>> The idea of a union is that it insulates you from being instantly punished for factors you might not be able to control a little better than the market is doing right now (look for news about new parents who were part of the layoffs recently).
Since when has this been the idea of the union? Recall that nearly all union rules are set by seniority, not personal factors like having a bad day or having a child.
> The idea of a union is that it insulates you from being instantly punished for factors you might not be able to control a little better than the market is doing right now.
Most people have good days and bad days. Any manager who's crazy enough to punish someone for having one bad day isn't a good manager. If that happens it's likely a manager specific issue
> When was the last time you got a job purely on the basis of your personal relationships without having to jump through hoops to show your skills?
This isn't a bad thing. More merit, less favoritism. People are hired based off of qualifications alone (ideally)
> Recall that nearly all union rules are set by seniority, not personal factors like having a bad day or having a child.
I'm unable to understand what you're saying here. Of course, union rules are not set by personal factors. I meant that they make it less easy to fire you for personal factors due to the heavier emphasis on due process in unionized workplaces.
In most non-union workplaces in the US, you can get fired because your boss had a bad day, or (practically) if you announce that you're pregnant. The latter case is theoretically protected, but it's very hard for an average person to get an appropriate lawyer, show a pattern and sue the workplace.
> Everyone rags on unions. But you know, I have great healthcare at a fair price, salary is good, protection from management fads like stack ranking, etc. The only real downside IMO is the focus on seniority.
I have those things (well not “protection from stack ranking” but my employer doesn’t do it) without the focus on seniority. A union is not requisite nor sufficient for those things.
>Most of the warehouse workers are now making _less_ than they were before due to union dues.
If most of the workers are making less now, why would they vote to unionize? Before the union formed did workers get vacation and sick time, or were their unaddressed safety issues, or was management treating employees unfairly?
In the US it is a lot of work to convince people to form a union even when the benefits are clear. Companies will bring in professional union busters, force employees to watch anti union propaganda, many employers will illegally fire employees who are pro union, and they will threaten(illegally) to shut down the whole company if a union is formed.
As someone who actually knows something about unions and their history, it literally never works that way. OP is correct. You can't make moves when you don't have power.
>Nobody wants to join a union during a hot market.
That's what has to change. I'm not saying it will change, but it's the only way. If your union is dependent on temporary conditions, it's weak. Weak unions are usually worse than no union at all. There are no shortcuts.
> I do believe there are some protections against companies firing everyone when they attempt to collectively bargain. Which is nice I guess. But not a requirement to form an effective union.
Part of the theory of a union is that the workers aren't easily replaceable as a group. Doubly so in that a company that is willing to fire N thousand people and hire replacements will likely have a harder time finding people willing to work for them. That seems sufficient to have enough bargaining clout, even with at-will employment.
> If you work for a company like Amazon, and you don't want to be laid off, the only thing you can do to move the needle is join a union.
If you don't like how one party can make changes to your job without your meaningful input, you should throw in so two parties can make changes to your job without your meaningful input? Also, you should be sure to pay some part of your wages to the second party, even if you don't like what they're up to.
> Don't unions work best in fields where quality is very uniform and expertise counts for very little? I'm thinking about low skilled jobs that can be mastered in months or years. Unions create salary progression, and benefits for seniority where there is otherwise no reason for them to exist. When no one does anything better than anyone else, it makes sense to negotiate as a block, individuals have no power.
No, this is a common misunderstanding. Note that all professional sports have unions for athletes.
The point of labor unions is that no matter how much power you may think an individual worker has, it's always relatively small and vastly surpassed by the power and money of the business ownership.
> The point of a union is not job security. It's about giving workers collective power they may not otherwise have.
No, it's about giving workers currently employed by the company collective power. This means keeping potential employees out by setting a threshold for financial compensation or number of hours available to work. The victims here (unemployed and underemployed people) have no collective power and don't appear in data so they are ignored.
> Note that Unions work very differently across different parts of the world. So your local union might be very different from ones that I've experienced.
You are right on this one. My experience with unions is that they want people to have a job even if that job is more efficiently done by a machine or to get salary increases even if the company is doing poorly because of outside market factors (like not enough sales due to poor economy and so on).
And while the goal might be ideal, the reality is quite different.
> after dramatic unmerited changes in the terms of employment is too late to start a union.
It's actually pretty invariably when unions are formed other than at firms in industries that are otherwise pervasively unionized.
Which is actually pretty analogous to physical security: outside of measures taken by everyone in similar circumstances, most heightened measures are taken after a dramatic experience shatters the sense of safety.
> But there is very obviously a point below which unionization is a sign of dysfunction.
FWIW I don't think that's obvious at all. Even a small group of happy employees could form a union to set the current policies everyone is happy with in stone and protect themselves and future employees against potential changes in ownership or a downturn in company health.
> Unions improve compensation by increasing the share of the profits pie given (or returned, rather) to labor, not by putting a stranglehold on new hiring.
How do you think they magically achieve this?
Surprise - it's by threatening to restrict supply (not working for the company if they don't agree to the union's terms.)
> A union is a mechanism by which a class of people with less power (typically workers) pool together to enforce rules on people with more power (typically employers).
Only if you ignore the fact union members are giving up power to union leaders, who can force them to give money to support political candidates as a condition of employment and who can, as part of a contract, deny them the ability to participate in labor actions if the union leadership disagrees, probably for some profit motive.
Since when has this been the idea of the union? Recall that nearly all union rules are set by seniority, not personal factors like having a bad day or having a child.
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