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COMMENT PAGE FOR:
HTML Break up bad companies; replace bad union bosses
tolerance wrote 23 min ago:
Does this guy lift?
ronsor wrote 1 hour 14 min ago:
Customers have the power to destroy both bad companies and bad unions.
jfindper wrote 41 min ago:
Missing the "when there's a choice" part of your sentence. Often
there isn't.
worik wrote 1 hour 5 min ago:
That is a sweet thought, it would be nice if it were true, it is
false.
"Customers" are barely holding on in a very precarious position
teeray wrote 1 hour 5 min ago:
Yes, they can take their dollars away from one bad company and bring
them to the other bad company instead. That will show them.
oersted wrote 49 min ago:
Or they can create a new good company and take all the customers,
that's the fairytale at least.
It does actually happen quite often, but then the good company
predictably goes bad once its dominant, which may or may not be
premeditated.
Indeed, often the only way the good company can afford to be good
is the prospect of eventually being able to be bad, worse even, to
pay back that speculative investment. And on-and-on we go.
jdross wrote 1 hour 42 min ago:
I would love to address unions in public and semi-public (e.g.
teachers' unions, dockworkers, police and fire unions). They are able
to hold the public hostage by preventing automation at ports, stopping
teaching (often doubling as daycare for children), or withholding
public safety.
The counterbalance to a union and to management needs to be customers,
but customers aren't able to vote no here. That's fundamentally
undemocratic.
And you end up with terrible outcomes like collapsing literacy rates
through the prevention of teaching phonics, which leads to parents
opting out of public education entirely. There needs to be a feedback
mechanism in unions for them to work.
miltonlost wrote 20 min ago:
> And you end up with terrible outcomes like collapsing literacy
rates through the prevention of teaching phonics, which leads to
parents opting out of public education entirely.
Did the teachers unions also cause you to make this leap in logic?
csb6 wrote 36 min ago:
> And you end up with terrible outcomes like collapsing literacy
rates through the prevention of teaching phonics, which leads to
parents opting out of public education entirely.
What is your evidence that teachersâ unions are causing these
issues and not state/federal education policy? Do teachersâ unions
have a big role in developing curriculums or setting educational
policy? It seems like state legislatures and superintendents have
more to do with that.
Aurornis wrote 34 min ago:
Several Teachers' Unions publicly oppose phonics curriculum as part
of a larger goal to shift curriculum choosing power to the teachers
unions.
If you want evidence, look to the Teachers' Unions own efforts to
oppose phonics education:
HTML [1]: https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/why-some-teachers...
csb6 wrote 20 min ago:
Seems like the unions have a lot of valid concerns about how the
measures in those bills will be implemented and how/if new
materials/training will be provided for teachers. It also seems
like legislators are mostly ignoring the unions and passing the
laws anyways, so not sure how unions are gaining power over
curriculums in any way. If teachersâ unions had any significant
leverage on legislatures I would think teacher salaries would be
higher, which other unions (e.g. dockworkers) are successful at
doing.
jfindper wrote 25 min ago:
>If you want evidence, look to the Teachers' Unions own efforts
to oppose phonics education:
This does not read like an "effort to oppose phonics education".
In fact, I did not see one mention of one single teacher who is
opposed to phonics.
The complaints are about implementation timelines, continuing
education requirements, potential over-stepping of policy-makers
re: teacher autonomy in the classroom, etc.
>âTo the extent that these laws remove teacher choice from
certain decisions about curriculum and pedagogy and instructional
style, itâs not at all a surprise that youâd see unions be in
opposition to those, even if they support the arguments behind
the science of reading,â said Melissa Arnold Lyon, an assistant
professor of public policy at the University at Albany.
>"âThatâs establishing a precedent that is really dangerous
and really could open up schools and teachers to all kinds of
litigation, and all kinds of conflict and problems,â said Scott
DiMauro, the president of the Ohio Education Association.
âYouâve got to always be cautious about micromanaging
decisions that ought to be made at the local level.â"
>âThat raises a lot of academic freedom questions for us, that
raises a lot of questions about being able to differentiate based
on student need,â said Justin Killian, an education issues
specialist at Education Minnesota."
>District leaders need time to create new instructional plans,
money for new curriculum materials, and systems in place for
coaching and supporting teachersâprovisions these laws donât
always include, Woulfin said.
