Good for them. During economic downturns, when fewer resources are available for redistribution, collective action across population groups can help address worsening power imbalances.
To an extent. There is always the chance that the collective action discounts the impact to the business too heavily and ends up driving the company under, making the outcomes worse for everyone. We saw this a couple years ago with Yellow Trucking.
If the company's existence depends on the unfair exploitation of its staff, its foreclosure is inevitable and justified, and that is simply the price everyone involved must pay to maintain equilibrium.
Perhaps. But that's cold comfort to someone who doesn't have a job because the company went out of business. You would have to be an enormous asshole to say "it'll result in a better equilibrium" to someone who just lost his job.
> But that's cold comfort to someone who doesn't have a job because the company went out of business
I suppose only those who lose their jobs because of a merger, or the CEO making poor decisions ought to get the warm and fuzzies because someone on the Internet won't blame them for their own misfortune.
Somewhere on the spectrum between "egalitarian, flat organization Utopia" and "Slavery", one has to draw a line where entities below that line should not exist.
You forgot that collective ruin is also an option and we have seen this many times when societies attempted to do away with economic & market concepts.
> somewhere on the spectrum between "egalitarian, flat organization Utopia" and "Slavery"
I didn't say that collective ruin was a result of unionism, only that that you appeared to be trying illustrate a point by outlining a broad spectrum of outcomes, but IMO you forgot one common outcome of forced collectivization. Where it belongs on that spectrum can be debated but that it's a common outcome cannot be.
I provided a range of leader:worker income/power ratios from 1:0 to 1:1 with no commentary whatsoever on outcomes, because my entire point is that the outcome doesn't matter: at some threshold value and below, the existence of the org itself is immoral. We don't have to agree on where that point is, but its existence shouldn't be up for debate, IMO.
I hope we can all agree that a slave plantation should not exist in 2025, regardless of whether it's making billions in quarterly profit, or hovering above insolvency. Paying workers at this plantation $0.01 per hour isn't okay, either, but if you keep adding $0.01/hr N times (and incrementally improve working conditions), you'll eventually arrive at the threshold I was describing.
> They're saying you forgot about the range 1:1 to 0:1.
Color me intrigued! Tell me more about these slave-CEOs serving at the beck and call of empowered workers. I didn't merely forget about the 1:1 to 0:1 range, it's an Outside-Context scenario. I confess I have never encountered - or thought about - organizations with inverted hierarchies. Do you have any specific example of such a thing?
When unions gain too much power and the company can no longer respond effectively to market forces (particularly with hiring/firing), leading to the collective ruin they were talking about.
It does happen just like bloated management also makes a company less flexible even though managers don't want the company to fail.
They wouldn't intentionally push it to fail, but they could easily push it very close to failing and then something else pushes it over the edge, happens time and time again.
Who got convicted over Sears, KMart, and Toy's R Us? How about the slap on the wrist for the Sacklers for supercharging to opioid epidemic? What happened the the CEOs of GE from Jack Welsh on who steered the company on into the ground primarily through layoffs and cut-throat business management?
There's plenty of examples of business owners driving a company into the ground to personally enrich themselves.
Not all of those were instances of the management purposely screwing people, but let's suppose some of them were. Should the conclusion then be that we should find ways to prevent that from happening again, or should it be that two wrongs make a right?
Not all businesses fail because of unions, but let's suppose some of them did. Should the conclusion then be that we should find ways to prevent that from happening again, or should it be that two wrongs make a right?
It goes both ways. There are plenty of nations with strong unions throughout. In the US some work is primarily done by unions (such as trade work).
The fact that someone can pull up an example where a union caused a business to go under doesn't make me think "we should eliminate unions". It doesn't even make me think "We should limit union negotiation powers" primarily because unions rights have been curtailed since the Reagan era.
If you wanted to convince me to get rid of unions, you'd do it by setting up robust workers rights nationally which unions provide.
That's the point. We should prevent management from destroying productive companies and prevent unions from doing it, instead of saying "what about those other guys" to justify the bad behavior of either of them.
> In the US some work is primarily done by unions (such as trade work).
You're referring to some of the least efficient industries in the US with high levels of regulatory capture. The fact that there is no test-based path to occupational licensing in many trades, only multi-year "apprenticeship" (i.e. permission from an incumbent), is one of the big reasons construction costs so much, people can't afford housing and government construction projects consistently blow the budget.
> If you wanted to convince me to get rid of unions, you'd do it by setting up robust workers rights nationally which unions provide.
Most "worker protections" are nothing better than highly inefficient alternatives to unemployment insurance. If you have competitive markets then you don't need regulatory protections because companies are subject to competitive pressure. If you don't have competitive markets then you're unconditionally screwed and the first thing you need is to fix that.
> We should prevent management from destroying productive companies and prevent unions from doing it, instead of saying "what about those other guys" to justify the bad behavior of either of them.
Im not justifying anyone, I'm suggesting a pragmatic, imperfect solution to a clear power imbalance. There's only one way to treat a counterpart who repeatedly defects on the iterated prisoners dilemma, and its not waiting for them to unilaterally start cooperating.
> There's only one way to treat a counterpart who repeatedly defects on the iterated prisoners dilemma, and its not waiting for them to unilaterally start cooperating.
Except that there isn't only one way, there are two. The first is that you keep playing with the defector and start defecting yourself, hoping that they unilaterally start cooperating. The second is that you quit playing with the defector and go play with someone else. And which one of those is likely to work out better for you?
> We should prevent management from destroying productive companies and prevent unions from doing it
I'll agree to that. But I'd point out that it's far more the case that management destroys a business, not a union. The US has fairly weak union protections and few unions at the moment. The place where change needs to happen is in management. But also we need to start talking about what it means for a business to be productive.
> You're referring to some of the least efficient
Least efficient how? Because it's expensive?
> high levels of regulatory capture.
No. Regulatory capture is when a business keeps out competitors through hard to fulfill regulations. It's not when the standard for employees is high making it hard for new employees to enter the market. The acid test for regulatory capture is "is there an oligopoly here" and the answer for trade work is a clear "no". There's a billion different companies in any given city that do trade work.
> The fact that there is no test-based path to occupational licensing in many trades, only multi-year "apprenticeship"
For very good reason. Tradework done poorly gets people killed. Taking a one time test is a very bad way to ensure that quality is high. There's a reason places without unions also use the apprenticeship method of licensing (doctors for example).
> If you have competitive markets then you don't need regulatory protections because companies are subject to competitive pressure.
That's wishful thinking assuming that a competitive market can't also be exclusive, hard to enter, or oversaturated. There are things that naturally can't be competitive, usually involving high levels of skill or knowledge. For example, microchip fabrication. It's simply too expensive to buy the equipment to make a computer chip and that can't be solved by anti-trust enforcement.
> But I'd point out that it's far more the case that management destroys a business, not a union. The US has fairly weak union protections and few unions at the moment.
It's possible that those two sentences are related.
> But also we need to start talking about what it means for a business to be productive.
