Unions tend to incentivize low performers and prevent companies from adapting to changing conditions.

Since it's next to impossible to get fired from a union shop, lower performers and less ambitious tend to stick around because it's easy work and they can't really get fired. And because pay in union shops is often tied more to tenure than performance, your higher-performing workers tend to get resentful and leave, as they are not rewarded for their contributions.

In terms of inflexibility, markets and conditions can change very quickly, which means people's roles and responsibilities need to change.

Unions tend to (but as a rule to "have to") push back against this, even when the employer is offering re-training programs. Typically unions define what a "job" is and then fight to keep said jobs, which can prevent companies from making the changes they need to. Ironically, this often leads to more, not fewer job losses, since the company can't adapt. This is why many cities in the Northeast still have "typists" officially on their payroll. The union will fight to keep a person's job, _as it was defined the day they were hired_. You can get away with this sort of thing in government, up to a point. In the private sector it can gradually grind companies down, as it prevents them from making the necessary transformations the need to in order to succeed longer term.

This is a huge issue Volkswagen and other car companies are having. As they shift to electric cars the Unions are pushing back hard as it takes a fraction of the employees to manufacture electric cars.

This is the idea of have of unions. NYC MTA is all union workers and when I hear stories (from a relative that works) of the kinds of things people get away with before being fired along with their ridiculous compensation, I can't easily shake my opinion of unions.

Unions can be tremendously helpful when there is a wide disparity in bargaining power between employer and employee. In the late 19th and early 20th century, labor unions made tremendous strides in improving worker conditions and pay/benefits.

Among the criticisms I've heard ...

Sometimes market forces can get you adequate conditions and pay/benefits without the need for collective bargaining. For instance, software engineers tend to be well paid even without needing to unionize. So if you don't feel that you need a union, but you're forced to be in a union (and pay dues) against your will -- as happens in many industries -- you may feel those dues are taking money out of your pocket unnecessarily. In fact, the union leadership might actually be making decisions that benefit them or the members collectively but that don't benefit you individually.

> For instance, software engineers tend to be well paid even without needing to unionize.

Compensation for the majority of software engineers has not kept up with cost of living increases, inflation nor the amount of revenue they generate for their employers.

Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm and eBay all colluded with one another[1] to keep tech worker compensation below their market rates.

> So if you don't feel that you need a union, but you're forced to be in a union (and pay dues) against your will -- as happens in many industries

No one is forced to work a union job. If your employer makes a decision that you don't like, you aren't forced to work for them, either. If a union makes a decision you don't like, you aren't forced to work for it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

Under Agency Shop, hourly workers have to pay full union dues whether they join the union or not (workers who preceded Agency Shop can opt out).

No one is forcing you to work for an agency shop against your will like the GP is claiming, though. If you don't want to pay dues, then you're free to quit and find another employer. Similar to if your employer decided employees needs to pay for uniforms or whatever, you're free to quit and find a job that doesn't require that.

> No one is forced to work a union job.

This is technically true, but this is also an argument against unions. It's true that if you don't like that your company is unionized you can go work for a company that's not unionized, but it's also true that if you don't like that your company is not unionized you can go work for a company that is.

Union proponents are not arguing that they're forced to work for non-union employers, though.

The union workers I know generally are annoyed to hate the union, both for the dues unceremoniously rippéd and for "protecting lazy co-workers". It's usually held to grumbling but they always have an eye out to grab a higher-paying non-union job if one shows up.

Statistically, white collar union workers have higher compensation[1], better benefits and more time off. They also report higher rates of life satisfaction[2].

[1] https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/04/art2full.pdf

[2] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0160449X16643321

>both for the dues unceremoniously rippéd

I mean, yeah, you owe dues. How else should it work? When I was part of a union it amounted to 2 hours of wages per month, not exactly onerous.

Counterexample: the nascent Google employees union is taking 1% of total comp.

That’s pretty ambitious when the employees are Googlers.

>> itsoktocry 2 hours ago [–]

>> When I was part of a union it amounted to 2 hours of wages per month, not exactly onerous. reply

>> elefanten 2 hours ago [–]

>> Counterexample: the nascent Google employees union is taking 1% of total comp.

Not sure it's really a counterexample as there are - in theory - about 200 work hours per month, so 1% of comp is pretty much equivalent to 2 hours of wages per month.

> I mean, yeah, you owe dues. How else should it work?

It's a bigger problem in non Right to Work states, where you can be forced to join the union (and have dues taken from you).

In places where joining the union for their benefits is voluntary I don't see the problem.

There are also places where you don't have to join the union, but they still take some of the wages (at a lower rate than full members) for nebulous "benefits" the union offers. Those are especially contentious because not all the employee believe they get any benefits at all.

