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.<p>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.<p>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.
> customers aren't able to vote no here. That's fundamentally undemocratic<p>Union workers _are_ voters and citizens and the disenfranchised. There is almost nothing _more_ democratic than organised action.<p>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.
I’m fine with the right to collectively act and bargain in some abstract sense.<p>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.<p>If tech or game workers or whoever wants to unionize, fine with me.
Police unions are <i>the</i> 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.<p>Given that the police are already the group charged with <i>enforcing</i> the law, this has the effect of putting them <i>above</i> the law.<p>Systemically, police unions are completely different than other unions, public or private sector.
I see similar dynamic (though not as extreme) with many public sector unions.<p>For example, the pensions for public sector in Illinois are crazy generous. People can retire at 55 or 60 (with enough years of service), and get 85% of their final salary, untaxed in perpetuity. I want them to be fairly compensated but those pensions go far beyond that and dominate the state budget. The pensions are funded by taxes, paid by everyone, including lots of ordinary people working much less well paying jobs.<p>How did they arrange this? Politics. It’s not like with a company where there really is a level of compensation that the company cannot afford and the company just can’t go higher than that. The politicians couldn’t give a shit if they put the state in debt for many generations to come. That’s a future Illinois problem and they’ll be long retired. They want those union votes now and so they say “sure, whatever you want.”<p>I have no qualms about private sector unions which don’t have these issues.
None of these other public sector unions are for jobs that have the power of life and death over people on a daily basis.<p>None of these other public sector unions are for people who already get <i>massive</i> deference by the legal system.<p>None of these other public sector unions actively and regularly protect their members when they <i>murder people</i>.<p><i>You</i> may see similar dynamics, but that's because you're ignoring the abuses the police commit on a regular basis, fully supported by their unions.<p>Other public sector employees getting generous pension packages are not remotely like what police unions do. Indeed, they are very much like what <i>many people</i> could expect from retirement in the latter part of the 20th century. Before we decided that everyone's old age should be at the mercy of Wall Street.
That is because police are class traitors. They serve the bourgeoisie. That's also why police unions are allowed to be insanely powerful.
> If you dislike them because of those effects, that is removing their right to effectively collectively act and bargain.<p>Disliking a group does not remove any of their rights.<p>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.
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.
So, sincere question: If grocery workers go on strike, they (a minority of voters) could keep you from getting your groceries.<p>Same or different?
I don't think that particular example focuses on the right thing to make the comparison similar.<p>The point isn't that education (in general) can't happen during a strike or that you can't get groceries (in general) during the strike you mention. The point is that education union is a small minority controlling what education is available, regardless of what the public wants.<p>To make your analogy similar, I think you could compare to grocery workers refusing to allow meat to be sold in grocery stores because a large portion of them are vegans, regardless of what the general public wants.
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].<p>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.<p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45851620">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45851620</a> (citations)<p>[2] <a href="https://federalnewsnetwork.com/congress/2025/12/house-passes-bill-to-restore-collective-bargaining-for-federal-employees/" rel="nofollow">https://federalnewsnetwork.com/congress/2025/12/house-passes...</a><p>[3] <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/2550" rel="nofollow">https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/2550</a>
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.<p>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.<p>Democracy is rife with examples like this.<p>How did the suffragettes get the vote? By protest.<p>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.
> 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.<p>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 <i>both</i> failed to come to agreement.
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."<p>Looks like bad companies are what is left.
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.<p>Sector-wide unions in general seem prone to anti-competitive practices (including, but not limited to extortion).
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.<p>Why? Because it will translate to better pay and benefits for everyone else.
<p><pre><code> > 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.
</code></pre>
if instead of being in conflict with capital/management, the workers owned the companies/schools etc (iow a cooperative), i wonder if they would be against automation and the rest of it in that case? perhaps in that structure automation would be welcomed relief from drudgery and fear of being let go...?<p><pre><code> > The counterbalance to a union and to management needs to be customers, but customers aren't able to vote no here.
</code></pre>
they can vote if its a consumer cooperative, no?<p><a href="https://ncbaclusa.coop/resources/co-op-sectors/consumer-co-ops/" rel="nofollow">https://ncbaclusa.coop/resources/co-op-sectors/consumer-co-o...</a>
> 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.<p>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.
Several Teachers' Unions publicly oppose phonics curriculum as part of a larger goal to shift curriculum choosing power to the teachers unions.<p>If you want evidence, look to the Teachers' Unions own efforts to oppose phonics education: <a href="https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/why-some-teachers-unions-oppose-science-of-reading-legislation/2023/03" rel="nofollow">https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/why-some-teachers-u...</a>
><i>If you want evidence, look to the Teachers' Unions own efforts to oppose phonics education:</i><p>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.<p>The complaints are about implementation timelines, continuing education requirements, potential over-stepping of policy-makers re: teacher autonomy in the classroom, etc.<p>><i>“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.</i><p>><i>"“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.”</i>"<p>><i>“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."</i><p>><i>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.</i><p>You are confusing "against the legislation as it is written" with "against teaching phonics".
