Then I don’t understand the outrage. What’s offensive about instructions on how to fill out a ballot above and beyond the fact of them asking you to vote no?
The GGP seemed to think that there was something particularly bad about the detailed six page instructions. But the GP correctly pointed out they do the same thing in regular government elections (to milk as many voters as they can).
> What’s offensive about instructions on how to fill out a ballot above and beyond the fact of them asking you to vote no?
Nothing. The outrage is about them telling you to vote no. If they were trying to help you fill out your ballot in good faith, there wouldn't be a problem.
No. The OP was complaining about something already assuming they're telling you to vote no, meaning the OP was adding something on top of that. I was asking what that thing-on-top is. So it has to be something more than:
>The outrage is about them telling you to vote no.
Which, indeed, you correct yourself on in the next sentence, to say that the issue is that it pretends to be neutral ballot instructions, but, if followed, end in you voting no, and are thus misleading (just guessing -- again, no one here seems to be making it easy to understand what they're objecting to).
If so, it would have been helpful for the OP to communicate that the first time around. Remember rtpg joined in to clarify, but actually objected to something else, the power imbalance -- and yet s/he seemed to believe s/he was agreeing with the initial comment!
Not everyone can read minds about what a speaker thinks is the most salient part, and we don't deserve to be ridiculed for asking.
If you want others to be outraged, it helps to clearly communicate what they're supposed to be outraged about -- starting form a clear model.
I didn't correct myself. Did you look at the article? It doesn't purport to be neutral at all. There's a giant yellow sign that says "VOTE NO" with five bullet points about why you should vote against the union. The step-by-step instructions encourage you to vote no in three different places.
There's no assumption or mind reading needed. To be honest, I don't see how OP could have been more clear:
> Detailed, 6 step instructions on how to open a ballot and mark no? Thanks, amazon.
I'm not objecting to the article. I'm asking what the original comment was objecting to.
We all know, before that comment, Amazon wants you to vote no. The OP was adding to that, in criticism of Amazon, by saying there are detailed six page instructions on how to vote the way they want. But that doesn't tell me what's to be outraged about -- as the first response noted, that is exactly what every other campaign does.
If the OP wasn't claiming Amazon was outrageous beyond the mere fact of asking for no, then why even bring up a six page instruction set?
Someone noted that it's different when your employer tells you to vote in a certain way vs. a random political party. That's where you entered the conversation, so I'm not sure how that's getting lost.
I guess what's "getting lost" is the fact that the original comment says nothing about that, and how that part has nothing to do with all the kvetching about "omg six detailed pages!" -- you know, the focus of that very comment.
All such people are so blinded by the outrage they can't take a few seconds to make clear what they're actually outraged about in way that can convince others to join them? Yeah, sounds about right.
Have you considered that you simply aren't understanding the reasons, which are quite clear and unambiguous to a relatively large population? That is, maybe the issue here is your difficulty understanding, rather than anybody else's ability to explain.
We've banned this account for breaking the site guidelines. Can you please not create accounts to do that with? We're trying for something different here.
You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=community%20identity%20by:dang...
The original comment (at least, I think I went far enough up-thread) said that teaching somebody how to vote and to vote in your favour, when you have power over them, is sleazy.
Maybe you didn't understand because you're focusing on a bit that the original comment didn't emphasise. The complaint is not about six pages of instructions. The complaint is about combining education with manipulation.
Imagine a handy guide from your bank that included instructions for how to wire money to its author.
Can you please stop? I know these tit-for-tat exchanges are hard to pull away from but they're exceptionally tedious, and not what HN is supposed to be for.
Your analogy is off: if you suggested that government officials sent police offers with instructions on how to vote it'd be closer to what is the case when an employer instructs its employees to do something work related (vote "no" on the union, in this case).
Unions are at least nominally directly elected by their constituents and beholden to them, which is why they are protected when engaging in politics.
If you think they do not represent them, then maybe the solution is to develop better union structures that are more democratic and representative.
