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.
