[nabla9]

American companies often think that European unions are just stronger than unions in Europe. They don't realize that labor and union laws are different.

Toys R Us tried the same in Sweden. They initially refused agreement and hired only non-union workers. But transport and logistics workers union and finance union started sympathy strike. Toys R Us didn't get deliveries and bank workers refused work related to company.

[AndrewKemendo]

One of the key points to being unionized is the fact of solidarity with other union workers.

that is where the power in unionization comes from.

Literally, the entire purpose of unions is to give employees enough economic power to fight greedy CEOs, managers and boards

As it stands now, corporations are entirely too powerful that the only way to actually fight back is to create collective support structures

[monocasa]

Which is why solidarity strikes have been illegal in the US since 1947's Taft-Hartley Act.

[AndrewKemendo]

Precisely this.

This is a perfect example of how corporate ownership of the political process has usurped the actual function of government responsible to the poorest people, in favor of taking care of corporate interests

A great example of how oligarchical power is literally built into our legal infrastructure

[AYBABTME]

It's not a given that "the actual function of government responsible to the poorest people" should be the true purpose and focus of government.

I would assume that your discontentment is a result of misalignment between what you think is the government's role and what those who make government, think the government's role should be. Which one of you has a more legitimate claim to the truth?

[anonymouskimmer]

A refusal to do business over a controversy has a First amendment claim to assembly and petition. No federal law has any business limiting such a claim outside of literal matters of life and death.

I can see an argument that the Commerce clause grants powers to regulate such claims, but unfortunately federal laws in pursuit of a Constitutional power are still subordinate to Constitutional rights (IMO). It would require a Constitutional amendment to so empower a federal law to override a Constitutional right (again, IMO, as I'm writing to your "legitimacy" question posed to the GP).

[yakubin]

Neither. Both would be attempts at assigning goals to things that aren’t persons. Fallacy of teleological thinking.

[JumpCrisscross]

> corporate ownership of the political process has usurped the actual function of government responsible to the poorest people

This is a curious diagnosis of a late 40s law. Consider why average Americans, including those in the lowest rung, vote against pro-union legislation (or don’t turn out for it), as well as the difference between Swedish and American unions.

[toomuchtodo]

Collectivism vs rugged individualism and exceptionalism with a serving of low empathy self interest institutionalized.

[JumpCrisscross]

Sure. I’m just saying that we can’t throw the brainwashed/corporate corruption card at everything we don’t like.

[monocasa]

A good chunk is the late 40s geopolitical climate. Recalibrating for the cold war was already in progress.

1947 was one of the first red scares, with for instance then SAG president Ronald Reagan signing explicitly anti-communist statements.

Unions are always assault from capital; they just never really recovered in the US from the red scares.

[daenney]

They didn't vote for it, or against it. In most countries, citizens don't get to vote on individual laws. We vote people into power, who then hopefully don't enact laws that harm us. But as we all know by now, that's never stopped a politician.

[JumpCrisscross]

> didn't vote for it, or against it

Outside urban centres and select belts of the country, unions poll poorly. A candidate running on pro-union credentials will perform the same as, or underperform, one who is neutral on the issue. Ignoring the trust deficit American unions have with the public is partly why this situation isn’t changing.

> citizens don't get to vote on individual laws

Most American states have referenda. Even in deep blue states, like New York and California, it’s typically a struggle to get pro-union ballot measures through.

[Ekaros]

Also they forget that on average they are pretty benign. At least in my field they ask for quite tame things. And them being same union for everyone means that you don't really lose much to competitors. As they will have same rules in place...

[nabla9]

Good point. Sweden has better institutions and labor laws to reduce friction and enable cooperation.

Enterprise bargaining in the US is more zero sum game between companies and workers. Everything you give to workers, reduces competitive edge against non-union competitors. It's in company interest to fight unions as much as possible.

In sectoral bargaining, unions negotiate same deal with their counterparts representing corporations. When nobody gets competitive edge over others, there is less downside for agreeing.

