[guard-of-terra]

I think that any funny clauses in the contracts should be abolished and the worker/employer relations should only be regulated by law.

This makes me pro-regulation and anti-market, but unfortunately I see exactly zero ways in which market can make contracts better. What are you expected to do in this situation - quit?

[wyuenho]

Collective bargaining rights was developed to counter exactly this power imbalance with minimum government involvement. Unfortunately I'm not aware of any programmer unions.

[mistercow]

What's odd to me is that in many cases people who purport to be "pro free market" are also anti-union. As far as I can see, unions are the free market.

[wmil]

Unions in the US always have specific views that employees often don't share. Everything is about retirement, preservation of existing employees, and supporting other unions.

The problem is that most tech workers want incompetent workers fired, since they make other workers lives more difficult. The field also moves fast enough that credentialization is not particularly helpful. In fact, it can be harmful.

Unions would call for rules like "10% of new projects must be in COBOL" to help older workers that don't want to re-train.

German style unions aren't as opposed to guaranteeing worker performance, I'm not really sure why. That might fly, but keeping it German style would be difficult.

The other option is something along the lines of the WGA/SAG. But individual developers are treated well enough that that isn't seen as worthwhile.

Also there are the problems unions have with corrupt elections and organized crime.

My point is that unions are a mixed bag, and for many tech workers they're a bad deal.

[mistercow]

Sure, but my point is that a die hard free market advocate should either disagree with what you just said, or swallow that hard pill and say that the problems with unions are just a necessary evil. Instead, many seem to be vehemently anti-union while still holding to a "the free market will solve everything" point of view.

I'm not saying that unions are perfect. I'm saying that it's inconsistent to admit that they can be problematic while still holding that the free market is the ideal.

[jerf]

You should be careful imputing views to others, then criticizing them, it's easy to miss nuances, then jump on the nuances you missed. For instance, here's a consistent view: "Unions can be forces for good but the government has gone too far in empowering them, creating a monster." I live in Michigan, a state that, no matter how much unions would love to deny it, has been badly damaged by them.

I'm a libertarian, and I support the existence of unions... but I also support the existence of Right to Work laws. A union should have to work to justify itself to its members, not be empowered by law to collect funds from individuals who do not wish to be in the union. Unions should be shielded from punitive violence by their employers... which I wouldn't even see fit to mention except that history says it needs to be mentioned... but if the employer can "just" hire replacements then the simple truth is that the union is negotiating itself right out of its market, and it needs to be forced to face up to that, not hide behind the government.

Unions are part of the free market, and should remain part of the free market. They should come and go as companies do, and the very fact that so many are The Union for their industry and that the same unions are nearly-permanent fixtures of the landscape is significant evidence that they are themselves artificially-created government monopolies, and I view them with the same suspicion I would any other government-created monopoly.

[kelnos]

I don't see that as inconsistent at all. Why can't you be pro-free-market and anti-union? You can agree with the concept of a free market, but disagree with how unions currently operate. You appear to be confusing "I hate how unions tend to behave" with "I think unions should be forbidden".

I think unions can do great things to protect the workers they represent, but I hate that many (most?) of them seem more focused on things like retirement benefits and policies that have the effect of making it difficult to impossible to fire bad employees.

[makomk]

> You can agree with the concept of a free market, but disagree with how unions currently operate.

You can do, but die-hard free market types only ever seem to disagree with how unions currently operate, not how corporations currently operate.

[roel_v]

I'm pro free market, and against unions, just as I am against fascist political parties. One could analogously say 'the choice to vote oneself into serfdom is the ultimate freedom' - this is the age old 'problem' with freedom, and while I acknowledge that it's a paradox in the ideology of freedom, I also find it hardly ever a problem in practice. Just as with unions, since they invariably turn into choice- and freedom-restricting guild-like entities.

[eli_gottlieb]

Meeeehhhhh... I'd join a tech union that allowed me to participate in bargaining over working conditions and benefits. I've seen a surprising number of companies (coughAmazoncough) that pay very high base salaries and nice bonuses but completely crap out on health insurance, pension/retirement account, vacation time, work hours, etc.

[Evbn]

What is wrong with employment benefits at Amazon, and besides the 'work hard'. ethic?

[jrockway]

Only two weeks of vacation, no free food, etc.

[mgkimsal]

I've thought that too. The difference seems to be that in general, an entire workforce in a company is either 'union' or 'non-union'. In places I've worked in that had unions, you didn't have a choice as to whether you wanted to join or not - you want the job, you join the union. At the macro-level, perhaps 'the market' for labor has said "union", but the choice is not there for the individual to join or not.

