[Jcampuzano2]

This is usually one of the arguments made against unions, and I find it an interesting phenomenon.

Philosophically unions benefit the majority and are probably a net good on a social construct level. But they are likely a net loss to the top percentage of workers who are extremely motivated to move up and probably hurt innovation overall.

Unions exist to benefit the median and bring up the floor, but it stifles competition among those who really do desire to be at the top. And in doing so while it brings up the floor, it also brings down the ceiling because people who would normally be motivated enough to move up would not have much incentive to do so anymore.

Additionally most companies arguments against unions make the assumption that EVERYONE wants to be part of that top percentage, that everyone is extremely motivated to move up the ladder, etc. Also they bank on convincing everyone they could be part of that top percentage that moves up.

But statistically only so many can, and there is no universe where everyone can be that top worker who is successful because only so many can move up anyways.

Edit: Adding that this is from my perspective on US views of unions. I don't know much about how it differs elsewhere since many point out it seems to be done differently here vs elsewhere.

[underlipton]

And the part no one talks about: the "higher floor, lower ceiling" paradigm is actually much better for sustainability (including, in many cases, sustained growth), so long as there is an actual moat around the business (i.e., it actually provides value). It is death for companies that are poorly-managed or that have unworkable business models. "Growth at all costs, including the worker well-being that union presence embodies" is a principle of businesses that are trying to outrun their own fundamental deficits, particularly among that "top percentage". They seek to portray unions as dragging the company down because it distracts from the truth of their poor leadership and business sense. Unions are like a boat's keel and anchor; smaller or non-existent ones make the boat faster, but less stable in rough environments.

Ambitous Icaruses didn't get us heavier-than-air flight; sustained investment in a series of societies that supported educated middle classes over years of technological development did. The key wasn't the "obvious" straight line of gluing wings to your arms, it took a few decades of people literally spinning their (bike) wheels. Ironically, the sky was the limit only once the ceiling was lowered.

[Veserv]

A key problem in the US is that in a unionized job you are legally required to be represented by the union. Union membership is non-voluntary.

If you think you are part of that top percentage or even if you think that the union is not representing your interests, tough luck. It is illegal to quit or reorganize like-minded individuals to form your own that better represents you. To reform the union you need to get 50% of the members to vote for change instead of just forming a new, smaller organization that represents your interests.

This is in contrast to many European unions where you can choose to join because you think they provide worthwhile benefits. Or you can choose to not join because it does not. Unions need to compete on benefits to their members and are thus incentivized to provide better benefits.

[jltsiren]

Voluntary unions have a free rider problem. You may choose to join the union because you believe it's the right thing to do, but the benefits are rarely worth the dues. Non-members also benefit from collective bargaining, but they have a bit more money to spend.

Legal representation is probably the main exception. Other benefits you could just pay on your own, but unions are the easiest way to get access to lawyers specialized in labor issues, and they will often represent you for free.

The bigger difference between American and European unions is that Europe tends to treat union membership as sensitive personal information. Your employer has no legitimate reason to know whether you are a union member, and it's not allowed to ask. The union is also generally not allowed to tell its members which of their colleagues are members. Many of the issues surrounding American unions just disappear when union membership has no impact on your daily job.

[Veserv]

Voluntary unions do not have a free rider problem. That is only the case if you legally require collective bargaining to apply to non-union members (as is the case in the US).

For instance, in Germany [1] collective bargaining agreements are agreements between employers and unions, and are only required to be applied to union members. Companys may voluntarily choose to extend those same benefits to non-union members. Despite the fact that unions are voluntary in Germany, they still have significant union membership as a whole and German unions are frequently held up as a good example of the benefits of unions to both workers and society which is evidence against the claim that it is necessary to legally enforce union membership.

[1] https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.86564...

[jltsiren]

There are plenty of incentives, practical reasons, and even legal requirements for extending the benefits to non-members. Germany also has a mechanism for declaring a collective bargaining agreement generally binding, which means that it applies to everyone working in the field in every company.