[s1artibartfast]

I would also add that many (most?) European countries allow multiple unions in the same shop, with worker choice. Inter-union competition is important to keep unions honest and aligned with their workers. I think this more than anything else is responsible for the anti-union sentiment in the US.

[cyberax]

This really helps. There are also other ways unions can be corrupt.

For example, the ILWU union allows its members to give their position to their children as an inheritance. It's literally a mafia ("family").

And of course, any random Joe can't just apply for a job with the ILWU. In rare cases where positions become available, they conduct a lottery.

The end result is that the ILWU-controlled ports are competing with each other for the coveted last place in the global Port Performance Index. Right now, it's held by the LA ports.

[lotsofpulp]

The US also has lots of tribal/ethnic/skin color/religious/socioeconomic delineated groups that are not necessarily aligned with each other, and are OK with other groups being screwed.

One example I especially like to use is how agricultural workers are somehow not deserving of the same minimum wage as others. Even in the progressive states. Surely, it could not have anything to do with the workers mostly being poorer immigrants from a certain region.

[virgildotcodes]

I'd say corporations and their wealthy owners, far more than any other factor, are responsible for the anti-union sentiment in the US.

[SonicScrub]

I feel like this is a very convenient scapegoat for American unions to avoid looking internally at their own flaws. Many Americans have negative opinions of unions. Corporations and their wealthy owners have certainly put a lot of money to influence public opinion this way, but they aren't omnipotent. These efforts would be laughable off if the value-add of the union was readily-apparent. Dismissing anyone's negative opinion of a union as being the victim of a propaganda campaign is infantilizing, and dismissive of lived-experiences.

My negative opinion of a union came from my own direct experience as being part of a mega-union that crossed multiple industries. The structure of the union was such that they were so divorced from the actual work being done that they could not possibly help us. Advancement meant playing the union political game, and not being good at your job. They were a constant thorn in all of our sides. I try to limit my disdain to that union in particular (not all unions are like this). But your comment dismissing concerns such as these fault of the business sound incredibly tone deaf. And as a result will not lead to a positive opinion of unions in America.

[virgildotcodes]

I was talking about the predominant contributing factor to anti-union sentiment in the US, not that there aren't legitimate gripes against unions.

When looking at the vast amount of energy and resources dedicated by the wealthy and by corporations over the last hundred years to crush unions in the US, the government going so far as to murder strikers and violently oppose them on behalf of those interests, legislation like the Taft-Hartley act, etc etc. -- it seems clear to me that forces external and opposed to the unions are far more influential in the erosion of those unions than legitimate internal gripes by union members.

[nabla9]

If you think this little more, you must realize that this is not a good argument

Systemic and institutional reasons are more important than individuals.Enterprise bargaining in the US is more zero sum game between companies and workers. Everything you give to workers, reduces competitive edge against non-union competitors. It's in company interest to fight unions as much as possible.

[InCityDreams]

...amd the Unions can also be in cahoots with each other (to not piss off the employer). A deal here, a deal there, between themselves and then with the employer, everybody is happy apart from the workers. Nb: 1st hand experience, currently ongoing.

[lotsofpulp]

Union members can be in cahoots amongst others even in the same union.

All across the US, if you are younger, you likely get less compensation than if you are older. Older union members vote for higher compensation for themselves and reduced compensation for young and future union members, since they cannot vote. For example, if you look up collective bargaining agreements, you will often see tier 1 benefits for employees hired before year x, tier 2 benefits for before year y, and tier 3 benefits for after year y, etc.

A similar dynamic plays out with taxpayer funded benefits and older voters vs younger voters.

The US has an “Additional Medicare Tax”, to help pay for healthcare for older people. But there is no “Additional Medicaid Tax”, to help pay for healthcare for poorer/younger people.

[s1artibartfast]

A classic example of this is teachers unions, where senior members can earn 2x the salary as junior ones for doing literally the same job. Similarly, unions frequently bargain away the retirement benefits of junior and future members.