You are confusing "against the legislation as it is written" with
"against teaching phonics".
givemeethekeys wrote 41 min ago:
As long as executive compensation continues to be many multiples
higher than rank and file employees, I will support unions holding
whomever they want hostage in order to get better pay and benefits.
Why? Because it will translate to better pay and benefits for
everyone else.
littlestymaar wrote 41 min ago:
> collapsing literacy rates through the prevention of teaching
phonics
Is that even a true thing?
I'm asking because in my country (France) this has been a talking
point of the conservative party for the past 2 decades and it's also
100% a urban legend. So I wonder if they just imported a (real) US
educational controversy or if it's a urban legend there as well and
they just imported the bullshit.
danaris wrote 11 min ago:
The switch away from teaching phonics, and the consequent drop in
literacy, is real.
It is not particularly something that was pushed by teacher unions.
The "three cueing model" was being pushed for some time as being
more effective due to widely-promoted misunderstanding and
misinformation by one guy whose name I'm afraid I've forgotten (I
was reading about this a few months ago, and don't have the
references to hand). It correctly recognizes that highly adept
readers do not mentally sound out every word, but rather recognize
known words very quickly from a few individual aspects of the word.
However, this skill absolutely 100% requires having first learned
the fundamentals of reading through phonics, and its proponents
thought they could skip that step.
toomuchtodo wrote 58 min ago:
People who do the work should be able to exert power against those
who demand their labor. Otherwise, they are simply slaves to
consumers and shareholders "because that's the way the system is, and
we're not willing to change it". Based on the evidence in the US, is
that working out? It is not. Whether you believe change is necessary
are components of some combination of either empathy for your fellow
human and their experience having to work to support themselves and
how exposed you are economically to the dumpster fire.
This is the ideal time for labor to exert power at this part of the
demographics cycle [1], as surplus labor will only decline into the
future as labor shortages [2] from the rapid fertility rate decline
[3] become structural and irreversible. [1] [2]
HTML [1]: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jesusfv/Slides_London.pdf
HTML [2]: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
HTML [3]: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Aurornis wrote 25 min ago:
> People who do the work should be able to exert power against
those who demand their labor. Otherwise, they are simply slaves to
consumers and shareholders
Hyperbole like this is hard to take seriously. Nobody is a "slave"
when they apply for and accept a job offer where they're paid wages
and can leave for another job at any time.
jfindper wrote 13 min ago:
>and can leave for another job at any time.
This may be true for you. If it is, congratulations.
It is not true for many.
toomuchtodo wrote 23 min ago:
> Nobody is a "slave" when they apply for and accept a job offer
where they're paid wages and can leave for another job at any
time. [1] This idea that "you can just leave for another job at
anytime" is fiction in the context of the US and the current
position in the credit and macro cycle. Is it a job with the same
wages and security? Is it within commuting distance? How long and
how many interviews does it take to get "another job"? The Fed is
cutting rates to preserve the labor market [1], that does not
strike me as a "healthy economy" with the opportunity you believe
exists to switch jobs.
Again, you do not have to take what I write seriously, it is
immaterial to the situation. I'm confident demographics will do
the work necessary. ~400k US workers leave the labor force every
month, through retirement or death. There are not enough younger
workers to replace them, and immigration will be constrained for
at least another three years under this administration [2] [3].
Young workers simply need to work on unionizing and organizing as
old workers age out of the working age population. Support for
unions in the US is at record highs [4]. [1] Federal Reserve
issues FOMC statement - [2] - December 10th, 2025 [2] CBO Slashes
Immigration Estimates as a Result of Trump Policies - [3] | [4] -
September 10th, 2025 [3] Texas Firms Hit by Immigration Crackdown
Add Hours, Raise Wages - [5] | [6] - July 28th, 2025 [4] [7]
(citations)
(think in systems)
HTML [1]: https://www.google.com/search?q=low+hire+low+fire
HTML [2]: https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/...
HTML [3]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-10/us-wi...
HTML [4]: https://archive.today/RnFBo
HTML [5]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-28/texas...
HTML [6]: https://archive.today/Z3lvp
HTML [7]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45851620
ryandrake wrote 1 hour 0 min ago:
> They are able to hold the public hostage by preventing automation
at ports, stopping teaching (often doubling as daycare for children),
or withholding public safety.
