Anti-Union Socialist

[Sanitary Stache]

I am off base finding myself opposed to many Union interests but a supporter of wealth redistribution and increased social safety net programs?

I always thought unions were socialist, because of Howard Zinn and the United Socialist Workers Party (I could never remember what they were called).  Maybe I got socialists and unions confused.  Or maybe unions have changed.

I don't support much of what my union appears to be doing.  Now I believe our defined benefit pension plan (State employee) has an unreasonable cost associated with it and is taking money that should be better spent on other programs, like food security.

Are there any contemporary books about unions that I should read to help me form an up to date view on Unions and their role in white collar workers jobs?

The police union's have exhibited an ugly display of racism recently. Though there are likely industries that still require union protection.  I would like to have a more complete picture of which unions to support and which to piss on.

[CodingHare]

I mean, unions are pretty fundamentally capitalist in that they don't exist in a pure socialist system, to start.

I did a quick scan of well rated texts on unions, most of hte ones are left leaning and generally supportive.  Here's a couple of titles that might be interesting:

Why Unions Matter by Michael D. Yates
No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age by Jane F. McAlevey

It is worth noting that a lot of what unions organized for has actually been made into law that effects non-union workers.  Things like eliminating child labor, minimum wage laws, etc.

Most white collar positions avoid unions because the pay and benefits are good enough to keep employees content.  The view is that the market is competitive enough that any given white collar worker would end up with a lower salary if the position unionized versus not.  The focus on labor organizing there tends to be more around ethics, see the Google Union that just formed.

[sailinlight]

I would never take a union job just because it means I will get compensated based on someone negotiations that I'm not a part of, and not how hard I work. If an industry/company wants to have one, that's none of my business though, I just won't work there.
However I think public sector unions are a whole other thing though- I think there should be legislation banning these, as the incentives of those negotiating on behalf of the government has no incentive not to give in to all of the employees demands.

[habanero]

I would never take a union job just because it means I will get compensated based on someone negotiations that I'm not a part of, and not how hard I work. If an industry/company wants to have one, that's none of my business though, I just won't work there.
However I think public sector unions are a whole other thing though- I think there should be legislation banning these, as the incentives of those negotiating on behalf of the government has no incentive not to give in to all of the employees demands.

I live in a heavily unionized country. How it actually functions is that unions have historically done a remarkable job in securing basic rights for any employee (holidays, workplace safety, working hours, pay etc) but when it comes to pay they currently have close to zero influence in the more high-paid echelons of the workforce. And noone forces you to be a member of a union or pay dues (you can write those off as an expense when filing taxes btw) but at the end of the day any freerider benefits from whatever they negotiate as it applies to the whole workforce.

In real life most people don't get compensated based on how hard they work but what job they have.

And oh, as opposed to the US we don't even have a legal minimum wage because we don't need one and frankly noone wants it.

As to your last point you have really abseloutely no clue what you talk about. The government has massive incentives to not fold in negotiations. The public sector is a very large workforce meaning increased expenses for salaries are a big drain on public budgets. As late as last year we got very close to a teacher's strike here for example. All over pay. Why? Because the government didn't fold. They know for example that for 99% of the employees there isn't really any alternative place the teachers can go to work. In the end the teachers settled for peanuts, like they generally have every year.

The correlation between the de-unionization of the US workforce and the stagnant real wages in the US is pretty big.

For the same reason pretty much any basic drug costs way more in the US than in Europe because in Europe buyers negotiate on behalf of a whole country so the power of balance is changed. Same applies for pay, most individuals are in a pretty bad negotiating position vs their employer.

[PDXTabs]

I mean, unions are pretty fundamentally capitalist in that they don't exist in a pure socialist system, to start.

Yup. They're a double edged sword but they aren't socialist. There is a really good Freakonomics episode that touches one that: Does Anyone Really Know What Socialism Is? It is well worth a listen/read. I highly recommend it.

I would never take a union job just because it means I will get compensated based on someone negotiations that I'm not a part of, and not how hard I work. If an industry/company wants to have one, that's none of my business though, I just won't work there.

