or the deadwood that gets protected because they belong to an union. Or unions being against remote work because that'd reduce employee control. Or union leadership just using their membership to laze around. Or union opposing projects they don't like. Or union harassing (including physically) managers. And to say nothing of railway union who apparently have a Mission to gridlock the country every few years (usually around the time someone in the government check the deficits of the railways)
Even if all of these were true (I would describe most of them as a mischaracterization at best), do you honestly think that outweighs everything that I described? The worst thing that people can say about unions is they are bureaucratic and inconvenient. The worst things people can say about, say, working conditions in many non-unionized American workplaces are far, far worse. People dying, unfairly losing their job (and healthcare, and home), working incredibly long hours, unable to see their kid, unable to get adequate sleep, etc etc etc. I happen to think there are values other than "workers producing profit for their employers as efficiently as possible at the expense of anything else"
> The worst thing that people can say about unions is they are bureaucratic and inconvenient.
I disagree. Unions can lead to the death of entire industries - I have seen it with my own eyes. Inefficiencies created by unions lead to jobs going to places where such unions do not exist. Personally, I do believe the workers need to be protected, but if you protect workers then you also need to protect industries, and this opens a gigantic can of worms as it runs counter to globalization and free trade.
Maybe we need to open a gigantic can of worms that “runs counter to globalization” if we’re talking about sending those jobs to countries with unethical working conditions.
There are many examples in the manufacturing industry, though unions aren't the only factor.
> Maybe we need to open a gigantic can of worms that “runs counter to globalization” if we’re talking about sending
those jobs to countries with unethical working conditions.
I couldn't agree more, the problem is there are powerful interests that will keep trying to sweep this issue under the rug.
Yes, so unions tend to kill countries where they're too strong. They tend to promote short-sighted action that save/retain existing jobs. This makes it harder for the economy to change when it is needed which in the long run leads to failed businesses, an uncompetitive work force and unemployment. Maybe unions is like democracy in that they totally suck, but the alternatives are worse. However, unions should definitely have their power checked.
I'd say that, yes, work laws are better in France than in the US, it's rather obvious, but I can't say that the unions in France are a net good.
Also something I forgot to yesterday: unions that prevents downsizing or restructuring efforts to tackle industry changes, ending by killing the companies in question. Or, when a falling factory is about to be bought, imposing such constraints that all deal fall trough.
You forget, with a union, the world's richest man might get richer every day at a slightly slower rate than he currently gets richer. That's the real horror!
At what level does wealth go from "normal wealth" to "oligarch wealth"? Like, where is that line?
Also, on what planet could Bezos be described as an oligarch? Not this one. Everyone on the left and the right hates him for various reasons. The previous president hated him. This president just told his workers to unionize. Senators are constantly portraying him as Satan incarnate.
He has no political power in Washington. They hate him.
I'm not sure why people hate unions exactly. Seems weird to have "freedom of assembly" but then hate those that practice it for better negotiating leverage.
This isn't about "freedom of assembly". I'm extremely pro freedom of assembly. "Unions = always good" is just as harmful as "Unions = always bad" as "Rich man evil" or "Rich man good".
Eh? I hate lots of people who I nonetheless want to have freedom of assembly. Like anti-vaxxers. I want them to be able to say antivax shit but I hate them. What exactly is weird about this?
The former glory was holding colonies by considerable violence. If unions are the ones who stopped it, good. Through I strongly doubt unions had anything to do with that.
Ah, classic selection bias blinders on. Sure, great benefits for those who have jobs. What about for the people who can't get employed due to the conditions on labor? The young, poor, already jobless? Not so much concern for them, you got yours.
unlike the US, where working conditions for the poor are fantastic?
Don't get me wrong, France (and the EU) has its share of problems. But "better protections for their workers" is not one of them. EU countries decided to use a small portion of their enormous wealth building a safety net and decent worker protections. The US does this to a much lesser degree, preferring instead to center corporate profits and the wealthy.
This part. People point to things like wealth inequality but not point to median incomes or employment rates, or marriage rates or birth rates. its extreme selection bias. If france was a country its median income with be comparable with alabama.
This is not a particularly useful statistic unless you include the varying levels of public services.
I just did a similar analysis for a job in the US vs one in Canada. The actual salary in the US was much higher, but including healthcare expenses closed a lot of the gap. In some cases (e.g., chronic illness or young kids), the lower Canadian salary was a better "deal" overall.
Friend of mine moved to France from California. He said raising a kid in is way cheaper and less stressful in France.
Me I'm fully aware that I'm paying whats amounts to $900/month protection money in the form of health insurance. Protection money because really the co-payes I have to pay are close cost of actually providing medical goods and services.