[dfxm12]

I think, based on the anti-union talking points I see, the media is most responsible for anti-union sentiment, whether it's the normal corporate friendly mainstream media or classic films like On the Waterfront where union corruption is a side plot. Complimenting this are books, biopics, news stories, etc. of mythologized biographies portraying some business leaders as people who have pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, when they were really born into a privileged position (see: Gates, Musk, Zuck, etc.).

[avgcorrection]

> Enterprise bargaining in the US is more zero sum game between companies and workers. Everything you give to workers, reduces competitive edge against non-union competitors. It's in company interest to fight unions as much as possible.

I suppose they will always hide behind “competitive” edge. The more naked truth seems to be that between the stakeholders of the CEO+board of directors v.s. workers—avoiding the nebolous “company interest”—there is always inherently a zero sum game. Like one of the automative CEOs in the US who boasted about how she was paid according to her performance—her performance being, among other things, directly related to how low she could keep wages for the rank and file.

[s1artibartfast]

Yes, there is always a competition between workers and owners for money. However, The structure of US unions also change the incentives.

[banannaise]

> Enterprise bargaining in the US is more zero sum game between companies and workers. Everything you give to workers, reduces competitive edge against non-union competitors. It's in company interest to fight unions as much as possible.

This is how companies treat enterprise bargaining. It is rarely true.

Unions are often after things that benefit both sides. Safety improvements both protect the workers and shield the company from both injury liability and material losses due to accidents. More generous leave policies and more worker-friendly hours result in happier, healthier, better rested, and therefore more productive workers, which can easily balance out the small reduction in total hours.

But executives/corporations don't see it this way - they see this all of this as a power game, and every union demand they agree to is a fight lost.

[AnthonyMouse]

> Unions are often after things that benefit both sides. Safety improvements both protect the workers and shield the company from both injury liability and material losses due to accidents. More generous leave policies and more worker-friendly hours result in happier, healthier, better rested, and therefore more productive workers, which can easily balance out the small reduction in total hours.

In cases where this is actually true, the company would be offering these things of its own volition -- as happens in many industries without unions. So then what would you need the union for?

You could obviously have poorly managed companies that get this wrong, but then they would be at a competitive disadvantage in the market.

Where this more often doesn't happen is in the places where it isn't true. There are some jobs where worker productivity isn't that salient -- or is only relevant to the extent that it allows the company to employ fewer people, which is the sort of thing a union would then try to prevent.

[edgyquant]

I think that reality is always more nuanced than partisan talking points. Both unions and corps make good points about certain things and exaggerate others for their own benefit.

[VoxPelli]

And when the government is in on it as well and gives the unions and employer organizations room to be innovative and flexible with one another, then it’s even a net gain over having the government giving detailed guidelines for everything

[AnthonyMouse]

> In sectoral bargaining, unions negotiate same deal with their counterparts representing corporations. When nobody gets competitive edge over others, there is less downside for agreeing.

That's assuming the company/industry doesn't have competitors in other countries.

[ttymck]

> reduces competitive edge against non-union competitors

Except for, ostensibly, employee satisfaction and quality of life?

[VoxPelli]

Yeah, the idea of the Swedish model being that it’s better for employers and workers union to decide details as then they can be adapted to the need of every specific field rather than be dictated by the government and be the same for all.

Makes for a much more agile, progressive and cooperative environment that benefits both businesses and workers.

Unions in Sweden don’t try to get paid the most possible by the employers – they want fair wages and healthy companies and together with employer organizations they try to make up rules that benefit both, as healthy companies and happy workers are beneficial for all parties

[DanielHB]

I had 3.5% union-agreed raise this year against an almost 10% inflation year-on-year. In Sweden the unions are not out to screw the employers over, the unions know the companies are under stress due to market downturn and share the burden with employees.

Before the downturn I consistently had at least 1% raise above inflation for several years.

[dv_dt]

That seems like it supports the principle of shared pain and shared profit and it’s good that the laws and company/union structure supports that. I think it’s better for stable long term stability and growth of a nation.