[psadauskas]

Also in the US, when Unions were starting to get going, the "good" ones that stood on principles and tried to do right by their members had their leadership harassed and even murdered by oligarchs and the government. The corruptible ones were allowed to exist, and be corrupted as another means of control, and for the anti-union people to point at as proof that unions "don't work".

Reading up on this has been eye-opening, they didn't teach much about it in school, except maybe a paragraph in the history textbook about the Ludlow Massacre. They don't mention at all the IWW or other leftist unions from the 1910s and 20s. If they mention the Taft–Hartley Act, they don't talk about how it targeted "communist" union leaders, and left "capitalist" unions alone.

[dimitrios1]

I always viewed unions as a temporary solution to a long term problem. Fundamentally, its simply a unit or type of organization. But for some reason here in the west they have become this entrenched institution in of itself, presumably because it tasted a modicum of power, that power had real influence over people, and wherever there is an institution that exerts power over people, it becomes prime targets for demonic and corrupting influence.

You had guilds in the middle ages, and that worked well to serve the primarily agrarian feudal society. Unions worked well in a rapidly industrializing country with little to no enshrined worker protections or rights. We saw measured, direct, positive change. But the last 30 years or so, I can't really say the same has happened. In fact, some of the most unionized sectors have seen the most degradation. Blame who you will (I've heard it all in this point), but the main take away is its not working. Maybe its time for a new structure for this modern, post industrial society.

[deepsquirrelnet]

> Unions exist to benefit the median and bring up the floor, but it stifles competition among those who really do desire to be at the top. And in doing so while it brings up the floor, it also brings down the ceiling because people who would normally be motivated enough to move up would not have much incentive to do so anymore.

I think people tend to fixate on the worker-to-worker differences inside of unions. Yes, that is the most visible part of a union when in place, and at least in the US has valid arguments about meritocracy.

What is missed when limiting the scope to just that is the population-level abuses of workers that no amount of meritocracy will fix. When corporations engage in collusion against workers (now common and nearly unpunished in the US) the top-level wages are suppressed industry wide.

The whole pay band alignment that comes out of that undermines the meritocracy argument, and doesn't even begin to address the wage-fixing that has gone almost unchecked in tech for decades[1,2]. As a merited employee, you might have more options to where you can go, but it won't protect you from predatory hiring/layoff cycles and it certainly won't guarantee that you'll receive a truly competitive wage.

On paper, meritocracy sounds great. I have worked many places in tech and never once observed it, personally. Best case, if you have warmed a seat for enough years, then you advance that way. Worst, your employer knows they can just take advantage of you because you're willing to work without a dangling carrot.

As before, either the government frees itself from corruption and enacts justice or unions will come back. That is point we are at.

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/01/16/37...

[2] https://conversableeconomist.com/2025/10/31/the-silicon-vall...

[robtherobber]

> On paper, meritocracy sounds great.

In reality, meritocracy was a slur word. It was coined in 1956 to describe a farcically unequal state that no one in their right mind would want to live in: https://archive.discoversociety.org/2018/10/02/meritocracy-a...

[Jensson]

Meritocracy is still a slur word by the left, that never changed, the left doesn't like meritocracy and the right likes it. So a left winger writing about the horrors of meritocracy doesn't mean that meritocracy is bad.

[robtherobber]

I find the left/right approach altogether ridiculous for this, it's but a spurious oversimplification which usually shows lack of understanding for the topic discussed. In this particular case, it also shows that you didn't bother to read what meritocracy actually is, since you claim, against the very inventor of the word, that it's a good thing without producing any evidence or reasoning.

[phil21]

It’s not about just being a top worker though.

It’s about showing up ready to do an honest days work for an honest days pay. Not going above and beyond, but being reasonable about the fact that at the end of the day it’s work and things need to get done for everyone involved to put food on the table.