So to some extent the premise needs to be challenged. If e.g. Kmart fails, but there are a zillion others to take its place for workers and customers, then its failure is primarily of impact to its shareholders and it's their fault for hiring shortsighted fools to run it. The people who used to work there can just work somewhere else.
If e.g. GE fails, and it was the primary company sustaining some industry in the US, that doesn't work because now nobody is doing that here anymore. But the problem then isn't that they failed, it's that they didn't have enough domestic competitors to begin with. Mismanaged companies are supposed to fail, what they're not supposed to do is take the domestic industry with them.
> Regulatory capture is when a business keeps out competitors through hard to fulfill regulations. It's not when the standard for employees is high making it hard for new employees to enter the market.
That's literally the same thing. "New employees" and "competitors" are synonyms.
> The acid test for regulatory capture is "is there an oligopoly here" and the answer for trade work is a clear "no".
So zoning rules can't be regulatory capture for the housing market, even if they're unambiguously limiting supply and raising costs, because there is no oligopoly?
> For very good reason. Tradework done poorly gets people killed. Taking a one time test is a very bad way to ensure that quality is high.
It works for truck drivers and lawyers and real estate brokers etc.
Meanwhile the assumption is that the apprenticeship requirement would have higher standards, but it doesn't. It's even less effective. All it is in most places is a time requirement. If your overseer has you doing nothing but wrote physical labor of a uniform type that only represents 1% of what you would see if you went out on your own, you've still put in your hours and get your license. And it's far more susceptible to corruption because then people sign off on hours not actually performed in cases of nepotism etc.
> There's a reason places without unions also use the apprenticeship method of licensing (doctors for example).
That's just another example of trade organizations capturing the regulators. The fact that they use the AMA instead of a union doesn't change the nature of it.
> For example, microchip fabrication. It's simply too expensive to buy the equipment to make a computer chip and that can't be solved by anti-trust enforcement.
Sure it can. Prohibit vertical integration. Make all the fabs contract fabs (most of the state of the art ones already are) and then separate the facilities from the production equipment. Then TSMC or Samsung or Micron don't fabricate chips, their business is essentially building new fabs for independent third parties. At which point they stop worrying about "overcapacity" because their profit only comes from building more fabs. Then someone like Apple or AMD goes and contracts with the independent fabs to produce their designs, only now each facility is a separate company in competition with the others.
Meanwhile the companies that produce the equipment would then be smaller (because less vertical integration) which lowers the capital requirements to enter into that market. And if you lower it enough then they all end up in cross-licensing agreements and the only requirement to enter is to develop ~1/Nth of the next generation's improvements where N is the number of existing companies, so that they each want to license yours as much as you do theirs.
"he fact that someone can pull up an example where a union caused a business to go under doesn't make me think "we should eliminate unions""
It seems here it does.
For years every time a company fails that also happened to have a union, the union gets blamed. Never mind the management decision.
It's just a common flame bait for some groups to hate unions. That group doesn't actually reasonably think out these things.
It's like 'woke', the word 'union' is a key word that some groups use to label others for hate. They aren't sitting back and making an economic argument.
The longest time an enron CEO spent behind bars was 12 years. Richard DeLisi was sentenced to 90 years for a nonviolent marijuana charge and spent over 30 behind bars before being pardoned. Kind of puts "serious" prison terms in perspective.
I am pointing out that some commenters here are grading Unions and CEOs on different curves on the issue of negative outcomes, and the alleged union bogeyman is a frequent occurrence at ununionized organizations.
> Multiple people were convicted over the Enron scandal, including some serious prison terms.
That is great, and should have been a deterrent for more ruinous shenanigans. Which CEOs got arrested for the subprime mortgage heists that triggered the 2008 GFC? The GFC made Enron look like jaywalking, I'm sure dozens of executive received life sentences and entire banks shuttered for their malfeasance and lack of internal controls. Right?
Unions are basically useless in a healthy market economy because then companies have to compete for customers and employees instead of having a monopoly, which causes them to have thin margins and therefore leave nothing on the table for collective bargaining to extract that wasn't already being extracted through competitive pressure.
Meanwhile unions in a consolidated market have the perverse incentive to sustain the monopoly because then the union is extracting a portion of the monopoly rents the corporation is squeezing out of consumers at the expense of the 99% of workers who don't work for that specific company. Which is why consolidated markets need not unions but antitrust enforcement.
> Meanwhile unions in a consolidated market have the perverse incentive to sustain the monopoly because then the union is extracting a portion of the monopoly rents the corporation is squeezing out of consumers at the expense of the 99% of workers who don't work for that specific company.
This still sounds like an improvement over the American consolidated market status quo, where the companies and shareholders retain more of the monopoly rents.
Antitrust enforcement would be great, but absent an 1880s-1910s level push, isn't going to happen.
> Antitrust enforcement would be great, but absent an 1880s-1910s level push, isn't going to happen.
Let's do that then.
> This still sounds like an improvement over the American consolidated market status quo, where the companies and shareholders retain more of the monopoly rents.
Except that you then get the union lobbying to sustain the monopoly instead of eliminate it, which makes it even harder to do the thing that actually needs to be done.
> Let's do [an 1880s-1910s level push for antitrust enforcement] then.
The last time that happened was a pre-globalized world, multiple decades of building pressure (including the passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act), and the youngest US president to ever assume office (Teddy Roosevelt).
That's a confluence of events I'm not betting on naturally replicating.
Step 1 would be passing an update to the Sherman Act through Congress that would survive the current Supreme Court.
> Step 1 would be passing an update to the Sherman Act through Congress that would survive the current Supreme Court.
The nice thing about antitrust laws is that they're right in the core of the interstate commerce clause, so it's a real stretch to find them unconstitutional and in practice that hasn't been what has happened. Instead, because the Sherman Act is extremely broad but not very detailed, they've just been narrowly interpreting it. Which wouldn't work if you would pass something that explicitly spelled out some of the things. Like just go make a list of all the existing antitrust cases where something bad was found not to be a violation and make a line in the new law that explicitly calls out that one as "yes it is". Which deletes all the precedents anyone could use to claim that their bad behavior is allowed, since Congress just explicitly said that it isn't.
Another great improvement would be to allow anyone to sue for antitrust violations instead of requiring the government prosecutor to do it.
It would also help to get some bipartisanship happening. The current Court has a conservative majority but you only need to convince two out of six, and some of them are more partisan than others, which actually gives you two ways to win. One, you make a good argument and convince the reasonable ones. Two, you stir up the conservative base against some California corporations. Probably easier to do the next time there is a Democratic administration because then they'll start kowtowing to the new administration instead of Trump and thereby anger the conservatives again.
Unions are about building worker rights and protections into the business expenses. When they are industry wide, it prevents any company from gaining an advantage by exploiting their workers.
A strong market economy is orthogonal to the treatment of workers. For example, the economy of the early US was both very competitive and had slavery. Same for islands like Jamaica.
The ideal is government regulation ensuring worker rights. Barring that, unions fill the role. Unions exist to fill a void created by a low regulation market. They are the libertarian solution.