The US should shift to the European model where multiple unions are available at each employer, and they compete with each other for membership. I believe joining a union is required there, they don't have any non-union jobs, but a European union is not the same as a US one.

Taft-Hartley banned the "closed shop," where you must join a union to work at a business, in 1947. You will never be forced to join a union anywhere in the US to work at any given employer.

That's not true. You misunderstand the rules.

Google: "closed shop vs union shop" and you will see.

Basically you cannot have a business that only hires from a union, but you can have a business that requires you to join a union after being hired meaning the union cannot prevent you from joining them.

Or in other words in non-right-to-work states you can be forced to join a union.

Under the NLRA, you are never required to join a union. You may be required to pay union dues, and the union will still represent you in collective bargaining, but that doesn't make you a union member.

Could unions be ad-supported? Maybe you put a TV monitor playing a continuous stream of ads in the employee break room. It's win-win.

The lazy worker argument applies to any job. I work in a F500 and have 'lazy' coworkers. I can't just go to my manager and get them fired.

The difference is that with a union not even the manager can fire them if he notices that they are lazy

The union workers I know generally are pleased by their union, especially if they worked in their location prior to organization. They are able to remember and appreciate the difference between how management treated them before and after. Even my friends who worked as management in union-shops appreciated what the org was able to do for the people they supervised (even if it was frustrating during 2018 strikes to have to manage entire hotel restaurants short staffed).

Out of curiosity, what field are your union friends in, and do you happen to know what union represents them?

Mainly government jobs - I don't know the union.

> but you're forced to be in a union (and pay dues) against your will...

If it's a "closed" union shop, then I'd consider the union-dues as simply part of the job-offer and treat it the same as employee-side health plan copayments: a minor unpleasantry but nothing worth raising a fuss about - assuming the union dues were in the typical range of $300-800/yr - obviously the more they cost the more I'd be inclined to ensure they're being spent responsibly and that I felt like I was being represented well.

Though I want to say the sentiment (or mental-connotation) you're expressing with language like "against one's will" w.r.t. union membership hints of a reductionist Ayn Randian influence on your opinion. That statement is not an incorrect assessment, but it's overstating the problem - it reminds me of sayings like "taxation is theft".

Sincere question: what do high-quality surveys of union membership (across all industry sectors in the US) suggest about opinions held by closed-shop employees of their unions - and their employers? I feel there's too much reliance online on anecdotes about the excesses of certain named unions when it comes to forming opinions about them, so I'd prefer to see some "big data" about union membership.

Living in Detroit and knowing a lot of people who work in the auto industry I can tell you that for every ounce of goodness that comes from a union there is an equal and opposite ounce of badness. The shit that I hear people get away with is remarkable. And yet they continue to come to work day after day with seeming impunity, continuing to assemble vehicles, etc...

I am personally anti-union because inevitably they become so large that they succumb to their own internal forces and become beurocratic and misguided.

Also from Detroit metro, and was coming here to say the same thing. I moved here from out of state and the more I talk to folks who work in the auto industry, the more I'm convinced that unions are a large obstacle to the revitalization of Detroit's auto industry.

While they bring stability and job security to workers who are invested in excellence and quality, they also bring stability and job security to workers who have no desire to be productive. This is demotivational for anyone who needs to work with these employees and has an outsized effect on the organization. To quote a friend, "I love my work, but I can't get anything real done because I need sign-off from X, but he sits around all day, doesn't really work, and no one can fire him."

The whole "he just sits around - no one can fire him" is painfully true.

You can find this in non-union companies too. I worked at SAP (SuccessFactors) for seven years and had to interface with many people that were incompetent and lazy, yet protected from termination because of company politics.

Unions bring democracy to the workplace.

Democracy ensures some modicum of fairness, but is slow, inefficient, and can lead to very bad outcomes when dealing with highly technical questions. There's probably a place for big, large-scale political questions (who should be president, should we stay in the EU) to be decided by direct democracy, but I wouldn't want that for trade or monetary policy.

The big problem I see with democracy, in general, is that it's highly susceptible to special-interest takeover. When a small group stands to gain disproportionately from a particular outcome, they will lobbby--HARD--to get that outcome. Even when doing so might be so harmful to the overall system, that it collapses, even if they get what they want.

The US analog is the SEIU/AFSCME organizing so hard that the entire government of a state, like Illinois, becomes beholden to what they want.

How did AB5, the TNC bill, pass, when it was overwhelmingly not supported by drivers and the electorate didn't want it, either? Teamsters pushed their agenda. Hard.

