[nerdponx]

I knew someone was going to say this. There are a lot of things wrong with this line of thinking, but the simplest rebuttal is that there is a lot of room between "workers should organize for greater market power to prevent abuse by employers" and "we have abolished the State and everyone gets exactly the same outcome in all situations, and also we have executed half the population". To deny that is to argue in bad faith and/or deep ignorance.

[slt2021]

I am from Soviet Union (which had strong state) and witnessed labor unions - who did nothing of value absolutely. so no, not buying this argument at all.

"workers should organize for greater market power to prevent abuse by employers" - tech engineers dont need it - because if you dont like it - you can simply leave to another employer. market forces will find equilibrium, labor union is only an obstacle in reaching market equilibrium.

it is telling that people who escaped communist countries never want to see any sign of communism in their life. Because communism doesnt work, never worked, and will never work

[PuppyTailWags]

I think Hollywood is doing great. I also think Football players are doing pretty well for themselves. Maybe tech can work like that instead?

[nerdponx]

> tech engineers dont need it - because if you dont like it you can simply leave to another employer.

This is my whole point. This is only true for some, and it's not distributed according to merit. People get mistreated all the time at both tech and non-tech companies, even in career fields that are traditionally high-paying and high-mobility. The only way to stop that in a way that also promotes a relatively free labor market is for workers to self-organize, and for the government to legally protect their right to do so.

I understand your concerns about communism. Nobody in their right mind is proposing that we bring communism to the USA. The fortunate workers who have market power uniting to support for their fellows who lack market power is not itself communism, nor does it lead to communism. American labor unions are not communism, and never will be.

The USA once developed a strong tradition and culture of organized labor that brought us out of the brutality of the 19th century Industrial Revolution. There were plenty of smaller socialist and even anarchist groups at the time, but in general most people were not that radical, and no group anything resembling the Bolsheviks ever gained popular support in the USA.

Ironically however, communism indirectly enabled big business to crush that tradition of organized labor, because the Red Scare of the early 20th century allowed them to label pro-labor policy as socialist or communist and therefore anti-American and anti-freedom.

If anything, the kinds of labor unions that people join the USA are a uniquely capitalist institution, being dedicated specifically to the purpose of balancing asymmetric market power.

[slt2021]

> it's not distributed according to merit.

How do you define if it is or not distributed to merit?

Arent market forces the ultimate invisible hand of merit?

I mean literally any worker can gove notice and change employers, it is at will employment on both sides.

You enjoyed it during great resignation, where IT workers would jump ship every year and get 50% raise.

You realize labor union will put a hard stop on job hopping? You will have to work for the same company for decades with 1.5% pay raise at best! Imagine working for sweatshop amazon for a decade lol

[nerdponx]

> How do you define if it is or not distributed to merit?

Work performance?

> Arent market forces the ultimate invisible hand of merit?

No. The price system is very efficient at certain kinds of allocation, but not in all or even most cases.

> I mean literally any worker can gove notice and change employers, it is at will employment on both sides.

Only if you have enough savings to survive without income and/or you can easily find a comparable job, which is not even true for many high-wage tech employees anymore.

> You enjoyed it during great resignation, where IT workers would jump ship every year and get 50% raise.

Yes, that was temporary.

> You realize labor union will put a hard stop on job hopping?

It won't, because it currently doesn't. This is not at all an established phenomenon.

> You will have to work for the same company for decades with 1.5% pay raise at best! Imagine working for sweatshop amazon for a decade lol

This simply isn't true. Even labor unions that struggle to negotiate with management are doing better than 1.5% over a decade. I'd be interested to see some data on this, but I'd bet that median union-negotiated wages are rising at about the same rate as median non-union-negotiated wages (read: slower than inflation). I say "median" and not "average" because there will be high earners who have seen huge pay increases recently that would skew the mean upwards.

[slt2021]

I trust myself and market forces more than labor union executives tbh and am not willing to outsource my agency to labor union

[nocoolnametom]

You do know that those "executives" are almost always your coworkers, right? There are extremely few "labor union executives" because there are extremely few unions that have grown so large that they require managerial training to administer them. The vast majority of American unions are small and composed of your fellow coworkers. For all that talk radio likes to rant about the Teamsters and other giant unions, most unions are composed of people who know the job intimately.

[kingboss]

Unions gave you 40 hour workweek. Market forces worked children 12 hours a day including weekends in unsafe conditions. You are blinded by ideology. I've seen it before with people from ex-soviet countries. They jump so far to the other side and believe unfettered capitalism is the answer that it's just sad to watch.

[jltsiren]

The USSR did not have real labor unions. It had organizations that pretended to be unions while being part of the state apparatus. Actual unions would have been the worst kind of enemy for the Communist Party: independent organizations that hold the same ideological position as the party while representing the interests of labor against it. The party could not tolerate such challeges to its legitimacy.

In a market economy, successful unions are powerful interest groups. They tend to have more influence on political parties than the other way around. Much like big businesses, but on a different subset of politicians.

[selimthegrim]

USSR officially also hated job hopping “litun”

[gamblor956]

it is telling that people who escaped communist countries never want to see any sign of communism in their life. Because communism doesnt work, never worked, and will never work

Oddly enough, I don't see too many former communists movie to Somalia or Ethiopia or Afghanistan. Former communists seem to favor the EU and the US, where we have heavily socialized large aspects of our public life (health care, etc.)

[slt2021]

Are you saying USA has socialized healthcare? Perhaps, but only if you are poor (medicaid) or very old (medicare), or risked your life for military service (VA), and even then the wuality and access is not very good (just like anything socialized)

Looks more like minimum safety net, rather than socialism

[gamblor956]

A minimum safety net is a form of socialism...

There is no concept of "safety net" in capitalism.

[nerdponx]

Neither socialism nor capitalism has any bearing on the existence of state social services one way or another.