I'm not sure how COVID has effected it, but for the past years France has had a higher prime age labor force participation rate then the US, so it doesn't seem to be causing that issue.
I am not sure the American underclass (a large part of Trump’s support base) is faring much better. Even with larger unemployment, inequalities are still not as bad as in the US. Several countries have similar problems, whether it takes the form of 10% unemployment or working-class poor.
The horrors of unions to me are represented perfectly in teachers unions, which repeatedly protect sexual predators and incompetent teachers [1] [2]. They serve their members to the detriment of everyone else, including the children they claim to care about (while enabling predators).
In fact, teachers are significantly more likely to be predators than even priests. [3] Thanks to unions who go to bat for them.
> unintended consequence is that it also facilitates exploitation of software developers by big corporations who from the perspective of FSF are just users as regular people.
Sure, but rms has nothing but pure comtempt for every big corporation and their approach to software. The only difference is the FSF doesn't have influence over big tech the way it does over hobbyists. This isn't a condemnation of the FSF, but of its marginal position. An alternative perspective is that the principles of the FSF are good, and should be enshrined in law and regulation, much like other freedoms are. We shouldn't make FOSS software less free, we should make big tech software more free.
I mean sure, if the "failed policies" are opposing US imperialism in Latin America, inviting a huge backlash of sanctions, several US-sponsored coups, etc.
What "working class" person owns investment property in NYC? They amount of capital required to do that is so enormous that the article calling them "working class" is deeply misleading. They certainly aren't working class in the way that most NYC tenants are.
I love it. Too poor to invest in property? Working class.
Have enough money to invest in property? No longer working class.
It’s attitudes like this that prevent the working class from participating in the generation of wealth through capital. As soon as they dip their toe in, they’re now “rich” and get the rug pulled from under them.
I mean, the ownership of property - particularly land - and the use of that property to derive one's income is exactly what differentiates the working class from the ownership class. Landlords are pretty unambiguously in the latter; rent-seeking is not work.
This seems like a great theoretical internet take and not applicable to the real world in the least.
So some 50 year old blue collar dude who saves just enough to buy a duplex and live in half of it, but can’t stop working or he’ll starve, has suddenly been propelled from the working class into the lazy, cigar-smoking, top hat twirling capital class?
If he wants to not be in that "lazy, cigar-smoking, top hat twirling capital class" (as you put it - because apparently hyperbole and gross misrepresentation of an argument counts as "discussion" on Hacker News nowadays), he is welcome to transition his ownership of that duplex into, say, a housing cooperative consisting of himself and the other half of that duplex (or - more likely - a cooperative for the land and the duplex's exterior, and retain ownership of his own unit while putting the other unit up for sale - effectively forming a COA, but cooperatively owned).
Don't put the hyperbole on me. I'm just repeating what I hear from the far left. They love to pain landlords as some evil 1%ers when in fact many are middle income people trying to get by.
And great, start a cooperative. But for everyone else who wants to rent a place, there are landlords.
A landlord's wealth derives from being a middleman between the tenants and the property, not from the landlord's own labor. That wealth is quite literally the whole point of being a landlord in the first place; if the income from rent didn't significantly exceed the value of the labor your FIL performs as "maintenance", then why would he bother with dealing with all the headaches of property ownership if he could instead just be an employee of the tenants themselves (said tenants forming e.g. a housing cooperative)?
That is: there's nothing a landlord does that the tenants couldn't do themselves (whether directly or by hiring someone to do it on their behalf). It is therefore not labor alone that defines the relationship between a landlord and one's tenants. Your FIL may be "the hardest working person [you] know", but he's still a middleman in the ownership class.
Sure the landlord is doing something I can’t, as a tenant, can’t do myself - if all I have is an income of a few thousand a month and I need housing, the landlord is providing me housing I couldn’t otherwise afford.
You could pool your money with other people needing housing and collectively obtain that housing, with all y'all having equal ownership of it. This is known as a "housing cooperative" - kind of like if you rented from a corporation, but one in which you and your fellow tenants (and nobody else) are all equal shareholders.
A housing cooperative is about as economically efficient as it gets; you and your tenants would only need to pay the bare minimum to keep up with loan payments (and possibly, as I've proposed elsewhere in this thread and others, a land value tax) and maintenance, with no middlemen taking any cut out of your rent.
If I'm some early 20's person just starting out, no money to my name, I need a cheap place to rent. I don't want to own or in fact, I probably can't own.
And it's not just early 20's people. I moved to a new city for 1 year with the intent of returning. I don't want to buy anything, I want to rent.
