This is also my experience dealing with unions. Management is legally required to make concessions during collective bargaining, so anything that can be considered an improvement to mandatory bargaining topics (pay, benefits, or working conditions) gets held back for the contract negotiation.

In one case, management wanted to purchase sit/stand workstations for employees, but HR pointed out that this was a change to working conditions and should be included in the collective bargaining negotiation. However management had already started taking measurements for the tables, so the union knew what management was intending. During the negotiations, the union decided to try and call HR's bluff and refused to ask for the workstations as a concession. So in the end, the whole plan was scrapped so that HR would have concessions available for future negotiations.

if the belief is that employees using sit/stand workstations will improve productivity and output, it's a business' own choice not to do so for employees who have collective bargaining.

there is also a cost associated with maintaining different workspaces and equipment for employees of different status, and it's a company's choice to take that on.

typically when discussing working conditions, you're talking about minimum standards. it's not very smart to refuse to improve working conditions across the board.

you said in a reply further down that you were an executive level manager, you should have told HR to shove it because your individual performance would be impacted by the collective output of your employees, and the costs of improving working conditions would be returned in several multiples, some of which you might receive as a bonus.

it was, however, your choice and right not to do this. :)

> you said in a reply further down that you were an executive level manager, you should have told HR to shove it because your individual performance would be impacted by the collective output of your employees, and the costs of improving working conditions would be returned in several multiples, some of which you might receive as a bonus.

This assumes the EMgr is compensated/recognized more on performance of collective output than on politics and relationships. I dont know specifically about Apple, but plenty of orgs are imperfect enough that relationships are actually more highly rewarded/recognized than optimal collective outcomes (which are disparate and difficult to take credit for.)

This is part of the reason why "glue" workers[1] are usually overlooked and kept back. They neither please anyone, nor have a specific item to take credit for, usually simply boosting the outcomes of others who take all the credit for their work, plus some for that of the glue worker.

[1]: (ones which keep a team functioning well, but do nothing particularly stunning of their own)

I highly recommend the "glue" worker path. The catch phrase I use is "a rising tide raises all ships." When I was a young buck I took the "shooting star" path where I'd knock out user stories at 10x or more compared to the team average. Basically everyone hated me. Then I chose the "rising tide" path and most people loved me. All of my greatest $ opportunities came from people I raised up. Even little behaviors like instead of speaking up in meetings I DM people to offer suggestions/corrections to things they've said in meetings. And then they can seamlessly take credit for my ideas by incorporating them as they continue to talk. If you care about promotions, it's important to also do this for leadership.

If you measure my work by lines of code or user stories completed, etc. I will come up short for sure. But teams love having me around and I never lack for opportunity.

I appreciate you sharing your experience. Mine has been essentially the opposite, but I suspect the root cause being working for a company with a terrible culture.

Any tips out rooting out the companies that actually reward this virtuous behavior?

You do it in a way where you're helping the careers of people, not doing it because you think is abstractly best. Where having you around is good for them, and not having your around is bad for them. Where if you're gone, it's fuck, now my life is going to be harder. Some might call it 'relationships', but maybe it's more about choosing what has more effective impact?

Also a lot of glue people are missing the marketing aspect, and I think that is why it is unappreciated. If you never made a sound, do you exist? Glue people exist outside of the typical marketing machine for most employees, which in lies its power too, because the opportunity set is also richer.

The parallels to business and sales is very apt. You can't just make a product and expect adoption with no marketing, and the same applies when you're doing a job too. If you think you shouldn't do it, your essentially saying someone should do it for you, and they can, to a point, but you are your own best marketer, because you work with your work 24/7, while your manager has 5 to 25 other people to also think about.

In addition to what novok said, I would say keeping score is a detriment. Most of the people I "raised" provided absolutely nothing tangible in return and I don't feel any negative emotion about that. I'm glad they are better off in some capacity because I was in their life and that is its own reward. Keeping score is the path to bitterness and negative attitude which people will see through.

Can you speak more specifically about what you experienced that you found so terrible? That might help me offer a more useful response.

Same here, always thrived for the team and stick with the motto to make yourself replaceable. In this way i felt always free that i can move on if needed, had cheerful mates around me, and was the most appreciated person around as well. Even at amazon where people competing even with teammates, we have competed together helping each other. It was an amazing experience compared with what i saw in other teams.

I'm aiming at trying to make myself useless by automating everything I can and teaching others to do what I do so I don't have to. One day I may succeed but so far when I've been on the brink of success I've been offered more and more interesting work and I don't think the world will run out of work to be done anytime soon :-)

+1 on this. If someone is as smart as they think they are, building up the team is always the best option. If you’re always going to be ahead of the curve hours out how you can make everyone perform better as a force multiplier rather than just your own performance.

I will say, I think this is a negative aspect of performance culture though: if you’re average are you going to help someone who is going to be pipped instead of you? Probably not.

I helped one of the worst programmers I've ever known become an average programmer and he was so thankful that a few years later when a crazy opportunity came along to make a few million bucks he called me up because there was no one else he trusted with what would become his life's work. Now we hire abuse victims and other people who had a rough time but are amazing and get them set up on an accelerated path to six figure income careers as PMs, sysadmins, and developers. And we make great money in the process. I'm an above average programmer it would be a disservice to deny it, but you don't have to be the best programmer in the room to help the worst programmer in the room.

I worked with another guy and a few years after we had been working together he called me up and asked me if I would mind if he named me in his will. He had started a solo company and made good money and if he died he wanted me to help make sure his wife didn't get taken in by vultures. Of course I offered to do it without hesitation.

Fuck performance culture. Make your own culture. Be the kind of person that others want to trust their life's work and fortunes with.

So the HR would rather impose authority than make workers' lives easier?

No, the point is you get to make demands and make the company meet your way. That means once the deal is done, that's the deal. It's literally fair. You made a deal, now that is the deal. Your deal is different from other employees deal. There are upsides and downsides to both. Upside for the union employees, they got all the benefits they demanded with the downside of no new benefits. Upside for non-union employees is they get all the new benefits with the downsides they don't have all the benefits the union employees demanded and got because they thought they were that important.

Except there is no singular "other employees' deal" — each non-union employee has their own contract.

Do you think Apple made everyone individually negotiate for these perks? Or did they just give the perks to all non-union employees because they think it'll prevent other stores from unionizing?

A place I worked at previously had some warehouse locations that were unionized. Regional leadership was very concerned that if the Union locations interacted freely with the non-union locations that it might spread. Besides trying to have management employees be the only bridge between sites wherever possible, that also included treating the non-union employees to more perks like company provided drinks, snacks, more breaks, better pay, and better staffing levels. In some cases our non-union warehouse employees were paid more than the union employees for the same position. They also made sure to play up incidents like when there were accidents due to say a forklift operator being intoxicated at work having their job saved by the union. In many ways the non-union employees benefited from the union existence, however many of the perks given to the non-union employees continued even after the union warehouses closed - and when evaluating locations to shut down union places were always at the top of the evaluation list.

> that also included treating the non-union employees to more perks like company provided drinks, snacks, more breaks, better pay, and better staffing levels. In some cases our non-union warehouse employees were paid more than the union employees for the same position.

This just goes to show that unions improve working conditions and employee outcomes for everyone. If it takes fear that a union might spread to make a company treat their employees better that's still a win for unions, even if it puts unionized employees in a position where they now have to bargain for those same improvements.

The company is an origination whose goal is to extract as much out of their employees as possible for as little compensation as possible and when employees organize to prevent being exploited that way everyone wins, including the companies themselves.

They are acting in bad faith. Just like Starbucks, which is doing the same thing to cause problems for thier current employee unions.

Well, the point of a union is that management actually has a very bad sense for what employees want, so employees can't rely on management to meet their needs.

Like in this metaphor, sit/stand desks are a visible 'we care about you' move that cost $500/head one time. Meanwhile, the dental plan sucks and management ignores it because only a small subset of the employees notice and even then, it's only periodically.

So from that point of view, HR probably just said "well, based on the union negotiations, they don't seem to care about the desks, might as well shelve it and put the money to use elsewhere."

OP is the one adding the color about 'saving it for the next negotiation'

The point of a union is that management don't care what the employees want/need.