Instead it becomes a cat and mouse game of figuring out how to game the rules and scam as many hours as possible while doing either nothing, or as bad of a job as possible. The whole “not in my job description” thing makes a bit of sense when first implemented as a union rule, but devolves rapidly into nonsense like office workers being unable to plug in a monitor at their desk and sitting around idle for a few days until a union electrician can amble on around.

There is of course a balance here, and it seems the US is one extreme or the other outside of the trade specific unions. Other countries apparently have avoided much of this absurdity somehow.

The grocery store union I was forced to join as a teenager made sense on paper. Make sure employees were kept in safe working conditions, couldn’t be fired arbitrarily, had a reasonable pace of work anyone could keep up with. But it was more about protecting that group of guys who spent half their shift out back on smoke breaks, purposefully damaging cartons of goods while stocking since they didn’t like a particular manager, etc.

[bombcar]

If the unions were more really trade guilds and policed themselves people would have much higher respect for them, I feel.

And some unions practically are this, where the union negotiates rates and benefits, but the "customer" still gets to decide which particular people he hires (and so the "bad apples" never get any reliable business) - which I've seen in AV production, etc.

[Jcampuzano2]

I don't disagree and thats likely the opinion of the vast majority of people. Thats why i say that unions and collective bargaining are most likely to be a net benefit overall.

It just hurts competition among those who have an internal motivation to go above and beyond. They will feel they are being held back and either lose motivation or go somewhere where they feel a union isn't holding them back.

And the downside of that is companies losing their most hardworking/motivated people.

Edit: the above was written before the edit adding the cat and mouse game.

Added: I agree as well that when implemented wrong unions have pretty annoying affects on peoples motivation or work ethic. People who are qualified for things aren't allowed to do things outside of their explicit job description/contract. Etc. Some argue this is good, others argue it just wastes tons of time and hurts progress.

[AshleyGrant]

> The grocery store union I was forced to join as a teenager made sense on paper. Make sure employees were kept in safe working conditions, couldn’t be fired arbitrarily, had a reasonable pace of work anyone could keep up with. But it was more about protecting that group of guys who spent half their shift out back on smoke breaks, purposefully damaging cartons of goods while stocking since they didn’t like a particular manager, etc.

Why do we constantly denigrate these "free loaders" and exalt the capitalists who quite literally free load off of our labor extracting untold billions and trillions of dollars off the backs of average folks like you and me while we get relative pennies?

I worked in Big Tech for a while. For a normal person, I made good money. But the founders and top shareholders of these companies made literal billions off the labor of myself and my coworkers while contributing absolutely nothing on a day-to-day basis. I would have to work 100 lifetimes to earn what many of them take home in a year.

Frankly, if the system allows some normal folks to dick around and get paid the same as billionaires jetting off to spend time on their megayachts then more power to the folks taking a smoke break.

[tristor]

> Why do we constantly denigrate these "free loaders" and exalt the capitalists who quite literally free load off of our labor extracting untold billions and trillions of dollars off the backs of average folks like you and me while we get relative pennies?

We should do both, but when I agree to take a job at a given pay, I show up every single day capable, ready, and willing to work for the wage I agreed to. When other people don't pull their weight, it means I have to take on an unfair amount of work to make up the difference so that I can complete the things I've committed to in the workplace. The focus is on worker to worker relationships, because those are the most locally impactful relationships you have in the workplace. At the giant corporation I currently work for, I'm in the ladder fairly high up compared to most people as far as steps from the CEO, and yet I still only see the CEO on video calls with the whole company 4 times a year. The person in the office down the road from me that is blocking me from completely the thing I need to do to meet my own quarterly objective is far more tangible and legible to me than whether or not the CEO is a bum who spends all day golfing.

The fundamental difference is I take personal accountability for my own behavior and commitments, and that is one camp. The camp that doesn't see an issue with union free riders not pulling their weight are generally folks who only see accountability collectively, rather than personally, or maybe don't even take any accountability at all. Accountability is generally in short supply in our current society, so maybe its a novel thing, but I actually don't like doing a shitty job and if its due to somebody else screwing me over at work, I don't like that person a whole lot more than I don't like someone who I've hardly ever met and never talk to (CEO).

