Being a "high-performer" by definition suggests you are operating at a higher level than the average, suggesting you are a minority. The idea that labor policy should exclusively cater to a minority to get better compensated due to their superior contribution and negotiation skills is perplexing. Society requires a stable labor policy. The culture of the narcissistic self which powered the second half of the twentieth century isn't going to work in the low growth environment we're currently living in.

The idea that people who do more and create more value should be compensated more is perplexing?

What?

This sentence is perplexing, not sure what drew you to that conclusion. What's also perplexing is that all compensation should be based on an individuals capacity to negotiate.

I don't think that rhetoric is going to convince many people who think they deserve an above average pay rise to accept the average instead :)

Personally I don't think "stable labour policy" is more important than allowing people to ask for higher wages and receive or leave, but if I did I'd be more hostile to wage bargaining via collective threats to withdraw labour than individual ones...

If you work in a high margin, less capital intensive industry with more specialized labor categories, a union is likely less necessary. Unfortunately only a minority of American workers operate in such an environment. This minority of higher paid individuals aren't enough to power a massive economy centered on consumerism. Without a stable labor policy, you risk social instability, low growth rates and rising inequality.

But we all think we're the high performers.

Individuals, even stellar performing ones, also have significantly less bargaining power than the collective bargaining power of either a union or the employer.

There are plenty of companies that know this, and it is the primary source of their antagonism towards unions.

This depends heavily on the industry.

If you're a stellar technician specialised in fixing stuff in the only employer in the only industry in town, sure, the company knows you need that job even more than they need you and so you're poorly paid just like all the other technicians. If you're a stellar software developer and your bosses know it, not so much. You can, individually, take your 10x-more-productive skillset to loads of other high paying companies, and that gives you a much better individual negotiating position than "everyone deserves a raise", especially since your colleagues won't go on strike to help you get a new top salary band at a large multiple of what they're earning even if you really deserve it.

This is true whether not not the company you work at is unionized. Ultimately what you appear to be saying that the union is valuable since you'll get paid more until you leave.

No, I'm saying that if you are an above average employee in $role an industry where there is already competitive pressure to offer good wages, a union fixing your wage at the level it is able to negotiate for the average employee in $role will mean you earn less. Until you leave, obviously.

Companies, generally speaking, already have guidelines around what wages they will pay.

So to get significantly better pay you need to leave anyway (how often do you get counteroffers that meet or exceed the competitors offer). Blaming a union for the thing the company already does seems odd.

Companies have guidelines. Wage bargaining arrangements negotiated between companies and unions have binding guarantees. One is obviously easier for a company to ignore if it's in their interests to incentivise a staff member than another.

Also, company wage setting guidelines are more likely to prioritise "retain and reward the staff we think are best" in the first place. (Obviously unions prioritising things like reducing wage inequality or rewarding the union leaders' core constituency are good for other people's wages instead.) Seems far odder to insist that as companies have some sort of guidelines, unions can take credit for but accept no blame for any of the changes they negotiate whilst formalising them.

> unions can take credit for but accept no blame for any of the changes they negotiate whilst formalising them.

Good thing no one said that then!

> One is obviously easier for a company to ignore if it's in their interests to incentivise a staff member than another.

But in this situation, the offer you're getting is going to be no better than what the other company offers, so if your current company can't match, you don't lose anything.

> But in this situation, the offer you're getting is going to be no better than what the other company offers, so if your current company can't match, you don't lose anything

What a strange comment?! Perceived high achievers and high potential talents receive well above company average salaries or salary rises all the time in competitive industries like software, without waiting to see whether that person starts interviewing at other companies and what that offer is! They can't receive well above company average pay offers if the company's collective bargaining arrangement doesn't allow them to offer anything other than the standard union-agreed pay rate even the below average workers get. So they earn less.

If a company is willing to pay a person more than they're willing to pay their average and below average staff, but a union rule forces them to pay everyone with that job description the same, that person is obviously earning less money, not more money. I'm genuinely amazed a concept so simple can generate so many objections

> but a union rule forces them to pay everyone with that job description the same

Why would we advocate for this though? You keep making the claim that unions would advocate for more and more restrictive policies.