>don't care what the employees want/need.

Do you really think it's malice and not ignorance? Like, sure there's some bad apples, but you really think management thinks 'there's no marginal benefit whatsoever to having better working conditions than our peers?'

Keep in mind, this article is about retail workers at Apple

Not malice, rather sacrificing employee wellbeing in the name of profit and growth. There is a reason we needed unions to fight for us to have weekends off, a minimum wage, paid holidays, maternity and paternity rights, sickness provision, and more.

no, the point is maybe the union wants a 9% raise. if you put new desks in you now pay a 9% raise and new desks. if you keep it for bargaining then maybe you pay an 8% raise and include some other benefits like new desks.

Why should employees pay for desks? Sounds like a strategy to make the work environment suck so that people are willing to spend their own money on work supplies, traditional corporate welfare.

Which reminds me, all those jobs I brought my own monitors … I should have just resigned.

they're not. the point is in a traditional setup the company springs for standing desks as a perk. in a unionized setup it's better to hold stuff back for negotiations. this is the flip side to collective bargaining, you kinda gotta go through "The Process" for everything. there's also the considerations that 1. unions sometimes don't like the workplace just adding perks bc it's perceived as "undermining" the union and 2. unions will always push for more even if you add a perk like new standing desks (bc that's their job) so the workplace kinda has to always push for less so they come to a middle ground compromise.

Close.

It's not about pay equity, it's about a small minority (employers/directors/shareholders) currently deciding what happens with the profits made from the labor of all the WORKERS. (And about that same small minority also deciding whether to burden society with a newly unemployed person by firing any worker.)

Those decisions should instead be made by the workers, democratically, in the same manner we pretend to glorify for civil society's governance: one person one vote.

This is how worker-owned co-op's operate.

Worker-owned co-ops were always allowed. Nothing stopping workers from starting them instead of working for traditional companies.

Where have you heard this? In general things not specifically discussed in a CBA default to management ("management rights") so this would seem to require a carpeting clause in the CBA.

>Management is legally required to make concession

This is false. The NLRB explicitly says so:

> It is an unfair labor practice for either party to refuse to bargain collectively with the other, but parties are not compelled to reach agreement or make concessions.[0]

They are only required to bargain 'in good faith.' Withholding benefits they would normally give is an intimidation tactic and an attempt to maintain leverage.

[0]https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/your-right...

no, apple is currently conducting negotiations with the unionized store and there is no contract so presumably they are working on getting that into the contract as part of the bargaining process. which is literally the way unions are set up to work.

messing with existing benefits could be construed as an intimidation tactic but delaying new ones due to going through the union workers just voted in is not, since the union has already been elected this isn't interfering with a vote or sm.

That sounds like a win for the union and it’s members.

Union members would presumably much rather pocket the money than have it go to standing desks. Sacrificing stuff they don’t want in a negotiation is negotiation 101.

I’ve worked in several union shops. You can as an employer easily choose to address these via a side letter or other mechanism.

One place i am familiar with this handled COVID remote work with that type of mechanism. They setup a pilot program for the duration of the pandemic that included language to not undermine future negotiations.

"This is also my experience dealing with unions."

I'm sorry this happened to you. But this sounds like your experience dealing with a low-road employer, not with "unions". If you don't mind me asking, which union were you and your coworkers affiliated with?

"In one case, management wanted to purchase sit/stand workstations for employees, but HR pointed out that this was a change to working conditions and should be included in the collective bargaining negotiation. However management had already started taking measurements for the tables, so the union knew what management was intending. During the negotiations, the union decided to try and call HR's bluff and refused to ask for the workstations as a concession. So in the end, the whole plan was scrapped so that HR would have concessions available for future negotiations."

You experienced two standard union busting techniques favored by management-side labor lawyers. First, try to divide the workers to weaken their bargaining power, with the ultimate goal of portraying the workers active in the union as an unrepresentative minority. Then, blame "the union" or "labor law" (i.e. your coworkers who are active) for negative changes that are entirely their doing.

"Management is legally required to make concessions during collective bargaining"

If this is the United States we're talking about, you were misinformed. Under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), management has a duty to bargain over certain issues with unionized workers, but there is no obligation to make "concessions" (i.e. changes the workers find favorable).

I was an executive level manager at the time. My understanding is that employers are required to "bargain in good faith" and the easiest way to demonstrate good faith is by making concessions.

This is a common misunderstanding. For example, an employer can propose a wage cut (obviously not a concession) as part of good faith bargaining.

To your point, making concessions will often prevent any worker (or the union as a body) from filing an Unfair Labor Practice charge. But employers with good counsel seldom worry about such charges, because the penalties are so weak.

Say I don't like bargaining or know how to bargain with someone in a position of power. I'd rather have a union do it for me. An organisation should have more leverage and employ people who are better negotiators and who concern themselves with employee rights. It's just like companies that are outsourcing work or hiring HR positions to hire and fire people or to negotiate pay.

Sounds like a pretty reasonable negotiating tactic. Everyone holds stuff back.

It's a purely procedural standard.

To oversimplify a bit: if the employer meets with the union's designees (e.g. workers elected by their peers, a lawyer hired by the union), exchanges proposals verbally or in writing, and goes through the motions until reaching a so-called "valid impasse", they have made good on their duty to bargain. They could propose nothing but cuts to wages and conditions, and indeed this happens often if workers don't have a credible strike threat.

See: https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-law/ba...

The model you have in mind - make concessions or have more general terms impose by a regulatory body - does exist in other countries, where parties have to go to a sectoral body, interest arbitration, etc. when impasse is reached. Interest arbitration was a proposed reform in the (now dead) PRO Act that the Biden administration favored early on.

Sounds like they are acting in bad faith.

About the same reasons I never joined ones, when I had the option (which lets be honest in IT is not that often). Great ideas on paper, properly poor execution that ends up in entrenched folks, power games and politics

The moral of the story here is that HR tried to withold something they were already planning on doing to avoid paying employees more, and you think the answer is to just accept whatever management wants?

The ownership side is in a union whether employees are or not, with their own dollar-weighted democracy, legalized collusion between owners (say two restaraunts agree with each other to lower wages, that's illegal; say they both merge and become shareholders: a coordinated wage decrease across both restaraunts with the same two owners involved is now considered done by one entity).

There is nothing wrong with collusion, whether its from employees, or employers.

The state should stay out of it, and the laws forcing negotiations, or giving either the company or the employees protections should not exist.

If employees want to get together in a union and negotiate collectively, that's their right and they should not be legally barred from doing so.

If companies want to fire the employees who do so, and not deal with a union in any way, that too is their right and they should not be legally barred from doing so.

The primary purpose of labor laws should be to establish the expectations in the absence of an article in the contract establishing those expectations (ie: if the contract doesn't mention which safety procedures are to be followed in the steel foundry, the thing that's in the law prevails. If the contract outlines other procedures, then the contract prevails).

A secondary purpose of the labor law is to enforce the contract. (Ie: if an employee doesn't get paid for hours worked, the courts should be therefore to enforce the payment)

Anything else the state should stay out of.

The owners voting results are legally enforced amongst each other. In right-to-organize states employee voting results are likewise enforced amongst employees. In right-to-work it is a state protected dollar-weighted democracy with all kinds of liability limit gifts and intricate rules for protecting minority shareholds for the owners, and nothing similar for the employees.

Democracy of dollars over democarcy of people is the main concern in right to work states, except for Doctors, Lawyers, Accountants, etc. all get union like protections backed by the state and enforced results of voting within their associations, they are the "right" people with enough dollars to have a level of democracy in the workforce.

Rest assured, I believe agreements between employees should be just as enforceable as agreements between shareholders.

Indeed that fits perfectly well in that second point I mentioned.

In many right to work states the union's contract with the firm can't legally say newly hired workers are to be part of the union's democratic process, paying agreed on dues, etc., so it is an immediate coordination problem that the owner side doesn't have to suffer.

You're confused.

The only thing that right to way means is that employees cannot be forced to contract with the union if they do not want to.

It does not prevent them from doing so.

Most (all?) right to work states have a law saying the union can't voluntarily contract with the firm to put in terms say new hires would be part of the union and have to pay dues.