> When they are industry wide, it prevents any company from gaining an advantage by exploiting their workers.
If one company is exploiting their workers in a competitive market, what prevents those workers from going to work for any of the other companies?
> For example, the economy of the early US was both very competitive and had slavery.
Slavery is a government regulation that says that if someone pays a stranger money then you have to do work you never agreed to do. Markets are the thing where you only have to do something if you agreed to do it.
> They are the libertarian solution.
They're an attempt to monopolize the labor market in an industry. When unsuccessful they're useless because they have no bargaining power, when successful they're an abusive monopolist extracting undue rents from that industry's customers.
> If one company is exploiting their workers in a competitive market, what prevents those workers from going to work for any of the other companies?
Depends, is there a labor shortage or a surplus? It might be cheaper for a company to train a replacement than it is to treat employees better. If there's a labor surplus, then the employer has a lot of power of the situation.
> Slavery is a government regulation that says that if someone pays a stranger money then you have to do work you never agreed to do.
Nope. In fact, slavery was contract/property law. There wasn't a government regulation or statute that established or regulated it. That was part of the problem. Slavery was the ultimate in libertarian ideology because it recognized that through whatever means, individuals could end up the property of other individuals. It further recognized children as the property of their parents (and thus property of the slave owners).
You can consider indentured servants, for example. Someone willingly signs themselves into slavery to pay off the debt (usually the boat ride to america). Slavery was a natural extension of that concept.
The only role the government served in this situation was enforcing the slave contracts.
> They're an attempt to monopolize the labor market in an industry.
That's not a refutation. Libertarian ideology (particularly the free market form) has no problems with a monopoly.
I do, which is why I think government regulations and actions to break up monopolies is a good thing.
But in a market without government protection for workers, unions forming a labor monopoly is the only solution which can counteract the inherent power imbalance between employer and employee.
I'd not classify them as "abusive" because far more people benefit from strong employee protections than the people harmed by those protections. The ultimate harm is it makes businesses less profitable.
> Depends, is there a labor shortage or a surplus?
That determines things like wages. It doesn't allow companies to do things like cause $1000 in damage to you in order to save $10, because then they'd have to pay you $1000 more than the company that isn't doing that or you'd still go work there instead.
Also, if there is a labor surplus then how is a union going to do any good? The company would just let them go on strike and hire replacements.
> In fact, slavery was contract/property law.
That seems to have the word "law" in it.
> It further recognized children as the property of their parents (and thus property of the slave owners).
Which is obviously not something the child consented to.
> You can consider indentured servants, for example. Someone willingly signs themselves into slavery to pay off the debt (usually the boat ride to america).
There are arguments to be made against this, but it's significantly more defensible than doing it without consent. Because then who is going to do it? And how is it really different than e.g. non-dischargeable student loans, a thing the government still does?
> The only role the government served in this situation was enforcing the slave contracts.
The only role the government serves in a contract to form a cartel is enforcing the contract too, which is why there are contracts the government shouldn't enforce.
> Libertarian ideology (particularly the free market form) has no problems with a monopoly.
Libertarian ideology assumes that monopolies form as a result of government rules. It obviously can't allow for unrestricted anti-competitive contracts because then someone with a monopoly on any necessity could force everyone into a contract to form a dictatorial government, which is anathema to the entire ideology. But contract law is the government. A government that didn't enforce contracts at all and only enforced laws against violence would be perfectly consistent with it, whereas a government that enforces contracts you never agreed to or that you were forced to sign under duress would not.
> But in a market without unions and government protection for workers, unions forming a labor monopoly is the only solution which can counteract the inherent power imbalance between employer and employee.
How is there an inherent power imbalance in a competitive market? They can choose a different employee and you can choose a different employer.
> I'd not classify them as "abusive" because far more people benefit from strong employee protections than the people harmed by those protections. The ultimate harm is it makes businesses less profitable.
The ultimate harm is that it makes the industry's products worse or more expensive to customers, or increases market consolidation if a union destroys a company in an industry with high barriers to entry and thereby causes there to be fewer of them.
How a worker is treated is part of wages. It has a very real impact on the jobs people take. If you are, for example expected to work 60h weeks vs 40h weeks you take the 60h company if nobody else is hiring.
> Also, if there is a labor surplus then how is a union going to do any good? The company would just let them go on strike and hire replacements.
Scabs crossing picket lines have a real hard time. And, historically, unions have banded together to boycott employers who hire scabs.
> That seems to have the word "law" in it.
Law isn't the same thing as a regulation. Anyone that proposes a "free market" is looking at a market determined by contract law.
Or do you think there's some other way to operate a market that doesn't ultimately need a 3rd party to take disputes to?
> which is why there are contracts the government shouldn't enforce.
I agree. My points were more digs at free market absolutism.
> Libertarian ideology assumes that monopolies form as a result of government rules.
No it doesn't. That's silly. You can read up on any libertarian thinker and they'll all happily argue that monopolies actually aren't bad things. A business that can capture a market through scale efficiencies will always be argued as a good thing from the libertarian perspective.
> could force everyone into a contract to form a dictatorial government, which is anathema to the entire ideology.
I agree with your conclusion, but disagree with how you assess it as applying to libertarianism. A fundamental of anarchist-capitalist libertarian thinking is that the only role of government is contract enforcement. They see no problem with a private entity ending up with a monopoly of force so long as everyone agrees to the contracts they enter. That's why you can read about libertarians that support the notion of a company having it's own militia.
I mean, heck, the entire point of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" was how government fails and how society would be much better off if all the smart people got together and formed their own private government in the wilderness (But don't call it government, call it a community organization or whatever). Ironically enough, the main actions of the protagonists was doing a general strike.
> How is there an inherent power imbalance in a competitive market?
As explained earlier, a market can be competitive with either a labor surplus or a labor shortage.
And even with a labor shortage, businesses can collude to undermine worker rights. It becomes harder with a wide market to do that, but not impossible. Real pages is such an example of a pretty wide and competitive market colluding to raise rent prices outside of market forces.
You can't just "go to a different employer" if they all treat employees the same way.
There's also simply a cost in switching jobs. It takes time to search for a new job and with an abusive employer that maybe hard to come by. For example, how do you do a job interview if your employer demands you are there from 9-5 every weekday?
That's the imbalance.
> The ultimate harm is that it makes the industry's products worse
Actually no. You can look up the reasons unions strike and it might surprise you to know it's not always about just getting more money for the union members.
For example, the USC [1] has done strikes specifically because medical facilities are under-staffing on nurses. They want more nurses to improve patient safety.
Money is a part of union negotiations, for sure, but often it's also just about making sure union members aren't overworked.
> How a worker is treated is part of wages. It has a very real impact on the jobs people take. If you are, for example expected to work 60h weeks vs 40h weeks you take the 60h company if nobody else is hiring.
The "if nobody else is hiring" is the point. That's the thing that happens when you don't have a competitive market, and correspondingly don't have a lot of different employers to choose from.
There is always work to do for the right price and if there is a surplus of labor and competitive markets then it will tend to just make things cost less, which mitigates the lower pay.
