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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32050 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022

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Anyone have any examples of an employee union that improves business for both employees and employer?

The most salient feature of unions that I know about is that they prevent the employer from firing bad employees, or promoting good employees over ones with seniority. This makes sense to me because unions get their power/support from employees that need the union more than the employer needs them i.e. bad ones. A prototypical example of the leftist high-low alliance.

But there's no reason it has to be this way. It's technically possible for a union to say "fire bad employees, promote some faster than others, but pay us more". Is there any examples of this sort of thing working well?

Anyone have any examples of an employee union that improves business for both employees and employer?

This is like asking for examples of a defence lawyer making things better for the state prosecutor (barring mistakes or incompetence). That isn't their job. The relationship is adversarial in that getting better conditions (pay, breaks etc.) for employees will generally cost X and that X is money the company could have spent elsewhere or taken as profit.

The reason unions protect bad employees is the same reason that defence lawyers defend the guilty as well as the innocent. Because the companies incentives do not necessarily align with the employees and therefore a bad employee from the companies perspective is not an objective measure. In an employer friendly location like the US, it might make sense for companies to fire employees for very little as long as the labor supply is good, but socially that may not be desirable. Also its tricky to get people to join unions if you have a reputation for throwing them under the bus when they get in trouble.

The question you should be asking is in totality taking into account employees, companies and society in general are unions an improvement or not? And that is a much trickier question to answer. It's quite possible a union could be a net good but be bad for the company itself.

Having said that unions definitely can and do soft shoe things when they are dealing with poor employees. They just can't advertise that for the above reasons. But if you deal with them you can tell. Do they go for the throat and be aggressive or do they just show up at the meeting make some notes, pat the employee on the shoulder and advise them to take the written warning etc. I've fired people while dealing with public sector and private sector unions and they do have ways of dialing back support for employees they think themselves are a problem. Which is not to say they do that all the time, but they can.

This is like asking for examples of a defence lawyer making things better for the state prosecutor

Not necessarily. This is how Wagner Act unions in the U.S. work, but I'm given to understand that there are more cooperative labor organization models out there that integrate labor into the entire decision-making framework of the company.

Sure, workers coops and the like can have different dynamics. But in the standard US model that is not on the cards.

Because the companies incentives do not necessarily align with the employees

Disagree. Unless the mission is dumb, businesses fail or succeed with their employees. If the business succeeds it grows, which ends up benefitting most employees.

The public sector union would be the closest to what you've described because they as an organization can fail without (immediate) consequence. But the actions of the union are most of the reason they suck.

Under a framework that assumes companies are rational, profit-maximizing entities , the tendency of companies to resist unionization suggest this is not true. Part of the problem with unions I think is the inflexibility in the hiring and firing process, not the benefits.

But there is a huge gap between failing and being perfect. And not all companies even want to grow. Companies are not perfectly efficient or even close to it in my experience. But it is quite possible to have a business model which relies on exploiting workers in order to eke out more profit. You can also have a business which is a cooperative with all employees all being owners. But most companies are somewhere between these extremes. If you can keep replacing your employees then you can be successful even while treating your employees badly.

How does a business growing benefit its employees, assuming they don't own stock in it?

Seems like growth, contraction, and staying exactly the same are the only logical options, and staying exactly the same isn't a realistic option for any significant time period.

The business has to hire more people, raising the seniority and salary of most existing employees.

I have worked in at many companies in many trades, and this has never happened once ever to me or to anyone I know or anyone they know.

It is just kindof a silly thing to believe?

Like, have you ever worked retail, or construction, or tech?

Like, have you ever worked retail, or construction, or tech?

I've worked in retail and tech, and know people in construction. Generally folks want their business/location/franchise to grow because it comes with pay boosts, and opportunities for advancement. Sounds like you don't care about climbing the org ladder, but for people who do growth is crucial.

It depends on the size of the organization already. Obviously if your 20-person firm goes up to 80-person, that's good. But if you work for an international giant with a six figure workforce, it hardly matters if new locations are being established when they're on the other side of the planet.

Unless it doesn’t, and puts more work on said existing employees without increased compensation. Sure, they can go somewhere else...at which point it’s their replacement who might see benefits.

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