Break up bad companies; replace bad union bosses
81 comments
·December 15, 2025jdross
vintagedave
> 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
I’m 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 members’ interests at the expensive of the public’s. They seem more like a mafia.
If tech or game workers or whoever wants to unionize, fine with me.
danaris
Police unions are the single example of a union that cannot be allowed to exist unchecked, because their primary purpose is to remove restrictions on the power of the police.
Given that the police are already the group charged with enforcing the law, this has the effect of putting them above the law.
Systemically, police unions are completely different than other unions, public or private sector.
krainboltgreene
That is because police are class traitors. They serve the bourgeoisie. That's also why police unions are allowed to be insanely powerful.
Aurornis
> 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.
jtbayly
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.
toomuchtodo
Support for unions in the US is at record highs (~70%), well above a majority of voters. If you slice by age cohort, highest support is Gen Z, lowest support are oldest cohorts (Boomers, Silent), which are aging out ~2M/year (55+ age cohort) [1].
Interestingly and very recently (December 11th, 2025), the US House recently voted on a bill to restore collective bargaining rights for a majority of federal employees [2]. House lawmakers voted 231-195 to pass the Protect America’s Workforce Act [3]. The entire Democratic Caucus, along with 20 Republicans, voted in favor of the legislation.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45851620 (citations)
[2] https://federalnewsnetwork.com/congress/2025/12/house-passes...
[3] https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/2550
vintagedave
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.
ryandrake
> 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
> 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
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.
JKCalhoun
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
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
> 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.
givemeethekeys
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.
toomuchtodo
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] https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jesusfv/Slides_London.pdf
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
[3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Aurornis
> 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.
Arainach
Workers can't "leave a job at any time" when healthcare is tied to employment.
They can't leave a job at any time if the job is working them at hours that prevent them from interviewing anywhere else.
They can't leave a job for a better job when employers are colluding - either directly or indirectly with things like credit checks for jobs not involving handling finances.
jfindper
>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
> 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.
https://www.google.com/search?q=low+hire+low+fire
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. Let the JOLTS report be your guide in this regard [2].
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 to constrain the labor supply for workers to improve their power position. ~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 [3] [4]. Deaths outnumber births in twenty one states as of this comment. 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 [5].
[1] Federal Reserve issues FOMC statement - https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/mone... - December 10th, 2025
[2] https://x.com/lisaabramowicz1/status/1998409877274726422 ("The quits rate in October's JOLTS report came in at 1.8%, the lowest since May 2020. While the number of job openings increased, it seems that workers don't have much confidence to leave behind steady employment." -- Lisa Abramowicz, Bloomberg Surveillance) - December 9th, 2025
[3] CBO Slashes Immigration Estimates as a Result of Trump Policies - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-10/us-will-n... | https://archive.today/RnFBo - September 10th, 2025
[4] Texas Firms Hit by Immigration Crackdown Add Hours, Raise Wages - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-28/texas-fir... | https://archive.today/Z3lvp - July 28th, 2025
[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45851620 (citations)
(think in systems, citations for assertions as always)
csb6
> 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 teachers’ unions are causing these issues and not state/federal education policy? Do teachers’ 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
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: https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/why-some-teachers-u...
jfindper
>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.
>“To the extent that these laws remove teacher choice from certain decisions about curriculum and pedagogy and instructional style, it’s not at all a surprise that you’d see unions be in opposition to those, even if they support the arguments behind the science of reading,” said Melissa Arnold Lyon, an assistant professor of public policy at the University at Albany.
>"“That’s 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,” said Scott DiMauro, the president of the Ohio Education Association. “You’ve got to always be cautious about micromanaging decisions that ought to be made at the local level.”"
>“That raises a lot of academic freedom questions for us, that raises a lot of questions about being able to differentiate based on student need,” 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 teachers—provisions these laws don’t always include, Woulfin said.
You are confusing "against the legislation as it is written" with "against teaching phonics".
csb6
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 teachers’ 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.
Arainach
>The counterbalance to a union and to management needs to be customers
What do you even mean by this? Customers want everything as cheap as possible as fast as possible, and to hell with the employees. Go watch a supermarket checkout section for an hour if you don't believe that.