> Scabs crossing picket lines have a real hard time.
It sounds like you're defending intimidation tactics.
> And, historically, unions have banded together to boycott employers who hire scabs.
Which is the thing where they really start acting like an abusive monopoly.
> Or do you think there's some other way to operate a market that doesn't ultimately need a 3rd party to take disputes to?
There are plenty of transactions where you're not worried about disputes. You hand money to the vendor, you get a sandwich, if you don't like the sandwich you're not going to sue them but they don't get any more of your money, the end. Transactions that don't all take place at once can use a private third party escrow service with a reputation to uphold etc.
The ability to form contracts enforced by the government is typically more efficient than some of these things, but if you had to go without it you could make it happen.
> A fundamental of anarchist-capitalist libertarian thinking is that the only role of government is contract enforcement. They see no problem with a private entity ending up with a monopoly of force so long as everyone agrees to the contracts they enter. That's why you can read about libertarians that support the notion of a company having it's own militia
This is the thing where you find the guy who defends Stalin and use it impugn someone who wants to ban leaded gasoline because they both support having the government do things. Extremists are a dull minority and primarily useful to their own opponents when they don't want to contend with a more reasonable version of the argument.
> And even with a labor shortage, businesses can collude to undermine worker rights.
But then you're back to an uncompetitive market. Collusion is anti-competitive and an anti-trust violation.
> Real pages is such an example of a pretty wide and competitive market colluding to raise rent prices outside of market forces.
And there isn't a lot of evidence that their attempt was even successful, rather than just happening concurrently with events that caused rents to increase for independent reasons.
Of course, that doesn't mean that their attempt was lawful either. Attempting to monopolize a market is an anti-trust violation even if you fail at it.
> You can't just "go to a different employer" if they all treat employees the same way.
When there are a thousand of them, they won't all be the same.
> There's also simply a cost in switching jobs. It takes time to search for a new job and with an abusive employer that maybe hard to come by. For example, how do you do a job interview if your employer demands you are there from 9-5 every weekday?
There is also a cost to replace an employee. You have to find someone new, train them, take the risk that they turn out to be lazy or adversarial etc.
Meanwhile there are many jobs that will hire someone immediately with no qualifications, because they have low pay. So if your existing job sucks that much then you quit immediately and take one of those while searching for a better one. Also, in a market with many employers there would be employers that will do interviews after hours.
> For example, the USC [1] has done strikes specifically because medical facilities are under-staffing on nurses. They want more nurses to improve patient safety.
They want more nurses to reduce the workload on nurses and argue patient safety because it's harder to refute. But then they simultaneously lobby for occupational licensing and similar rules that limit the supply of medical professionals, which does the opposite, which is why there is a shortage of doctors and nurses to begin with.
Meanwhile healthcare is one of the industries with the most regulatory capture and that does everything to make sure there isn't a competitive market, so it's not a great example of what happens when there is.
You present a very long list of evidence that proves the current status of the market is not competitive, and illuminates the power imbalance. We probably agree that this is not a self-correcting state.
AFAICT, the difference in perspective is what to do first, with some of us recommending more unionization, and your take being to fix the competitive landscape. IMO, unionization is in the hands of the workers, and is easier to accomplish compared to addressing competition when - as you noted - there's regulatory capture. While it probably offends your sensibilities, the how of unionizing is self-explanatory; it's not at all clear to me how we would go about making all the industries competitive again. It's a worthy goal, but for now, it seems to be a solution for a world with spherical cows and no force of friction.
> IMO, unionization is in the hands of the workers, and is easier to accomplish compared to addressing competition when - as you noted - there's regulatory capture.
If you form a union and then the company goes bankrupt, or lets you go on strike forever and hires replacements or offshores the work, that hasn't helped you.
If you form a union and the employer is a monopolist, now that company gets even less efficient, and meanwhile now the union prefers rather than opposes the company remaining a monopolist, which makes it even harder to fix the actual problem.
> it's not at all clear to me how we would go about making all the industries competitive again.
The government solution is to enforce antitrust laws and remove the ones impairing competition. You can do this at multiple levels. If the federal government sucks right now, individual states have their own antitrust laws and many of the regulatory capture rules are state laws to begin with.
The market solution is get all these people you were going to unionize and instead have them pool their resources or raise capital to start a competing company. They already know how to do it because they're already doing it right now, right?
> If you form a union and then the company goes bankrupt...
And we've come full circle to the bogeyman again. Before we get caught in a loop I'll reference historical record of positive outcomes actually happened, and I'll sign off from this circular debate.
What if you form a union, and with other unions force employers to accept a 5-day working week, instead of 6 or 7 days per week? Or striking until 8-hour work days are the norm instead of 12 or 14. What if you fight employers for decades to end child labor amd ultimately succeed? All these things are examples of actual changes effected by pressure from organized labor to improve the lot of workers. It wasn't "free markets" competing for labor. Perfect competition doesn't exist on planet Earth, especially for labor.
Current US law forces companies to negotiate with a union if it's employees vote for it. That seems like the opposite of a healthy market; it is a market in severe regulatory capture.
A healthy market would allow voluntary decisions by both parties. It would allow management to choose whether they want to negotiate with a collective broker, and it would allow workers to choose whether they want to find employment congruent with their preferences to either self negotiate or hire a third party.
How isn't it a market solution for a collective of individuals to band together to determine what they think are fair conditions of wage and labour? If they are wrong then the whole thing fails just like a business mispricing and/or mistreating its customers would, if they are right they all get a better deal.
It's a freer market than allowing disproportionate power of employers in the labour market distort the price of labour.
Unions are the reason we have a 40 hour week, minimum wage, equal (ish) pay, reasonably safe working conditions, overtime pay, holiday, etc. Anti-union think is a Reagan/Thatcherite psyop, don't drink the kool-aid. Notice that since the dismantling of the Unions both here (UK) and across the pond the average person's life has steady a steady economic decline? Not a coincidence.
That's probably not a great example given that the rust belt was thick with unions.
And in general the US has a cost of living problem because the various levels of government keep getting captured by people who want regulations that make costs to go up because they're the ones getting the money. That makes US workers less competitive because of the corruption-induced regulatory costs, which is exactly the opposite of markets working as they should, except insofar as "industries move out of countries with high corruption and inefficient laws" is supposed to apply pressure to countries to get more efficient rules.
> That's probably not a great example given that the rust belt was thick with unions.
Perhaps we need to complete the thought here: was it the unions or executives that decided to offshore manufacturing? If the counterargument that unions are to blame for offshoring by "artificially" increasing the cost of labor, and should have competed with Chinese labor on price and they got their just deserts: then why are executives now (successfully) lobbying for protectionism against Chinese manufacturers? Why can't capital handle the type of rugged capitalism they inflict on American workers? If chinese goods could be ported as easily and cheaply into America and American labor was ported to China, there'd be blood on the floor.
> was it the unions or executives that decided to offshore manufacturing?
Neither. It was consumers, who prefer lower prices.
