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The United Auto Workers have gone on strike: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/us-auto-union-strike-three-detroit-three-factories-2023-09-15/
What happens if Ford and GM simply say: "okay, you're fired"? This seems to have quite a few benefits, mostly that they can get rid of union workers and remove the threat of another strike.
I'll admit that unions sortof confuse me. I didn't grow up around them and have always wondered the mechanism by which everybody gets to quit their job but then demand extra money to come back. Are the people running factory machines inside of Ford and GM (or starbucks, or a hollywood writers room) really that highly skilled?
It should be noted that Tesla is not unionized, and will not be a part of this strike. Do you guys think there is a chance that the government tries to force Tesla to stop making cars during the strike to make things more fair?
I'll be honest about my feelings towards unions: I don't get it at all, and I think I'm missing something. I do think that workers should have an adversarial relationship with their employer, but it seems to me like unions have all but destroyed the american auto industry. I think you'd be insane to not just fire anybody who joins a union on the spot. I don't get how places can "vote to unionize". Why does the employer not simply fire the people doing the organizing? Sure you can all vote to make a starbucks union, but...I just won't hire anybody in your union.
There's a lot of history there and a lot of competing interests. It's probably worth reading this: http://www.paulgraham.com/unions.html
There are explicit laws against that. Unions in general have a lot of laws to protect them. Read up on Pinkerton strike breaking.
The owner of the "Giant Tiger" chain of stores in Canada likes to joke that "you don't get unions unless you deserve them". I don't think that's entirely true, but early unions were created in response to genuinely horrible treatment.
More or less yes. Starbucks isn't terribly high skilled, but a key part of the atmosphere is the preppy gayish vibes they curate in their employees. They needed to do a lot of careful hiring and firing to get that while staying within the bounds of the law.
Hollywood is actually a case of very functional unions. Each production is a new company, so everyone is fired afterwards. The union can't force anyone to employ low performing employees. So standards are enforced by constantly having to be rehired and treatment is enforced by the union. Writers getting royalties makes a lot of sense. Without them writers would save all of their best ideas for a time when they were co-producers and could share in the profits that way.
Skilled autoworkers do deserve decent pay and are difficult to replace. One issue is that the janitorial staff will often get better contract than they deserved, and the union representing them is stuck fighting for raises on top of an already overpriced salary.
Autoworkers and old industry are very interesting. Their golden age has passed, but a lot of unions still expect generous contracts.
Unions are often overly adversarial in the US. I have a controversial explanation for this -- the culture was strongly influenced by soviet spies who wanted to sabotage US industry. The KGB was certainly trying, and had a lot of connections on the left. I admit I can't prove they succeeded.
But countries closer to the iron curtain tended to have more reasonable unions. Germany has national unions based on job type instead of local unions for each company. That makes them more accepting of contracts that are in line with industry standards even if they don't offer big raises.
American unions will bankrupt a company then shrug and say they were just representing their workers, who are now all unemployed.
Unions in the US (and Canada) also like to start taking over management roles, which creates conflicts of interest. Controlling shifts and vacation dates. Sometimes people need a way to protect themselves from an abusive union rep. As far as I know no one has managed to organize a sub-union to curtail union abuses, but I think it could happen.
Seems to me unions are more useful when labor market is thin. Modern economy means its relatively easy to get info about and apply for jobs outside of your local region making the pool of employers much larger.
You don’t even need that many people willing to move. Just enough people to create an equilibrium.
And note that non union car workers generally get paid pretty well. It’s also probably better for the individual worker who can be a bit more entrepreneurial since unions protect more the LCD.
You're not wrong, but the purpose of union solidarity is to be able to make the market very thin at a moment's notice. Ideally dropping the available labor down to near zero.
It's also why crossing the picket line in union heavy areas tends to (or, more realistically, tended to) have such high social consequences.
I meant when the employee market is thin. The classic example is the company town where there is a single employer.
Fair enough, I interpreted it the other way. That's my bad.
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You overstate Hollywood. Writers would sell their stories without unions and not hold out for producer positions.
Unions make a little sense as you said on careers that have short term projects being the majority of their work. But that’s nothing like most unions who try to hold an asset hostage.
In the case of short term projects they are mostly selling a worker quality thing which does have value. If you’re building a bridge that takes a year having an organization guarantee worker quality makes sense. That’s not most unions.
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A quick follow up is where unions fail...
Unions have a negative effect when there's a fixed capital asset that the union can hold hostage that is unrelated to worker performance.
For instance LA port workers are crazy overpaid just because the port is so important for the US economy and there is no political will to fight the union or build a second big pacific port in Seattle.
Railways are always struggling because unions base their demands on the value of the entire rail system. The fix here is to split of the railway companies... pass a law that the company that owns the rail lines can't use them for shipping, they have to charge other companies for rail access who actually do the shipping.
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