[geraltofrivia]

I am sure your opinion is formed based on some experiences you have had in life.

I would like to disagree. Unions are a tool for the poor, the people who don’t have a lot of rights, and protects them from the whim of the rich. If you are working a minimum wage job, and you are being made to work excessive hours, what is your recourse? What is your bargaining power?

Okay, one answer may be to quit and try somewhere else since there isn’t anything to lose here.

Well, I can tell you a very real scenario. My mother was working as a bank clerk in India. Has been her whole life. In the same bank (branches changed but she never changed the bank). When she was 50, there was a fraud. There was a transaction from a local businessman to someone, worth 3x her annual salary. She approved the txn. Once discovered, the businessman took the bank to court who in turn put the blame on my mom of will full ignorance. Businessman offered to settle out of court but we couldnt afford it, of course. At this point, the union came to mum’s help. They pressured upper management to get their house in order, not shift the blame to the tellers, and do not even think about firing her.

[randomdata]

> If you are working a minimum wage job, and you are being made to work excessive hours, what is your recourse? What is your bargaining power?

That's the question. What is your bargaining power? All you have is your ability to stop working. Which, indeed, can exert power –– But if you are poor how long can you really go without work before you starve to death?

The rich can afford to sit around and wait until the over side caves. But unless you working excessive hours is the only thing keeping a business afloat (in which case, what do you stand to gain?), most likely they can outlast poor you with ease. Once you give up, your power is gone.

If you can't go without work for weeks, months, maybe even years, the business will quickly recognize your idle threat is just that. It is not just coincidence that unions are rare in professions where there isn't a whole lot of money floating around.

> Well, I can tell you a very real scenario.

This doesn't appear to speak to bargaining power, just communication. No power was needed to be exerted. If it came to a point where power needed to be exerted, how long would your mother have actually lasted? Assuming she could have lasted long enough, perhaps she wasn't as poor as you let on?

[baubino]

> All you have is your ability to stop working. Which, indeed, can exert power –– But if you are poor how long can you really go without work before you starve to death?

When union workers strike, they do so collectively, which means that the bargaining power is not that of a single individual but that of the collective workforce. Employers often can’t just wait out a strike because they lose tons of money when all its employees aren’t working. The union’s strength lies precisely in this collective bargaining power.

Also, unions raise money to support striking workers and unions emerged initially in the jobs where workers were paid the least and exploited the most (see early 19th century textile workers in the U.S., for example). The decline of unions since then is a more complicated history but the reality is that unions most benefit the most exploited workers who would otherwise have no recourse as individuals. Collective support helps maintain workers throughout a strike.

[randomdata]

> Also, unions raise money to support striking workers

You’re still thinking of the rich. The poor don’t have money to raise. If they did, they wouldn’t be poor.

[awesomeMilou]

> most likely they can outlast poor you with ease. Once you give up, your power is gone.

Maybe don't put forward arguments that hinge on denial of reality?

The railway strikes in Germany from beginning of this year prove that, no, the bourgeoisie cannot just sit around and wait and/or rehire their entire staff. The 2023 Hollywood labor disputes show that "the poor" can indeed last longer than "the rich".

[Rinzler89]

>The railway strikes in Germany from beginning of this year prove

That's because national railway and other such national critical infrastructure workers like policemen, teachers, healthcare workers, etc have actual leverage. Like what are you gonna do then? You can't outsource your infrastructure maintenance, healthcare or policing to remote offshore Asian workers, but you can for other non-credentialed internet connected professions in the private sectors where the language is Englisch, which correlates to their unions being very weak in negotiation power, like IT workers for example.

The recent tanking of IT/tech jobs in some high-CoL countries has made IT workers there realized that without the low interest rates to artificially inflate the market demand, they have virtually no leverage over their employers unlike those in credentialed professions with unions.

[AngriestLettuce]

> but you can for other internet connected professions in the private sectors

You can certainly try, but the quality will be noticeably poorer. You can get away with that for a while, especially as a big business, but I think the tide is already turning there. Everyone's tired of broken shitty tech that doesn't work properly with no one to really contact about it. Skilled IT professionals are in huge demand nowadays, it's only the fleas on the rats complaining that the ship is sinking. Rats can swim, they'll be fine as long as land isn't too far. Mechanics and firefighters that can actually keep the ship going (if you pay us well enough), are on the other hand doing quite well these days. Unions are great, especially for tech professionals. As long as you're still allowed to negotiate personally as well, there's no reason not to.

[Rinzler89]

>You can certainly try, but the quality will be noticeably poorer.

I know HN loves repeating this outdated trope to feel good, but that's not always the case and not in many I saw where they offshored and product quality didn't drop because they made sure to hire qualified people and managers, and not bottom of the barrel on the cheap.

Sure, you won't find many rockstar workers abroad, but most companies don't need that many rockstar engineers especially for CRUD work which is a commodity now, and plenty of countries have upskilled their workforce in the last 20 years especially in web CRUD, that they can take on the maintenance of stable products on the cheap.

>Everyone's tired of broken shitty tech that doesn't work properly with no one to really contact about it.

You mean like the one Google, Microsoft, Crowdstrike, etc. build in he US and not by offshore workers?

>Unions are great, especially for tech professionals. As long as you're still allowed to negotiate personally as well, there's no reason not to.

That's not how unions work in France and Germany. The unions set strick salary bands so that a newcomer can't earn more than someone who's been longer in the company so your negotiation doesn't get you anything, you let your union negociate for you.