Alabama for instance blocks such agreements:

> Any agreement/combination between employer and labor union or organization denying nonmembers right to work is prohibited; labor organizations cannot require membership, abstention, or payment of union dues.

https://www.findlaw.com/state/alabama-law/alabama-right-to-w...

Even if the union is unanimous in agreement to require dues and make things a union shop with an agreement that new employees will be in it too (through their employment agreement), that free agreement between union and firm is outlawed, even if it is unanimous.

It is a masterstroke of "right-to-work" propaganda that even "I support all free contracts" Ayn Rand people don't know this.

Missippi:

> State "right-to-work" statutes generally prohibit employers and unions from requiring employees to be union members or pay membership dues membership in order for to get and keep a job. In addition to statutory provisions dating back to 1954, Mississippi had right-to-work guarantees added to the state constitution in 1960.

From what I can see such a free agreement between union and business is prohibited in every right-to-work state:

https://www.findlaw.com/employment/wages-and-benefits/right-...

That sounds like a quick path to having people sell them into slavery the first time the economy goes south and people get desperate

> why is it only people that get desperate? why doesnt the companies, in these scenarios?

The state is supposed to be servants of the people, not of the companies. Human rights are important; companies are at best a means to an end, and if winding up a company leads to better outcomes for humans, few would or should shed a tear for the company.

> this kind of thing strikes me as very elitist, how can someone listening to the argument interpret it as anything other than "those regular working joes are so stupid they will just offer themselves up as slaves the second a company talks sternly or the price of food increases!!!!" ?

It's a race to the bottom, and the only way to prevent that is collective organisation. There's nothing elitist about the notion that people acting together are stronger than people acting alone.

> is it really that much to expect, that people individually take some responsibility, say no to conditions that are, by THEIR judgement, poor, and save up a decent enough buffer that they wont have to say "well it was a good run, im a slave now" the instant a company might not immediately cave to a demand or meet at a reasonable spot?

Yes, by definition. How can they save up if they're being paid starvation wages?

> It's a race to the bottom, and the only way to prevent that is collective organisation. There's nothing elitist about the notion that people acting together are stronger than people acting alone.

not true. For example, I have a minimum I would work for, if this is not met, I would not accept working for less. I would rather go eat grass and leaves from trees than that. I would rather plant carrots, chase after a rabbit, whatever it takes. I do not need a union, I do NOT want anyone else interferring in my salary negotiations, and I can deliver value to a company beyond what I am asking in salary. vast majority of employees can deliver value beyond a decent salary.

> I would not accept working for less. I would rather go eat grass and leaves from trees than that. I would rather plant carrots, chase after a rabbit, whatever it takes

Easy to say when you haven't had to do it. And if you say "whatever it takes", you've already undermined your argument - you'll reach a point where your only option is working.

> vast majority of employees can deliver value beyond a decent salary.

Sure. But employers often capture all (or indeed more than all) of that value, through monopsony situations, self-organising de-facto cartels, or just acting as an actual cartel (e.g. the famous "anti-poaching agreement").

> why is it only people that get desperate? why doesnt the companies, in these scenarios? why do we always assume its the "slave-minded plebs" that blinks first?

Because companies are a legal fiction that dissolve if things get that bad? If they didn’t provide legal protection for liability than most would just be privately owned assets with direct, as in legally direct not that they necessarily speak, negotiations between the owner and employees

> if companies really are so greedy, surely they could see the benefit in paying more than they would prefer(which would naturally always be 0), and get to earn decent, rather than employees saying "too bad, wont work" and they get to earn nothing?

Observed behavior? Are you unfamiliar with the small businesses complaining about how “nobody wants to work” while offering minimum wage? Or in the tech industry how the majority of firms have settled on providing below market yearly salary increases and eating the replacement cost for employees rather than pay a few percent more to keep people from looking for new jobs. To the point that it’s commonly accepted for jobs to be 2-3 year stints instead of the lifelong careers of the past?

> this kind of thing strikes me as very elitist, how can someone listening to the argument interpret it as anything other than "those regular working joes are so stupid they will just offer themselves up as slaves the second a company talks sternly or the price of food increases!!!!" ?

You’re reading into it if you think I’m referring to just “working joes”. It’s what desperate people do in the rule set you propose. It’s how we had indentured servants in the American colonies. It’s how there were literally people who sold themselves into slavery to pay off bets in the Roman Empire.

> is it really that much to expect, that people individually take some responsibility, say no to conditions that are, by THEIR judgement, poor, and save up a decent enough buffer that they wont have to say "well it was a good run, im a slave now" the instant a company might not immediately cave to a demand or meet at a reasonable spot?

If someone is in a desperate enough situation to consider selling themselves into slavery, how pray tell, do they save up a decent enough buffer?

> Because companies are a legal fiction that dissolve if things get that bad? If they didn’t provide legal protection for liability than most would just be privately owned assets with direct, as in legally direct not that they necessarily speak, negotiations between the owner and employees

I legitimately do not understand what you are saying. I am a business owner, are you seriously saying I would rather dissolve my business than pay what it costs for labour (assuming i could still make money after paying that much for labour) ? Are you saying that if all software engineers tomorrow simply had an epiphany, and demanded 50% more money, google would say "we had a good run, time to simply END google" ?

> Because companies are a legal fiction that dissolve if things get that bad? If they didn’t provide legal protection for liability than most would just be privately owned assets with direct, as in legally direct not that they necessarily speak, negotiations between the owner and employees

And clearly those companies still do reasonably fine, and isnt THAT much in lack of employees, or they are in a low margin market where paying more would not really result in sufficient profit to incur the risk?

> You’re reading into it if you think I’m referring to just “working joes”. It’s what desperate people do in the rule set you propose. It’s how we had indentured servants in the American colonies. It’s how there were literally people who sold themselves into slavery to pay off bets in the Roman Empire.

I am not saying any one solution fits ALL scenarios, but WHY are they desperate? if they have skills that are useful enough to a company that it could ever sustain hiring them for a pay we would both agree is decent, then what is the reason?

> If someone is in a desperate enough situation to consider selling themselves into slavery, how pray tell, do they save up a decent enough buffer?

by saving up before they become that desperate. I am not saying this covers for absolutely everyone, but I will dare say the vast majority, and I would double down and say that a large part of those where it doesnt, its because they have been held back by these authoritarian nanny-state laws and customs. A very large amount of people who are living paycheck to paycheck very regularly does very stupid shit, like buy fancy clothes, go to restaurants instead of cooking themselves, prioritize a fairly new iphone, have a few streaming subscriptions etc. They would consider it 100% impossible to live without that, and would rather go into extreme debt and be "desperate" when the bill comes due.

Again, not everyone, some people legitimately have all odds against them from the beginning. Some have emergencies happen that they realistically couldnt have prepared for even if they did everything. This is the edge cases, the outliers. NOT the bulk of people. The bulk of people who subscribe to nanny state things considers it more apropriate to have a netflix subscription than set that money aside in an emergency fund, assuming they are paycheck-to-paycheck

I don’t think there’s much more to talk about here if you read my posts and come away with this question

> I am a business owner, are you seriously saying I would rather dissolve my business than pay what it costs for labour (assuming i could still make money after paying that much for labour)

Having to pay more for labor as a business when you can is not comparable to being so destitute that selling yourself into slavery is a better idea. It is equivalent to being bankrupt as a company.

> by saving up before they become that desperate.

That’s just hand waving away that it happens, and has happened in the past at greater frequency without government limitations on what rights people have. You started this off with advocating that the government should only set defaults and everything else is on the table and you’re response to asking what we do for people who hit the failure mode is to say “don’t fail”. It’s not an edge case, it’s not outliers. You might think so only because you are a century into heavy government intervention into business/employee relationships and to suggest that this is the natural state and would continue without government intervention is frankly, ridiculous

> The bulk of people who subscribe to nanny state things considers it more apropriate to have a netflix subscription than set that money aside in an emergency fund, assuming they are paycheck-to-paycheck

I felt like I might be a little too hot with my previous section and then I read this line. It’s obvious you subscribe to some equivalent of Calvinist theory where the poor deserve it and you are hand waving away the idea of failure.