You see those complaints as reasonable? I would have wanted the teachers, instead of complaining, to start by apologizing to their current and former students: "We taught you badly, we mangled many of your peers' ability to read, we wasted your time and failed you - we are so sorry! We had good intentions but we didn't know better, we were ordered to follow a plan, and we didn't bother to stop and think if what we were doing made sense."<p>But instead of acknowledging that they had been setting up children for failure and taking immediate action to improve things, they are dragging feet and complaining about "district leaders needing time to make instructional plans". As if their school and district are unique snowflakes, and nobody else in the country had published good enough plans already.
><i>You see those complaints as reasonable?</i><p>My point is that these aren't "We are against teaching phonics" complaints, like the parent poster asserted.<p>I don't agree with the rest of your comment really, either, but it doesn't have much to do with the conversation.
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 <i>gaining</i> 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.
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.<p>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.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jesusfv/Slides_London.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jesusfv/Slides_London.pdf</a><p>[2] <a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=labor%20shortage&sort=byDate&type=story" rel="nofollow">https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...</a><p>[3] <a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=fertility%20rate&sort=byDate&type=story" rel="nofollow">https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...</a>
> 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<p>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.
Workers can't "leave a job at any time" when healthcare is tied to employment.<p>They can't leave a job at any time if the job is working them at hours that prevent them from interviewing anywhere else.<p>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.
><i>and can leave for another job at any time.</i><p>This may be true for you. If it is, congratulations.<p>It is not true for many.
> 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.<p><a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=low+hire+low+fire" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?q=low+hire+low+fire</a><p>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].<p>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].<p>[1] <i>Federal Reserve issues FOMC statement</i> - <a href="https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/monetary20251210a.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/mone...</a> - December 10th, 2025<p>[2] <a href="https://x.com/lisaabramowicz1/status/1998409877274726422" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/lisaabramowicz1/status/1998409877274726422</a> ("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<p>[3] <i>CBO Slashes Immigration Estimates as a Result of Trump Policies</i> - <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-10/us-will-need-migrants-for-population-growth-by-2031-cbo-says" rel="nofollow">https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-10/us-will-n...</a> | <a href="https://archive.today/RnFBo" rel="nofollow">https://archive.today/RnFBo</a> - September 10th, 2025<p>[4] <i>Texas Firms Hit by Immigration Crackdown Add Hours, Raise Wages</i> - <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-28/texas-firms-hit-by-immigration-crackdown-add-hours-raise-wages" rel="nofollow">https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-28/texas-fir...</a> | <a href="https://archive.today/Z3lvp" rel="nofollow">https://archive.today/Z3lvp</a> - July 28th, 2025<p>[5] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45851620">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45851620</a> (citations)<p>(think in systems, citations for assertions as always)
> 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.<p>Did the teachers unions also cause you to make this leap in logic?
>The counterbalance to a union and to management needs to be customers<p>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.<p>Customers are not a valid check on labor-capital relations.
What are you talking about? >99% of all Austrian employment contracts are based on and negotiated by the unions here.<p>Is our school system failing? No. Is our public infrastructure somehow inferior? No.<p>The U.S. is much less unionized and much worse off for it.
Winston Churchill one quipped 'You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they’ve 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.
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)<p>You need to be able to explain this better than “look at Austria”. Nearly everything about Austria is different than the US.
You made the assertion (teachers unions are failing students). The burden of proof is 100% on you.
>Specifically in the US context, this is failing.<p>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).<p>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.<p>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.
Are you referring to public sector teaching jobs in both cases?
> 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.<p>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 <i>still don't get the sick days they were striking for</i>.<p>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.<p>It's fun to try to square that circle.
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_States_railroad_labor_dispute" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_States_railroad_la...</a><p>> In February 2023, CSX announced a deal to provide four days of paid sick leave annually, plus the option of converting three personal days into additional paid sick time with two unions.<p>Is it enough? No (they were striking for 15 days). Does it help until the ratchet can be pulled further for better working conditions? Yes. Next time they strike, they should ensure they're in a better position of power to obtain their desired outcome.
Not getting everything everyone wants is a pretty common outcome in negotiations. Some people got more sick days. Some didn’t get more sick days. Maybe the ones who didn’t will leave to find work elsewhere with a better schedule?
> collapsing literacy rates through the prevention of teaching phonics<p>Is that even a true thing?<p>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.
The switch away from teaching phonics, and the consequent drop in literacy, is real.<p>It is not particularly something that was pushed by teacher unions.<p>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 <i>highly adept readers</i> 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.
I'd like to read your sources on that, because from what I checked in the meantime it looks like it's more of a “culture war” thing that a real thing. See: <a href="https://www.sdkrashen.com/content/articles/great_plummet.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.sdkrashen.com/content/articles/great_plummet.pdf</a> which provides figures for tests results between 1984 and 1990 showing no such decline over that period.<p>Also, the PDF I quoted is from 2002, 10 years after California had legislated in favor of phonics in 1992 (which had never stopped to be used no matter what the urban legend says).
Er...what?<p>The change I'm talking about happened in the mid-to-late 2000s. Nothing from the periods you cite are relevant.<p>Here's one of the articles that's been written about the three-cueing model: <a href="https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-how-schools-teach-reading" rel="nofollow">https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-ho...</a><p>If you want more, you have the search terms.
You realize that your link talks about the same time period as mine, and not about something that allegedly happened in the “mid to late 2000”?<p>> Goodman's three-cueing idea formed the theoretical basis of an approach known as "whole language" that by the late 1980s had taken hold throughout America.