But by and large, teachers do not support the Libertarian party and instead favour the Democratic party, quite heavily in fact. So why is it wrong that their alignment follows their base?
However, using that line of thinking people voluntarily join a company too.
Often to work for a company with union rep one HAS to join, whether one agrees or not, so it’s not entirely voluntary in a strict sense.
All this said, I do believe Amazon is treating their warehouse workers unfairly and they deserve pushback though I admit I do not favor bringing in a Union due to my past member experiences with them.
I agree but I have yet to see a better solution than unions. Companies will constantly use their influence to erode workers' rights and unions do levy a constant cost on society but it's a cost that's being paid to counter that otherwise imbalanced influence.
To repurpose a famous Churchill quote "Unions are the worst solution to labour equality except all the others that have been tried before."
Unions do not rent seek. They provide value to society via higher wages and act as a counterbalance to externalities from capital.
They are indeed not a cure, but the cure to the symptoms we are seeing is nothing short of a total overhaul of the capitalist system, which is both not politically feasible, and requires something like unions to make politically feasible to begin with. That is because by definition such a changé even if it was in the larger interests of society wouldn't be in the interests of capital.
"There were and are workers’ unions in communist countries." Most independent unions in those countries were/are destroyed. The "unions" in China, etc. or the former USSR were/are essentially arms of the Stalinist Communist Parties, and rarely if ever have any political independence or ability to oppose the employer (the state, or a company that the state has given privileges to).
Those activities only fit the definition of rent-seeking if you consider the value of labor as only what the market will bear. By that logic, if I offer a job at $5/hour and someone takes it, any attempt by that employee to get paid above $5 is "rent-seeking".
But that brings us right back to my original point: if my choice is starvation or $5/hour, I'm going to take the $5, but that's a coercive choice. I was forced into it by the threat of death. Now explain to me how that's different from holding a gun to someone and forcing them to work? You didn't determine the value of my labor, you determined that I don't want to die.
So an attempt to increase the cost of labor (minimum wages, credentialing/protectionism) is an attempt to extract the true value of labor, even though the threat of death-by-starvation remains. Like a previous commenter said - unless we want to radically re-org our society - that threat of death is irreducible. For example, if every person was granted enough arable land to subsist off of by the state, we'd see a very different labor market.
There were and are workers’ unions in communist countries. They didn’t always have their worker’ best interests in mind. Often they were a tool of the communist state to control workers. In addition sometimes you had student movements pitted against workers’ unions and so on.
Exploitation or at the minimum the potential for it exists in every economic system. It’s not a feature exclusive to capitalism as much as people dream it to be so. Even in a barter economy, can I not take advantage of another worker? Of course I can!
I never said that we should install Soviet socialism/state-capitalism, it's not a good system.
Workers unions in socialist countries were basically illegal, there was only one legally allowed union pretty much. In the Soviet Union the role of labour unions were mostly for the state to resolve interpersonal problems, and in theory to allow the state to receive feedback from employees to optimize production, but not in practice due to dysfunctions because of the broken political and economic framework.
The one time I worked in a union shop, I was told that I didn't have to join, but I did have to pay dues. If I chose to join, there were certain benefits provided by the union to members (optical coverage IIRC).
One thing I'd like to see is competing unions. The UAW supplies labor to the big three US automakers, putting them in an unfair negotiating advantage; the UAW can easily bully them around. The UAW ultimately hurt themselves because it put the Big Three at a big competitive disadvantage. Some manufacturing left for right-to-work states, and some business left for (mostly) Japanese automakers.
I think that could help. Some unions at least, like the UAW shoot themselves in the foot. It’s very adversarial from both sides and often the worker in the middle is the one who loses out. Example the steel industry. They made labor so expensive the companies folded. Admittedly the industry ran aged inefficient systems that made their process uncompetitive. But the Union only cared about protecting itself. The companies only cared about immediate profits.
