> all software engineers there had to be part of the union.
Is that legal? Can unions or companies force you to join the union as a condition of employment?
A business can be a “closed shop” and require payment of a fee. Though you don’t, technically have to be a member. The fees are not “dues” they’re essentially “agency fees” or “fair share fee” that make up for the benefits you’re getting due to the union.
The fees are usually very close to Union dues so most people just join to get all the rights.
Exceptions are “Right to Work” states which explicitly outlaw closed shops.
Of course they can - unless you live in a jurisdiction with a so-called “right to work” statute.
If you weren’t forced to join then, in theory, management could subvert and then break the union by hiring lots of new employees who are compensated to “opt-out”.
Yep. That's why I will vigorously oppose any unionization drives. It's incredible that people would acquiesce to being forced to accept whatever contract some union boss negotiates.
Huh? If there’s no union you’re forced to accept whatever contract the company boss decides upon. At least in the union situation you’ve had an advocate in negotiating the contract. In either situation if you don’t like the end result you can just quit.
Yes, I always have the option to quit. Which I had in the first place. It's just as possible (in fact, probable) that the union negotiates a worse contract than what I could have gotten myself and I'd be forced to quit a job I liked. That's a strictly worse outcome.
> At least in the union situation you’ve had an advocate in negotiating the contract.
They're not an advocate for me. They're an advocate for the union. Those are not at all the same thing.
At the end of the day these arguments always come down to people thinking they're superior than the peasants who "need unions", possibly because they can't imagine organizations where people work for the welfare of people other than themselves.
First, I don't think there are 'peasants who "need unions"'.
Second, there are people who might want a union to negotiate for them. Just like there are people who prefer having a lawyer represent them in court. Having such preferences (or not) doesn't make anyone superior or inferior. But it also doesn't mean that we should all have the same preferences.
> [...], possibly because they can't imagine organizations where people work for the welfare of people other than themselves.
Eh, lots of organisation, including companies or political parties or charities, do that kind of stuff all the time. Doesn't mean that I want that I automatically want to hire the services of any such organisation.
Eg I'm fairly sure that most churches are run by basically altruistic people who only have my salvation in mind. Understanding that doesn't make me into a Christian.
What if labor rights and regulations provided nearly all the same benefits as unions but across the board to everyone, union member or not? Union membership could still be something you could choose to do, but the better working conditions be legislated so everyone in the country, no matter what job, had fair working conditions?
I’m someone who is not necessarily pro-union but understand that working conditions could be improved. A great example is 40 hour work weeks. I have never been in a union but because there are laws regulating a standard work week and mandating overtime if you go over, I have benefited from that. We could all collectively as a country lobby for this instead of each individual workplace fighting the same battle one thousand times over.
Not every anti-union argument is based on the one you are postulating.
Tom Brady, the greatest quarterback of all time, with a professional agency to negotiate on his behalf, was in a union. Tom Cruise is in a union. Steven Spielberg is in a union.
There may be philosophical reasons to oppose a union, but contracting isn’t generally an issue. If you have more negotiating power than the union, you can just negotiate on top of the union contract, like sports and entertainment stars do.
The existence of some unions which don't enforce collective bargaining doesn't negate the fact that most worker unions limit the negotiating power of individuals. In fact, they actively attempt to eliminate it and socially/professionally isolate anyone who prefers to negotiate directly.
Most software developers, even top performers, are not brand name celebrities. If the union forces everyone to follow a contract, they will need to comply. Realistically, tech unions will end up looking a lot more like journalist unions than football stars.
This is explicitly the goal of the new NYT union: they are looking to "begin negotiations for a contract with management."
Some union boss negotiating my employment contract is my worst nightmare. I have friends who work in union companies and they hate the union's policies but are terrified of going against the union bosses.
Many people think they individually can get a better result negotiating themselves than having some "racketeer" negotiate in their name. With the historical connections of US unions to organised crime, they can hardly be blamed.
Why is it bad to be forced to generate revenue for the union as a condition of employment, but ok to be forced to generate revenue for the company as a condition of employment?
The business has customers and pays me a salary. The union is simply a parasite, extracting value from the organization.
Objectively, if you voluntarily join a union shop, there's nothing wrong with that. I would never do it, but it's at least a free market transaction.
But it's unconscionable that a union might show up at my work and demand I start paying them for the "benefit" of negotiating on my behalf. I would instantly quit. Thankfully the Alphabet union is a tiny farce.
Why is the union a parasite, but not the company’s shareholders? In both cases employees are forced to send them revenue. So why is one good but the other bad?
I wouldn't consider shareholders good or bad, but neutral. The revenue you send them today is compensation for the capital they provided to get the business to where it is today (or, in many cases, liquidity for earlier employees who built the company). They provided meaningful value to secure that revenue stream.