Wait, so even if the union job pays more you'll take the non-union job? You do you.

EDITed to add - in my experience unions are very very good at protecting their members from illegal discrimination and labor violations. It's not that this stuff is legal in non-union shops, it's that in a union shop someone has your back.

[John Galt incarnate!]

I am off base finding myself opposed to many Union interests but a supporter of wealth redistribution and increased social safety net programs?

I always thought unions were socialist, because of Howard Zinn and the United Socialist Workers Party (I could never remember what they were called).  Maybe I got socialists and unions confused.  Or maybe unions have changed.

I don't support much of what my union appears to be doing.  Now I believe our defined benefit pension plan (State employee) has an unreasonable cost associated with it and is taking money that should be better spent on other programs, like food security.

In Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (2018), Janus prevailed.

The case   was another in a  line of cases that consistently demonstrate the Supreme Court's stellar guardianship of Free Speech under the First Amendment.

Mark Janus was an Illinois child support specialist.

The reason I post about  Janus is that I have a hazy recollection that like you, Janus expressed disapproval of some sort of  spending by his agency. As I recall Janus thought it was most inappropriate in light of Illinois' total debt.



Are there any contemporary books about unions that I should read to help me form an up to date view on Unions and their role in white collar workers jobs?

The police union's have exhibited an ugly display of racism recently. Though there are likely industries that still require union protection.  I would like to have a more complete picture of which unions to support and which to piss on.

[sailinlight]

I would never take a union job just because it means I will get compensated based on someone negotiations that I'm not a part of, and not how hard I work. If an industry/company wants to have one, that's none of my business though, I just won't work there.

Wait, so even if the union job pays more you'll take the non-union job? You do you.

EDITed to add - in my experience unions are very very good at protecting their members from illegal discrimination and labor violations. It's not that this stuff is legal in non-union shops, it's that in a union shop someone has your back.

That's a good point, I guess I've never been in that situation before. But as I said, I don't care if there are private sector unions.. it's up to each potential employee to weigh the pros and cons of working for that firm.

[Bloop Bloop Reloaded]

I used to work in a union field and my experience is that unions negotiate for better working conditions for about 80% of the workforce at the expense of the top 20% of the workforce. Those higher wages and better protections generally come at the expense of job flexibility and pay incentives which would threaten below average workers but reward those at the better end of the bell curve for productivity.

For example the union where I used to work negotiated a rule that said all employees with under 3 years' experience had to be paid lockstep. To me lockstep (as opposed to eat what you kill) is an awful way of paying and incentivising employees. But it sure protects the weak.

[WhiteTrashCash]

Unions are awesome. I get great Platinum level health insurance with very low contributions to the premium. I have a defined benefit pension. I get ten sick days and 2 personal days per year which carry over if I don't use them and I can save them indefinitely and get paid extra for not using them when I retire. I am protected by my union contract from being fired without due cause, unlike non-union employees. Being in a Union is terrific. I highly recommend it to people who want to be successful and provide for their families.

[MudPuppy]

Reading your concerns about unions, I think what you find distasteful might be corruption, rather than the unions themselves.

[Secret Stache]

Not a Union fan here.  I've worked in a Union shop as a salaried employee for the last 5 years.  They filed a grievance on me for sitting at the lunch table with the folks I was working on a process improvement project on and talking about work.  They are pretty worthless in my mind and hinder innovation.

[Sanitary Stache]

I am definitely opposed to corruption.  And I think the police unions have rubbed me the wrong way with their overt racism and Trump support.  But I am also turned off by the perceived political power unions hold, which does not align with my personal political philosophy. 

I think I would benefit by forming an understanding of Union political interests so that I can place their lobbying efforts in the proper place when I consider political actors.  What I think I am driving at is that in the tent of the Democratic Party, union support may be politically important, but likely what the Unions are concerned about will not be the initiatives I think are most beneficial.  When a candidate is said to have the support of a particular union, then I should have a better understanding of what that means in terms of the policies that candidate is likely to support.