This is an ideological position and I hold the opposite ideological position so I think we’ve reached an impasse

> It’s obvious you subscribe to some equivalent of Calvinist theory where the poor deserve it and you are hand waving away the idea of failure.

that is simply not true. I said very clearly the default way things work shouldnt happen to outliers. What exactly are you saying here? that most people are simply not able to handle themselves throughout their lives without the nanny state handling salary requirements to the evil companies? I would say this is PARTIALLY correct, but only because people have been lulled into relinquishing all sense of personal responsibility. its like helicopter parenting adults, by the nanny state.

and your argument makes no logical sense anyway, how can someone that has marketable skills, WANTED by companies, then be not expected to be able to handle their life themselves?

there will then of course be edge cases, those that through disease, low skill (and low ability, low intelligence etc) not be able to really earn a living. That does not make them worse people, and a different mechanism should help them have a decent life.

When you characterize wanting worker protections as wanting a “nanny state” and then claim that the people who support that think it’s a better idea “to have a Netflix subscription than set that money aside in an emergency fund”, am I supposed to infer that you have a high opinion of people in this situation or that you think they deserve it?

> and your argument makes no logical sense anyway, how can someone that has marketable skills, WANTED by companies, then be not expected to be able to handle their life themselves?

Perhaps if I had started this chain off by talking about people with in demand skills, this would be an appropriate critique. However, I was speaking about when people are in a desperate situation which usually implies they don’t have some sort of leverage like in demand skills.

Your suggestion of letting the government be the default but allowing employees and employees to negotiate whatever deal they want is already the case for people with leverage. People with in demand skills aren’t trying to negotiate a $2/hr wage but the “nanny state” is getting in their way. You’re proposed change to removing government minimums that cannot be negotiated away will only change the situation for people in desperate situations and you are continually hand waving that away as an outlier case despite that both A) not being an outlier, and B) being the vast majority of peoples whose personal situations would be affected by your proposal

As opposed to the entrenched folks, power games, and politics that exist currently? Those don’t appear because a union is formed, you just have less of a say at the bargaining table without one

Edit:removed an extra “don’t”

Forgive me, I'm struggling to parse that triple negative! Can I flip that to be "you have more of a say with one"? Or am I getting it wrong?

Fault was mine, had an extra “don’t” that made it a triple, rather than the intended double, negative.

Your interpretation of that last sentence was correct

- Why did my store not get this new benefit that other non-unionized stores are getting?

- Why was my store not affected by layoffs but other stores in the area were?

- Why was my raise X% but employees at other stores got Y%?

The answer to all of these is the same – you will get exactly what is in your collective bargaining agreement, not a penny more or less. If you want more perks, ask your union reps to bring it up in the next contract negotiation.

For me the question is

Would Apple have introduced these perks without the union?

It's not the union that's preventing these things from going to the unionized workers. It's the company.

My guess is that Apple would prefer there not to be a union, so they take the carrot&stuck approach in response. Carrot new perks if you don't unionize. Stick we close the union stores.

But you have to ask what the state of things would be without the union at play. Does Apple decide to give everyone more perks just 'cause?

>Does Apple decide to give everyone more perks just 'cause?

No, in the absence of unions and regulations, companies provide more perks and compensation when they need to in order to higher or maintain workers.

Classic supply and demand. If you can't hire a worker for X dollars, you raise the salary to x + 1. Companies do it all the time when they can't find the workers that they need

Apple has 370+ stores across the country and 65,000 retail workers. Exactly one store is unionized. It’s safe to say that broad benefits decisions across the company aren’t being driven by this union.

The implication is that additional perks will make other stores less likely to unionize. One store successfully unionizing is certainly enough to cause Apple to take such measures, they're likely trying to prevent a domino effect.

A company of Apple’s size routinely adds and removes employee benefits. It’s not like they offered nothing before a single union consisting of a handful of employees showed up. To make this claim you need to look at a time span way longer than a couple of months to see if there’s an actual correlation.

I recall one particularly vivid experience with a customer who seemed to be dumb as a post. But he kept getting what he wanted, and it took some time to realize I'd underestimated him.

His superpower wasn't his wit, it was getting things he didn't really deserve. His bosses saw that, which is why he was in charge. He would ask for things that sounded very reasonable, and every time we said yes our profit margins went down.

Every boss who has loyal employees that make 10% less than they deserve gets recognition from the organization for getting things they aren't really entitled to. That's why your 'nice' boss often seems to get stuck. They only succeed if you go out of your way to make them look good.

> Why was my raise X% but employees at other stores got Y%

If you believe in meritocracy this is a complete _negative_

Belief in meritocracy continues to amuse.

Misunderstanding meritocracy as anything other than aspirational continues to frustrate.

We can’t achieve a true meritocracy. That’s not an argument against trying.

Sure, but if you believe it does not exist then why argue against systems that level the playing field and offsets it?

Because “systems that level the playing field” tend to make a system less meritocratic (and less fair), not more.

So I guess what you're saying is it's better to maintain the illusion of meritocracy instead of acknowledging and being honest with ourselves that pay is not commensurate to effort?

> So I guess what you're saying is it's better to maintain the illusion of meritocracy …

No, it’s better to strive for meritocracy and fail to achieve perfection, than to abandon the effort to reward merit entirely.

> … instead of acknowledging and being honest with ourselves that pay is not commensurate to effort?

“Merit” is not a synonym for effort, pay was never commensurate with effort, and it never should be.

We’re not trying to reward effort — we’re trying to reward results.

> We’re not trying to reward effort — we’re trying to reward results.

What makes you think we do that now?

You don’t believe there’s currently any correlation between merit and pay?

The main benefit mentioned in the article is a $400 annual credit to Coursera. Everything else is "some education" or "some doctors", which usually translates to practically nothing useful.

They should have found out what the average pay is for union vs non-union, and then compared if the new benefits actually translated to something meaningful.

My guess is that the union members earn more than $400/yr in cash, and then they can spend it on whatever they want - education, doctors, whatever.

Benefits were not withheld from the union, they get to negotiate separately. They earned the right to negotiate. Most of the company is under at-will employment.

Non-union Apple employees didn't get to choose those "additional" benefits and didn't have a choice of taking the cash value or bargaining for something else.

Apple has a choice here - they can offer the benefits freely or withhold them to try to extract something else from a negotiation. If offered freely the union could still reject them, and try to extract something else instead at the next negotiation. If the union did that it would at least raise the question of whether the money spent on those benefits might have more utility providing something else for the workforce.

A union will almost always eschew a contingent, quirky perk like 'Coursera credit' in favor of a smaller increase in take home pay, anyway.

Rightfully so. My company provides a whole list of “benefits” nobody ever uses. I much prefer cash.

To be fair, when benefits meet your goals, it could be very good deal. For example 401k matching is the same cash in your pocket, but without tax. Good health care plan, especially when you have family is worth much more than cash and also doesn't add to tax base. In some states you pay more than half off what you make in taxes, so making something a benefit is a convenient way of legally saving on said tax

I sincerely doubt anyone whose primary income is working as a retail employee is getting taxed anywhere near a 50% marginal tax rate, even if you include city/county/state taxes.

410k and health care are fine. I am talking about stuff like legal advice or health hotline. They are promoted as benefit but usually useless once you try to use them.

It sounds more to me like they're offering college credit and improved healthcare plans; both of which are expensive and something you'd want. The coursera thing isn't the main benefit at all

> The company told retail and corporate staff this week that it will increase benefits for outside educational classes and health care, according to people familiar with the matter. Workers will get more funds to pursue coursework, and employees in some states will be able to access new health plan benefits,

If you read the article they are offering better healthcare options in a few states (not the one where the upcoming union vote is) and to pay for their tuition reimbursement in advance rather than as a reimbursement. The Coursera thing is in fact the main new/universal benefit.

Does this mean those employees getting the online credits for Coursera can do the course of their choice during work time?

This is standard contract law. With a contract in place, companies are required to adhere to the language of the contract, any any change needs to be negotiated (or the contract needs to expire).