> why are executives now (successfully) lobbying for protectionism against Chinese manufacturers?
Because they were fools who thought they could offshore the factory work but not the management work.
> If chinese goods could be ported as easily and cheaply into America and American labor was ported to China
This is literally what has already happened.
The actual solution is for the US to do something about high domestic costs, especially housing and medicine, which are the things keeping US workers from being globally competitive.
>> was it the unions or executives that decided to offshore manufacturing?
>Neither. It was consumers, who prefer lower prices.
Right, because every executive who pursued offshore manufacturing was thinking, "gosh, how can I deliver even lower prices and better value to my customers?", and not "OK, we've shown the market will pay $X for product Y, how can I cut my costs and free up more money for bonuses and cocaine?"
Graphs of price indices (aside from a few sectors such as electronics where it was the core technology that improved, not labor efficiency) and wages over the last 50 years clearly show that the bulk of any offshoring savings were not passed along to consumers or front-line workers.
Regulation is a requirement in actual capitalist/market thought. Only fairly recently have libertarian's retconned in their 'free market requires no oversight' nonsense.
I agree, we should return to Adam Smith style capitalism/markets, with his strong promotion of regulation against monopolies, corruption, and rent-seeking
> Only fairly recently have libertarian's retconned in their 'free market requires no oversight' nonsense.
You have to realize that there are people who call themselves "libertarians" who are actually plutocrats, just like there are plutocrats who call themselves "progressives", because people wouldn't agree with them if they would plainly state their actual goals. Whereas pretending to be the people who want to take you down serves the dual purposes of stealing the support of their base for your corruption and then undermining the support for the people who actually want to fix it once other people see what you're doing under their banner.
Reminder that up until recently, economic & market concepts included a requirement for strong government oversight. The originators/thought creators of capitalism talked about the need for such. Adam Smith argued relentlessly for regulation against monopolies, corruption, and rent-seeking. Libertarian ideologues retrofitted in the fantasy of self-regulating markets without oversight fairly recently and it is turning out to be a pretty disastrous retrofit. I agree, we must go back to true, pre idealog economic & market concepts, like Adam Smith argued for.
Conversely, it might be great comfort to someone who has a job because their company didn't go out of business. The point of unions isn't to punish business. The point of unions is to empower workers. One of the things workers can do with that power is ensure their business stays afloat and jobs remain, for example policies promoting long term health and stability rather than short term stock price bumps and volatility or corporate strip mining, even if it means executives get smaller bonuses.
The point is rather that the company would go under with our without the union. The union just means the staff aren't plundered along with the electric cables as the shop sinks.
Indeed. I'm not without sympathy for anyone who loses their job. But losing the job due to an anti-working class parasite going belly up is not entirely a tragedy. One less parasite in the world is a good thing.
Game development is a lot different than "normal" software development. Usually involves a lot more crunch/unpaid overtime. Though yes, the comparison is hyperbole.
The logical conclusion of the scenario being floated here is that if enough workers resist their own exploitation, the "job creators" will take their capital and go... somewhere. And then there will be no jobs.
Like with full time employed Walmart employees that qualify as homeless. Are they happy because they have a job, since poor old Walmart might go under if they were forced to pay a real salary?
The entire capitalist economy is based on that principle.
In fact the crazy politics right now are largely a consequence of that: with all the factory jobs and similar jobs that were lost, the idea was that “the market” would somehow “correct” and all those people would get different, hopefully better jobs. But that didn’t happen, because it’s all an ideological fiction, right up there with the idea of trickle down economics.
But suddenly, when it’s about workers collectively standing up for their rights against the one-sided power of enormously powerful corporations, “you would have to be an enormous asshole”? There’s definitely an enormous asshole somewhere in this picture.
Also, this will result in more jobs being offshored.
Hollywood unions were a sticking point. In 2022 and 2023, following the lead of Netflix and Amazon, most of those jobs moved from the US to Europe and Asia.
Atlanta, which was booming for nearly two decades, which had built dozens of $500M class-A film production studios, is suddenly almost entirely vacant. We went from doing almost all of Marvel and Netflix to being a dead zone. We're at 20% of past volume, if that.
LA was evacuated of work even more precipitously.
It's all in Ireland, the UK, Eastern Europe, and Asia now.
Gaming is next. The Saudis and Chinese are chomping at the bit.
I work in a bank with collective agreement and three trade unions. We are dropping offshore contracts before we lay off people covered by collective agreement.
The bank simply can't lay off people at all without drawing up the plan together with the unions.
Ironically, China has also proven that you can't easily import expertise. At best, you can "steal" it over a long period of being the current industrial center's gopher.
Amazon, Netflix, et al. flew domestic crews to Europe to train their crews how to work. This wasn't unusual, because a lot of movies filmed on-location overseas. Nobody questions that. Par for the course.
Except they trained local crews how to do everything - they trained their replacements in person. And now there are no US domestic crew flights to Europe and Asia.
People in the game industry are pretty often out of work anyways, so I don’t know how much there is to lose there. But industry wide unions can help with this, by providing financial assistance to workers laid off from union organized strikes.
That assumes that the union never unfairly exploits the company. I think historical evidence shows that unions sometimes do exploit the company (and that union leaders sometimes exploit the members). Humans exploiting other humans is a flaw of all of us, not just corporate management.
Yeah, I'm not sure Id Software, backed by their billion dollar parent company ZeniMax Media, who in turn is backed by their parent company Microsoft, has to live in fear of being exploited by the 165 employees who just signed onto a union.
You're trying to minimize the power of the union by quoting dollar amounts, when the whole point of the union is to have power, and the whole point of unionization is to defeat superior dollar amounts by capturing the organizational memory that money cannot buy.
You cannot replace your entire gamedev team at once without destroying what makes your company, your company. You cannot respond to your entire gamedev team refusing to work other than by replacing them or by getting them to stop striking, either by aggressively union-busting or by negotiating with the union. That is the reason unions work at all.
It's not just about dollar amounts, it's about security and consequences. If a developer finds out that he got laid off his life is completely upended. If the CEO of microsoft finds out that the subsidiary of a subsidiary goes under, his life doesn't change. One of those two people is in a position of power so much greater than the other that they have absolutely nothing to fear from having to treat a small number of twice removed employees a little more fairly.
The whole point of the union is to have any power at all and to try to improve their working conditions, not to overpower the giants who rule over them. No one joins a union because they want to put themselves out of a job.
>You cannot respond to your entire gamedev team refusing to work other than by replacing them or by getting them to stop striking.
Funny thing. Pay people fairly and don't abuse them, and they don't strike. If they are striking, I have a lot more suspicion towards management than the workers.
That is as true as saying "work hard and produce good value and you wont get fired, if you are fired I have a lot more suspicion on the worker than the manager".
Sure most of the time people are fired for good reasons and most of the time people strike for good reasons, but not always.
Why would they be terrified of a handful of employees just for having the ability to influence the company? The point of a union is to improve working conditions and job security, not to murder your bosses and kill off the company. Funny thing about workers is that they like having jobs, especially ones where they have any influence at all. If a company is fearful that treating workers a little more fairly will sink them, the company deserves to go under.
