There is a reasonable argument that competition for worker and increased wealth in the society also created these conditions.

Higher worker productivity achieved those things, not unions.

Those gains so-called 'worker rights' were achieved in countries without unions as well. It's also unmentioned how much unemployment and misery unions also caused in this narrative.

Higher worker productivity naturally leads to shortened hours? No wonder we've all got 15 hour workweeks now.

Better be damn sure about that. If you want to live like a worker in the 1850's, you can work 1/5 what they worked.

No - higher productivity made it _possible_ but unionized workers fought and died to make it actually happen.

What unionless countries achieved these things? It seems to me that workers in countries with unions tend to have far better working conditions than those in countries without unions. The only alternative to unions to get these things is to get them directly enshrined in law, but in most countries that only happened after unions fought for it.

> What unionless countries achieved these things? It seems to me that workers in countries with unions tend to have far better working conditions than those in countries without union

Beware of correlation/causation. Unions that represent the highest earning workers are the strongest, because the strongest workers already have the highest bargaining power and the highest salaries.

A modern example of what productivity does to working conditions is in SV, where the unionized workers have less perks than the un-unionized ones.

Historically unions are always tied with: import restrictions, protection from competition, minimum wage laws (that dont apply to themselves), unemployment (the best way to increase wages for a union is to cut supply short).

As a nice example, Argentina has unions with constitutional level protections since the 50's, and unemployment is up, working conditions are down, poverty is up, import restrictions are up and minimum wage laws are up: result, 40% of the population works under the table, and union workers have some of the highest wages in the country.

You will seldom find improving working conditions without notable increase in GDP per capita.

Exactly. Look at LA Teachers unions demanding cap on charter schools.

Charter school teachers are non-unionized, so this demand harms the pay of non-unionized "outsiders". If they succeed, they can parade the statistic that "Unionized teachers have gained income over non-unionized teachers thanks to the wonderful work of unions", when in fact what they have really done is transfer wealth from outsiders to insiders.

That is largely revisionist history, most of those things where already happening naturally due to competition between employers. Unions may have accelerated it a few years but the idea that we as a society would have never gotten a 5 day work week or an 8 hour day with out the unions is just false

There is fierce competition for employees in tech, but the hours seem to be normalized at 50+...

Few jobs show so much flexibility as tech. People work as they please, including shortened hours.

Idk where you work, but 40hrs a week is the floor not the ceiling in my workplace.

You may find this link interesting: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ford-factory-wor...

Here's another link that I think has balanced coverage: https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/sep...

Ford even wrote an article on the subject (which I can't seem to find at the moment). In it he discusses hiring private detectives to follow his workers to ensure that they spent the extra money he was paying him. He was worried that by paying his workers too much and giving them too much time off, he'd create another class of wealthy people. Instead his great experiment was to get them to spend their money, drive the economy and create a market for his cars.

So while I don't consider Ford to be a philanthropist for his moves, and while I recognise the achievements of unions in this area, it would be foolish to ignore the fact that 40 hour work weeks, minimum wage and safe working conditions have always been a win-win situation for industry. There have been companies who realised this win-win much earlier than they were forced to. I think one might even be able to argue effectively that these moves may have occurred even without the participation of the unions. Indeed, it is possible that despite all the good work from the unions, that laws of this nature were only passed because this was rapidly becoming the concensus opinion in industry anyway.

Just an aside while I'm here... I once was asked to sign a new contract with my employer with really draconian terms. I was already under contract and none of the termination clauses had come into effect, so I politely declined. They threatened to fire me at which point I asked them if understood the legal consequences of getting people to sign contracts under duress. Their lawyer, who was present, promptly apologised and wrapped things up.

As I was leaving, I mentioned that it would be a good idea to have an ombudsman to review these kinds of contract changes. I was now going to go talk with the rest of my colleagues and there was no way that anyone would sign the new contract from that point on. However, if they had an intermediary, there was a good chance that whatever problem they were having with the old contract could be solved. The HR person replied, "We'll never allow a union here and don't even think about threatening it". The lawyer laughed nervously (I really didn't envy him that day).

And this is the thing that drives me crazy about both sides of the equation. It really is a win-win situation. There is no need to have a "both sides". The company wants a good contract that protects them from crappy stuff. The employee wants a good contract that protects them from crappy stuff. But as soon as one side or the other gets the upper hand, they just try to crush the other side. It's really frustrating. Even the mentioning the idea of working together seems to be crazy talk. While I only mention this anecdote, I am one of the few people who have worked in a union shop as a programmer before. Exactly same thing, other way around. The union would happily drive the company into the ground if it meant getting some pointless concession for its members....

This is a really good comment.

One thing your comment made me think about was a story I heard about a company who had a fairly draconian contract. One of the employees brought this up with the CEO and the CEO said it was what their lawyer suggested and so they did it.

Lawyers are there to protect the company. Sometimes they make recommendations that will help with the law but not necessarily with company culture and hiring people.

Kudos for knowing enough not to get suckered into a contract that wasn't good for you.

Legislators delivered it. It's not clear unions were a required interim for that to happen.

Legislators cannot deliver what they do not provide.