It takes two to tango. If they're striking it's because they are not
bending and management is not bending either. Why are management
always off the hook when a walkout happens? Only the union gets the
blame. They both failed to come to agreement.
Aurornis wrote 36 min ago:
> Why are management always off the hook when a walkout happens?
Only the union gets the blame.
I haven't seen this as a general rule. Most news outlets publish
headlines about "failed to reach an agreement". If you go to news
outlets and sites with a political lean it's predictable which side
will be blamed. Visit Fox News and it's all about the union being
bad. Visit Reddit and everyone is angry at management.
danaris wrote 21 min ago:
I've never seen it framed in an article as management being the
party with agency. It's always about what the union is or isn't
doing.
I do not make a habit of reading any conservative-leaning
outlets.
vintagedave wrote 1 hour 22 min ago:
> customers aren't able to vote no here. That's fundamentally
undemocratic
Union workers _are_ voters and citizens and the disenfranchised.
There is almost nothing _more_ democratic than organised action.
If they cause inconvenience through that action, that is intended to
be political pressure. If you dislike them because of those effects,
that is removing their right to effectively collectively act and
bargain.
jaredklewis wrote 17 min ago:
Iâm fine with the right to collectively act and bargain in some
abstract sense.
In practice, I observed that police unions, for example, seem to be
too effective at protecting their membersâ interests at the
expensive of the publicâs. They seem more like a mafia.
If tech or game workers or whoever wants to unionize, fine with me.
jtbayly wrote 24 min ago:
They are a minority of voters, though. And they get to unilaterally
declare things that the vast majority don't get to vote on. I don't
think you're making a good case.
Aurornis wrote 30 min ago:
> If you dislike them because of those effects, that is removing
their right to effectively collectively act and bargain.
Disliking a group does not remove any of their rights.
Everyone has the right to dislike or disagree with another group.
Nobody has to agree with you or support your different opinions.
That's fundamental.
vintagedave wrote 1 hour 13 min ago:
I see I was very rapidly downvoted. Let me expand: the history of
labor rights, environmental protests, and many others have all been
through disruption.
Take a completely difference example: anti-logging. Logging
protesters march through the streets, disrupting traffic and making
people late for work. (Legal marches.) Or they sit up trees and
chain themselves, preventing the trees from being cut. (Usually
illegal.) Both these get significant attention.
Democracy is rife with examples like this.
How did the suffragettes get the vote? By protest.
Yet many other groups would have -- and have tried -- to prevent
these protests and actions, just like the 'customers' cited in the
comment I replied to. That's my point: to call being able to
prevent that 'democratic' is outside the past century and a half of
modern Western democratic history.
vkou wrote 1 hour 25 min ago:
> They are able to hold the public hostage by preventing automation
at ports, stopping teaching (often doubling as daycare for children),
or withholding public safety.
The legislature can and has ordered them back to work without a
contract. Check out how well that went for the railworkers' union.
Biden ordered them back to work, and most of them still don't get the
sick days they were striking for.
It's interesting that they are so critically important to the nation
that they aren't allowed to strike, but not so critically important
that they shouldn't be treated like shit.
It's fun to try to square that circle.
jdross wrote 1 hour 16 min ago:
Not getting everything everyone wants is a pretty common outcome in
negotiations. Some people got more sick days. Some didnât get
more sick days. Maybe the ones who didnât will leave to find work
elsewhere with a better schedule?
JKCalhoun wrote 1 hour 35 min ago:
FTA: "Thankfully, union workers figured out that the answer to this
problem was firing their leaders and replacing them with militant,
principled leaders who cared about workers, not just a subsection of
their members."
Looks like bad companies are what is left.
nickff wrote 49 min ago:
Have you seen how and what the Longshore Workers negotiate
(mentioning them because the grandparent did)? They falsely claim
many things, such as that port automation is dangerous (when it
isn't in Europe), to increase the number of members employed at
West-coast ports, and are able to hold downstream customers
hostage, because they have a monopoly on stevedore-age across the
West coast. If one company obtained a monopoly the way the LSW did
(through gradual horizontal integration), they would have been
stopped under anti-trust.
Sector-wide unions in general seem prone to anti-competitive
practices (including, but not limited to extortion).
rickydroll wrote 29 min ago:
> They falsely claim many things, such as that port automation is
dangerous (when it isn't in Europe)
I believe it is not a false claim as much as incomplete. I
suspect EU ports are more worker-friendly and safer.
rcbdev wrote 1 hour 38 min ago:
What are you talking about? >99% of all Austrian employment contracts
are based on and negotiated by the unions here.