What you say is true but it does not represent the spirit of what has happened historically. Historically the means of production exploit labor vastly more frequently and with greater degrees of extremity than the inverse.
This comment puts it in perspective:
>Yeah, I'm not sure Id Software, backed by their billion dollar parent company ZeniMax Media, who in turn is backed by their parent company Microsoft, has to live in fear of being exploited by the 165 employees who just signed onto a union.
Your comment is inane in the context of the reality of the situation.
The Union is a business too - and it's product is the labor of it's members.
Always follow the money - there's no free lunch. The Union negotiates incremental raises not because it is righteous and just - no, it negotiates incremental raises because the Union wants more revenue.
Sometimes the goals of a Union and it's members align - but often they do not.
Unions get a lot of free positive PR, but in modern times there seems to be more examples of bad-acting Unions than good-acting Unions. Unions have been responsible for businesses failing and massive job-loss, are the source of countless frivolous lawsuits, and in many ways suppress wages by standardizing across organizations and industries instead of allowing natural market-forces to act. Unions have been responsible for stunting the development of a generation of kids during COVID, keeping our ports non-automated and inefficient, driving product cost increases due to bloated staffing requirements, driving jobs overseas, and in some cases preventing people from gaining employment that don't want to be part of a Union.
Unions used to serve a great purpose. We used to have 12-16+ hour workdays, no days off, etc. None of that is true anymore - the great battles have been fought and won, and nobody is going back. The Unions have to find a reason to exist, so propaganda.
Software Engineers are the very last class of workers that need Unions. On average a SE earns a very healthy income and has a very comfortable working environment.
If you believe a Union will substantively benefit your quality of life - you really should just find a new job. As fanciful is it might be, a Union isn't going to 180 your job and make everything great - and now they get a cut of the wages too.
> We used to have 12-16+ hour workdays, no days off, etc. None of that is true anymore - the great battles have been fought and won, and nobody is going back.
The 8 hour workday is not guaranteed to office workers anymore.
Pay is a but a single way in which an employer can attempt to unfairly exploit you.
The rest tends to hide behind culture and opportunity. Unpaid overtime framed as dedication, scope creep framed as growth, on-call expectations framed as ownership, understaffing framed as efficiency. You might find these game developers being abused by a few or all of these examples.
Exploitive companies can borrow against your pride, your fear of falling behind, and your desire to be seen as competent until your baseline becomes always available.
I support that freedom! I just think the idea that all employee-employer relationships are exploitative is wrong. It feels derived from Marx's long discredited labour theory of value.
It is of course possible for an employer to treat employees very poorly and arguably exploit them. But it is also possible for employers to lose money for years such that employees are effectively exploiting the employer.
I can imagine unions being a great force of good in the world, but whether they are or are not is largely down to how they behave, just like individuals, corporations and other organizations & institutions.
A union that bargains collectively for it's members sounds very straightforward and logical.
A union like the NYC hotel union that actively lobbies for fewer hotels feels insane.
Employers having to pay more than they'd prefer to pay for a given type of work/provide better working conditions does not imply "unfair exploitation" of the company by the union, either.
It's just a market reaching equilibrium. It's always weird how employees are forever to be expected to be at the mercy of market forces much greater than they are, while employers have to be shielded from them.
> It's just a market reaching equilibrium. It's always weird how employees are forever to be expected to be at the mercy of market forces much greater than they are, while employers have to be shielded from them.
It's not a market, at all. It's only possible because of federal law that prevents a business from firing employees for unionizing. If it were a market, the business would have to choose to keep unionzed workers voluntarily. The fact that they don't means it's more like the business being held hostage.
The equivalent would be employees being required by law to stay at a company they don't want to work for. Essentially indentured servitude.
An employer can't fire people for unionizing, but there's no law that requires them to accept a union's negotiating demands... Or prevents them from bringing in scabs if the union chooses to strike without pay.
The existence of a union by itself doesn't do anything.
The only power that a union actually has is not showing up to work. And when the union doesn't show up to work, the employer is free to hire someone else to do the work. It's wild to comparing people not showing up to work because an employment agreement hasn't been reached to 'being held hostage'.
The workers aren't drones, they have the agency to choose another job. If a company is underpaying workers relative to the rest of the market, they'll struggle to hire and retain employees without the interference of a union.
> The workers aren't drones, they have the agency to choose another job. If a company is underpaying workers relative to the rest of the market, they'll struggle to hire and retain employees without the interference of a union.
The problem is that all employers have certain common interests, and they are generally more organized and powerful than individual workers, which biases the market status-quo in their favor. The market doesn't fix that.
There are a lot of defacto cartels where all of the corporations determine a ceiling on wages they won't go over.
There was a big case with Apple and other Silicon Valley corporations were found to have colluded to not hire employees working for any of the other companies.
> There was a big case with Apple and other Silicon Valley corporations were found to have colluded to not hire employees working for any of the other companies.
And there's some factories in Asia that confiscate foreign worker's passports.
Nobody is claiming that workers' ability to move jobs is never compromised by employees. The question is, is there any evidence to back up that Id employees are in this situation as commenters are claiming in this thread?
And it sure looks like the answer is "no", given that the best people can come up with is point to a decades old no-poaching agreement and speculate that something like that might be happening at Id.
"In July 2025, a class action lawsuit was filed against Constellation Energy, Duke Energy, Pacific Gas & Electric and other U.S. nuclear plant operators, alleging that they conspired to suppress and coordinate worker pay for thousands of employees dating back to 2003. This lawsuit claims the companies acted together to keep wages low, which plaintiffs allege violates antitrust law"
"In a landmark verdict on April 14, 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division notched its first-ever jury trial conviction for criminal wage-fixing under the Sherman Act in United States v. Eduardo Lopez in the District of Nevada. A home health care staffing executive, Eduardo (“Eddie”) Lopez, was found guilty of (1) conspiring with several competing home healthcare staffing agencies to fix the wages of home health nurses in the Las Vegas area, and..."
https://www.crowell.com/en/insights/client-alerts/doj-secure...
Is there any evidence that wage fixing is happening at Id?
Again, bosses kidnapping employees and holding them by force is extensively documented. But posting a bunch of stories to that effect doesn't matter for the topic at hand unless one of those is happening at Id.
What's keeping any one of these Id software developers from accepting a competing job offer elsewhere?
Yes, there are scenarios where employees are stripped of agency. E.g
a factory owner taking and holding foreign worker's passports. But if you're going to allege that something is preventing these works from accepting competing offers, you have to offer evidence for that claim.
You're asking me to prove a negative. Bosses at other companies have been caught locking employees in factories and physically preventing them from leaving.
Can I say for certain that this didn't happen at Id? No, but anyone making that claim ought to actually provide evidence that it happened at Id, not simple point to some other company that engaged in this behavior.
Do you have evidence that Id is being subject to some sort of no poach deal?
