European here, let's talk personal experience. The americans have a very unhealthy situation wrt unions, and i'm not surprised people with do-it-yourself and can-do attitudes common in tech are soured up to them. And my impressions are relative to polish culture, where unions are traditionally quite strong.
I was responsible for selecting several tech conferences for my boss to visit, both in USA and Europe, Middle East, and Asia. Having read most of the documents proffered, I was shocked to find the amount of red tape that was specific to union arrangements in USA, and USA only. Stands, decorations, electrics, cargo large and small. The rider of one american general contractor was the longest document I had to process across 3 continents. We're talking "young institutions" - tech conferences, organized mostly by, and for, "do it yourself" kind of people.
Were the problems insurmountable? No, certainly they were surmountable. Did it have a sour taste and impression of a lot of wasted effort on both sides of the contract? Yes, certainly it did.
I don't quite understand the underlying cultural issue that leads Americans to create unions they hate. It's got to be something cultural. Or is it something in US law? It seems so easy to fix, but somehow they end up creating something they hate. Why? What causes this, and why is it so hard to fix?
- a lot of what the union do/did have to be understand in the context of important fight between the unionized worker and the companies that want to undercut union influence (and often undercut workers right)
- a lot of thing union do / used to do, make sense in the past, but are less relevant now.
- Human is quite good to do stupid things, to create some bureaucracy / rules... That applied to companies (Bullshit Job being one manifestation of it), but also to union
- We tend to notice more the bad things than the good things...
- Humans tends to love power and hate change... that includes human running unions
I would also mention goals.
If your goal is absolute efficiency in running a convention then you end up with poorly treated and underpaid workers.
If your goal is making sure the convention doesn't poorly treat or underpay workers, you end up having to find someone to plug in your equipment (also I suspect there are legitimate safety and security concerns for a prototype electronics conference).
You can't blame convention workers for preferring the latter situation.
1. Anti-union propaganda and the union-busting efforts of American corporations and their consultants starting in the 1970's leading up through the policies of Reagan.
2. Globalization and the loss of manufacturing jobs.
SADLY, in the interim American wages have been flat since the 70's and class inequality has exploded.
"Had the fruits of the nation’s economic output been shared over the past 45 years as broadly as they were from the end of World War II until the early 1970s, a full-time worker whose taxable income is at the median would instead be making $92,000 to $102,000" instead of $50k. (RAND Corporation) Source: https://www.fastcompany.com/90550015/we-were-shocked-rand-st...
READ:
- https://www.vice.com/en/article/akwwvb/us-employers-spend-do...
- https://www.jwj.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/JohnLogan12_2...
- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/commentisfree/2018/jun/2...
- https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/starbucks-history-...
- https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/power/history_of_labor_unio...
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_th...
- https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/06/how-wal...
No he's not. Every unionized workplace I have been in from educational institutions to government departments to defense contractors is like this to a pretty large extent.
>But the German example
Yes, I know that European unions are different and not nearly as asinine as American ones but I have yet to hear anyone say that tech will get European style unions let alone a good argument for why this will happen. The best I've heard so far is we should unionize because Europe's unions don't suck. I've never worked (in tech) in an environment where I feel I am getting screwed hard enough that the unions are the lesser of the evils. I understand game devs may feel differently (and they will likely unionize before the rest of the industry IMO).
Basically American unions suck which is why American workers in well compensated industries don't want them.
A EU unionized tech worker here who has union negotiated minimum salery and benefits and am fully able to negotiate for more (which I do each year). And I am not far from the 6 figure mark (in $).
So there is nothing saying that unions will mess with your bottom line.
Just don't create unions that suck.
Well, it's good that discussions like this are happening because it spreads awareness that there are better models for unions from abroad, and perhaps that will get more people agitating for an union that's different from the traditional American kind.
Some things are more expensive in the US, like cars. Some are more expensive in Europe, like food and gas.
There are great communities in the US. Dont generalize a country of 360M people on your personal situation.
EU unions are bigger and more general but aren't allowed to force workers to join, ie EU is a "right to work" area. This avoids most of the problems with US style unions and also gives workers more political power since EU style unions are bigger and can therefore more easily influence national politics.
It was declared illegal in the EU in 2006: https://www.internationallawoffice.com/Newsletters/Employmen...
This was recently ruled illegal in the public sector (Janus v. AFSCME), because of first amendment concerns (the state is forcing you to pay money for union lobbying).
This hasn't resulted in a drop in membership, in no small part due to many unions adopting freakishly Byzantine opt-out measures, e.g. the ones where there's a certain window of 10 days a year that you can leave (computed relative to when you signed your union card, never advertised by the union — and if the employer even mentions these rights the union might attempt legal action under California law which forbids their employer from doing anything to "deter or discourage public employees from becoming or remaining members").
As French taxpayer I am forced to (indirectly) pay for all French political parties, including extreme right. This money gives political parties some freedom to act, to nourish the political debate... seen as a way to straighten the political debate and the democracy ; good for the general interest.
Still the number of members of a given political movement and the share of people voting for it is giving it the real power. And as someone only forced to give (indirectly) some money to a given movement is then entirely different than being force to join such a movement. And that is the same here for union.
Please note that as a worker, you are forced to "pay" for the stockholder. If you are not happy with it you can pick another oragnisation. Same goes for union, you are always free to join a union free company...
"Congratulations you're hired. We can either hire you with an official job title of an X at wage V or a Y and wage W, Y is a union position, here's the paperwork"
It's not a "closed shop" but in practice if you want to get paid at a level befitting the work you're doing it is. Since unions are
But the important part is: they need to balance the needs of all three parties: the country, the companies, and the workers. It would be stupid to sacrifice one of these for the benefit of one of the other stakeholders, as that would ultimately hurt everybody.
And indeed, the force people to join bit was outlawed in EU in 2006, but it was never particularly popular outside UK anyway.
Perhaps am I ill informed (never been in USA, and my friend living there are not in unions), could you give us some sources saying that what you say is the main form of union in USA today ?
> In the end, employees voted 46-to-37 in favor of unionizing
> As of February 2020, the union was made up of 85 engineers, directors, analysts, designers, coordinators, and customer support specialists
https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/13/21257585/kickstarter-layo...
If 40% of the workers are not part of the union, seems that you are free to be part or not of the union. And that the union makes sense to the worker, as more than half of the workforce choose to join.
Money helps, but union main strength comes from number of member and support. So paying for it or being member is in all case 2 very different things. And it seems workers are free to join or not, and most of them decided to join.
I don't know the situation of all European countries, but in France, unions gets some money from their member, but they also get some money from the state (ie taxppayers), and some elected union/worker representatives have some work time paid by the company to work on workers representation and union stuff
https://www.worker-participation.eu/National-Industrial-Rela...
Having an organization that can help a worker that is abused, or giving more bargaining power to workers seems clearly positive for the worker.
That could be a bit more irritating for the top management ... But the German example (strong unions, 50% of employee representation on the supervisory boards of large corporations) shows it tend to be, overall, positive for the companies.