Unions will make no bones about running an employer, government, or other organization absolutely into the ground in the name of advocating for their members' interests. They do not care about taxpayers, customers, or any other constituency other than themselves and their members. And when it all falls apart, they'll just go to the next state/company/etc. and run the same playbook, over and over. It's very harmful. Some things need to be outside the reach of democracy/the masses.

Everything you said negative about them applies to corporations as well. Not sure why you single unions out on this.

Because the thread was about unions. Though you're right.

I think people who are really big "repeal citizens united" types need to realize that it cuts both ways.

>What are some of the disadvantages of unions?

As someone who spent a lot of time as a member of a once powerful Canadian Union, the downside is that you get what you get, losing individual bargaining ability. You have a vote, but majority rules, and overnight you could be working under terms and conditions you don't necessarily agree with. Promotions and internal transfers are handled by seniority. The collective trumps the individual. Nothing inherently wrong with that, but you can't please everyone.

It isn't uncommon to find yourself on the losing end of the union contract negotiation with little you can do about it. You give up your agency. The only things that matter are the interests of the existing majority which will often be prioritized at the expense of the minority (e.g. LIFO layoff practices).

I made one tenth the salary as professor while teaching as an adjunct in grad school despite having a similar course load. My uncle's union negotiated lay-offs of his division over another one. A lot of us have stories like this that left a bad taste in our mouths about unionization. Corporations can also be guilty of favoritism but they aren't supposed to be on your side of the negotiating table.

FIFO or LIFO?

LIFO. Thanks, corrected it.

Somebody's law (don't remember whose): Organizations tend to preserve the existence of the problem to which they are the solution. That is, unions often try to protect the union's interest, not the members interest.

A lot of the answers describe problems that can exist in any human organization rather than being specific to unions. For example:

- Prioritizing the organization survival or growth over the needs of those who should benefit from it. Ironically, this is the default of for-profit companies.

- People at the top being corrupted, prioritizing personal gain over moral values

- Becoming slow and bureaucratic after becoming big and/or old

> What are some of the disadvantages of unions?

Corruption. Over and over again, decade after decade.

So... the same as most corps?

No. There are many fewer unions than corporations. And many many incidences of corruption at unions than corporations. Do the math.

As someone who is a Catholic first and politically more conservative second, the question of Unions is pretty interesting.

Catholic teaching says that in principle, unions can do a lot of good, see for example:

> The most important of all [voluntary associations] are workingmen's unions, for these virtually include all the rest. History attests what excellent results were brought about by the artificers' guilds of olden times. They were the means of affording not only many advantages to the workmen, but in no small degree of promoting the advancement of art, as numerous monuments remain to bear witness... (http://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/docume...,

> Among the basic rights of the human person is to be numbered the right of freely founding unions for working people. These should be able truly to represent them and to contribute to the organizing of economic life in the right way. Included is the right of freely taking part in the activity of these unions without risk of reprisal. Through this orderly participation joined to progressive economic and social formation, all will grow day by day in the awareness of their own function and responsibility, and thus they will be brought to feel that they are comrades in the whole task of economic development and in the attainment of the universal common good according to their capacities and aptitudes. (http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_counc...)

When I read those descriptions, and compare that to either the limited experience I had working for a company that was largely unionized or the stories that I've heard or read about, I'm not sure how often these apply outside of a few genuinely dangerous occupations.

See as one example how some unions have argued that union jobs should be exempted from minimum wage laws (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/12/los-angeles-..., https://www.uschamber.com/sites/default/files/documents/file..., https://padailypost.com/2018/04/02/minimum-wage-law-includes...). Evidently, unions see an opportunity to grow their market share by lowering their prices (i.e., wages of labor), and do so by lobbying Congress from exemptions from law, which is the very thing that they claim corporations are evil for doing and that we need unions to exist in order to stop. The argument is that unions are able to negotiate better benefits, but they don't argue for an exemption from minimum wage if the employer provides a certain level of benefits, they argue for an exemption specifically for using unionized labor.

Are there good unions and good union leaders out there? Sure, but I think this example shows that unions in themselves do not advance the "whole task of economic development and in the attainment of the universal common good," but are instead subject to incentives and respond to them the way any other organization does, and very often the incentives of the union leadership is different than those doing the actual work.

  some unions have argued that union jobs should be exempted from minimum wage laws

Union shops are exempt from numerous worker-protection laws. For example, California rest and meal break constraints don't apply to organized laborers; the contract can specify whatever rules the labor reps and management agree on.

You are probably being downvoted because this is not really an appropriate venue for such a discussion. If you are genuinely curious, surely you have access to a search engine where you will get much more thorough discussion of both sides.

Why isn't this an appropriate venue?