Meanwhile, the union provides no value to the business.
It does provide value to the business, but to the employees rather than the shareholders. The question is why should interactions with the shareholder reps be compulsory, but not the employee reps? Why is compulsion fine for one but not the other?
> It does provide value to the business, but to the employees rather than the shareholders.
At best, unions provide a redistributive function (transferring income from high-performing to low-performing employees). In practice, their net benefit to employees is negative.
> The question is why should interactions with the shareholder reps be compulsory, but not the employee reps? Why is compulsion fine for one but not the other?
The shareholders own the company. They bought it from the original founders and employees who built it. Without shareholders, there would be no company.
Unions are just mafia bosses who showed up later demanding to be paid. They were never involved in value creation.
Without the employees, there would also be no company. You cannot work at the company without being forced to generate money for shareholders. You also cannot at the company without generating money for the union (if membership is compulsory). Once again, why is one bad and the other one good? Why is one a “mafia boss” and the other legitimate? It’s identical compulsion either way.
> Without the employees, there would also be no company.
This is incorrect. A company is more than the employees. See holding companies or any of the many companies that have gone through mass layoffs/restructuring.
> You cannot work at the company without being forced to generate money for shareholders.
I’m not forced, the whole point of wanting to work for a company is to enter into a mutually beneficial agreement where you make them money and get money in return.
> You also cannot at the company without generating money for the union
This is a third party that has no business interfering with the agreement I’m trying to enter into with a company to sell it my labor.
> It’s identical compulsion either way.
I don’t think you know what “compulsion” means. One of the things is voluntary, one is not.
Why is it racketeering when a union prevents me from working for the company without contributing to fees, but not when management prevents me from working for the company without contributing to shareholder profits?
Who is going to tell him his work is paying for HR people that exist solely so the company can get rid of him when it wants to? Middle managers scheming to juggle his work for their own benefit? CEOs that collude with others to restrict his work mobility?
A union is just a counterweight to executives. If you are not paying for the former, you are definitely paying for the latter.
The company's management can prevent me from working for the company without contributing to shareholder profits - do you also think that is bad? If not, what's the difference?
No. Some union agreements specifically forbid the company from hiring non-union employees. That's what makes it a closed shop.
"Right to work" states have it right here. A union should never forbid you from voluntarily transacting directly with an employer. If they do, they're just a protection racket.
I wonder if there have been situations where someone was banned from a union, but then couldn't find employment in their trained profession and home state because of the closed shop contract.
Ok, so the union has negotiated a contract with the company, and as a part of this negotiation the company has agreed to specific terms of employment. Should they be prohibited from engaging in those negotiations, or agreeing to those terms?
Yes, because it is monopolistic/anti-competitive behavior. In isolated cases, it doesn't seem so bad. But you eventually end up with entire industries dominated by unions where you can't work at all without paying their protection money.
We have laws against corporations using market power to force monopolies. Unions also should not be able to legally monopolize the labor market.
I would agree that if unions were significantly larger and more powerful than corporations then there might be an issue (just as corporations being significantly larger and more powerful than individual workers is an issue - that is after all what unions exist to address). But I highly doubt this union is bigger and more powerful than the NYT, and I rather doubt that any union is as big and powerful as Google/Facebook/Amazon/Apple/etc..
Sure, and maybe in cases where a single union has a monopoly on the labour supply for an industry then certain counterbalances would be appropriate, like allowing smaller companies operating in that industry to negotiate collectively with that union. I really don't think that's a relevant concern in this instance though.
I don't think the union contract should cover people who don't want it.
If the company consents and an employee comments consents, why is the union when relevant? Why should they be able to barge in and mandate their terms?
It's a contract that the company has agreed to -- if they violate that contract, the consequences apply. Or should they be able to violate contracts negotiated between private parties?
Sure, just like companies can require you to work at certain times as a condition of employment, or wear a uniform as a condition of employment, or a hundred other things.
Letting it go the other way just results in freeloader syndrome: unions fight for improved work policies and work culture for all, but you can get much of the benefits without paying in. So many people don’t, which ends up weakening the union in the long run.
Though if paying union dues is optional, the unions present in a company will have to show they can do something to actually improve the situation of the workers and not just collect dues by just existing
The problem here is that much of a union’s work is improving the general work culture and policies to be more labor-friendly. Letting people pay union dues optionally means they get a lot of the benefit of the union without paying for it. Classic free rider problem.
It's being forced the same way any other terms of employment are forced on you, and your option in this case is the same: go somewhere else.
We know from history and other countries that broadly speaking, if you weaken unions with right-to-work laws, workers as a whole end up worse off. It tilts the power relationship between employees and employer towards the employer.
If you look at peer countries with stronger, more present unions, you find that workers are usually considerably better off there.