I took at job in a grocery store where the union was on strike - the only reason I didn't have to join the union was because they were striking and I was working directly for the corporate HQ. Pay wasn't bad, though I suspect they were having to pay more to get us scabs to come in through the picket lines :)

I'd prefer union places where you could elect to join the union or not. If they actually lobbied for better conditions for union members, and got those, there'd be more incentive to join - you'd be making the union mgrs work for their jobs, essentially.

[georgefox]

The concept you're talking about is the so-called "right-to-work law" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law). The problem seems to be exactly what jiggy mentions: it's much cheaper not to join the union, and you still enjoy at least some of the benefits of the collective bargaining. The reality seems to be that right-to-work states have weaker unions, lower pay, and lousier benefits than non-right-to-work states. Whether this is directly related to right-to-work laws or not is not entirely clear, but there's no evidence to suggest that right-to-work actually makes unions stronger or better for their members.

In terms of "making the union managers work for their jobs," is that really a problem right now? I haven't often heard arguments suggesting unions are just collecting dues and doing nothing. Generally the only anti-union argument I've heard is that unions are too powerful and their members have overly generous compensation.

[rmc]

In places I've worked in that had unions, you didn't have a choice as to whether you wanted to join or not - you want the job, you join the union.

Huh. Those sort of closed shops are illegal in the European Union, and have been for years, your right to join a trade union must mean you have the right to not join a union. Needless to say, unions and socialists in EU were not so happy with that.

It's weird to think that part of the USA have more union friendly than the EU

[jiggy2011]

I guess the problem here is that from a purely selfish point of view it is better to not join the union (thus saving dues money) and let other people pay the union to negotiate on your behalf.

Perhaps it would be possible for an employer to offer separate union and non-union contracts with different pay rates (employers can already sort of do this by outsourcing) but the issue here is that not all union issues are about contracts.

For example , a union might negotiate for a factory to provide extra safety measures at the employers cost. All employees union or not would get the advantages provided by this unless the employer provided separate more dangerous machines for the non union workers to use.

[gabemart]

While it's not a position I hold myself, I imagine such people would argue that unions are not the free market because of the legal protections and privileges they enjoy.

I'm no expert, but I know that in at least some jurisdictions a union-endorsed strike carries protections against worker dismissal.

[dalke]

It's odd for you to point out one of the legal protections unions have without also pointing out the things they are prohibited from doing, such as sympathy strikes, mass picketing, and (in some states) the ability to require a union shop.

And the law gives company owners protection against personal liability, and taxes companies different from personal income, while it also prohibits employers from having an unsafe workplace, child labor, and practicing various types of discrimination.

We are far from a free market. I agree with the earlier poster - I think a free market enthusiast should also want unions.

[yummyfajitas]

A union: some sellers of labor merge into a single legal entity, and it becomes illegal for some purchasers of labor to buy from alternate suppliers. To translate to another field: Apple and MS merge, and now consumers can't use Linux.

Laws enforcing a requirement to purchase from a cartel are about as far from a free market as you can get.

Saying free market supporters should favor unionization is like saying free market supporters should oppose net neutrality. In a free market, net neutrality is certainly something to oppose, but in the world we live in it's necessary to counteract the government granted duopoly held by Verizon/Cable.

[dalke]

At issue is the part "laws enforcing a requirement."

I'm hard pressed to think of any advocate of a free market who wants this law in place.

But a closed shop arose not from legal statute but by an agreement between the company and the union. There's no need for government involvement, except to settle contract disagreement.

In fact, it's quite the opposite! Closed shops are illegal in the US, under Taft-Hartley Act, though they are legal in some other countries. Union shops are legal, except where the states have prohibited that practice.

The question to the audience is, shouldn't a free market advocate want to reduce both the laws which give unions specific power AND those which take power away from unions?

If your concern is about monopoly powers, well, 1) that's a restriction of free trade, so our hypothetical free market advocate might not want those restrictions either, and 2) why aren't they regulated under anti-monopoly laws, rather than specific anti-union laws?

As to the net neutrality issue, well, that's a mixture of morality and an abuse of monopoly power. I believe you're only focusing on the latter issue for now. (And I think our government is and has been entirely too closely intertwined with business, and especially big business, for too long, which has allowed these abuses to grow.)

