It’s difficult to see unions as anything but a failed model. What they advocate for, workers’ rights, is noble. But the divisiveness they employ makes them a political distraction. We need workers’ rights in law for everyone. Not just those who are in a union.
1. It’s pretty much only in the US that there are union workers and non union workers in the same field. If you haven’t already guessed, this is entirely a ploy by corporations, and the US govt to weaken unions by creating differences where none exist.
2. Unions rarely, if ever, negotiate rights only for their own workers. The massive union protests prior to COVID asking for minimum wage increases didn’t ask for minimum wage increases only for union workers. They asked for federal and in some cases statewide increases in minimum wage which would affect all workers.
3. A lot of the research shows that higher union salaries also translate into higher non-union salaries, so union efforts also very directly help non union workers.
> pretty much only in the US that there are union workers and non union workers in the same field
China. India. Japan. Korea. Pretty much all of Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. Unions are prevalent in Northern Europe [1]. That's it. That's the exception.
Outside Northern Europe, countries with great workers' rights [2] have between one in four and one in six people in unions.
> Maybe if China had labor unions their software engineers wouldn’t be working 996
Again, you're ignoring that countries with terrific worker protections have, on average, low union penetration. The one is uncorrelated with the other. In America, unions principally serve as a distraction. We periodically throw a few industries a bone while most workers get zero protection.
Individually, workers have very little bargaining power. Collectively, we have a lot of power. So unless you’re arguing that workers would deliberately argue for fewer protections, I don’t see how not having collective bargaining could lead to more workers’ rights.
The fact of the matter is, God gave us Sunday off and unions gave us Saturday off. Unions were the reason child labor was banned in the U.S. We have worker’s comp and the 40 hour work week was standardized. None of those things would’ve resulted from the benevolence of profit maximizing corporations.
> unless you’re arguing that workers would deliberately argue for fewer protections, I don’t see how not having collective bargaining could lead to more workers’ rights
Unions are inefficient--only those represented get benefits. And they're unnecessary. Most countries with good worker rights have low union penetration. Unions in America are a dead end. They let electeds toss a bone to the ten percent of Americans in a union while delaying broad reforms.
Unions are the only path to success when Congress is operating in a degraded governance state. Do you know how many worker hours will be exhausted in suboptimal labor conditions waiting for Congress to pass human labor protections? Strong legislative labor protections would be wonderful, but they are not on offer in the present day United States.
Congress won't function until the cohorts who vote for representatives unwilling to champion broadly popular policy or labor protections dies out. That's going to take a hot minute, even assuming a death rate of 1.8M voters over the age of 55/year.
> Unions are the only path to success when Congress is operating in a degraded governance state
Congress is divided, but still generally productive [1]. Expanding labor protections simply isn't a political priority. Also, this can be done at the state and local levels.
> Do you know how many worker hours will be exhausted in suboptimal labor conditions waiting for Congress to pass human labor protections?
About as many as there are laid off writers? Ten percent of Americans are in unions [2]. Doubling union membership in a year has less effect than waiting ten years to pass protections into law.
The only divisiveness I see (after many years in many different union shops) is planted by corporate flaks in an attempt to divide and conquer the other side of the negotiating table.
> But the divisiveness they employ makes them a political distraction. We need workers’ rights in law for everyone. Not just those who are in a union.
And how do you propose we align around such things? It seems like you’d need to organize your labor pool and possibly position yourself to bargain collectively, perhaps?
No no, you see, all bureaucracy is evil, and thus organized collections of workers-- necessitating an organizational bureau --is evil.
If you read my magnum opus, Chronos Shuffled, you would see that individual negotiation by an enlightened majority will reach the same common goal if... um... everyone individually pursues the exact same agreed upon goals...
> all bureaucracy is evil, and thus organized collections of workers-- necessitating an organizational bureau --is evil
This is the distraction I'm talking about. Unions, in this century, have been effective at one thing: dividing voters from organizing around labor reforms in law.
I really don't understand how you reconcile that with unions pushing for federal and state wide wage / benefit increases that cover non-union employees as well. You need a structure with which to organize labor power. Call it whatever you want—whether it's a union or a soviet or a syndicate it's the same idea.
Voting is literally just the bare minimum bottom of the barrel scraping. You have to also agitate for things to be on the ballot, and there is plenty of pressure to be applied outside of the purely electoral lens. A union gives people a direct benefit for organizing while trying to improve conditions for workers in general.
For one, get tech workers to vote. Ironic detachment from politics still appears to be a thing for many in our industry. After that, this is political organization 101. For all the tech unions we do have, I haven't seen them try to expand workers' rights broadly. Because why would they. That's the competition.
Unions are fundamentally about putting workers and management into separate categories. (And unionized workers on a pedestal above others.) In an industrial context, this makes sense. In a start-up, it does not.
This is so fundamentally wrong I don’t even know where to start.
By definition of function, employees and shareholders are at diametrically opposed incentives if the organization prioritizes return on capital over all other things.
If you are in an organization, where in the majority of the ownership is held by the people who have funded it, then at the starting point, it is already adversarial unless you are an equal partner in equity.
Since the vast majority of organizations are set up as such, and unless you have a controlling interest in the organization from a legal stock perspective, then you are in a position of no power to start with, and it will continue that way until you become a significant shareholder.
Unions are required to provide the collective action necessary to counter the overwhelming legal power of shareholders in the current structure.