Is our school system failing? No. Is our public infrastructure
somehow inferior? No.
The U.S. is much less unionized and much worse off for it.
taylodl wrote 1 hour 24 min ago:
Winston Churchill one quipped 'You can always count on Americans to
do the right thing - after theyâve tried everything else.' I
suppose that also applies to managing their societal affairs as
well. The upside to falling so far behind the industrial world?
There are plenty of proven solutions to copy to which they'll
loudly proclaim as their own stroke of genius.
harvey9 wrote 1 hour 24 min ago:
Are you referring to public sector teaching jobs in both cases?
jdross wrote 1 hour 25 min ago:
Specifically in the US context, this is failing. And 70% of our
teachers are unionized, with unionized districts seeming to
underperform equivalent non-unionized districts (despite
researchers repeatedly trying to find the opposite, the stats just
are what they are)
You need to be able to explain this better than âlook at
Austriaâ. Nearly everything about Austria is different than the
US.
sillyfluke wrote 49 min ago:
>Specifically in the US context, this is failing.
You have existing counterexamples in other countries who don't
employ your suggested tweeks. It's a sign you should go back to
the drawing board (and history books).
Ask the customers: Ok great. I can already see how well that
would've worked in the past. Tobacco smokers are pissed off at
the rioting slaves for slowing down shipments. Boo-hoo.
There's stats being thrown about that this Black Friday the
number of people buying shit decreased even though the amount of
shit bought was higher. Even if you ignore that point but can
concede the growing wealth inequality is a thing (consumer class
is shrinking but getting richer), you should be able to
understand why giving more weight to the wealthier class should
be thought about twice.
daft_pink wrote 1 hour 55 min ago:
In the United States, unions should be used to advocate for higher
wages and thatâs it.
OSHA and the USâs high litigation costs make most work places fairly
safe.
The unions have been failing for advocating for unrealistic benefit
packages where most workers would rather have the salary.
The unions have also been destroying companies by imposing restrictions
that limit operational flexibility like arguing against automation,
specifying minimum operational hours for a factory etc.
They should adjust unions so they are only arguing for increased total
wages and not all these other things that are incredibly destructive.
dylan604 wrote 32 min ago:
Why only focused on wages? What about treatment of employees in
general from maximum hours, minimum down time, workplace safety, and
many other things that unions are meant to address?
oersted wrote 38 min ago:
> high litigation costs make most work places fairly safe
I don't understand this. High litigation costs give an unfair
advantage to those with capital to spare. It makes it harder for
harmed workers to sue and have the stamina to succeed. An important
role of unions is actually to pool worker capital to level that
playing field.
Do you mean that the amounts that companies need to pay when they
loose are high enough to disincentivize taking those risks? I'm not
sure that's true, it may be to a degree.
awkward wrote 1 hour 49 min ago:
Unions are useful because they are a counterparty to negotiations
with management. They have leverage because they are able to
represent labor as a single entity. If they are only able to
represent labor on one axis, but not on issues that represent quality
of workplace, they lose leverage in negotiation that allows them to
win larger salaries.
pdonis wrote 1 hour 28 min ago:
> they are able to represent labor as a single entity
They'd be even more able to do that if they were actual
corporations, owned by all the workers, selling organized labor as
a service. Then they would only have to negotiate the prices of the
services they sold, instead of having to negotiate all kinds of
other things. The workers themselves, as owners of the corporation,
would be determining things like benefit packages, retirement, how
to bring new workers in, etc., etc.
oersted wrote 30 min ago:
It's a good idea. Co-ops do tend to face quite a few fundamental
challenges in practice that make them less competitive, but they
have their place and they should be a more common occurrence.
One would need to be careful to stop such a company from fully
monopolising the profession though. Otherwise we go back to
medieval guilds, which were good at guaranteeing product quality
standards, but heavily suppressed innovation and were quite
extortionate towards new workers. I suppose unions are also like
this to a degree, but making them actual profit seeking companies
may be dangerous.
philipallstar wrote 2 hours 0 min ago:
> Unions are not perfect. Indeed, it is possible to belong to a union
that is bad for workers: either because it is weak, or corrupt, or
captured (or some combination of the three).