Customers are not a valid check on labor-capital relations.
miltonlost
> 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?
ronsor
Customers have the power to destroy both bad companies and bad unions.
jfindper
Missing the "when there's a choice" part of your sentence. Often there isn't.
teeray
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
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.
teeray
> but then the good company predictably goes bad
Don't forget the other fun variant: Bad company sees the rise of Good company, offers the founders F-U money, then puts all of Good Co.'s products into maintenance-mode post-acquisition to prevent them from competing with Bad Co.
jaredklewis
Any tips on "destroying" my local police union?
worik
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
tolerance
Does this guy lift?
BrenBarn
The article calls out "bad" union bosses as being those who push things like two-tiered contracts, prioritizing more senior members and creating inequality within the union. But in my perception (and I don't think I'm alone in this), an equally troubling problem is that even "good" union bosses prioritize members of their own union and create inequality among the broader class of workers and citizens.
Egregious examples include union advocacy for various kinds of licensure or "fossilizing" regulations (i.e., "we must keep doing things in this way we've been doing them to preserve the jobs of the people who do them that way"). These just raise barriers for other workers, increase competition for coveted union jobs, and increase the separation between "good" (aka union) jobs and the rest.
The old-school unions a la the Wobblies were more focused on improving the lot of all workers, everywhere. Many of the labor reforms that were passed in the early 20th century (like minimum wage) followed this model: everyone gets the minimum wage, everyone gets worker safety guarantees, everyone gets the benefits of the labor policies. But nowadays I don't see so much of that from unions or labor activism in general. To a large extent I see the reverse: advocating for special minimum-wage carveouts (e.g., for hotel workers or fast-food workers); advocacy for special work-condition requirements; and yes, things like two-tier systems where benefits or pensions are differentially allocated based on characteristics internal to the union/job.
I hate fat cat capitalism and large corporations more than almost anyone I know, but many unions (especially public employee unions) have lost a lot of my trust because of these things. The sad reality seems to be that many unions, just like the corporate bosses, are just in it for themselves. Being in it for everyone in the union is better than being in it for just the union bosses, but it's still not good enough as long as they're not in it for everyone who isn't super wealthy. If unions want to attract people they need to forcefully advocate not just for better stuff right now for these few people (union members), but for a wholesale societal overhaul to upend the entire economic system that makes such small-scale negotiation necessary.
krainboltgreene
> 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
Why is that?
dylan604
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
tadfisher
Whoever told you that is misinformed, because the power of unions does not stem from forcing all employees to join the union. Even in right-to-work states, unions have the power to negotiate contracts which include protections, and workers who join unions are protected from retaliation under federal law. There is an extreme counterbalance in the form of employers misleading employees that unions do not benefit them, as you helpfully demonstrated with this comment.
krainboltgreene
Unions would actually prevent this problem, because in response to a wrongful firing they can apply collective pressure. That's not why Americans don't want to join a union.
outside1234
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).
Aurornis
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.
gopher_space
As a group we're probably the most profoundly ignorant people on the planet when it comes to labor relations. We can't even reason about this because we (again, as a group) have practically no experience and even less interest in the subject.
The union issue vs. Japan is a perfect example because you only need to sit in the cars both countries were making at the time to understand why we were uncompetitive.
dylan604
You also have decades of corruption within the unions. That'll take effort as well to overcome.
toothandnail
[dead]
philipallstar
> 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] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/teachers-unions-pour...
OkayPhysicist
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.
dylan604
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.
danaris
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.
dabockster
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.
lawlessone
>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?
null
daft_pink
In the United States, unions should be used to advocate for higher wages and that’s it.
OSHA and the US’s 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.
awkward
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
> 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
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.
oersted
> 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.
null
dylan604
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?
danaris
If you would rather have an extra, say, $3k/yr* in salary, rather than having that exact same amount of money go toward an employer-provided health plan that would, if you tried to obtain it on your own, cost $10k/yr, then I think you might have a problem with math.
Note that I don't just mean the math of $10k > $3k, because I know some people think that they can save money by just not having health coverage. This is also being bad at math: specifically, statistics. You won't win, especially since you need regular checkups to make sure you aren't starting to develop something that's cheap to nip in the bud, but massively expensive to treat later.
* No actual numbers were harmed in the making of this post. If you think these specific numbers are unrealistic, feel free to substitute other actual values, but the rough ratios should still be in the right ballpark.
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.