Nobody doubts that employers can curb worker's ability to accept competing offers. The question is whether there's actually any evidence backing up the claim that Id employees aren't free to leave.
Doesn't need it to justify unionizing. Unionizing is a right, and it was previously not exercised because there was no evidence of the will of the market to defraud or conspire against workers. It is now written plain for all to see that indeed, these types of arrangements are kept in board members back pockets. It is not their job to protect a companies interest in renumeration execs and shareholders. It is their job to get their share in spite of the management class's proven track records of the proclivity to engage in shenanigans and lies.
The fact you can't understand solidarity is your problem, not theirs.
> Benefits are part of an employees compensation package. A competing offer could have even better healthcare than Id.
If a period of unemployment kicks you off an insurance program that's covering life-essential treatment for a loved one, there is no mechanism of "choosing freely" here; ex-employees don't have the option of covering health care themselves and there are no guarantees that the other employer's health care will cover existing treatments even if the coverage is better in theory.
> This is illegal and the last time SV companies were found doing this the government punished them
Every recruiter has spreadsheets of blacklisted employees, one of the reasons why companies frequently outsource staffing to outsides for plausible deniability.
> Illegal in CA where ID is based. NDAs don't prevent you from working at competitors, only from taking confidential info.
So illegal en CA but legal pretty much everywhere else, once again limiting you if you want to move because COL is too high in California and reducing the pool of real employment alternatives.
> Id is located in the Bay Area, probably the place with the greatest concentration of software jobs in the country if not the world.
Software jobs but not gaming jobs. California suffers from an artificial shortage of affordable housing due to insane tax laws and building restrictions. There's nothing free market about this.
Id employees can apply for jobs while remaining employed at Id. You're writing as though Id employees must first quit their jobs before seeking a new one. And even if they do have a period of unemployment between jobs, COBRA continues to cover them for up to a year.
> Every recruiter has spreadsheets of blacklisted employees
If you're going to allege illegal anti-poaching agreements, you ought to provide evidence of those claims.
> So illegal en CA but legal pretty much everywhere else, once again limiting you if you want to move because COL is too high in California and reducing the pool of real employment alternatives.
Actually, I just checked this and in 2024 the FTC banned non competes nationwide.
> Software jobs but not gaming jobs. California suffers from an artificial shortage of affordable housing due to insane tax laws and building restrictions. There's nothing free market about this.
And? Id software developers are free to work non-gaming software jobs. A big part of the reason why game dev jobs offer less renumeration is because people are passionate about games and are willing to take a pay cut to work in the industry.
If an Id employee is not willing to work non-gaming software development jobs that's a restriction imposed by their own decisions, not by their employers.
People in this thread are comparing Id software developers to slavery. The fact that they'll have to go on COBRA in between jobs doesn't make this comparison to slavery any less absurd.
> If you're going to allege illegal anti-poaching agreements, you ought to provide evidence of those claims.
Yes because companies are famous for being highly law-abiding under every circumstance and every major instance of corporate fraud has been identified and properly punished at a criminal basis.
C'mon man, the US is a country where wage theft is 3 times higher than all other formst of theft combined. Informal blacklists are as simple as keeping a notebook in writing and letting people know through hidden WhatsApp channels.
> Actually, I just checked this and in 2024 the FTC banned non competes nationwide.
The rule is vacated by an injunction.
> And? Id software developers are free to work non-gaming software jobs. A big part of the reason why game dev jobs offer less renumeration is because people are passionate about games and are willing to take a pay cut to work in the industry.
I have no idea why you think that a job being desirable and in high demand means that the people who effectively perform the job are somehow less deserving of workers' rights. The entire point behind having workers' rights is that basic job affordances and rights a non-negotiable because we do not allow certain forms undignified work.
So you're asking to prove a negative with respect to blacklisting?
Some factories have been caught physically locking employees in the building and not letting them leave. Can I say with certainty that this isn't happening at Id? No, but it's still not valid to baselessly assert that it is happening at Id Technologies because other instances of this behavior have been documented.
The fact that desirable jobs like game dev means employers don't have to compete as hard to attract talent. That's not infringing on game developers' rights. Game developers have the ability to work in jobs other than game dev. If they choose not to pursue those opportunities that's a choice they're making on their own initiative, not an infringement on their rights.
Workers rights like safe working environments, minimum wage, and other laws still apply to game devs.
You are correct. Unions do not exist to exploit employers, they exist precisely to make working conditions acceptable (livable) and no more, most of the time. There are outliers, like Police unions, which have ulterior motives, but on the whole it is a labor movement meant to prevent the abhorrent conditions to which capitalism naturally backslides, which we saw after the industrial revolution.
This collusion affected 8 companies, and stopped over a decade and a half ago. Is there any evidence that Id employees are being subject to this kind of no poach agreement?
Because people replied to my statement that Id employees are free to accept competing jobs elsewhere claiming that that employees at Id don't have that ability. It sure looks like this claim is baseless.
Many markets today only exist due to unfair exploitation of its staff, and the exploitation will continue for quite a long time if everyone who unionizes ends up without a job, since that will discourage unionizing at other companies.
We have spent most the last 50 years undoing all of the checks on corporate power that were enacted in the first half of the 20th century. There were literal pitched battles that happened when workers demanded their rights. Here's hoping the transition this time will be less painful (and actually gets repeated at all).
What if that unfair exploitation is perfectly normal behavior in overseas markets that happen to be competing? I guess we've been over the consequences of the globalization-driven equilibrium ad nauseam so no need to harp on it but it's still unfortunate.
> If the company's existence depends on the unfair exploitation of its staff, its foreclosure is inevitable and justified, and that is simply the price everyone involved must pay to maintain equilibrium.
Claiming that all non-union companies are inherently operating via "unfair exploitation of its staff" is ridiculous. It's entirely possible for a labor union to go too far and drive a company to become noncompetitive.
These sort of canned answers are empty claptrap and not really fit for an honest discussion.
That's not at all what the statement I replied to says in context.
hellojesus said "There is always the chance that the collective action discounts the impact to the business too heavily and ends up driving the company under, making the outcomes worse for everyone."
popalchemist said "If the company's existence depends on the unfair exploitation of its staff, its foreclosure is inevitable and justified"
That response is implying that the only way the business could go under due to unionization is because the business was formerly exploiting its staff. It's not just pro-union, it's outright zealotry that ignores reality.
You’re reading an extra claim into it. It’s not saying “all post-union failures prove exploitation.” It’s saying “if survival requires unfair exploitation, then losing that advantage exposes an illegitimate model.”
I see no implication that all failing businesses after unionization is due to exploitation.
There are lots of outcomes where having the wages the company can profitably offer are far better than having zero wages.
I see this low IQ argument template everywhere now: simply declare your opinion a "basic human right" and then declare anyone with a different opinion unworthy of engagement because they are "against human rights". It's impossible to engage with in good faith.
> There are lots of outcomes where having the wages the company can profitably offer are far better than having zero wages.
