Similar life experiences. Like the idea of unions - especially how they are explained at a textbook level. I fully believe labor needs as much leverage against capital as possible for the scales to be balanced at all.

But US unions seem to exist nearly exclusively to protect people who don’t want to work.

Not my thing. At all. One should be able to be rewarded for hard work and productivity when you are expending more effort than the guy clocking in and doing everything possible to avoid it.

I’ve often thought you solve this via old fashioned guild based systems. The guild trains and provides labor while guaranteeing skills, quality, and honesty. They vet their members and cull the losers - a poor performing member should be seen as a liability for the rest of the pool of labor and very quickly corrected or removed from the guild.

That way employers know that even if they are paying more than they would like, at least the labor being supplied is going to be top tier and the job will done done to a high standard and on time.

Unions devolving to simply protect the lowest common denominator is a problem.

There are some trades unions in local chapter formats that work somewhat like this today. I’d just like to see more of it and more formalized with local competition between different union groups.

▲

WarmWash 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

>But US unions seem to exist nearly exclusively to protect people who don’t want to work.

They don't exist for that reason, but their inevitable ground state is that.

The fundamental and intractable problem with any form of socialization is that it naturally attracts free riders. The idea doesn't have a balanced equilibrium, so it's either logistically/bureaucratically heavy or always being pulled towards collapse.

Everyone who starts these systems has pure intentions, and the initial members tend to be dedicated too. But over time it will either naturally decay, or turn into the thing it was trying to fight.

▲

virgildotcodes 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This doesn’t seem to be a universal rule at all, but smells more of a boogeyman promulgated within US society.

The nordics are anywhere from 50% - 90% of all labor unionized and they absolutely destroy the US on every standard of living metric.

It seems to me a case that echoes “better to let 99 guilty men go free than to execute an innocent man”. Of course, in this case, the ratios are actually reversed. Should we execute 99 innocent men to make sure that 1 guilty guy gets punished?

There will be some free riders, just like there will be some welfare queens, just like there will be some voter fraud.

That said, these cases represent a vanishingly small minority of the whole, and the cure is far worse than the disease.

▲

WarmWash an hour ago | parent | next [-]

>It seems to me a case that echoes “better to let 9 guilty men go free than to execute an innocent man”. Of course, in this case, the ratios are actually reversed. Should we execute 9 innocent men to make sure that 1 guilty guy gets punished?

We don't have to do an echo. We can just do it as it is.

9 men hunt and 1 man eats free, so the 9 men are carrying the weight of the 1.

This system is inherently unstable and unsustainable. Maybe you can mitigate it (nordic style) by keeping a small population and drilling into people's heads from birth that "you take turns being the 1, and the 1 needs to be eager to get back to the hunt or shame will be had", but even then that is a not an inherently stable system, but one propped up by trust.

	▲	virgildotcodes an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> 9 men hunt and 1 man eats free, so the 9 men are carrying the weight of the 1. Updated the quote to the historically accurate 99 vs 1. > This system is inherently unstable and unsustainable. The countries cited are extremely stable. Arguably far more stable than the US. That said, we can bring in the rest of Western Europe if 5 countries aren't enough of an example. They have union participation rates between 10% and 50%, median around 20%. The thing is, they have much larger proportions of their workforces covered by collective bargaining agreements - France for example is at 10% union participation yet 98% of labor covered by bargaining agreements. Western Europe and the Nordics combined = ~400 million people, bigger population than the US, and far more diverse, so the common refrain of "small homogenous population" doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Of course, all societies so far have eventually been unstable. We can just choose whether our unstable society will be a vindictive one that prioritizes punishing wrongdoers over the wellbeing of the whole, or a pragmatic and (as a nice bonus) compassionate one which prioritizes the wellbeing of the whole over a puritanical urge to purge the unworthy.
	▲	faidit 7 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		>9 men hunt and 1 man eats free, so the 9 men are carrying the weight of the 1. You just described every non-union tech company I've worked at but maybe ratio reversed. Full of lazy entitled takers, not a shop steward in sight. If unions are inherently unstable and unsustainable, so is capitalism as a whole.

▲

georgemcbay 16 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

> but smells more of a boogeyman promulgated within US society.

Particularly the ultra-capitalist part of US society.

Do unions attract some percentage of people who want to abuse them to do less work for more pay? Sure, humans are flawed. But unfettered capitalism also attracts some percentage of people who will greedily exploit the labor of others to enrich themselves.

Both extremes are why we should have rules and regulations as a society to curb the worst excesses, because we can't trust all humans to do the right thing in any system.

That aside, I'd also argue that while both are unfair the actual practical outcome of some people being a bit lazy in a union has a far less disastrous impact on society as a whole than the people who greedily exploit on the other end.

	▲	theamk 3 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		[delayed]

▲

Muromec 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

A healthy organisation can reflect on this tendency and purge some free riders to preserve itself. The fact that it doesn't, to me personally, just means it's not under external pressure.

▲

WarmWash 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If there is one thing free riders are generally skilled at, it's hiding the fact they are free riding. There is then an internal decay where as others learn the tricks, they realize that they can start coasting too, and they should, because why would you do extra work if you don't have to.

To defeat this you need intense oversight, but then you yourself become the man with an iron fist.