Adding a benefit or removing it without going through a contract causes all kinds of legal liabilities (employees may assume it as a permanent perk). Union leadership also don't typically want perks granted that they didn't negotiate for (why would people "choose" to pay for a union otherwise).

Except there's no contract in place yet, and there's absolutely nothing preventing them from being good people. Except, of course, the vicious demands of capitalism.

Unions are not quite the great deal. They don't add to the value of the company, and their only goal is to redistribute value from company to workers. Which is not a bad deal when all runs smoothly, but come financial stress and unionized companies go under first. Then there's also the question of fairness. Unions are not motivated by merit employee brings, so the leeches end up eating lunch of workers who are productive, causing stagnation. All in all, this is not an ideal arrangement. If I had an option to join a union, I wouldn't

This is the problem with the adversarial union system.

You can call it a failure of the vicious demands of capitalism, but after decades of watching independent adversary unions destroy whole industries that my family was involved in (aerospace, airlines and steel) - with zero-sum negotiations where one side must loose for the other to win - I've come to the conclusion that the only way to deal with it is to give in and deal with unions and only unions and only in the context of the law.

The unions know that - of course - which is why the Union in Australia is threatening to extend their strike if Apple asks it's local workers there to vote on a proposal, when only 1/4th of the workers are represented by the union.

> adversarial union system

Alternatively, you could frame the system as the "adversarial employer system" because Apple also chose to be adversarial. Apple could, in good faith, extend the additional benefits to the unionized employees or add their dollar-value worth to their paychecks, contingent on re-negotiating them the next cycle, but instead they choose to hold themselves directly to the minimums they negotiated this cycle and do nothing additional for those employees.

I think this is a pure anti-union move that Apple is marketing via "look, if you just trusted us, and not the evil unions, we could be giving you more!" Where, in reality, the important thing for a union to protect from is the cutting of benefits and lowering of working conditions in those times where it's normal to do so (downturns), because time has proven that those "austerity measures" are rarely reversed by a company when profits rise.

It's even worse than you describe. The store in question has voted to join the union but negotiations on the union contract have yet to begin. So there's not even a "last cycle" here.

A lot of people seem to be missing the fact that adversarial (or adversarial union system) is a term of art and a definition, not simply a talking point (No! It’s not the unions that are adversarial! It’s the evil company! The union is evil - because it’s adversarial!).

As far as companies, unions and good faith go - go read up on some of the less ideal aspects of the adversarial system. Beyond the strike breaking, and violence - It’s relatively common for the zero sum adversarial system to result in outcomes that corporations or unions are willing to literally destroy themselves (over the long run) to win a short term victory. For example, Charlie Bryan demanded to see the books of Eastern Airlines as part of a negotiation, determined that Eastern could not survive without concessions from the unions, and instead chose to maximize their claims and call a strike figuring it was worth getting more for employees, even if it meant the inevitable death of eastern airlines.

You can’t take an adversarial position to your employer, such as joining a union, and then expect your employer to treat you just like a man who isn’t in a union.

There are two sides to any relationship. An employer can choose to begin their relationship with me in a non-adversarial way, accepting that I and my colleagues want to be represented by a union of the group of us and still be decent and try to reward us for the hard work we do, or they can fight it tooth and nail, constantly stick to the "letter of the law" like Apple here (which is just trying to make union and non-union employees feel disconnected from each other and shed negative light on the union), etc. That's why unions also use these tactics to fight back against that (the old "work to rule" or whatever you want to call it).

I expect my employer to treat me as an individual and as a member of a greater collective of humans. Besides, my employer isn't a faceless corporation, it's the management in the chain from my boss up through the CEO, all also humans. Instead, most employers choose to use what power they have over me to make my life harder and make my working time shittier for no reason. Unions didn't just pop out because people felt too comfortable and well-treated at their jobs.

Why joining an union is considered adversarial ? The behaviour of the union can be adversarial but an union is fundamentally just an association of employees.

If an employer considers taking measures to understand and protect your rights to be adverserial, then they're probably screwing you over. A decent employer has nothing to fear from a union. It's like how if someone won't let you read over a contract with your lawyer before signing it, that's a giant red flag that the contract is against your interests.

Perhaps you wouldn't mind sharing examples of these mythical workers who joined a union despite the benevolence of their employer? I suppose those mean heartless laborers left the poor helpless capitalist with no other options.

Worth noting ... there are non-adversarial union systems, cooperatives, worker-councils and even sectorial tripartitism outside of the US legal system way to structure a union.

How long do you think it takes to go to the union and say "do you want free stuff?" and they say "yes". One contract doesn't forbid another.

Every company I know of with unionized, and non-unionized employees, have different perks etc for each group.

Same tactic Starbuck's is using - insist that the store needs to negotiate via the union, while simultaneously refusing to engage with the union.

The company I work for has over 150k unionized employees and about 50k white collar workers. Including a massive amount of retail employees. The union negotiates on behalf of their employees this is nothing new. Not sure what Starbucks is doing but Apple is going to negotiate with them.

No idea why this is getting downvoted; its simply true.... and it's totally within Apple's right to do so.

It isn't within Starbucks or Apple's rights to refuse to engage with the union.

With the union having won an NLRB election, the employer is required by law to bargain with the union in good faith.

https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-law/ba...

is Apple refusing to bargain or engage with the union?

Not to my knowledge, but that wasn't my point.

> while simultaneously refusing to engage with the union.

It seems like that was your point

I was responding to these two statements:

> Same tactic Starbuck's is using - insist that the store needs to negotiate via the union, while simultaneously refusing to engage with the union.

> and it's totally within Apple's right to do so.

Welcome to collective bargaining.

> insist that the store needs to negotiate via the union, while simultaneously refusing to engage with the union

American unions are adversarial to management. I don’t see why one has an obligation to negotiate with an adversary.

American management is adversarial to unions.

American management is adversarial to workers.

> American management is adversarial to unions

Yes, adversarial relationships have this symmetry.

> American management is adversarial to workers

Strongly disagree. Between tech and finance we have proven models for gains sharing that doesn't require workers and managers be at each others' throats. Many European models similarly have workers aligned with the company's long-term goals and vice versa without a militant union butting heads with sociopathic management. (They're symbiotic.) Meanwhile, American ports are embarrassingly inefficient because the port unions don't want to modernize.

These models need refinement. But for many industries, they seem better than inserting a middleman whose existence is reliant on an adversarial relationship between employee and employer.

> Many European models

It might depend on the exact country you are thinking about, but I’d assume these models stand on top of solid labor laws and employer obligations that don’t need bargaining in the first place.

You don’t need an union if you have a government willing to pass laws benefiting all workers. You’ll see unions where these laws grossly mismatch the extent protections and adjustments are needed (in particular in profession where the employer is the gov itself, teachers for instance…)

> Between tech and finance we have proven models for gains sharing that doesn't require workers and managers be at each others' throats.

What models are those, and how are they less adversarial than union membership? Compensation negotiations are inherently adverserial, getting fair representation for workers doesn't make them any more so.

> how are they less adversarial than union membership? Compensation negotiations are inherently adverserial

Employees as stockholders, employees having a Board seat (I still think ESOP plans should be required to have this). Profit shares. Yes, pay in the present is adversarial. But there are synergies and opportunities for productivity enhancement modern companies and workers can use to align interests that an industrial line worker could not. (A line worker couldn’t boost the company’s bottom line the way an Apple retail employee can. Counterfactual: an Apple retail employee is less able to jump ship and turbo power a competitor the way tech and finance workers can.)

> Employees as stockholders

I don't think owning 0.000001% of your employer's company is particularly meaningful.

> employees having a Board seat

That's... vanishingly rare, no?

> Profit shares

Unusual outside of small businesses, and even then...

I agree with the GP that employers are generally adversarial toward workers.

You raise a good point, not every industry has a history of capitalists intentionally harming and killing workers!

I don't know what you mean by "obligation," but I assure you employers have a legal duty to negotiate in good faith with their employees' representative. See 29 U.S. Code § 158 (a)(5) - It shall be an unfair labor practice for an employer...to refuse to bargain collectively with the representatives of his employees, subject to the provisions of section 159(a) of this title.