It's also possible to belong to a union that's bad for customers as
well, as they entrench the status quo or raise prices by blocking
automation.
Or to ones that donate against your politics[0], which seems
particularly galling.
[0]
HTML [1]: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/teachers-unions-poured...
dabockster wrote 1 hour 5 min ago:
I think the big takeaway here is that unionization can sometimes be
just trading one bad manager for another. It's not a silver bullet to
fix a workplace.
That being said, though, I do encourage unionization in general. But
you have to be aware of which union you'd be entering into a
relationship with as well.
OkayPhysicist wrote 1 hour 36 min ago:
Unions are political entities, because their existence in their
current form (i.e., not throwing dynamite at the cops, blowing up
bridges, kneecapping scabs, or dragging the foreman out of his home
in the middle of the night and killing him in the street) is a legal
construct, that the bosses would love to eliminate.
If you're disjointed enough to belong to a union, benefit from a
union, and yet hold political views that want to eliminate unions,
then it really shouldn't come as some shock that your union is
supporting politicians you don't.
danaris wrote 7 min ago:
Well, the right wing also wants to destroy education, which is
pretty bad for teachers in or out of a union.
The teaching profession also has a tendency (far from a universal
rule) to select for people with higher compassion and empathy,
which has been outright called a "sin" by the right wing.
So yeah, if you're mad at teachers' unions for supporting left-wing
political causes & politicians, you're, uh, kinda barking up the
wrong tree. Or upset at water for being wet. Or something.
dylan604 wrote 33 min ago:
Not sure disjointed is the right word though. Just as a company
without a union can have Norma Rae types pushing for a union,
there's nothing to say that someone working in a place that
requires union membership to be employed can't have their
anti-Norma Rae types as well.
lawlessone wrote 1 hour 56 min ago:
>which seems particularly galling.
Is it that galling they supported the party more likely to give
teachers a favorable outcome?
The idea unions shouldn't be political when some politicians want to
destroy unions is silly.
If the billionaires can donate to support politicians that serve
their interests more than others why not workers?
krainboltgreene wrote 2 hours 5 min ago:
> I raise this because a general strike is back on the table, likely
for May Day 2028 (5/1/28):
I say this as an out socialist, member of the DSA, and strong advocate
for unions: No it's not. I love Shawn Fain to death, I am a huge fan of
his work and strategies, but the idea that an American General Strike
is two years away? Most americans won't join a union despite having
extremely positive opinions of unions.
JKCalhoun wrote 1 hour 33 min ago:
Why is that?
dylan604 wrote 37 min ago:
A lot of states are right to work states, so joining a union is
just giving your money to someone else with no protections if they
can just fire you regardless of union status. At least that's
something I've been told before
outside1234 wrote 1 hour 2 min ago:
There has been decades of propaganda about how unions destroy jobs
in the United States and most software engineers have grown up in
those decades.
I'm not trying to argue that Unions are exact right answer (perhaps
something like worker's councils would be better) but the
underlying issue is that collective action in the United States has
been effectively demonized for a very long time (going back to
blaming unions for our uncompetitive cars vs. Japan).
dylan604 wrote 35 min ago:
You also have decades of corruption within the unions. That'll
take effort as well to overcome.
outside1234 wrote 33 min ago:
There has also been decades of corruption in management (see
donations to ballrooms) and yet nobody is saying it will take
decades to overcome management.
dylan604 wrote 30 min ago:
It will though. Tim Apple has been in charge how long? Bezos?
Musk?
Aurornis wrote 40 min ago:
A neutral observation: The pro-union camp really needs some
better messaging if they want any hope of overcoming these
objections.
Nearly every pro-union discussion I see online or even politician
speaking to a crowd feels like they're in full-on preaching to
the choir mode, where they don't even consider how to address
anyone skeptical of unionization. It's always presented as the
obvious choice. Any skepticism or critical questions are
dismissed as the result of consuming propaganda (like the comment
above).
If the hardcore pro-union people want to get anywhere, they need
to stop treating anyone with critical questions or skepticism as
being misinformed or the victim of propaganda.
Speakers like Pete Buttigieg are a good model for addressing
mixed audiences without alienating the other side right off the
bat. Not everyone is going to agree with him, but he does a much
better job of speaking to a mixed audience as a group of people
with differing opinions than most.
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