Landlord's are providing me a service in that case - housing.
> If I'm some early 20's person just starting out, no money to my name, I need a cheap place to rent. I don't want to own or in fact, I probably can't own.
Which is exactly why it's handy to be able to pool resources with other people looking to do the same thing, thus spreading the debt (if there is any) - and the risks thereof - across multiple parties. Think of it less like a real estate purchase and more like a startup, because that's what it is.
> I moved to a new city for 1 year with the intent of returning.
In which case a housing cooperative would've served your needs just fine. Again, less like owning a home outright, and more like owning a share in a company (because, well, you would own a share in a company). And when you're done with it you can sell that share.
But I don't want to buy and sell into a cooperative. I can't pool my money, I have none beyond my paycheck. I want to rent a place. I need landlords for that.
I've heard stories about cooperatives in NYC and the bureaucracy can be a negative. It sounds like an HOA or condo board.
What kind of housing someone can afford is a political question. Our current answer to it is that this should be resolved through market mechanisms, which creates high prices alongside scarcity
Ain't even the market mechanisms themselves that drive the high prices; rather, it's what those market mechanisms track.
Transitioning from land prices to land rental values - i.e. gradually moving toward a 100% land value tax - would address both high prices and scarcity by taxing land consumption - and, accordingly, encouraging urban density in order to amortize that tax, thus alleviating scarcity and reducing residential expenses. Same market at play (a land value tax definitionally taxes the market value of land); vastly improved outcome.
If you're just starting out it doesn't matter if homes are $100k or $1M, you don't have money to purchase.
People act like renting is some sort of evil forced upon people, but don't realize there is a big market for renting. People don't always want to own their own housing.
There’s nothing wrong with renting, I support strong, high quality, inexpensive public housing. I don’t support private landlords and the commodification of housing.
Property management is work. Owning property is not. For small scale landlords, this is often the same person, and they may do a lot of property management.
I don't care about "enforcing contracts" as an abstract concept. If a contract is unjust, there is no reason it should be enforced. A contract that forces someone to pay $X a month or face homelessness during a huge economic crisis is not a just contract.
Cea Weaver, who is used as a foil and whose perspective is unfairly maligned in this article, is basically 100% correct. Landlordism should not exist. Housing is a human right and should not be an investment commodity.
> Emergency policies enacted in times of crisis are prone to becoming permanent, which some members of the #CancelRent movement say is the goal.
This is a good thing. The COVID crisis has exacerbated the huge inequalities in housing in the US, and now is a better time than ever to fix things.
So, if I own an apartment / house / room, I can't go and have a contract with another person willing to take on that contract and live in my place by the agreed rules beforehand?
I believe in a world in which housing is a public good and a human right, so that no one would have to rent from anyone else in order to have access to housing. In this world, housing would cease to be a profitable investment vehicle, and thus landlordism would no longer exist.
Could I "enter in a contract" to lease "land that I own" in a national park? No, because national parks are a public good that everyone shares in their ownership and right to access. Housing should be the same way.
That's a rather bold assertion -- can you cite any statistics or surveys?
In some limited sense, they may "choose" homelessness over poor shelter conditions or unaffordable housing, but that can hardly be considered a choice.
What is even wrong with the world you are describing? I would much rather live in a world of more flat compensation, where I don’t have to worry about negotiating a salary, where there are more rigid worker protections, etc. I don’t see myself as better or more deserving than my coworkers, I see us all as on the same team, with the same basic interests.
> I would much rather live in a world of more flat compensation, where I don’t have to worry about negotiating a salary, where there are more rigid worker protections, etc.
Thats fine and all but I don’t share your preference and so I’d appreciate it if you’d understand that I’m free to negotiate and don’t attempt to take that from me.
> I don’t see myself as better or more deserving than my coworkers,
I do think its better to earn your own wage rather than an average of all wages. After all I contribute my own productivity, I don’t contribute some average negotiated productivity.
> I see us all as on the same team, with the same basic interests.
> I’d appreciate it if you’d understand that I’m free to negotiate and don’t attempt to take that from me
No-one is trying to do that (at least, not at this stage, and any attempt to do so would be subject to at least a second vote). You are welcome to simply not join the union if you feel it doesn't represent your interests.
> I do think its better to earn your own wage rather than an average of all wages. After all I contribute my own productivity, I don’t contribute some average negotiated productivity.
Leaving aside the fact that is perfectly possible for a union to negotiate performance-based pay and/or bonuses, I would be interested to think what you think a fair productivity:pay ratio would be for a worker in an Amazon fulfillment centre. Currently, I understand employees are held to such high productivity targets as a matter of course that many of them are afraid to take bathroom breaks in case their productivity dips and they end up getting fired.