Is an employer a sort of monopolist? I believe they are. While there are exceptions (IT in the Bay Area during the dot-com era being an obvious one), for many people it is not easy to quit and easily find new employment. Otherwise Nevada wouldn't have a 10% unemployment rate. The problem with monopolies though isn't that they are monopolies, but that they can abuse their monopoly power.

You rightly pointed out that unions can abuse their monopoly power. But so too can companies.

So the modified question to the audience is: shouldn't a free market advocate want to reduce both the laws which give unions specific power AND which take power away from unions, so long as there is no abuse of the monopoly power?

Unfortunately, the easy answer by an anti-union person is that unions are, by definition, an abuse of monopoly power, so this question has no real utility. And I can't come up with a better phrasing.

[rayiner]

This is a dishonest characterization of the law in most states re: unions.

[cfn]

"A union: some sellers of labor merge into a single legal entity, and it becomes illegal for some purchasers of labor to buy from alternate suppliers."

I have seen references to this many times. Is this true in the States? I was once a teacher (not in the States) and did not have to sign up to any union. Apart from lawyers and medical personel and maybe a few other "special" professions you don't have to belong to a union to offer your services - at least here in the EU.

[eli_gottlieb]

Unions don't have a legally enforced monopoly on labor. They obtain a monopoly or oligopoly through market power.

The problem being that without unions, labor becomes subject to oligopsony buying power and Ricardo's Law of Rent kicks in.

[gabemart]

I don't necessarily disagree with the argument that a free market enthusiast should desire unions. I disagree that a free market enthusiast should desire unions in their current form, which we both agree is far from a free market.

In other words, I don't think it's unreasonable to say "Device X would be desirable in ideal situation Y, but as the current situation is far from ideal, device X currently does more harm than good".

And again, I don't necessarily personally believe that to be true of unions.

[georgefox]

There's also a fair number of union workers who are not allowed to strike at all: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strike_action#In_the_United_Sta....

[InclinedPlane]

Unions have very little to do with free markets, and they typically do not actually benefit everyone in labor (they benefit some folks who are already in the union). Because of the way our labor laws work unions, in the instances where they are prevalent, tend to end up being a monopoly on labor for a given industry. This creates distortions in the market just as great as monopolies of capital. Also, unions tend to erode meritocratic systems of compensation and advancement and replace them with systems based on seniority and union membership, which tends to disadvantage the business, customers, and most workers except those few at the top of the seniority ladder.

[pyre]

  > unions tend to erode meritocratic systems of
  > compensation and advancement

If such meritocratic systems exist, the awards are only dependent on the merits of your corporate politicking skills.

[InclinedPlane]

Let's say you are a tech worker in silicon valley. Your wages and the sorts of jobs you have access to are dependent on the sorts of companies in existence, their needs, and your skillset. If you have a highly sought after skillset then you will be courted by multiple companies who will try to woo you with jobs that you find desirable and competitive compensation packages. Let's say instead you are a dock worker in long beach. In that case your compensation and career opportunities are far more dependent on your union membership and seniority.

Certainly playing corporate politics can also have an effect, depending on the company, but that's also true in union shops as well.

[cdcarter]

Very few unions have a mandatory favored nations policy. If you were significantly better at dock workering, such that a company sought you out, they can easily pay you more. That being said, many union labor positions don't have a wild variety of skillsets. They often do need protection.

[dbecker]

Most people claiming to be "pro free market" still oppose cartels. A cartel is the banding together of multiple companies or parties in an agreement to work together to raise prices.

A union is a cartel. I don't mean that in as a normative statement. Unions may still be worth having, even if they are a cartel in that they workers band together to raise what they charge for their labor.

But, that is the logic by which many "free market" advocates oppose unions.

[philwelch]

Unions are actually cartels.

[pretoriusB]

Well, "pro free market" is usually (and silently) taken to mean "whatever benefit me as an employeer and screw the workers".

As in: "if I want to have people working 20 hours per day, with no overtime for less than minimum wage, I should be FREE to do so, and people are FREE not to work for me".

That's the kind of "FREE" the free market stands for usually.

Of course, when all employers follow the same idea, or when people are desperate to find any work to survive (e.g because of a lack of jobs in their city), the latter point about "choice" becomes moot.

[kylebrown]

This train of thought leads to the philosophy of freedom: positive freedom (free to) and negative freedom (free from). I think the best way to think about freedom is not as a binary relationship (X is free from/to Y), but as a ternary relationship (X is free from Y to Z).

[lostlogin]

A fellow cynic! I see FREE MARKET and straight away re-read the paragraph to see who is getting screwed. I'm rarely disappointed.