I am not unhappy to be represented by a union at contract negotiations or HR conflicts, the job security/flexibility trade-off is one I am willing to make - indeed very supportive of, and I recognize that I may be at the higher end of education/experience/pay then the majority of other workers in my union.  All great points, thank you all for raising them.  I also appreciate the gains achieved by the unions that have been made into law and am starting to see how a Union can support more employee rights changes.

I think the issue I may have is that my political philosophy, in some instances, is in opposition to the interests of the Union.  And, of course, that some public unions are vocally represented by scumbags.

[CodingHare]

I think @MudPuppy hit it on the head, dealing with corrupt systems sucks, no matter if it is corporate or a union.

I have heard similar complaints about what I'd call cliquishness.  My uncle joined a union shop and was treated terribly because he wanted to work his way up fast.  That was seen as disrupting the labor agreements.  He stuck at it to get the pension (a union only benefit) that allowed him to finally retire after years of working hard manual labor, but he sure as heck isn't friends with any of his old coworkers.  (As an outsider, my uncle is pretty affable and knows everyone in his small town, so I don't think it was him causing trouble, in this case.)

In general, when unions endorse candidates, the issues I think of they care about are A) government spending in their area of work (ie teacher want more education spending, construction workers want more public works spending) education funding (teacher's unions) and B) opposition to "right to work" laws (pretty much all unions.)  It's a pretty straightforward, this is in our best interests endorsement.

Right to work basically cuts unions at the knees, because it forces unions to represent non-union employees without compensation.  All unions do need money to hire the lawyers protecting you from unfair dismissal, which is ultimately why they collect dues (plus administrative costs, which is where corruption can seep in.)  It also prevents employees being forced to join the union at whatever company.  Which again, means the union collects less dues and has less money to represent employees against management, while simultaneously being required to represent the non-paying employees.

I'd be more in favor of Right to Work if the requirement to represent non-due paying employees was lifted.  As it is, it encourages free riders who get the benefit of the union negotiating to better base rates (which the non-paying employees take advantage of) while contributing nothing back.  I also think Right To Work proponents have a lot of strong arguments legally speaking, but ultimately I look at the unchecked power of corporations as requiring some employee lead bodies to check.  Unions give employees power to whistleblow with more safety, to negotiate for fair wages, and to have a say in management decisions that effect them.

I don't have a union available to me, and it makes me feel less safe as an employee.  It's one of my main drivers to FIRE, honestly.

[Greystache]

I have mixed feelings about unions.  I started working for an aerospace manufacturing company in 1982. I was frustrated with the union because they imposed stupid, inefficient work rules that were designed to increase union employment at the expense of the overall health of the company. They also protected bad employees who really needed to be fired. 
Since then there has been a backlash against unions and the % of union workers has fallen.  At the same time wages have stagnated and have not kept up with increases in productivity. Income inequality has increased.  I suspect it it time for the pendulum to swing back in favor of unions or some other mechanism to correct stagnant wages income inequality.

[Boll weevil]

I think part of the issue is that unions change over time. They start off with goals that most everybody could agree with, but as time goes on and victories have won, they feel they need to go past just monitoring and enforcing the existing contract and ask for even more things in order to continue being relevant.

I do live in a right to work state and am represented by a white collar union. They claim membership typically runs around 30%, but doubles around contract negotiation time, and that the membership jump does help in negotiations.

[ericrugiero]

I work in a union plant as an exempt (non-union) employee.  There are positives and negatives to unions. 

Our in house union is mostly a negative for the company and for the good employees.  All union employees are treated the same regardless of what kind of work they do.  Pay raises, promotions, vacation time, etc are all a function of seniority.  This takes away some of the motivation to do a good job.  Primarily, the union protects the troublemakers and the poor performers.  It does also negotiate some good benefits which help everyone in the union and those of us not in the union. 

