

1. American capitalists have waged a very effective propaganda campaign against unions and

2. American unions have had a history of corruption. (Or maybe I just think that because I've been taken in by the propaganda campaign.)

[mistrial9]

as an American, my casual observation is that "real, political Leftists in Unions of America" were pushed out by any means (media,legal pressure,illegal intimidation and harassment), leaving the far-Right shady people to run them (literally Mafia in many locations, and with the Teamsters). This is a political trade-off paralleling other anti-Communist countries. USA Americans do not have a real impression of the horrific power struggles that can occur within a labor & tax system, and as these comments show, also do not have a real impression of a working, daily Union doing it's job without drama.

[mgraf1]

I'm curious what you mean when you say "leaving the far-Right shady people to run them (literally Mafia in many locations, and with the Teamsters)". How are you defining "far-right" in this context?

[mistrial9]

sustained, organized indentured servitude was a fact of work life in many populated parts of the world for more than a thousand years, and is found today in most military structures, hotels and casinos, for example. Here, a working definition of "far-Right" is, descendants of those that enable hierarchical work structures parallel to indentured work, with control & reward structures associated with that.

[otikik]

It has been demonized and propagandized against by people with the deepest pockets in the world, and it’s working in some cases.

[Zeyka]

A quick look at the comments on here answers that pretty well... It's quite sad that those that are against unions for various reasons are also against any changes to them. It just seems like bad faith.

[JKCalhoun]

> I will never understand how some working class Americans can be against unions

It seems as though decades of corporate puppets have done a wonderful job of convincing the blue-collar worker that unions are corrupt and exist solely to milk worker's dues.

I don't understand it either.

[gchamonlive]

It's because you have the blessing and privilege of working two to three jobs in a capitalist society, a very small price to pay to access all capitalism has to offer: smartphones, TVs and cleaning machines that break in a month after warranty expires, cars, a healthcare system that will take your house and your dog as collateral...

Unions? you should be thankful!

[slater-]

as we say in america when someone is right about something, "i think you just hit the nail on the head."