[ansgri]

As kylebrown noted the distinction between 'free from' and 'free to', your interpretation suggests that the free market is the freedom to screw everyone you could manage to. I like this description, but the question is: is it net negative for people / production / indvidual?

-- a fellow cynic.

[sskates]

Yes, you can quit and work somewhere else. Also you can read about what Sony does on Hacker News and decide not to apply there for a job in the first place.

I really hope you are not actually against customized employment contracts- there are a lot of cases where they can be useful. What might be better is prohibiting instances of terms you find offensive. For example, California's moonlighting law, which effectively voids such clauses in employment contracts: http://www.quora.com/Legal-Issues/Which-California-laws-prot...

[guard-of-terra]

"Yes, you can quit and work somewhere else"

How exactly will it help when all employers adopt stupid and evil clauses in their contracts? Because that's what they do. Legal documents ("best practices") seem to circulate between companies, growing more bulk with each round. There's no place in this process for the consideration of employees' wishes. There can't be because legal department is famously isolated from the rest of the company and only cares about covering their own ass. They don't care about productivity. They don't care about happiness. They only care about having all bases covered. So I don't see why they won't grab every right from you that they can without violating the law.

If the law is where they stop, then there should be the law and nothing else. There's no reason for all those contracts-writing people to be employed.

[pi18n]

I think for many people it's going to be hard to fulfill the following:

> ... except for those inventions that either: (1) relate at the time of conception or reduction to practice of the invention to the employer’s business, or actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development of the employer ...

As a programmer, there's not a lot I can do that is going to be considered wholly unrelated to what I'm employed for... at least it would be murky enough that the employer would have a good court case. This is infinitely more so for anyone working with Google, Apple, or any other company that has got their fingers in everything.

[pi18n]

xugle, it seems your account got caught by the reapers. I found your comment to be informative, so it must have been some sort of mistake.

[pretoriusB]

>Yes, you can quit and work somewhere else.

As if people always have that luxury. What if most companies in your field (e.g computer games) follow similar practices? "Go work at another field"? Why fell prey and bow down, looking for work elsewhere, and not try to change the system instead?

If a company didn't allow black or gay employees would that be acceptable, and people be told to just "work somewhere else"? I think not, people would revolt and try to change the laws so that the company cannot do that. Why should BS NDAs be any different?

People forget that:

a) we're not necessarily talking about the top 1% of employees companies fight over, but also for the rest 99% of the people, that don't have an upper hand in negotiations and don't always have the luxury of moving around, staying out of a job long enough to find a better one, etc.

b) we're not necessarily talking about a "seller's market" such as programming

c) even if we did (b), we're not necessarily talking about now and the Valley, but also about times and places where unemployment is rampant.

[potatolicious]

I'm with you, though you're fighting a pointless battle on HN, a great bastion of the privileged who don't even know their own privilege. They are young, male, predominantly white with knowledge that is (almost always) accidentally gained in a field of absurdly high demand.

99.9% of the world doesn't have the leverage we do. The amount of clucking and tsk-tsk-ing HNers do at the rest of the world is sickening.

This entire "well duh, quit" argument is the employment equivalent of "let them eat cake".

[saraid216]

It's not a pointless battle. There are two possible reactions to any such post: engagement, which provides the possibility of changing the other person's mind, or disengagement, which at minimum gave you a little practice at making your point. The cost is the time and energy expended to write the post in the first place; as long as that doesn't outweigh either possibility, it's not pointless.

[Symmetry]

Not every company in your field is going to have contracts like that, I can pretty much guarantee that if you are willing to work for a smaller company you can negotiate something. And I did quit my job because we were bought by a larger company with a contract I didn't like just this summer. It's quite possible I'd be making more money if I hadn't restricted myself in this way, but, well, integrity is worth something. Also, what do you mean that being a programmer isn't a seller's market. Unemployment in our industry is just 2.5 percent!

[georgefox]

I believe the point was that programming is a seller's market, so the ease with which someone like you may be able to switch jobs doesn't necessarily translate to other industries.

But even for programming, who says there's always another company doing the same work in your area that's hiring? Unemployment may be low for us, and telecommuting may be a valid option for many, but it seems easy to suggest there are practically infinite possibilities for programmers when the list can actually be pretty small depending on your geographic location, resume/skill set, and a variety of other personal factors.