The local union halls that we can hire contractors from tend to work very well.  The workers we get are well paid, highly trained and mostly work hard.  If we have a problem with one of them, we can ask that they not come back to our plant.  The workers get some protections, retirement plan, good pay, sick time and other nice benefits.  We pay a fairly high wage to hire them but we get good workers who do a good job.  Overall, it's a pretty good system. 

Not all unions are created equal.  Some are a pain to work with and do very little but protect the bad employees.  Others work very well at ensuring their members are treated fairly while also ensuring the workers do a good job for the companies that hire them. 

At my plant, union membership is theoretically optional but working in a union job without joining would be a very tough life. 

[Sanitary Stache]

I have been down a rabbit hole reading about Janus, with plenty of side tracking into public pensions, the topic that lead me to question whether I support the union.

I have found that the reasons I joined the union remain strong enough for me to remain in it.  When Janus vs. AFSMCE (or whatever it is) was decided I was an agency-fee payer and it aligned with my preferences.  If there was still an agency fee payer option I might take that, but with Janus the agency-fee payer option was eliminted and in order to support the portions of the Union that benefit me directly I decided I would be a member.  My union will charge for legal representation if the employee needing it is not a member, which also factored into my decision.

Now I'll continue to be a paying member and I'll just keep raising concerns regarding the defined benefit pension and whatever other political issues arise that I don't agree with the union on. 

[rocketpj]

I work in a very difficult job with a high risk and high burnout rate.  Most of the burnout and almost all of the risk has been mitigated because our union has our backs. 

I came to this job from a non-union job in the same field.  High risk, high burnout, 70% the pay and dramatically worse benefits.

I am pro union for that reason.

[bigblock440]

I have mixed feelings about unions.  I started working for an aerospace manufacturing company in 1982. I was frustrated with the union because they imposed stupid, inefficient work rules that were designed to increase union employment at the expense of the overall health of the company. They also protected bad employees who really needed to be fired. 
Since then there has been a backlash against unions and the % of union workers has fallen.  At the same time wages have stagnated and have not kept up with increases in productivity. Income inequality has increased.  I suspect it it time for the pendulum to swing back in favor of unions or some other mechanism to correct stagnant wages income inequality.

Manufacturing jobs have also fled since then, which is a bigger factor than (and likely also the reason for) lower union membership.

[Cranky]

The role of a union is to protect its member workers, which is nothing to do, really with socialism.

Some unions, historically, have had broader progressive interests, like the Wobblies, but it’s not a necessary ingredient.

Personally, I’m not so much a socialist (state control of the means of production and redistribution of wealth) as an anarchosyndicalist (direct worker ownership of the means of production.)

[rosaz]

However I think public sector unions are a whole other thing though- I think there should be legislation banning these, as the incentives of those negotiating on behalf of the government has no incentive not to give in to all of the employees demands.

The last year has me really struggling with my previous support for public sector unions - between the teachers' unions (I strongly disagree with the cost-benefit calculations I've seen as far as closing in-person schools) and the police unions (the obvious), they do seem to have a greatly outsized impact on decisions that in a democracy should be decided by the voters. (E.g. an individual police officer has the right to say that new mandates to keep his gun holstered in certain interactions creates too much risk for him and for that reason, leave the force - and if enough do, we as voters will have trade-offs to face - but using strikes, etc., as a tactic to force a city's hands as to how it wants its police to operate is, in my book, unacceptable.)

From what I can see the main issue is that unlike with private sector workers there's no market pressure to keep demands reasonable. If my local grocery store workers say they won't work unless those who want to rough up customers can do so with impunity, they will quickly find that even if their employer eventually caves, their customers will all go elsewhere, and so they will lose their jobs. But the police don't face that pressure - dissatisfied customers have no option to "go elsewhere". And while we do have private schools, for your average family having to pay hundreds of thousands in taxes for schools over their lives, and then pay for their children's education as a separate tab simply isn't feasible. So the public sector unions can make ridiculous demands, as they are insulated from the consequences in a way private sector employees are not.