First it was guidelines, now it's strictly regimented salaries with no room for performance based pay at all.

You're generating objections because you keep changing your argument. Yes, paying everyone exactly the same is probably not a good idea. But no one is advocating for this, so who cares?

I mean, literally the entire point of collective bargaining arrangements is that instead of negotiating salaries individually, the firm agrees to pay everyone a wage schedule agreed with the union. Hence the whole subthread starting with another poster talking about collectively negotiated pay bands for all staff having less scope for large pay rises than a firm's discretionary policy, as the union also has to look after the interests of lower performing workers who want to be paid the same or nearly the same as their colleagues. A collective bargaining agreement is by definition a more restrictive wage policy than an individually negotiated one.

It is not me "changing my argument" that you have spent several posts sniping at my arguments without apparently having the slightest idea what collective bargaining is.

There are plenty of unions (some examples up thread) that do variable pay. If you're arguing against a specific kind of collective bargaining agreement, then just say that, and be aware that it's a far more oblique criticism of unions, especially in this specific context of Google.

Also, a salary agreement between a single individual employee and a huge corporation has by definition a huge power imbalance. Unions reduce that power imbalance. You can argue which is best (full negotiation freedom with massive power imbalance vs. collective bargaining with or without variable/performance pay and a much smaller but still non-trivial power imbalance), but there's no point in just arguing for one skew and ignoring the legitimate arguments for the other.

As I said in my original post, the power imbalance depends hugely on how marketable a person's skills are. A company being much bigger and richer than an individual isn't a weakness of that individual's negotiating position if the company really needs that developer and that developer doesn't need that job and both parties know it, it's a strength. There are people that Google would find incredibly difficult to replace, and few of them would find it more difficult to find other well paid jobs. A third party which is less interested than both original parties in prioritising the interests of the highest performers over workers 1/10 as productive is almost certain not to negotiate as effectively on the highest performers' behalf, whether the agreement involves a range or a fixed wage. Collective bargaining makes workers considered individually dispensable by the company indispensable by threatening to collectively withdraw labour. That doesn't help those who are already indispensable and know about it, and typical collective bargaining goals (reduce pay inequality, increase transparency, reduce or eliminate scope for individual wage negotiation, increase the amount the company spends on less productive employees) actively hinder them in getting the pay rises they could ask for.

As I pointed out a very obvious situation in which power imbalances ensure even the best performers would benefit from collective wage bargaining from the very beginning, I'm pretty confident I am not the person in this subthread arguing for just one skew. But I am equally adamant that there are people Google considers [near] indispensable, and most of them are plenty employable enough for wage bargaining to be skewed in their favour, an imbalance not improved by people who want others to see pay rises first taking over negotiations.

A wage schedule that increases minimum salary by x% is more restrictive, but benefits everyone and hurts no one.

Your "by definition" is incorrect. There's no law that requires a collective bargaining agreement to enforce pay maximums (or in fact anything about pay at all!). So please don't tell me that I don't know what I'm talking about.

This line of thought might be something that makes employees think that “union sucks”. At a place like Google I assume that everybody thinks they are high-performers and in most cases they are since they got into google. So the majority will always think that they will be “under compensated” and never attempt to unionize. What I want to know is, is it really just another way to convince employees against unions ?

"Everyone is a high performer or thinks they are at....", but not everyone can be with in a given cohort. But who really knows? The employer might know based on their internal metrics, but is that info worth sharing accurately to the employee? Wouldn't you want your high-performers to think they just might be just good enough to keep "performing up" and costs down?

I agree, there is an incentive for employers to create an environment where employees are being gaslighted by the employer but that might turn into a toxic work culture (IMO).

I think creating an uncertain environment where the majority lives in a myth of being a high performer and salary discussion is frowned upon benefits companies the most.