[Moru]

Can you tell Musk etc this? They havn't gotten the message yet. McDonads got it after trying on the Danish union though and is playing ball.

[avgcorrection]

> Also they forget that on average they are pretty benign.

They are not malign as far as I’ve heard, no.

[INTPenis]

Another oft cited example is the McDonalds strike of '88 in Denmark.

I'm very proud of being part of this scandinavian society when it shows this kind of solidarity with workers. Workers are after all the majority of society.

[audunw]

Want to share my reply to a comment reply here that was deleted, which called this “crazy”:

It’s not crazy. It’s a very effective way of balancing the power dynamics between corporations and workers. What’s crazy is not having these rights enshrined in law. Why should the government tell workers how they can or cannot strike?

This way of doing it gets you one thing that some Americans dream of: no federal mandated universal minimum wage. I mean think about it… a universal federal minimum wage is a ridiculous idea. It’s never going to be a good level for all industries.

But if you’re going to make minimum wage something that workers and corporations can just settle between themselves, you have to give the workers real power. Not make national laws that give corporations the right to make contracts that make their workers slaves to their employers.

Some American think this is socialism. I’d argue that it’s just good capitalism that ensures healthy (labour) market dynamics. Same as how you want regulations that discourage the formation of monopolies.

[AnthonyMouse]

> It’s not crazy. It’s a very effective way of balancing the power dynamics between corporations and workers. What’s crazy is not having these rights enshrined in law. Why should the government tell workers how they can or cannot strike?

It's like asking, why should the government tell business how they can or cannot do business? It's essentially an anti-trust issue. You don't want any organization to have too much power, whether it's a company or a union or even the government. You want power to be distributed as much as possible, but unions, like any other organization, centralize it.

The typical argument is that corporations centralize it too, but the answer to this is more anti-trust measures, not less.

[VirusNewbie]

Except immigrants will come to the country and be willing to work for lower wages, they will be OK without taking the union benefits. Unions are a way to enrich current members by creating an exclusive cartel.

How do you deal with the fact that there are people willing to work for less?

[MrDresden]

Icelander here. We have 90+% union participation in the country. A large portion of certain unions are immigrant workers. They have at numerous times gone on strike for better pay.

So, at least here, your hypothesis does not seem to hold.

This is probably due to the unions educating those immigrant workers on what their rights are.

[bbarn]

Iceland also has very bizarre "union" structures that more resemble professional associations than unions in other countries. When I worked at a software company in Kópavogur, on my team of 7 there were at least 4 different unions represented.

[MrDresden]

I'm not sure bizarre would be the way I'd describe it, but it is probably not identical to how the setup is everywhere else.

There are those that fit the professional association description, for instance the union of computer scientists which mandates a university degree in cs to become a member (this union does do collective bargaining with government and municipalities but not private enterprises), but then there are more broader unions for bigger sectors that do collective bargaining against the industrial collective (samtök atvinnulífsins).

So, I'm not sure what is with the downvotes for bbarn's comment. Its a point that isn't far off.

[LadyCailin]

Norway will not issue a work permit for immigrants, if their work contract pays less than is typical in the industry. So this loophole is accounted for. Once an immigrant has permanent residency (or arrives due to marrying a Norwegian) then this could become a problem, but by then they have hopefully integrated enough, and will no longer work for peanuts. The cost of living being so high here probably discourages that anyways, and the things the sibling commenters stated also apply.

[VirusNewbie]

Thank you for responding, it seems like you were the only one to understand the problem and explain how it is mitigated there.

[piva00]

> How do you deal with the fact that there are people willing to work for less?

By having a collective bargaining agreement setting the minimum pay the company is allowed, leveling the playing field to remove exploitative measures like that.

[VirusNewbie]

How is it exploitative? If people coming from other areas want to work for cheaper because they're willing, do you think they shouldn't have an opportunity to do so?

[piva00]

No, they shouldn't, that is the definition of exploitative, offering someone a lower pay because they are desperate enough to accept it. It's a race to the bottom and something needs to stop it.