I would love to have my mind changed, so if you disagree, please help me see the other side :)

[nessness]

I support unions in general, but chose not to join my (public sector, white collar) union. From what I can tell, all the things they've negotiated are things I'm pretty neutral about - for example, we have 3 performance reviews per year instead of the legally mandated 2, and we have a super complicated, union-controlled method of assigning cubicles. Beyond that, their main role seems to be protecting poor performers from getting fired, which I don't love.

I think unions should probably be confined to the private sector.

[CodingHare]

The last year has me really struggling with my previous support for public sector unions - between the teachers' unions (I strongly disagree with the cost-benefit calculations I've seen as far as closing in-person schools) and the police unions (the obvious), they do seem to have a greatly outsized impact on decisions that in a democracy should be decided by the voters. (E.g. an individual police officer has the right to say that new mandates to keep his gun holstered in certain interactions creates too much risk for him and for that reason, leave the force - and if enough do, we as voters will have trade-offs to face - but using strikes, etc., as a tactic to force a city's hands as to how it wants its police to operate is, in my book, unacceptable.)

From what I can see the main issue is that unlike with private sector workers there's no market pressure to keep demands reasonable. If my local grocery store workers say they won't work unless those who want to rough up customers can do so with impunity, they will quickly find that even if their employer eventually caves, their customers will all go elsewhere, and so they will lose their jobs. But the police don't face that pressure - dissatisfied customers have no option to "go elsewhere". And while we do have private schools, for your average family having to pay hundreds of thousands in taxes for schools over their lives, and then pay for their children's education as a separate tab simply isn't feasible. So the public sector unions can make ridiculous demands, as they are insulated from the consequences in a way private sector employees are not.

I would love to have my mind changed, so if you disagree, please help me see the other side :)

I agree on police unions (especially ones that are buying military grade equipment to use against civilians, WTF).  Teacher's unions I'm a bit more nuanced on.  I'm friends with three parents and a teacher.  In our area, schools are trying to force schools to open without even giving teacher's a chance to get their vaccine shots.  Teachers tend to be older and more at risk, so they're basically being told to retire or risk COVID.  Parents are split among "I NEED my child at school NOW and damn the consequences to teachers!" and "Well, we should open when it is safe even though it is inconvenient, work should be more accommodating to parents right now anyway."

So a public vote on whether to reopen schools would necessarily overrun the rights of our teachers to not knowingly expose themselves to illness.  And in our area I hear constantly "Oh, our pod of kids was told to stay home because one tested positive."

That's all COVID related, so what about regular times?  Teachers are consistently a low paying profession, partly due to the supply of teachers being high, partly due to the summer off schedule.  I think pay should be tied to that economic reality, but I also note that other countries pay their teachers much more relative to cost of living.  I'm also suspicious in general of wage stagnation.  In general, I favor more spending in education in general--not just hiking teacher's wages, but also pending on school budgets to improve outcomes. Where that bogs down is the politics of trying to target schools that need that budget increase and avoiding handing money to already wealthy school districts.

My TL;DR: Unions suck, funding public institutions sucks.  But I tend to think it sucks less than no union protections on average for most workers, and it sucks less than underfunding education (which has bad implications for society as a whole.)  Anytime people tell me "we can do this for cheaper," I am suspicious of what they are sacrificing to get to cheaper.  Teacher salaries are low, but principals and administrators are high.  Which job provides more value and which job controls the purse strings at schools?  Creating corruption proof systems is hard in general.  Where unions suck: when they protect underperformers and frankly bad employees.  Where they are good: when they protect employees from the unreasonable or unsafe demands of management or customers and raise the bar for compensation.

[RetiredAt63]

I suppport public sector unions.  Workers in the private sector can move companies.  Public sector employees are working for monopolies.  When I was teaching, if working conditions were intolerable I would have had to change provinces to find an acceptable job.  Our union negotiated working conditions (class size is a working condition for a teacher, and very important for the students), salary, pension, etc.  Re poor performers, I found the union made sure all protocols were followed, but that it was usually the administration that made it hard to get rid of a bad teacher because it meant too much effort on their parts.