This is a super common theme whenever you dig into anything socialized. It works great when everyone understands the system and is dedicated to the work, the mission. But as soon as a single atom of "I can get away with not doing my full part" seeps in, it's like a seed crystal that eventually collapses the whole system.

	▲	HardlyCognizant an hour ago \| parent [-]
		It's the prisoner's dilemma. I believe any self-preservation optimized intelligence is going to suffer from these problems until those behaviors are countered in interaction by design (e.g. process, societal/cultural pressures, etc.) or removed from the baseline (i.e. evolved out.) Our desires make us our own worst enemies, and until we acknowledge and openly plan to counter these tendencies, any social structure at some scale is going to fail to them. Unfortunately, the problems we face as a species are increasingly at larger and larger scales. I'm not sure if we can remain what we would recognize as "human," and solve for this without surrendering some level of executive function to an entity not afflicted by it. Government and regulation are already expressions of this, while retaining our intrinsic nature, but history has demonstrated this is inherently unstable.

▲

arjie an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

What definition of organizational health demonstrates this? Certainly none of the long-lived and powerful US unions have this property. Observationally, it seems that the strongest US unions also exercise their power to protect all within their fold. The worst offenders fail to be protected by the union, but in general, they are not purged. And US unions are quite powerful. The leaders wear Rolexes.

This seems logical. A labor union carries power commensurate with the number of members in it. It is more important for members that they be protected than that they be held to a high standard. If the latter is done, it is in service to the former. That is entirely the purpose of the union after all. No one forms a union so that others can hold them to a high standard of performance.

▲

aliasxneo 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Thanks for sharing. Very interesting to hear someone else with a similar experience.

> Unions devolving to simply protect the lowest common denominator is a problem.

I've always wondered if this is because the ones most incentivized to stay are the ones that eventually make it into upper leadership. It always seemed to me like the decisions being made at that level were intended to protect those same people. For example, rather than seeing poor-performing members as a risk to the union, the answer was to just lobby legally secured work so that companies had no choice but to hire its members. Which is quite the game, because I'm sure at face value it sounds great (companies can't ignore unions), but the hidden reality seemed to be that it just ensured these people always had a job.

▲

Muromec 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Honest question -- what should happen to poor performing people? They should have less money, less food, be homeless or what? Should they be more stressed and as a result somehow perform better?

On one hand I don't like to deal with results of bad craftsmanship, on the other hand I don't desire of the suffering of others.

The thing is real, but so are the people.

Not a snark or a gotcha, I'm a union member and recognise this thing at work.

	▲	aliasxneo an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> Honest question -- what should happen to poor performing people? The union should help them find roles they can be successful in. It should offer them more specialized training, mentorship programs, and other ways to help build up their skills. If they refuse to take any of these seriously, they should be fired. To me, that's the difference between poor performing and intentional laziness.
	▲	mc32 an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		There should be disincentives for poor performance, options to improve performance (training, counseling, etc.) and incentives for good performance (better raises, perks, etc.) to incentivize good employees.

▲

BobaFloutist 21 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Honestly I think the problem is that unions are also acting as guilds.

Which is to say, as a union, they make deals with companies and the government and fight for regulations requiring union labor, but then they turn around and act as a guild by restricting who can join and get trained and become union labor, keeping wages high with an artificial labor shortage.

So you end up with a situation where you're only allowed to hire union elevator technicians, but also there aren't any union elevator technicians. They get high wages and all the work they want, and everyone else gets broken elevators.

▲

finghin 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Unions are supposed to defend the value of labour. I think in a fair society where losing your blue collar job didn't mean dog food for dinner the balance of responsibility and squeamishness could shift away from employers and unions in terms of keeping food in people's bellies after they get fired. Then unions and businesses can actually have somewhat aligned goals, which is better for everyone, really.

In order to protect the long term value of a profession or some other labour corps, you can't skip efficiency and defend poor work ethic. I think to a degree the medical profession exemplifies this with professional bodies regulating conduct and standard of care/work. Part of this is the generally earnest approach to the scrutiny, but I believe part is the lack of immediate grave concern to anyone ‘on the stand,’ who can be presumed to earn comfortably, upon losing their job.

▲

chii 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> I fully believe labor needs as much leverage against capital as possible for the scales to be balanced at all

Competition is required, rather than unionization. If an industry is dominated by monopolies, not only do customers suffer, workers do too. Unions don't really fix the problem - only make certain groups win over others.

▲

Muromec 2 hours ago | parent [-]

For once, the union is one of the rare in-groups that are very easy to join and actually benefit their members

▲

BobaFloutist 20 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

>that are very easy to join

That's the case for most service-sector unions, but a lot (certainly not all) of builder's unions seem to meter the amount of people that are allowed to join, making it prohibitively difficult to actually get into the union.

▲

missedthecue 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The problem is that they tend to benefit their members in a zero sum way. For example the LIRR wants a double digit raise not in exchange for hitting targets on on-time arrivals or some other metric. They want it or they strike and hold the community hostage. It bothers me that there's no value exchange it's just take take take, and ultimately at my expense.

	▲	an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		[deleted]
	▲	AnimalMuppet an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Worse, public sector unions are ultimately at my expense in a way that I can't even fix by not buying the product, since they're taking it from my taxes.