That's not at all what happened to the steel industry. 50% of all US steel production capacity has been built in the past 30 years and steel production has seen continuous and massive improvements in productivity. In 1920 it took 3 man-hours of labor to produce 1 ton of steel in the US, now 1 man-hour produces 300 tons. The contraction in steel employment during the 70s coincided with a recession and the development of the electric arc furnace. From 1974 to 1999, global steel industry employment fell by 1.5 Million people with large decreases both in developed countries and developing countries like Brazil and South Africa as employment per ton of production fell everywhere. The actions of one union in one country had nothing to do with it.
Old outdated technology (not sure about the stance the unions had back then on productivity improvements that would lower headcount) plus outsized pay demands for the given the productivity.
Old and outdated compared to what? Outsized pay demands compared to whom? Everyone around the world switched to the new technology at the same time. Employment per production fell everywhere simultaneously. This was not a case of labor becoming too expensive, it was a case of labor becoming unnecessary.
The libertarian party supports School Choice, Actual Education for children, and less protectionism based on "seniority"
So it is no wonder that unionized teachers would oppose the Libertarian Party, libertarians want children to get a good education and allow parents to choose the type of education their child gets, taking away large amounts of power from Teachers who believe they should supplant parents and "know better".
This has never been more clear than in the Age of COVID where the hypocrisy of Teachers and their union has been on full display with their refusal to teacher (aka their job)
I dunno. School isn’t primarily about academics. It’s mostly about moulding pupils, their minds to their current society. It’s mostly political in that sense. Whether it’s patriotism, community building, stressing this over that, etc.
The three Rs are kind of incidental.
Now to be clear, we do need to grow up to be functional adults, but public schooling is not the only one option to achieve that.
To be clear — when people refer to "school choice", they usually mean a system that funnels taxpayer dollars to private schools based on student attendance. Similarly, when people oppose "school choice", they usually oppose that appropriation of public funds specifically, not public school alternatives in general.
It's a sneaky name designed to make you conflate the two.
I always thought that school choice means a system that funnels taxpayer dollars to any school, public or private, based on student attendance. Parents can choose to send their children to public school, if they feel the outcome will be superior to alternatives.
Public schools are by definition taxpayer funded, so I wouldn't describe allocating tax money to them as "funneling". And of course, absent school choice policies, parents are still free to send their children to private school — they just wouldn't receive public funds to do so (which is why the name is sneaky). But yes, you're correct.
It is important to note that that voucher only has a fixed value so those parents choosing to send their children to private schools still need to make up the difference out of pocket. That results in a wide variety of school choice for the rich and a smaller number of choices for those less well off. This voucher results in funds being diverted from public schools while the capacity requirements on those public schools may not be impacted but there is a larger issue IMO. If the more influential parents move their children to private schools then the amount that voucher should cover becomes less important and various parties can argue to shrink the voucher as a cost saving measure - that will end up strongly effecting those residents with less wealth since the money they are paying toward the value of that voucher is being multiplied due to the effect of progressive taxation brackets - while the more affluent residents will end up paying less money overall the smaller the voucher is since their tax revenue is going to subsidize school vouchers at large.
School vouchers can easily lead toward incentivizing minimizing education spending.
Oh also, private schools are often not held to the same standards of avoiding religious teaching as public schools are (by virtue of being a public service). The result is that the vouchers can end up funding religious education, but that's a whole other can of worms.
It is worth noting that many area;s where this has been tried the private schools were more than capable of providing better education for the same money that the public schools do since the public schools are wasteful and have no incentive to spend tax payer money wisely
It is completely false to charatice a school choice program as "more choices for the rich" as the rich already have those choices, poor and middle class people have zero choice because their money has already been taken to fund the public schools. redirecting this money to better more efficient systems is preferred and gives the poor and middle class choice that is normally reserved for the wealthy
>> This voucher results in funds being diverted from public schools
yes, that is by design and the desired outcome of libertarians.
>>Oh also, private schools are often not held to the same standards of avoiding religious teaching as public schools are (by virtue of being a public service). The result is that the vouchers can end up funding religious education, but that's a whole other can of worms.