[AshleyGrant]

And I personally think that billionaires extracting untold wealth from those of us doing the actual work is a far greater societal problem than some normal folks who are lazy but are making 0.0001% of what the capitalist class is extracting from my efforts.

> The camp that doesn't see an issue with union free riders not pulling their weight are generally folks who only see accountability collectively, rather than personally, or maybe don't even take any accountability at all.

And while I don't like that the Union protects folks like this, I believe the work they do to protect hard working folks like me from being "managed-out" or even laid off so that the billionaires can make even more money next quarter is of great societal value. We as workers deserve to have security that as long as we are meeting reasonable productivity targets, we won't be kicked to the curb.

Having dealt with a manager deciding they didn't like me and doing everything in their power to manage me out (successfully), despite me meeting every goal given to me, management and the capitalists can take a long walk off a short pier for all I'm concerned.

[tristor]

> And I personally think that billionaires extracting untold wealth from those of us doing the actual work is a far greater societal problem than some normal folks who are lazy

There can be two problems (or more). We can care about two things at once (or more). The fact that we all hate bad coworkers who make our lives harder and fail to pull their wait doesn't mean we can't also hate billionaires. I'm just explaining why the former gets more heat than the latter. It's human nature to feel more intensity of a problem the closer it is to you, and we are so far removed from billionaires that while we all can and should be taking actions to steer society in a better direction, it does not have the tangible immediacy of having better quality coworkers.

[chii]

equality of outcome is unnecessary, only equality of opportunity is required.

[oblio]

So if the apples are in a 3.5m high tree and you're 2m tall and I'm 1.5m tall, it's fair if we both get 1m ladders?

[chii]

why isnt it fair?

Someone taller has a better chance at becoming a pro basketball player. Shorter people are not given more leeway. But both tall and short people have the chance to try out (at least on paper).

[yifanl]

Because the equivalence between being signed for the NBA and having apples to eat is nonsensical. We accept some things being unfair, not everything being unfair.

[linkregister]

Fixating on apples is key to the metaphor. The shorter person has other opportunities to collect food that they are better suited for, e.g. picking strawberries.

[tristor]

> We accept some things being unfair, not everything being unfair.

Life is fundamentally unfair. Anything that tips the balance in the other direction is due to specific, continuous human effort. It's a good thing when we can make things more fair, but the inherent unfairness of life is not a cosmic injustice.

[anon291]

Strawman.... No one is dying for lack of apples in America

[anon291]

Yes? Maybe the 1.5 m tall guy should find another line of work where he has a natural advantage that could be turned into profit. People are not the same. The market is the best way to allocate resources fairly to people of different ability

[oblio]

Unfettered markets are how we get burning rivers.

I know we're on the bastion of libertarianism, but even though I work in tech, I don't feel that tech (hardware/software) is tackling the truly big problems of humanity, just the ones that bring the most money. We should at least acknowledge that and mitigate it.

[anon291]

Tech and the market are orthogonal issues.

Burning rivers? No failure to protect the environment is a failure of property rights enforcement. If your stuff is leaking off your property you should be forced to pay for it. That's just basic property rights. You don't have the right to put your stuff on others property

[chii]

Exactly! The "unfettered" free market examples are all externalities, which is unfortunately unavoidable. Therefore, the role of gov't is to remove by regulation and force, all externalities (and the best way, perhaps, is to fine/charge/tax those externalities such that the effect becomes neutralized).

This would work for carbon emissions, as an example.

[oblio]

Turns out, some people are taller and if we don't aim for equality of outcomes, they eat all the apples and shit on our short head.

Every HN poster should be forced to read the chapters in the Black Swan where Taleb describes Extremistan and Mediocristan.

With scalable tech almost everything becomes winners take most. Equality of opportunity leads to many people starving.

[HDThoreaun]

The shorter person should pick root vegetables where they have an advantage over the tall person. Not all people are equally suited for all tasks

[perfmode]

Squid Game