[9rx]

> The question then becomes whether you think that the only reason they manage to not cause everything to crash and burn is because they have far less relative power to the people who sign the paychecks

The question is how much do you trust your employer to weather storms. If a business is going to crash and burn if the people you work with move on to new roles at other companies then you're in a bad place trying to bet your life on that business. However, if you trust that the business stakeholders will keep things moving even as people come and go then the people you work with don't really matter.

Going into business with the people you work with is quite different. If they decide to back out of being business partners, everything falls on you and you alone. You have to trust yourself to not screw everything up when times get hard. And, well, if you had that trust in yourself and desire to deal with it you'd already be the business owner yourself. One becomes an employee exactly because they don't want to have to deal with all of those headaches. You need to have a great deal of trust when you are the owner that you don't need if someone else is the owner.

> I'm incredulous that you think that the people who are currently the stakeholders care more about your circumstances

They couldn't care less about your circumstances. They care about themselves, though, and if they let things run wild their business will fail. That would not be in their interest. In a union, you become the employer, so to speak. You have to put your time into ensuring that things don't run wild.

If you are surrounded by good people, like you and MLB players are, then you don't have to worry about things going wild so much. Good people can be reasonably trusted. But that is a privileged situation. Not everyone is nearly as fortunate as you are.

> If I accepted the premise that the waters hadn't be sufficiently poisoned by constant bombardment of messages like yours over the past century

I get that you have no idea what I'm talking about, as evidenced by the non-sequiturs you keep replying with, but how does a pro-union message poison the waters? Are you purposefully posting this nonsense in an effort to diminish unions?

[bonsai_spool]

> In a union, you become the employer, so to speak. You have to put your time into ensuring that things don't run wild.

Not really! You can hire for this role—your union can hire an attorney, an accountant, an HR professional, whatever you collectively decide with your peers.

However, without a union, you have no way to reliably access information that would reveal whether things are 'running wild'.

[9rx]

> Not really! You can hire for this role—your union can hire an attorney, an accountant, an HR professional

Your solution to avoid becoming an employer is to... employ people? Oh boy.

[bonsai_spool]

> Your solution to avoid becoming an employer is to... employ people? Oh boy.

Being in a union is not being an employer, anymore than calling a plumber is becoming a contractor.

And, even were that true, are you happy to accept your paycheck until every week until the severance pink slip lands on your desk? That is the alternative confronting knowledge workers today.

[9rx]

> Being in a union is not being an employer

Uh, you absolutely become an employer when you start employing people.

> anymore than calling a plumber is becoming a contractor.

Why would you become a contractor by calling a plumber? The plumber is the contractor in the equation (with some assumptions about the plumber's willingness to engage in a transaction).

> are you happy to accept your paycheck until every week until the severance pink slip lands on your desk? That is the alternative confronting knowledge workers today.

Accept a paycheck or start your own business (or retire, I suppose) are the only choices that have ever been present. What is the quip about knowledge workers intended to add?

[bonsai_spool]

> Why would you become a contractor by calling a plumber?

Exactly! I pay dues to a union. Those dues can go towards paying someone who knows how to run a union.

I pay money to a plumber who knows how to plumb things.

I'm neither an employer or a contractor in either setting.

[9rx]

> I pay dues to a union. Those dues can go towards paying someone who knows how to run a union.

Making you the employer. Dues are not a social or legal entity in and of themselves. There needs to be a human in the loop and in this hypothetical case that person is you.

> I'm neither an employer or a contractor in either setting.

Right. Under the common lexicon, the plumber is the contractor. Contractors are service providers, not service recipients. You, in this hypothetical case, are the one receiving a service from the plumber. Nobody would ever think you would be a contractor in this setting. It remains unclear why you keep repeating this obvious tautology.

And this is why tech people don't want to get into unions with other tech people. The unfortunate reality is that they let anyone become a tech worker.