This seems to be a valid fear - I couldn't find anything for Alabama, but in Baltimore, Amazon fire around 10% of their workforce annually for failing to meet performance targets. I wasn't able to find any documentation of bonuses or higher pay for higher performance, only the 15.30 USD starting wage, but if anyone has evidence that compensation is higher for high performers, I'd be happy to see that.
> Do you share a bank account with them? Why not?
This question doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Why are you asking this?
> Leaving aside the fact that is perfectly possible for a union to negotiate performance-based pay and/or bonuses, I would be interested to think what you think a fair productivity:pay ratio would be for a worker in an Amazon fulfillment centre. Currently, I understand employees are held to such high productivity targets as a matter of course that many of them are afraid to take bathroom breaks in case their productivity dips and they end up getting fired.
You know I heard those stories before I went to amazon, and while I wasn’t happy with the work conditions, it certainly wasn’t like that. So I’m not saying the stories are false. But I’m not convinced they are representative either, they certainly weren’t representative of my experience.
I’ll answer your question with a question, how do you measure productivity? What percentage of productivity is contributed by labor, and what percentage by capital? We’re going to need this number if we are to answer your question anyway.
> This seems to be a valid fear - I couldn't find anything for Alabama, but in Baltimore, Amazon fire around 10% of their workforce annually for failing to meet performance targets.
That seems reasonable. I think Jack Welch had a similar policy.
> This question doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Why are you asking this?
Gp said he/she were on the same team and have the same interests. If one has the same interests why does one have separate bank accounts?
> I’ll answer your question with a question, how do you measure productivity? What percentage of productivity is contributed by labor, and what percentage by capital? We’re going to need this number if we are to answer your question anyway.
I personally don't really object to being paid the same as everyone who shares my job title and does substantially the same job as me, provided we're all making the same (and proportionate to hours worked). This was based on your statement that 'I do think its better to earn your own wage rather than an average of all wages. After all I contribute my own productivity, I don’t contribute some average negotiated productivity.'
> That seems reasonable. I think Jack Welch had a similar policy.
For a lot of people, that doesn't seem reasonable at all, but ultimately, you are entitled to your opinion. If you have first-hand experience working in a fulfillment centre and your opinion is that these stories aren't representative, then I will bow to your experience.
> You said you’re on the same team and have the same interests. If you have the same interests why do you have separate bank accounts?
Can we skip past the point where you try to get me to say something and move to the counterpoint you're trying to set up? The original statement was not me, actually, but in case it's one of the below, then I'm not arguing, but feel free to add what you need to make your point:
- if one person 'earns more' then they should have the right to 'spend more'
- if you want to spend your money differently to someone else then you don't have the same interests
- how I spend my money shouldn't be dictated by other people (with provisos around tax, etc.)
From my perspective though, the main point that I wanted to raise with you was the first one, that no-one is being forced to join, and no-one is losing any right to negotiate individually, so why shouldn't the people who want to unionise be allowed to do so?
> From my perspective though, the main point that I wanted to raise with you was the first one, that no-one is being forced to join, and no-one is losing any right to negotiate individually, so why shouldn't the people who want to unionise be allowed to do so?
Well I’m arguing that its not in some employees interest to unionize. I’m fine with people voluntarily agreeing to whatever, freedom of association and all. I just don’t like unions when they require people to join or hold a monopoly on labor.
You and your work are not an island. My productivity is not just my own, I am aided by mentors, supported by smart teammates, etc. I find your hyper individualist mindset very depressing and isolating. I think it would be foolish to claim that any success or talent of mine or my team is solely my own. I believe in social obligations, not just in the context of work, but in general. My goal is not to maximize my personal salary, but to live in a world that is more humane and more just and treats everyone, including myself, with dignity and respect.
> Do you share a bank account with them? Why not?
No, because I don’t have a pension, but many people do and I am fully in support of the concept.
> I find your hyper individualist mindset very depressing and isolating.
I’m not a hyper individualist, a lot of this seems to be interpretation you’re bringing.
> I think it would be foolish to claim that any success or talent of mine or my team is solely my own.
There’s definitely a way to consider a person’s individual productivity in the context of a team of people they work with. Its not easy to measure or quantify and its definitely got subjective elements but some people are more productive than others and in a team that shares work, someone has to do the work that other people don’t do or it doesn’t get done.
> I believe in social obligations, not just in the context of work, but in general.
I believe in the power of incentives to shape behavior and I think there is a soft social obligation to align incentives so that they encourage desired behavior.