[rayiner]

It's only "anti-market" if you fall into the common fallacy of conflating ideas of individual and economic freedom with the functioning of the markets. It's not at all the case that increasing say contractual freedom is always coincident with the improved functioning of the markets. The classic example is anti-trust law. Laws banning producers from forming cartels to fix prices is a restriction on contractual freedom, but they're a restriction that produces better, more competitive markets.

There are a lot of considerations on the elasticity of demand for labor, information asymmetries between employer and employee, relative bargaining leverage, etc, that weigh in favor of laws to regulate the labor market. I think a great example is bans on NDA's or non-competes. They help make the labor market more liquid and prevent anti-competitive labor practices, even though they are a restriction on contractual freedom.

[cracell]

Negotiate for the removal of these clauses from your contract and don't sign it if they won't remove them. Sometimes this may mean passing on a job but if everyone did this then employers wouldn't try to get away with it.

[ChuckMcM]

In this case Sony is trying to change the agreement post employment. I wish the OP had said what HR said about ownwership of the sex tape, I really would have liked to use that example with the Google lawyers to see where they came down on it.

I don't doubt that future contracts will say "We reserve the right to update this in the future as conditions change in order to remain compliant with applicable regulations and laws and in order to protect the interests of the company."

Once you sign that, even with a permissive clause, they come back later than blam! Change it and you've pre-agreed to their changes which can now be much more restrictive.

[benwerd]

In smaller companies you can sometimes rewrite the contract. I've done this, specifically to remove this clause.

[pretoriusB]

>Negotiate for the removal of these clauses from your contract and don't sign it if they won't remove them. Sometimes this may mean passing on a job but if everyone did this then employers wouldn't try to get away with it.

The problem is that the effectiveness of this relies on the bargaining power of the employees, which, in a "buyer's market" is not that much.

Better to get the law to change to forbid such abuses for everyone.

[bconway]

If that was the case, sure. But in what world is this a buyer's market? At the last tech meetup I went to:

Employers looking for developers: 11 Developers looking for work: 2

Austin, TX, for reference.

[jiggy2011]

I'm not sure a one-size-fits all regulated solution is the answer.

For example , what about a startup that wants to make signing of an NDA a requirement for employment? Would they be expected to just take it on trust that a new employee isn't leaking stuff to their competitors for cash?

What about employments that might deal with highly sensitive/classified information and thus require certain background checks to be performed before & during employment?

[pretoriusB]

>Would they be expected to just take it on trust that a new employee isn't leaking stuff to their competitors for cash?

Well, make that punishable by law, and no need for an NDA.

[jiggy2011]

How?

Pass a law forbidding anybody from talking about what they did at work that day including to their family or friends?

The majority of jobs don't really require any real secrecy thus one size fits all fails.

[pretoriusB]

>Pass a law forbidding anybody from talking about what they did at work that day including to their family or friends?

Yes. Pass a law forbidding anybody from talking about what they did at work, including to their family or friends, if they are warned by the company that their work is confidential.

Then let a jury decide if they violated that.

If you work at a McDonalds, they need not tell you to keep confidential about anything. If you work at Apple, they can tell you: "no telling to anyone outside of what we do here".

No silly clauses about "all IP you create" and stuff.

[jiggy2011]

So presumably your employer decides which parts of your work are and are not confidential. They then provide this information to you in writing and the implication is that by working for them you agree to abide by these rules.

In other words basically the definition of a contract.

The only difference I can see in this case is that your approach would actually make it a criminal offence (presumably involving a possible prison sentence) to violate your employers terms.

[pretoriusB]

>The only difference I can see in this case

Well, there's a big difference: they don't get to dictate anything about your personal projects, stuff you make at home, your sex tape and such. Only about stuff done at the workplace and pertaining to the work.

Which is what the whole article was about, wasn't it?

[cbsmith]

> I think that any funny clauses in the contracts should be abolished and the worker/employer relations should only be regulated by law.

That tends to work well in a one-size-fits-all well established world, but tends to work particularly poorly in new and emerging industries.

[andrewflnr]

If we're going to have regulation, I think it would be more productive for it to make it easier to quit your job. That should actually improve the free-market dynamics.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

How could it possibly be easier to quit your job?

If I want to quit my job all I have to is not show up to work and eventually, after a few attempts at communication, they will send me a form letter and my final paycheck and remove me from the list of active employees.

Of course, being a more polite sort, I'd probably at least email my manager that I wouldn't be coming back.

But seriously, how could it be easier?

[andrewflnr]

Include "less dangerous" in "easier". Simply not showing up is not a good option for a responsible person trying to get ahead. Making sure the employment market is healthy and decoupling health care from employment might be helpful.