> employers have a legal duty to negotiate in good faith with their employees' representative

Sure thing. But that typically takes place in scheduled sessions. Casting Starbucks as refusing to engage when they’re adding it to the next meeting’s agenda is what I’m pushing back against.

> I don’t see why one has an obligation to negotiate with an adversary.

But that the situation when negotiation is most needed. I agree that the unions are under no obligation to negotiate with management, its just a good idea.

The heirs who own the majority of Apple stock - the idle class which generation to generation does not work, but which expropriates surplus labor time from workers - they already know they are in an adversarial relationship with the workers. The new thing is the workers who do all the work and create all the wealth have woken up to the fact that they are dealing with an "adversary" as you call it.

I find it so funny hearing HN people on here trotting out all the old tired anti-union BS. I think we all know the meta-game that's going on here. Unions provide an opportunity for employees to use their collective leverage to get better overall conditions (and especially to get real working condition improvements, not a meaningless $400 coursera gift card that practically no one will use).

However, Apple can't let that happen, because if the unions provide real benefit to the employees, then more people will join unions driving up the costs for Apple, and improving the leverage of the union. So it's much better for Apple's bottom line to run a continual PR campaign against unions - putting out articles in the press about "Everyone EXCEPT union workers get X benefit". Especially since it's so easy - people are tripping over themselves on here to shout about how this was always the obvious result and the union workers should know they're going to get screwed.

The important thing is for union workers to keep their eye on the prize - Apple is fighting unions for a reason, and that reason isn't because they're looking out for workers best interests, they're looking out for the shareholders. Don't be distracted by a bullshit $400 coursera subscription.

I think that this tradeoff is empowering to unionized workers Kinda. It forces them to design their own preferred workplace conditions and perks. Some perks, like a free company jacket, are chosen by the employer to make you feel loyal to the company. Perhaps you'd like the value of that jacket in cash or paid time off or better funding for retirement? Or maybe you want to extend company cafeteria access to your family?

The problem is that collective bargaining happens every X years but changes to regular employee perks and HR benefits can happen as inspiration strikes (management). They can also be withdrawn, as when a division underperforms despite the workers all doing their jobs well.

Unions need to be honest that - like any negotiation - they might "win" something but lose other things.

It's also possible Apple never would have offered any new perks if they didn't feel pressure of a union

As far as I can tell, none of the unions were asking for more educational benefits.

That doesn't matter. With the recent wave of unionization, companies are going to be playing hardball with union busting tactics. The play of "figure out some small perk that sounds good and is news-worthy, then give it to all the non-unionized stores" is a solid one.

It's not "union busting" to negotiate with the union on new benefits that you'd otherwise give to employees. That's how the process works.

Look up the Wright Line test. A withholding to unionized workers was seen as disciplinary against unions unless the employer could demonstrate otherwise

I literally described how strategically offering a new benefit could be used to discourage unionization. I don't know how much more clear it could be that if the motivation behind the new benefit was manipulating perception of the union, that's union busting.

I wouldn't see those as educational benefits. To me it means you are able to do online courses worth USD 400 in your private time.

I don't know the hourly salary of Apple employees, but let's assume for the sake of the argument it's 50 USD/hr after taxes. And let's assume a Coursera course costing 400 USD will require 20 hours to be completed. If you do such a course during your private time you are giving Apple 12h (20 - 400/50) of your time for free for educating yourself for the company.

That being said, I personally value my free time outside of work 1.5x higher than work time. It helps me evaluating if something is worth my personal time. Means if the company offers to pay for training I am happy to do so during work time, and if I think the training can be beneficial for me in general I am also willing to contribute some PTO time in return as long as the partial (the time the company expects me to do outside work) costs of the course are bigher than 1.5x my hourly salary multiplied by the number of hours I need to spend on this.

I hope it's somehow clear what I am trying to say. Native German speaker here.

Because cash is king. Apple just found a benefit that costs them less and offered that instead.

Apple pays pretty well, this doesn't seem unreasonable to me that they would have offered these perks regardless

Starbucks did the same tactic, as did Amazon. This is a very old technique; 1880s labor war era. It was sanctioned by the court in 1948 in Shell Oil Co., Inc., 77 N.L.R.B. 1306 (N.L.R.B-BD 1948).

Maybe Apple specifically didn't do it this specific time, but there's a long rich history of exactly this happening going back 140 years. You see it in unionizing literature as a predictable and expected response.

We don’t know if they’ve lost anything, though.

The union may ask for the extra perks next time they negotiate. until then they get what they previously agreed to.

No offense, but your “view” on labor law sounds untrained at best and dangerous at worse. Please stick to what you know.

Why is he wrong?

Labor laws are complex. No trained lawyer would make a comment saying something is “literally illegal” based on some article posted on an online forum. This should be a red flag on this opinion.

That being said, companies do this all the time, at least in my experience. I’ve worked at multiple companies that employee union and non-union employees. Unionized workers have a contract, which is one of the things you’re accepting when you unionize. Companies can offer new benefits, but I think most assessments aren’t going to see this as “literally illegal”. Some of the benefit differences I’ve seen firsthand is the amount of PTO, sick leave, and education benefits. I’m not a lawyer in the least, and Apple may be breaking the law in some other way, but this seems like a normal practice based solely on the number of companies that employ it.

They also do wage theft all the time, unpaid overtime, ignore breaks required by law, withhold tips... Employer offenses against employees is rampant.

As far as why this might be illegal, here's some background https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/starbucks-n...

I think the first two paragraphs of that article sums it up pretty well.

Keep reading, they really don't

I’m not spouting legal advice. So yeah, I will.

Can you cite a source for why this is illegal?

I suspect they are getting confused with the NLRA Section 8(a)(1), which among other things prohibits employers from:

> Withhold changes in wages or benefits during a union organizing campaign that would have been made had the union not been on the scene, unless you make clear to employees that the change will occur whether or not they select the union, and that your sole purpose in postponing the change is to avoid any appearance of trying to influence the outcome of the election.

However, this is only relevant during the organizing campaign. Not after, as is the case here.

> However, this is only relevant during the organizing campaign. Not after, as is the case here.

Except there are unionizing efforts going on in a lot of their stores. So this is illegal for any of the stores that are currently in the progress of it, but have not yet committed to it.

It would be illegal for them to withhold those benefits in those stores that have an active union campaign, but that's not what they are doing.

I'm fairly confident in this (I was a union organizer who has gone through an NLRB election), but do you have any precedent suggesting otherwise?

> So this is illegal for any of the stores that are currently in the progress of it, but have not yet committed to it.

The article says only the store that is unionized isn't getting the benefit. What am I missing here?

It’s the threat that if you unionize you won’t get these benefits.

Everything I see in that document says employers can NOT withhold benefits for employees in the process of organizing a union. I don't see anything about withholding benefits for employees already in a union.

My understanding is that Apple has many stores starting the process of unionizing, but only the store that already has been unionized are the benefits been withheld. Apple seems to be compliant to the law you shared.

Do you mind quoting which sentence?

And you don't think Apple has labor lawyers advising them differently? Are you a labor lawyer yourself, or are you just making your conclusion based solely on a summary of the law (which might not even apply to this particular situation) on a website, without access to case law?

I'm saying it because the NLRB has literally not been enforcing any of the labor laws. Of course Apple doesn't care. The penalties of non-compliance are also negligible.

No one is taking legal advice from a damned comment thread.

You don't know that. Please stop.

Dude just because you didn’t go to school doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to have legal opinions in a public forum.

This is what happens with a union. They voted for a floor and it came with a ceiling. Nobody experienced with unions should be at all surprised, but often folks who vote to unionize are not actually experienced with being in a union.

This is not at all to say that this is worse, it may be better at least for some people. But this is completely standard with unionization, there's nothing especially sinister here.

nb, I do not like Apple and don't consider this a defense of their business.

True. Many of us work in a similar unionized workforce called Agile. It makes sure people are working at a certain level, bringing otherwise would-be poor performers up to a certain average, but also stunting high performers.

Don't expect anything beyond a single letter of a collective bargaining agreement. It's pretty simple.

Seems reasonable. Either Apple controls the employee relationship or you negotiate the terms under a contract.

If the employees wanted Apple to deal directly with them, they would not have unionized.

