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0 pointstylerhou6y ago0 comments

Employers often have much more power than employees. That is, if Google doesn't hire me, it doesn't lose out on much. For Google, maybe a small fraction of its capital isn't deployed, which is unfortunate but doesn't make a dent in the grand scheme of things. But if I don't have a job, then I will lose out on a lot -- I can't pay bills, I might lose my home. So I have a strong incentive to accept an offer from Google, and therefore Google has a lesser incentive to offer me better compensation.

The above is sort of a lie -- in the case of the tech industry, there is a lot of competition for workers. Since everyone wants to hire SWEs, I have more negotiating power than other industries. If Google doesn't hire me, I could (presumably) get a job at Amazon, Facebook, a startup, etc.. Since I could find other offers, I wouldn't have much to lose if I don't take Google's offer, and Google will therefore have an incentive to offer me better comp. Because of the above, it's not clear to me that tech workers need a union right now.

In other industries, labor is a buyer's market. If there is only one or two employers in a region, then those employers can choose to not hire any one laborer. Not hiring one laborer might mean that an employer's capital is deployed slightly inefficiently, which is again unfortunate, but nobody will lose sleep over it. But since that one laborer has no alternatives, they must work for a lower wage or risk destitution. This is a big problem in academia, where it's very difficult for grad students to switch schools (admissions offices reduce student mobility) and there is only one employer -- the school.

So unions are not analogous to cartels for selling labor -- they are not necessary when there is a balanced labor market, like in tech. But for markets which favor employers, they may often be necessary to protect workers.

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saidajigumi6y ago

Funny enough, when I was in grad school, the graduate student employees formed a union. In a sort-of-parallel to your narrative, my department, Computer Science, had pretty good support for its grad employees. But many other departments were highly exploitative – splitting hiring lines that should have gone to a single student across three or four.. meaning that none of the recipients got a living wage but each still had a full workload. These departments were effectively trying to create an indentured servant class.

The union ended a whole list of bad practices virtually immediately. Even better, they negotiated us into the same benefits (healthcare, etc.) package that faculty received, which was a significant bump up even for students in the better departments like mine.

None of this would have been possible had the employees not been able to organize to realize their power.

wutbrodo6y ago

> That is, if Google doesn't hire me, it doesn't lose out on much. For Google, maybe a small fraction of its capital isn't deployed, which is unfortunate but doesn't make a dent in the grand scheme of things. But if I don't have a job, then I will lose out on a lot -- I can't pay bills, I might lose my home. So I have a strong incentive to accept an offer from Google, and therefore Google has a lesser incentive to offer me better compensation.

You're comparing apples and oranges here, in that you're comparing Google not hiring a single employee to you not getting _any_ job. The analogue to you failing to get any job is Google failing to hire any employees, at which point it ceases to exist, which isn't the case for even the chronically unemployed. The comparison as you've constructed it proves the _opposite_ of your claimed point (though I should note that I think the whole construction is weak; I'm certainly not drawing the conclusion that workers have more power than Google)

tylerhouOP6y ago

> You're comparing apples and oranges here, in that you're comparing Google not hiring a single employee to you not getting _any_ job.

Yes, which is why I clarify in the second paragraph that my first paragraph is a lie. As a tech worker with a few years experience, it is unlikely that I can't find any job (i.e. it is likely I can find a job).

But my first paragraph is _not_ a lie if you replace Google with MIT/Princeton/Harvard/Columbia/other universities, at which there are currently unionization efforts among graduate students. Or industries/regions where there are fewer employers or high switching costs.

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