Another red herring and strawman, but I (and most libertarian) are fine with the limited amount of religious education that would result from school choice if it means dismantling the failed and unethical public school system we have today.
I am sure you are a huge supporter of the Public School System and see nothing systemically wrong with it. We disagree with this position
> I am sure you are a huge supporter of the Public School System and see nothing systemically wrong with it. We disagree with this position.
I do actually see a lot wrong with the school system, I think the fact that education is largely funded from local property taxes goes strongly against most ideals around American opportunity and that the highly localized management means that a cartel of local officials can run a system into the ground with only limited options available to the DoEd to address is quite problematic.
There's a bunch of things wrong with the school system, certainly, but I can't see how partial privatization would do anything but exacerbate the issues.
People here are already set in their political tribes, if you were already a libertarian (or republican) then you just agreed with my post. If you are an Authoritarian you just down voted it.
Nothing I say will change anyone's minds on this topic, it is one of those things where no amount of data or facts will change minds. You either believe in a unionized Public school that only fails because we do not spend enough money, or you recognize that giving a monopoly over education to a group of people based on geography will always result in bad outcomes no matter how much money you spend.
I had heard Libertarians are bull-headed, self-righteous, think only they understand the facts, think everyone who disagrees with them are Authoritarians. I heard wrong.
By definition anyone that disagrees with Libertarianism is an Authoritarian.
While Libertarian and Authoritarian do exist on a spectrum in some ways, you are either on the Libertarian side of that spectrum or the Authoritarian Side.
It’s a very large tent party though sparse in density.
Some of us see the need for aspects of regulation and frameworks, others prefer the more idealist semi pastoralist view of the world. I’m more in the Johnson camp ;)
>It’s a very large tent party though sparse in density.
I'm not so sure about that.
I have strong libertarian (small 'l') leanings, specifically that government should stay the hell out of people's lives and bodies as much as possible. And that humans should be free to do pretty much whatever they want as long as they don't interfere with others doing the same.
But that's where I part ways with the Libertarian (big 'L') Party.
Because I do believe that, human nature being what it is, that the government does have a role to play in helping those who are disadvantaged in our society.
What's more, I believe that government has a role to play in evening the playing field and attempting to make sure that everyone has equal opportunity to succeed in our society.
The Libertarian Party doesn't believe in any of that, so I have no interest in supporting them.
I'd note that privatized everything (not saying you support that) isn't libertarian at all. Rather it's anarcho-capitalism[0], which would completely destroy our society.
While the implementation of the idea that minorities should be protected against the "tyranny of the majority" by the government has been pretty poor in the US, it has improved somewhat in recent years.
I look forward to that progress continuing. And the Libertarian Party won't be the one's that help us do that.
That's pretty much precisely where I stand as well. When you talk about personal freedoms the right to unlimited action is something that could only potentially be given to a single person, since at a certain point your actions begin to encroach on the freedoms of others. As an example the right to freely murder requires that other persons surrender their right to not be murdered - so, like most of life, the two extremes are extremely detrimental and sanity lies in the middle path.
Why would the TU endorse the Libertarian Party when the LP has done exactly zero for teachers, and has never said or done anything to imply it has any interest whatsoever in the lives of teachers?
It's a very revealing tell that this is even being asked.
Generally, why do Libertarians seem to act as if Rest of World owes them, but relationships are solely for their personal benefit with no reciprocity of any kind?
If we argue that what is wrong about the situation is the 'balance of power'... would that mean then no employer should be able to make their case when it comes to such situation because the balance of power wouldn't be fair?
That seems weird.
And unions once established have their own balance of power, and that's not in favor of the individual.
The literal purpose of a corporation in all its varieties, for profit, non-profit, co-op, S Corp, C Corp etc. is to pool the resources of its owners and serve their interests.
Unions serve the interests of the people with power in the union. If those interests don't align with yours, the union may be working against you and you may not want to get involved.
> On the other hand, the employer never ever serves your interest.