That shouldn't happen, you need some morality in this amoral system so it can be less exploitative, one way to set some moral guidance is to have a minimum threshold of what people should be paid for a job given that others are already offered that for a similar skillset. Willing to work for less in exchange of other benefits (like moving to a different society) only creates cascading issues for the others who aren't in that desperate position, eroding the labour market.

If people were willing to be slaves, should we allow them?

[VirusNewbie]

I don't understand your reasoning. If an immigrant is happy to have a standard of living lower than what you consider acceptable, and willing to work for slightly lower wages, do you think it is is unfair to either:

1. Bar them from entry into your country 2. Allow them in, but prevent them from offering their services at a lower rate to compete with locals?

Because ultimately, if you let them in and don't let them work, some of them are going to be supported by social services those workers are paying for indirectly.

[avgcorrection]

Stop throwing the word “cartel” around as if it even means a goddamn thing! A multi-billion dollar command economy (like a corporation) can focus its efforts on the opposite thing, like making sure that wages for their employers are kept low. But a group of employees banding together? Well duh, that’s a cartel, silly. What?

(In addition: unions for employers exist as well.)

Your charge is nakedly hypocritical.

[jorams]

> How do you deal with the fact that there are people willing to work for less?

The answer in the Netherlands is that for most industries that have one the collective agreement has been declared universally binding. It applies to everyone in that industry, whether they're a member of one of the bargaining organizations or not, and if a company ignores it they're breaking the law.

[VoxPelli]

Same here in Sweden - when a company doesn’t have a collective agreement they also don’t have a right to have peace with the unions, so then the unions can put pressure on them to get a collective agreement and when that succeeds there will be a collective agreement that then apply to all employees

[VirusNewbie]

My point is you have a societal issue if you have thousands of workers migrating who are looking to work and willing to work for less. You can either choose to house and feed them and prevent them from working, or you can realize labor is cheaper.

[VoxPelli]

We have no such race to the bottom here in Sweden

[VirusNewbie]

Interesting. Are refugees or illegal immigrants allowed to work? Do they get social services? Would they work if they could?

[victorbjorklund]

Yea, that is a problem. In sweden it has kind of resulted in the govt pushing immigrants into welfare and different programs to make unions happy (even if of course it hurts workers in the long run that a huge part of the population doesnt work and just live on welfare).

[usrusr]

European labor law tends to be aimed at productive compromise. By comparison, American unionization appears polarized into almost winner takes all extreme.

[dylan604]

I have issues with unions becoming way too powerful and prevent things from being done efficiently. I get certain aspects are safety related like needing an electrician to come in to wire up certain things. But I've had a friend that was a network installer that was allowed to mount the gear in the rack and wire in the low voltage ethernet cabling, but was not allowed to attache the power cord. That required the time of an electrician union member. On their schedule. After installing the gear, he had to wait doing nothing until this could happen. These types of rules are dumb, but show the overreaching power of unions.

There are plenty of stories/examples (so not just n=1) of these kinds of boneheaded rules that just make things very inefficient.

[dagw]

That required the time of an electrician union member.

For what it's worth, that is simply not a thing in Sweden. Being a union member (or not) is completely separated from any certifications or licensing. You cannot have being a union member as a requirement for hiring someone or have jobs that are only open to union members.

[Moru]

As we keep saying, US Unions !== Swedish Unions (Or Scandinavian for that matter)

Maybe the US Unions need to change name to something else because they act nothing like Unions in Europe. From what I see described by movies and companies it sounds more like Maffia, is that correct or is it propaganda?

[dylan604]

their tactics are very maffiaesque. a previous job went through the process to vote for a union, and during the lead up to it, there were definite examples of pressuring to family members. two individuals showed up to my apartment while i was at work, and were best described by my roommate as goons. they tried to talk to my roommate about why it would be a good idea for me to join even though the roommate had nothing to do with anything i did. she told me it was a very surreal experience.

[croes]

>European unions are just stronger than unions in Europe.

Typo?