Comment by Hupriene
15 hours ago
My only experience with unions was as a low level employee while I was in high school. It consisted of certain employees trying to drum up willingness to unionize through a combination of unrealistic promises and threats of violence. The company I worked for at the time was in trouble and went out of business before the unionization effort came to a vote. I don't know how representative my experience was, but it definitely soured me on unions for a long time.
These days I definitely believe that something needs to take up the role of fighting for the rights of labor, but I remain skeptical that unions, at least as they exist in the US, are the right tool for the job.
> These days I definitely believe that something needs to take up the role of fighting for the rights of labor, but I remain skeptical that unions, at least as they exist in the US, are the right tool for the job.
What would you say are the highest salaried professions in the US outside of management/executive roles that would obviously not be a part of unions? I think most Americans would probably list athletes and actors close to the top (if not literally the first two), both of which famously have powerful unions.
The highest paid MLB player in the last year before the union in 1965 was $105,000, which after inflation maps to around $1,110,066.67 in 2026 USD, but the minimum salary for MLB players for the 2026 season is $780,000, and the highest individual salary is $61,875,000. If you think that the union isn't demonstrably an effective tool for having achieved huge increases in salaries for players across the board at both the highest and lowest skill levels, I'd argue the burden of proof is on you, because you'd be arguing against the obvious interpretation of the history in the decades following the establishment of the union.
At absolute best, I feel like you could argue that unions are a mixed bag and some of them do more harm than good, but it's not clear why that wouldn't be an equally compelling argument against pretty much every other type of organization in our economy. There are plenty of corporations that have inflicted absolutely massive amounts of harm to society (many at levels I'd argue no union has ever come anywhere close to), but I've yet to meet anyone who's expressed skepticism at the concept of unions to have similar opinions about the concept of corporations. It's hard not to feel like people just give disproportionate weight to anecdotes about unions than they do for other economic entities because of how effectively they've been painted as the boogeyman by anti-labor propaganda.
> both of which famously have powerful unions.
It depends. The NFLPA is famously powerless. Domonique Foxworth (former NFLPA President) has long argued it should decertify and reorganize as a trade association because it doesn't work like a traditional labor union.
> If you think that the union isn't demonstrably an effective tool for having achieved huge increases in salaries for players across the board at both the highest and lowest skill levels, I'd argue the burden of proof is on you, because you'd be arguing against the obvious interpretation of the history in the decades following the establishment of the union.
The burden is on anyone to make a claim in either direction because you don’t have a control. How do you know the salaries wouldn’t have increased just due to baseball popularity and demand for good players?
The salaries for top players would have increased, sure! But there’s no reason to think the minimums would have, and an obvious supporting point is that there have been several strikes that occurred during the contract negotiations
Also, we forget the price fixing scandal in big tech. Programmers should probably all be making over 1M+ (thorough there probably would be fewer jobs).
> How do you know the salaries wouldn’t have increased just due to baseball popularity and demand for good players?
For starters, baseball is not nearly as popular today as it has been in the past, but salaries have not decreased. But more fundamentally, we do have a demonstrative example of great outcomes for players with the union, whereas we don't have a counterfactual of what would play out. Since you're the one arguing that a different choice would have been better (or the same), it stands to reason that you should have to provide evidence, because in the absence of either side providing a compelling argument, the only data we have is "things sure worked out well for the players after they had a union".
In Belgium unions exist across industries except for the railway and I think army unions. So I being a programmer can be in the same union as a street sweep. There's also mutliple that compete with eachother (most of which with political alignments tho they tend to coopeerate and organise togheter in many scenarios) and fees are very low. They have additional functions too though which are more debated.
So, the company was in trouble and the adults understood that. They probably wanted to fight to make sure they didn't lose their 401ks or pension, or be able to hold onto some insurance so the c suite didn't gut the company and leave everyone high and dry. Sounds like you just generally didn't understand the situation, being a kid.
To be clear, those threats of violence were against me and my co-workers if we didn't vote to unionize.
Ok, well that is different.