Their interests may align to mine even if they're doing it for their own benefit. And if the union's interests don't align to mine, then I'm better off without the union and with the employer.
I don't think that's a hypothetical scenario, either.
For example if the union wants to pay by seniority and the employer wants to pay by results, and I have low seniority but good results, who am I better aligned with?
Common experience is that performance reviews are bullshit and that scores are determined by warm fuzzies and management's political needs. Rachel has story after story. If you are politically astute, by all means don't join the union, but all this talk about "results" doesn't sound as if you are.
Do you not have the imagination to think of any situation where the majority of workers may want something that's not in your interests?
For example you morally support allowing new people to enter your field but the union is mostly comprised of more established people and they vote for credentialism to restrict supply.
Probably I'm very aligned with my employer on wanting to lower barriers to entry for the field!
> Probably I'm very aligned with my employer on wanting to lower barriers to entry for the field!
Well... until you start looking at advancing into upper management and realize that seniority-based hiring decisions and credentialism are very often in the best interest of the established managers and higher-ups.
In most large companies, the people making hiring decisions in upper management probably don't want to lower barriers of entry for their fields. They want to hire people who look like them, who have gone to the same schools as them and worked the same jobs as them, and they want to set up a performance system that makes it hard for them to get fired or demoted.
It's easy to make the mistake of thinking of corporations like they're some kind of impartial oiled machine, but the reality is that they're made of people who are just as biologically prone as anyone else is to forming cliques and gatekeeping their own jobs.
Do you not have the imagination to think of any situation where the majority of workers may want something that's not in your interests?
Consensus-building and making of viable compromises has always been part of governance, any institution comprises people with diverse, sometimes competing interests.
That said, the usual workplace conflict between employee and management is about working conditions and promotion. And for that it's useful to have a paid witness on your side, because HR is always working for the employer.
Codes of conduct are fashionable these days, but at the end of the day they are upheld by HR, which will always work in favour of the company.
> And for that it's usuful to have a paid witness on your side
But I'm not sure the union is going to be on my side. I know that's their pitch, but lots of people claim they want to act on my behalf - I'd be a fool to trust most of them!
The union will always be on your side, it's their reason for existing and what you're paying them for. They will support the most indefensible position you can throw at them because it's their job.
I’d recommend talking with employees of my local unionized Kroger, especially younger employees. The union is not always on their side. Benefits are heavily skewed to older employees by virtue of having more working-age years.
If I'm a junior worker in a union with a pay-by-seniority agreement because the majority of workers are senior, then they aren't on my side are they? They're on the side of the majority senior workers. They're on the side against me and my aspirations to get paid more.
In that situation, you have a clear way of getting paid more: Keep working, same as everyone else did. You're not getting special treatment, but it's not like they're working against you either.
> These are contracts with enforceable terms and are upheld.
Stop and think this through for just a second.
Try this thought experiment:
If I want dogs in the office and my colleague wants dogs banned, you’re telling me you think the union will simultaneously negotiate for both our positions with our employer?
Does not compute. It is not possible for them to be on everyone's side.
I'd also note that you appear to demand 100% alignment with your ethics from unions in return for your support ("think of any situation"), but are fine with being somewhat aligned with your employer.
You seem to already have chosen a tribal affiliation.
You said I since I didn't agree with you I must not be politically astute so I returned the favour!
> I'd also note that you appear to demand 100% alignment with your ethics from unions in return for your support ("think of any situation"), but are fine with being somewhat aligned with your employer.
But my employer pays me. And they're an essential part of the agreement. The union wants me to pay them, and they're optional, so yes I expect them to do a better job aligning to me otherwise why bother with them? What is the point joining a union, lending them what little power you have, as well as actually giving them money, if they aren't very aligned?
My current work negotiation is me and my employer. I have what I want and my employer has what they want. Why involve a third party, who may want something completely different, possibly morally offensive to me? Why do that?
I guess you're going to say 'because the union acts in your interest'. Well, let me tell you - there's a whole world of people out there offering to 'act in my interest' in return for something. Most of them are charlatans. Beware.