They unionized.

Now there is an intermediary between them and the company.

This works both ways. They are now bound to work with their union to address any grievances, and the company is likewise bound.

So they are getting exactly what they wanted by unionizing, but likely few if any of them have had any direct experience with what having a union means.

Explain? My understanding is it takes a majority of employees voting to form a union. Is there some process by which a minority can force a union on the majority?

When employees "vote" it may not be by secret ballot. It may be by a method such as card check whereby people know who's voting which way. There is a long history of humans using intimidation to get their way, and without a secret ballot, that becomes a thing.

Beyond that, people have a tendency to vote "yes" on things when they don't know about those things. There's always a fight on referendums on the language to be on the side of the "yes", because "yes" wins most of the time.

> There is a long history of humans using intimidation to get their way

Indeed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_th...

Specific example of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everett_massacre

Those both sound like situations where the majority has chosen something. Bias towards "yes" sure, but people also have a pretty strong bias towards NO CHANGE - unless things are bad.

I believe the general dislike of secret ballots among pro-union people has to do with the voting process being controlled by the companies. The accusation being that when the company controls the process, they are interfering in the result. Given the choice between coworker interference or employer interference... I'll pick coworker any day, they've got a lot less on me than my employer. If the vote could be truly independent and secret, sure... but burden of proof is high

Is that true in the US? I know that in Germany there are workplaces where you have a choice if you want to join the union or not.

The union systems in the US and Europe are vastly different

In the US you can only have one Union per workplace and job classification. Employer must treat the union and non-union workers the same. In most States employees have the right to not join the Union, but they are still obligated to pay partial fees to the union.

For example, they cannot pay non-union workers a higher rate wage then the union worker.

If only that store had some kind of, I don't know, process for labor making collective bargaining demands to establish some perks and benefits they could use.

Well yeah, as the.workers at that store are now an adversarial party.

Why? The store literally fought to have the ability to negotiate these kinds of changes. This is working exactly the way they intended. Now they have the option of accepting these benefits or exchanging them out for other benefits or pay raises, if that's what they want instead.

The goal of the union is to improve wages, benefits and working conditions. If Apple addresses those concerns to the extent that union membership is a worse deal, then the union has won.

> The reason given was that the Towson store needs to negotiate benefits with Apple via the collective bargaining arrangement that comes with a union. The approach isn’t unique to Apple.

In other words, they are withholding improvements to the job from the first workers who unionized. This gives them something to trade in bargaining, but perhaps just as importantly signals to other workers that they will play hardball with anyone who demands a seat at the table.

You don't get to have your cake and eat it too.

Apple is willing to provide these Employee Perks to everyone, but the Union will still insist on getting something out of their collective bargaining agreement. Therefore this just became the something. It's that simple.

Unions are not always automatically a good thing folks. For every good union story out there, there are an equal amount of bad union stories. As a union member, you give up your rights to negotiate things directly with your employer, which include receiving new perks. Now your union has to do the negotiating, and you better hope they get what you want out of it.

I’ve never been able to negotiate a damn thing with my employer. There’s no such thing as individual negotiation except on the day you get an offer letter, and that’s if you’re lucky enough to be an in-demand professional worker.

This is retail we are talking about here. Do any of you remember what it’s like to work hourly jobs? I’ll say it one more time: there’s no such thing as negotiation.

“For every good union story out there there are an equal amount of bad stories” seems like a false equivalency. All I see is union members on average making better compensation than non-union employees. The numbers do not lie. [1]

Apple knew this news story will read exactly like it’s reading when it took the actions it took. Giving non-union employees something visible like this is a well-known union busting tactic. They want people thinking of unionizing to feel bad for not getting some relatively worthless perks.

Meanwhile, Apple’s unionized store will be able negotiate far better benefits than non-unionized stores, the kinds of “perks” that matter like better hourly pay and healthcare, not some one-time benefit that’s arguably just a tool for the job.

The pitch against unions in America works just the same as the concept of “temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”

“You don’t want all this scary union bureaucracy because you’re so above average that the union’s contract is going to hold you back.”

It’s a lie.

[1] [PDF] nonunion employees make 83% of the salary that union employees make: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/union2.pdf

Non-union employees also make more when in proximity to unions. See: states without "right-to-work" laws.

"“Right-to-Work” States Still Have Lower Wages" https://www.epi.org/publication/right-to-work-states-have-lo...

Correct, because right to work is anti-union anti-worker and bad policy. I'm really confused on what you're trying to say.

> nonunion employees make 83% of the salary that union employees make

This is usually mentioned as though unions cause higher salary, but it could be bias causing correlation. I did some quick googling and I didn’t find anything that clearly shows causation.

Of course assuming causation is probably the safe average move if considering joining a union, although one’s specific circumstances likely matters most in any decision.

So, for real, you’re going to come here and suggest the data I provided might be subject to correlation bias and then immediately say that you couldn’t find any evidence when you searched for it? What’s the value in that?

I will say, the link I provided does say that unions are more prominent in certain industries, but to me that actually isn’t that much of a bias without further data.

What that shows me is that working in an industry with unionization gets you paid more, on average.

That’s not true. Unions negotiate minimums, using collective power to balance the employer’s power over employees.

Individual employees are free to negotiate individually beyond that. Many do just that, but of course it’s less likely to succeed since individuals don’t have the ability to threaten industrial action.

Given that the union will insist on gaining something during collective bargaining negotiations - completely regardless of whatever personal concessions an employer has made during the fiscal year - an employer has zero incentive to just give away anything for free to a unioned employee.

That's the deal you made when you joined a union. If you did not understand that deal, then I'm not sure what to say. Being in a union isn't some automatic path to employment nirvana or something...

In fact, there could even be a doorway to a lawsuit against the employer for treating a specific employee differently than all the other unionized employees. Unions make things... difficult, despite whatever nostalgic views some may carry towards them.

Unions are democratic organisations. If they’re insisting on gaining something, then a majority of the members are insisting on it.

Employers are already not giving anything for free to employees. They do it when forced, either by market forces or the threat of organised workers.

> Unions are democratic organisations. If they’re insisting on gaining something, then a majority of the members are insisting on it.

This is not how unions operate in reality. But regardless, you either get something because your employer thinks it will make your happier, or you get something because your union insists on it.

Why would you get special treatment just because you're in a union? Your union has to negotiate and accept things on your behalf... not you. You lost that right when you joined the union.

I find my employer quite generous when times are good, even when they don't need to be, less so when things are tight.

Maybe you should work for better companies?

LOL. This is not how "democracies" work. They are co-opted by the same mechanics of power just like any other governance structure.

The bureaucracy exists to serve the bureaucracy (a play on the infamous Oscar Wilde quote).

It's inescapable and unavoidable for any sufficiently long-lived bureaucracy. By the time you have full-time, professional union employees running things, the disconnect between what actual workers need/want grows uncontrollably.

I've never heard of an individual union member negotiating a higher individual wage or benefits than what's negotiated by the union. My cursory google search results say the same. Do you have examples of this?

I'll give you a widespread example: actors in film who are members of SAG-AFTRA.

Is there any industrial union in the US that works the way that the screen actors guild does?

Probably not but neither the article nor comment are about industrial unions? Many of the tech sector unions lack the alleged rigidity of industrial CBAs.

The union in question is for retail employees, not tech employees (even though they sell tech products). They are represented by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, an industrial union.

The name of the union organizing workers does not imply much about the contract negotiated on behalf of a bargaining unit. The United Steelworkers have organized google IT subcontractors. (That said I wouldn't expect a ton of compensation flexibility in retail CBAs, but I'm not an expert there either.)

It's extremely common. I'm afraid I don't have time to dig one up, but if you click around here for a while you'll find many contracts in manufacturing that specify minimums per job title.

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/olms/cba

I really doubt this anecdote.

The entire point of being in a union is for collective bargaining power. What incentive would an employer have to bargain with individuals directly, only to then get raked over the coals by the union for everyone else too?

Treating you special is a liability for the employer when dealing with unions.

When you joined a union you stopped being an individual and you became part of the collective union. That's what you signed up for... and these are the consequences of that decision.

A citation?