This is non-sense. There's no rule that says collectively bargained contracts can't include rewards or incentives for higher-performance. In fact, many do.

Look at any professional sports contract. Players usually get bonuses for hitting predetermined stat goals on the field. Look at any teacher contract. Teachers get bonuses for attaining higher education and certifications, or simply taking on leadership roles.

How much do you think Lebron James would be paid in a free market without collective bargaining?

In this hypothetical are you also removing the salary cap? If anything he'd probably get more because I suspect that replacement-level players would be willing to play for less than the mandated minimum salary of about 1 million dollars.

Probably the same, maybe less. Professional sports players get paid on merit. What they do on the court directly translates into what a team is will to pay them.

Actually he would get paid much more. The NBA CBA has a "max contract" capped at 25% of the salary cap[1]. There are numerous players playing on essentially the same deal, even though there is clearly a big gap in talent. If you look at the list of salaries for the 21-22 season[2], Steph Curry is the highest paid player at $45.6M, which is only about 15% higher than the 10th highest paid player despite being significantly better.

[1] there are some other contract terms that allow for up to 35%, but those require a bunch of other non performance conditions to be met. [2] http://www.espn.com/nba/salaries

I don't know, how much would he make if the NBA wasn't a monopoly?

Thats a good point, and I think in general I think using professional sports as an example either for or against unions is a bad faith argument because of the unique dynamics present.

> unique dynamics present

Maybe that's what makes it a great example. It shows labor unions are extremely flexible tools that should be configured for the work force they're representing.

Maybe its all these specific arguments against unions, like "seniority based promotions make for incompetent leaders" and "high performance workers are disincentivized", that are actually the examples given in bad faith.

If the parent comment to mine wanted to make a point, perhaps look toward movie stars. Although then I personally think the point falls apart.

First of all, collective bargaining doesn't just have to be about monetary compensation. It could be about working conditions - e.g. regulations about being on "pager duty", ridiculous overtime during "death marches" (think game industry), employee training, etc. Remember that the vast majority of software developers actually do not work at extremely high-paying FAANG jobs.

Furthermore, on the topic of compensation, Hollywood has unions and yet top actors still manage to make 10s of millions of dollars per movie.

Mostly agree, but why should negotiating skills be compensated? Should we all be taught poker?

I only mention that in acknowledgement that it is, fairly or not, a contributing factor in the equation.

> If however, you are a high-performer, you will likely be under-compensated in a collective bargaining environment because your excess effort will be used to compensate those who contribute less.

And of course, we all assume we're far above average high-performers.

Standard joke: "all our employees are above average". In the context of collective bargaining, it is not only possible but common: any halfway decent IT firm has highly qualified workers paid and ranked well above a "normal" worker sharing the same national contract.

Everybody earns much more than minimum wage, and someone (hopefully the high performers, but don't count on it) even more than that. Pushing low compensations against minimum wage limits is simply not plausible, and paying high performers less than market value is a recipe for talent drain.

Collective bargaining is important for working hours, safety, vacation, healthcare, and other important worker rights.

It's somewhat interesting that you're talking about low and high performers, and then and with "...and negotiation skills". Those don't seem to necessarily be related to job performance, and don't even seem to be purely a matter of skill: there's also a pretty big disparity in access to information between employee and employer.

I'm an above average performer. I'm happy to be paid based on my contributions, but I don't really want my negotiation to come into it. They means people who aren't as competent as me get paid more. So I should support the union.

Yes, and the high achiever will be further blunted by seniority-based promotion practices.

If FAANG-type companies unionize, one can see a possible positive outcome for the smaller competitors, as the quality talent will leave $BIGCO for better opportunities in the smaller companies.

> by seniority-based promotion practices

Seniority-based promotion isn't the standard. I'm unionized and any job opening in my workplace must be advertised publicly. Anyone who wants it must apply, qualify, and interview for the position.

> If FAANG-type companies unionize, one can see a possible positive outcome for the smaller competitors

Accurate or not, this really sounds like a win all around!