You can leave a company and get a new job. That’s a good time to renegotiate your terms of employment. You can even use the impending threat of your departure as a negotiating tactic.
Unions complicate an otherwise cut and dry relationship of your employer trying to extract value from you and you trying to extract value from your employer until you reach an equilibrium.
As a worker, you want "complications" in that relationship, because in its natural form, the balance of power is extremely lopsided toward the employer.
Why should I? You can start an organisation if you want, but you'd need to argue why it's in my interest if you want me to lend what little individual power I have. And the employer can present their arguments as well, which is fine. But if you think I'm going to trust you've got my interests at heart just because you're not my employer, then you're delusional. Why should I trust you more than them?
Subject to antitrust law is not an inherent property of a corporation. Antitrust law is a statutory construct, as are the tax benefits of incorporation.
What you’re failing to understand is that while there are different types if corporations as legal constructs, with differing advantages and disadvantages mostly related to their overall tax liability, a corporation in the general sense is just a group of people come together for a common goal. Usually that goal is profits. You join up with 5 people putting in 20% of the money, you are entitled to 20% of the future proceeds.
So if you take a distribution of $1000, all other shareholders holding equal shares, they must also take a distribution of $1000, or equal to their share of equity in the company.
A union has a different structure, different legal privileges and burdens, and different goals, but fundamentally it is a group of people with a common goal. I think where they tend to fall down is that unions can grow so large that the power is so diffused amongst individual members that even people in unions may come to resent the union more than their employer, particularly if they are always in the minority on union issues. In which case they might find they are actually more in alignment with their employers rather than their union leaders.
Is that even true? Quick Google searches seem to show several instances of antitrust accusations against non-profits including trade unions and professional associations. There does seem to be a basic exemption for trade unions, but it seems that trade unions can lose that exemption for behaving in certain ways.
With or without a union, there are no laws I am aware of that prohibit workers cooperating to get higher wages from employers.
That does not violate anti-trust law in the US. It is not a special exemption the union has, it doesn't violate anti-trust law in the US even if there isn't a union involved, for employees to "collude" to get higher wages.
Or if there are such laws I'm not aware of, feel free to share. But I gather you think it ought to be illegal? Why?
Can you elaborate on that? I don't understand what's inherently anti-competitive about labor unions, unless you think that any time humans organize themselves is anti-competitive and the only thing that counts as competitive is a total lack of organization and cooperation above the level of the individual.
Correct. People who hold more equity have more control. This is easily seen in small businesses on the Balance Sheet with only one or two owners, you can quickly determine who put more money into the business, assuming no investors.
This becomes more complex as you go from small business to startup with investors to a larger business, but the principles remain the same.
Nobody starts a business to have others dictate to them what to do with their business, and to be told whose interests they should really be serving. I’m not sure why you would expect that to change just because the company in question is valued at over a trillion.
There may be a line to walk here, but the balance of power really does matter. The Republican Party might send me a flyer saying "if you vote for Democrats, it'll be very bad for you" (or vice-versa), but they're not in an explicit contractual relationship with me that my income depends on. If my employer sends me a flyer saying "if you vote to unionize, it'll be very bad for you" that's clearly got some very different implications to it. They may both be raising the spectre of what happens if the vote doesn't go their way, but only one of them carries an implicit threat.
Should employers be able to make an anti-union case? I'd have to say yes on free speech grounds, but I'd also say that they really should be subject to more restrictions on what kind of anti-union organizing they can do than the union should be on what kind of pro-union organizing they can do. Yes, that's deliberately giving the union an advantage -- but, again, management has the advantage of being the side that literally writes the checks.
> unions once established have their own balance of power, and that's not in favor of the individual.
I mean, that's kind of the point, in a way, isn't it? The employee/employer power balance is almost always weighted toward the employer, because the employee alone is one individual and the employer is a corporation. Employees acting as a collective are theoretically on more equal footing. That doesn't guarantee every single individual employee will support every collective action the union makes.