[johnnyanmac]

> product quality didn't drop because they made sure to hire qualified people and managers, and not bottom of the barrel on the cheap.

So they didn't save much money, they just chose not to pay their domestic talent. Much better.

>Sure, you won't find many rockstar workers abroad, but most companies don't need that many rockstar engineers especially for CRUD work which is a commodity now,

Sure, we're mostly in tech and tech is one of the "easier" factors to outsource. I think your underrating how much even Crud work needs, but that's besides my main point.

You can't outsource everything. If you need people in a physical store, or on a physical setting in a building or in government land, you'll need to negotiate with your labor or shut down the project. I guess you can immigrate aliens who you can pay under minunum wage with the promise of citizenship, but that's clearly beyond the gray area at this point.

>You mean like the one Google, Microsoft, Crowdstrike, etc. build in he US and not by offshore workers?

In the grand scheme of things, most of my CS nightmares came from financial issues, not technical. And yes, they want to make that experience painful.

Sure, Crowdstrike happens but domestic labor means it's mostly fixed (and actually fixed) in a weekend instead of a week with precarious results.

[Leherenn]

Are the railway strikes in Germany really a good example? It's a public company, no matter what happens it will be kept afloat by the taxpayers. Realistically, if DB were a private company, it would have long gone bankrupt and the strikers would be out of a job. They lost 1.3B apparently in the past 6 months, and they claim 300M were due to the strikes.

[johnnyanmac]

>staff. The 2023 Hollywood labor disputes show that "the poor" can indeed last longer than "the rich".

Did it? What I read from the dispute is that it only slightly delayed AI while throwing Voice actors completely under the bus.i think the only reason it even settled was due to declining movie sales, another issue self inflicted by the rich.

[randomdata]

> Maybe don't put forward arguments that hinge on denial of reality?

Ironic. If I was able to meet reality, that would imply I have a full understanding of reality, at which point for what reason would there be to talk about it? That would be a pointless waste of time.

> 2023 Hollywood labor disputes show that "the poor" can indeed last longer than "the rich".

According to the internet, these "poor" you speak of are making average incomes into the hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. These are, generally, very rich people. Perhaps you aren't aware of what poor is?

[Symbiote]

Unions in Europe originated with the poor factory workers, miners etc.

Sometimes going on strike would be tough — there'd be less to eat, if the union wasn't large enough to subsidise strikers with workers' income from elsewhere.

[randomdata]

Unions predate the labour movement. The Royal Society is oft considered the first formalized union, originating in the 17th century, with a focus on the progression of science and not employment woes.

The early trade unions were not successful. I mean, they were successful in bringing about change, but they were not successful as power entities. They had to lean on government to exert the power. Unions are a rich man's sport.

Of course, government itself is ultimately a union, although differing in how membership is recognized. A government of only poor people wouldn't go far either, though. Government equally needs riches to wield power.

[sqeaky]

Consider the airline union strikes a while back. They leveraged the threat of striking in fits and spurts. They would strike for a day here or a hour there. Extremely disruptive to the business. The airlines had upper managers covering for flight attendants and scabs on contract but the stress was too much after a while. Because it was unpredictable and there are real costs to training flight staff the airlines could just replace everyone or have a whole fleet of spare staff on standby.

Strikes don't need to be and shouldn't be simple affairs, they can and should be nuanced and creative because the capitalists certainly will try to be clever and creative at putting people back into abusive working conditions when it suits them.

Unions are about organization. Because organization creates options. Options are power. Money is one way to get options and therefore power, but not the only way.

[randomdata]

> They would strike for a day here or a hour there.

Still a luxury of the rich, of course. The poor can't afford to lose a day, or even an hour.

[consteval]

... but its not, because the union makes this easier than doing it yourself.

Okay, just do some simple reasoning.

Who has more bargaining power? An individual or a union? A union, of course. Therefore, who can end a strike sooner? A union, of course. Therefore, who can get paid sooner? Unionized workers, of course.

If you're POOR and in a position to REQUIRE CHANGE, a union will be necessarily better for you. I don't even understand how this can be up for debate because it seems so painfully obvious.

[randomdata]

> Who has more bargaining power? An individual or a union? A union, of course.

Depends. Whomever has the most money. Generally, a group of moderately wealthy people will have more combined money than a single very wealthy person, but statistical likelihood does not provide a guarantee. We can find all kinds of examples in history where exceptionally wealthy individuals have completely dominated over unions.

And even when unions, especially labour unions, do show some amount of strength, they often have to go crying to a rich government for additional power when they don't have enough money of their own.

But if the union members are poor (like, actually poor, not pretend poor like we keep seeing in other comments)...

> If you're POOR and in a position to REQUIRE CHANGE, a union will be necessarily better for you.

Require is an interesting word. What is actually "required"? From what I gather "require" merely means something akin to "would be really nice to have". In that vein, a poor person attaining wealth would be really nice to have. Few would argue with that.

So, why don't the poor unionize and use their power to the capture wealth they are so sorrily lacking? The answer is simple: They don't have the resources to actually do it. Unions are a rich man's sport.

[consteval]

> So, why don't the poor unionize and use their power to capture wealth they're lacking?

They... do. You just described a union and why a union would be good for poor workers.

> They don't have the resources

Right... which is why they unionize, to pool resources.

> Unions are a rich man's sport

You've said this, and never explained how. Rich man are, presumably, business owners. Not laborers. Why, and how, would a union be beneficial for business owners? Wouldn't it be bad for them?

[sqeaky]

I don't believe randomdata is arguing in good faith.