>>That’s not true. Unions negotiate minimums, using collective power to balance the employer’s power over employees.

It is absolutely true in every union contract I have negotiated.

It's possible this varies with country. I presume many on HN assume the US, I know less about the labour practices there.

> Individual employees are free to negotiate individually beyond that.

That is typically false. You are bound by the collective bargaining agreement.

The employer is bound by the bargained minimum. They’re free to offer more, to one or many or all employees.

You are both slightly off.

It's entirely up to the parties bargaining how much discretion the employer has to adjust terms during the life of a collective bargaining agreement.

For pay specifically, it's not uncommon for the union to propose wage floors and allow some individualized bargaining. It's also not uncommon to specify a full wage schedule for the sake of transparency.

The workers get to decide what makes sense for them. Sometimes they decide on different systems for different career tracks.

Sure, but I’ve yet to see anything but a floor in bargaining agreements.

You should take a look at teacher pay schedules - they are generally very prescriptive beyond just a floor in my experience.

> For every good union story out there, there are an equal amount of bad union stories

Do you have empirical evidence for this claim ?

Because when you look back over time many fundamental workers rights came from union involvement.

>>Do you have empirical evidence for this claim ?

Do you have empirical evidence that this is not true?

Yes, they just presented that evidence to you:

> Because when you look back over time many fundamental workers rights came from union involvement.

I don't think we're in any danger now, in 2022 of returning to 18 hour work days and acceptable workplace deaths.

Yes, unions helped usher in a new age of employee rights, and we are all thankful for them. However, in the absence of anything real to fight for, unions in the modern day have increasingly become more of a nuisance than a necessity - for both the employee and employer side.

> in 2022 of returning to 18 hour work days and acceptable workplace deaths

This is exactly what is happening in the gig economy.

Workers that are not classified as workers and have no representation being taken advantage of by companies like Uber etc.

This is a crazy take on a volunteer, intended-to-be-part-time-side-hussle-money "gigs".

The "Gig Economy" is a fable for the most part. Some small minority of people have made it a full time job, sure, but that is not the norm, not even close.

No one is being taken advantage of by Uber, etc. You choose to accept a trip or not... it's that simple.

> The "Gig Economy" is a fable for the most part. Some small minority of people have made it a full time job, sure, but that is not the norm, not even close.

This is a fallacy. It doesn't matter if it were the norm or not. If it can happen at all, the original claim stands. On top of that, it can expand and in fact is.

> No one is being taken advantage of by Uber, etc. You choose to accept a trip or not... it's that simple.

This argument is completely invalid. Any worker can choose to accept a job or not; therefore no worker can ever be taken advantage of? Absurd.

> I don't think we're in any danger now, in 2022 of returning to 18 hour work days and acceptable workplace deaths.

Really? Workplace deaths seem absolutely acceptable, as far as I can tell: https://www.denverpost.com/2017/03/23/in-a-case-of-a-trucker...

> For every good union story out there, there are an equal amount of bad union stories.

There's both, for sure, but I don't know about "equal".

Except in a cardinality sense, where you can get as many as you want if you keep looking indefinitely.

In my country only unions get a seat at the table and whatever they negotiate applies to everyone.

Pro: This makes certain that corporations can't steamroll Hassan the semi literate immigrant with a contract done by business school suits.

Con: Kills Union membership because there's no perk to being in one.

Does the unionized store have a contract with apple already? If so, it would seem like until the contract is up, apple should continue operating under the terms of that contract with respect to the unionized store.

They are currently bargaining a first contract.

so it makes sense they are keeping it for negotiations then.

I suppose you could say it "makes sense" if you confine your field of view to one round of bargaining at one employer who is interested in minimizing short-term labor costs. But does it even make sense for Apple managers/investors on a longer time horizon? Is it part of an approach that's good for the wider world?

For better or worse we don't globally optimize during an adversarial two party negotiation. We seek a local equilibrium. It's hard to fault apple for this since any other model would ultimately require a reorganized society to work on a long term basis. Apple can't do that unilaterally.

And as for the idea of freely giving concessions to unions to avoid bad news cycles: it's been tried and the results are not always fiscally ideal.

It's more likely they will give a better deal overall to the unionized store but they will spin the hell out of it to the non unionized stores that the extra $1k they earn isnt really worth it because they dont get a fossball table, free coffee and bonuses that could be up to $1k.

A company I worked for used these kinds of tactics to try and convert contractors into perm. They talked as if the perks were 3-10x as valuable as they actually were.

Apple will also probably also try to keep the wages quiet but publicize the perks (or lack thereof) pour decourager les autres.

Once a union matures into its own thing, independent of the original idealistic/altruistic founding group of employees, giving things to members that the union didn't "win" for them becomes a big problem in their eyes.

I am in SEIU (and also AFT and IWW, but that is a whole other deal) and this is not my experience at all. The union doesn't have any issues with management providing benefits that were not a part of the contract negotiations, hell it happened all the time during the pandemic and the union was fully on board. SEIU is about as mature as a union gets and in my experience, across three rather established unions, the Union is the people that run it, which is my case has been my fellow employees.

That's good to hear. My experience with trade unions has been the opposite. They have full-time people who run it, many of whom haven't plied the trade in many years (and often only a token amount, if at all), and if they feel left out of any aspect of company<->worker transactions they become very prickly.

The topic of unions on here is one of the funniest I’ve seen.

So many posters will breathlessly run into the comments to loudly declare that “Unions are bad!!” instantly upon seeing the word. It’s as if too many pro or neutral opinions about unions get posted in row, a pesky Union will be summoned and materialize like Beetlejuice.

It's unfortunate that those who are against unions don't realize that they may, in some cases, be against the current state of a given union, and that they, if they belong to a given union, can change the state of it.

I was once in a union local of several thousand people that was directed by the fewer than 20 who showed up to the meetings. I pushed for a campaign of greater publication of upcoming meetings and in a few short months, the meetings filled a decent portion of a 500-person room. The changes that came about prove that the democracy under which many of these unions operate can lead to changes that cause them to better represent their collective body of workers.

You can change your union, if you want to, and that's a beautiful thing. Your union shouldn't have a predictable political slant (which is what a lot of anti-union normal people dislike). It should represent the collective views of its whole body -- which was the whole point of unions to begin with: to represent its whole body.

Ironically, I don't see any of those takes, but lots of people like yourself immediately running around claiming there are people posting in bad faith about unions.

That’s interesting, I don’t see another instance of “bad faith” on this page. Maybe it’s because I’m on mobile and my browser sucks.

I have seen comments like “Welcome to collective bargaining”, a few (now-downvoted) posts like “They’re no longer Apple employees”, “Unions are good for lazy employees”, and quite a few posters offering their legal perspectives that essentially boil down to “Apple is right to make this choice”. The latter is more mundane than “Unions are bad”, but “Actions against union members are okay” is an opinion, not a neutral statement of fact.

This community is filled with American techbro libertarians, what can you really expect?

It seemed to be decreasing in concentration in the past few years but this thread was rather impressive

That's how collective bargaining works: you only get what your union bargains for.

Anything else? Too bad.

Did you not get the memo as to what unionization means and how it works?

I don't understand Apple's take here. Embrace the unions so that you can shape them. Happy workers are more productive workers. Hippie Steve would be pro-union me thinks.

> Hippie Steve would be pro-union me thinks.

It is always weird when someone who has no connection to an individual responds and attempts to state how that person things/feels on an issue.

Question for you:

If Steve Jobs ran the company, and in your view he was "pro-union" why isn't it already unionized?

Steve often got what he wanted (he was DRIVEN).. So if unionization was something he wanted, one would think he would have done it?

He most certainly wouldn't:

https://www.wired.com/2007/02/steve-jobs-proud-to-be-nonunio...

> Hippie Steve would be pro-union me thinks.

Can you cite a reason for that? His words would seem to run counter to your thoughts: https://www.wired.com/2007/02/steve-jobs-proud-to-be-nonunio...

You know nothing about Steve Jobs lol

Read the story how he treated a lot of employees when Apple went public. There wasn’t much hippie in him. It took Wozniak to give stock to employees because Jobs refused.

Hippie Steve died once he became rich.