Like sweatshops for example. The idea that getting anything at all is far better than getting nothing is not new or compelling. It's exactly that kind of race to the bottom mentality where workers are expected to shut up and take whatever scraps their masters give them that causes labor movements to rise up and start demanding better.
I think there's a false perception that unions negotiate against the companies best interest.
Unions negotiate for a bigger slice of the same pie against leadership, executives, and shareholders/owners.
They have the same incentives as those to see the pie grow, but band together to negotiate that their pie be bigger and those of the above smaller than what would have been otherwise.
Most of the time when it results in squeezing the company itself it's because leadership wasn't willing to share downsides.
And this is the primary reason for unions. When things go well, leadership is rarely willing to share upsides. When things go bad, leadership is often unwilling to share downsides. Workers join union to pressure leadership in sharing both upsides and downsides.
There is always a chance that management's misguided choices impact the business too heavily and drive the company under or at least greatly decrease the value of their output.
I work for a factory that produces a type of heavy machinery that is in extreme demand. Any person with any semblance of foresight, would understand that in the near to medium term, this will be the case.
During COVID, there was a large dip(~30%) of orders. In the infinite wisdom of our business leaders, it was decided to shut us down. Coincidentally, our equipment was (supposed to be) transferred to our step-sibling factory, where most of the upper management is from… I say step sibling, although we make similar products, we come together due to a merger.
6 months after our supposed shutdown, after a lot of equipment has been transferred and a lot of good people have gone, suddenly demand was back to normal, and our customer are no longer asking how much our product costs, but if they can have one… and it turns out, our step-sibling can’t make our product very well.
It’s all politics, short-sightedness and personal greed, in upper management, UNLESS MAYBE, they founded the company(and still a big IF).
Yellow was in massive debt due to poor management decisions and the union fought against a move that would have combined driver seniority lists from various companies they managed, which they suspected was going to be used to cut people's jobs .
The union did what it thought was best for all its members, and the company was in so much debt it couldn't figure out how to fulfill those needs another way.
My point is exactly that the union didn't do what was best for its members because their actions collapsed the company.
Unions are subject to the constraints of operations. LTL is a very debt-heavy industry, and yellow pushed the envelop too far. But the union could have tried to negotiate a contract contingent on operating costs and debt load. They didn't. Instead they chose their line and then striked until the company went under.
Maybe not the best example, but it was the one on my mind.
Looking through the history of the company, it seems like the lack of making a profit for the last 25 years and taking on huge debt may have contributed way more to their demise than anything the union did.
Yes, because companies never go out of business or kill products for no reason under our glorious people's free market. Google, famously, never ends good products for no reason.
I don't think workers are to blame when it the business who makes the deals both with the employees and other business.
If I make a series of bad deals running my company and my employees take up collection action to demand a reasonable market rate increase in pay my business didn't fail because of collective action. It failed because I failed as ab businessman
Well, this economic downturn might have something to do with the games industry continuing to push out products that nobody wanted (or were no good in the first place) at absolutely lavish budgets. It didn't seemingly come out of nowhere.
Cue Concorde.
If you spend half a billion, to make a game that's five multiplayer maps, fail to do any market research, to find out that the part of your audience that isn't indifferent to your game actively hates it, playing the role of innocent victim subject to the whims of evil studio execs, is somewhat unproductive.
They did not, but since the parent comment alluded to there being financial trouble, I was just pointing out one of the most egregious examples of mismanagement in recent memory.
Unfortunately, the AAA industry is not in a good spot right now, I remember there being an article that there was not a single AAA game at some point in the Steam Best Sellers list.
id and Bethesda isn't doing quite so badly, but their most recent games have been meh.
There are movie flops, yet also there is an actors union. Workers are allowed to be paid even if management makes bad decisions. The company can go bankrupt, doesn't mean workers shouldn't get paid.
Are being wages owed here? If so, the company either can't pay them, and should be considered bankrupt, or is unlawfully holding them back, in which case they should be sued.
The parent was implying a common argument that a union will drive a company out of business. I'm saying, if there are poor decisions that drive a company out of business, then employees should still be paid. It doesn't make sense that employees should prop up the company by taking a pay cut.
This is true, but there's still the problem of how things are distributed within the collective groups.
When the labor market gets competitive, you start to see long probationary periods, two-tier pay and benefit scales, hiring people on as casuals instead of permanent members, and other bargaining concessions that end up favoring some union members over others. I know some unions over the last few years have managed to fight against two-tier systems, but if there's any sort of serious economic downturn I'd expect them to become commonplace again.
I'm curious to see if they can come up with a way to organize that works for everyone, or if it'll end up as something like the Longshoreman's union: a fantastic deal, provided you won the lottery to get in and then stuck around long enough to be a permanent member.
Unpopular opinion but I'm okay with treating union members better than non.
It's good to know that once you make it you are safe. It's okay to grind and give 110% on the come-up. Unsustainable drive, passion, fire. But there has got to be a point where you can ease off to giving 90%, even 85%.
Jobs are a part of society, and the society needs to create structures that make room for people to pull back and focus on other things like raising a family.
Not just unpopular, undesirable and unworkable. There's a reason unions have long opposed two-tier as a cynical divide-and-conquer management strategy.
Indeed what are you actually "okay with" here? Being on the upper tier, due to a strategy that explicitly wants to chip away at said tier until it's gone? When it goes away will that also be "okay"?
The way author was treated seem terrible, but I don't understad an accomplished composer would accept a contract where all penalties for deadline are on him, instead of having variable deadlines based on deliverables? And starts working before the contract is finalized but sign the contract with the original delivery dates, starting on a project already late?
interesting to see in the replies such incredible pearl clutching on behalf of the poor, poor businesses whenever unionization gets brought up. brain folds lighting up like a fireworks show just to combat the idea of [checks scroll] uhh not exploiting workers.
The problem is that there is actually an abundance of resources available, they're just horribly imbalanced. There's an entire megathread complaining about RAM prices, and very few people have said "maybe one single person shouldn't be allowed to make computers expensive for the entire rest of the planet".
When companies aren't doing well either, demanding more money will only result in bankrupt companies and out sourcing.
It's probably the worst time to do it.
I've only seen unions work well in the long-run with government jobs. The USPS is a good example. Mostly because you really can't fire the workers and the main entity won't ever go out of business because of government bailouts.
In professional sports, the player's union helps raise athlete salaries and improve working conditions and that does ultimately come out of the owner's pockets.
Easy counterexample: safety. Unions have historically been on the forefront of safety improvements. Not having workers mutilated or killed -> increased wealth for all. That's not a zero-sum game.
And if you think this doesn't matter for game programmers, look at how many overworked people in the past few years have gotten in car crashes while driving home. Fatigue kills.
I don't understand the video game industry from an insider perspective, but is it wise for id Software to unionize after Doom: The Dark Ages didn't do as well as Eternal? I haven't spoken to anyone who mentioned D:TDA IRL, but knew a fair amount of people who preordered Eternal.
I'm not a fan of parrying in any game and mentally put Eternal into the "Wait for cheap Steam sale" pile when I saw the shield. I wanna rip and tear in Doom.
