The word is spot on for a union, see https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/collusion.asp: "Collusion occurs when entities or individuals work together to influence a market or pricing for their own advantage."
"Collusion is a non-competitive, secret, and sometimes illegal agreement between rivals which attempts to disrupt the market's equilibrium. The act of collusion involves people or companies which would typically compete against one another, but who conspire to work together to gain an unfair market advantage. The colluding parties may collectively choose to influence the market supply of a good or agree to a specific pricing level which will help the partners maximize their profits at the detriment of other competitors. It is common among duopolies."
Normally, workers are rivals who are competing to sell labor to the market. A union occurs when these workers agree not to compete and "work together to influence a market or pricing for their own advantage."
What is secret about a union? Also the word carries a context, hence the mention of duopoly. So no, not spot on.
Also you failed to mention that capital works to actively disrupt market equilibrium for wages. So by “colluding” the union is merely attempting to counteract that.
Union relationships are always secret? News to me. Taft-Hartley even has:
> Sec. 211. (a) For the guidance and information of interested representatives of employers, employees, and the general public, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the Department of Labor shall maintain a file of copies of all available collective bargaining agreements and other available agreements and actions thereunder settling or adjusting labor disputes. Such file shall be open to inspection under appropriate conditions prescribed by the Secretary of Labor, except that no specific information submitted in confidence shall be disclosed. - https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/COMPS-8190/uslm/COMPS-81...
So by your definition, the members of that union are not colluding.
Labor providers and labor consumers are not rivals, and they do not compete with each other.
You need to demonstrate how it is an "unfair market advantage". Simply saying it is so it not enough. It could be a fair market advantage.
"workers are rivals who are competing to sell labor to the market"
Ohh, that a funny one. You've just claimed that all trade associations are a form of collusion too.
The Orange Growers of Florida - made of rivals! - get together to promote Florida Oranges so are colluding to take market away from Californian orange growers. Well clutch my pearls!
You also think Microsoft is colluding with HCL, Accenture, TCS, and Chinasoft because Microsoft has negotiated a preferred status with them to find contract workers, rather than be open to the entire market of possible contract workers.
If it makes you feel better, think of the union as a co-op owned labor provider who made a multi-year contract with a company as the exclusive provider of a certain type of labor. Would that be "collusion"?
> when these workers agree not to compete
You've confused two different issues. 1) "workers are rivals who are competing to sell labor to the market" refers to all people who could be hired. Most of these people are not in a union, as we clearly see when the company hires scabs.
2) "A union occurs when these workers agree not to compete" generally refers to the people already working for a company. At least, I have not heard of a union started by people who were not employed and decided to use collective action to improve the market salary rate. Thus, they are not in the same market as #1.
The union for #2 acts as a single economic actor, just like you interpret the company as a single economic actor even though many managers may be involved ("collude") in setting new salary levels.
I already pointed out how the definition "collusion" doesn't fit most union agreements. You have not shown there is collusion. Instead, you double down and say it's a cartel.
> A cartel is a group of independent market participants who collude with each other in order to improve their profits and dominate the market.
If there is no collusion, there is no cartel.
Where is the collusion?
If 7-11 and Coca-Cola reach an agreement for Coca-Cola be the sole cola supplier to 7-11 in exchange for a reduced price, that is not collusion, that is not a cartel, that is not anti-competitive.
Yet if 7-11 and labor organization reach an agreement that the labor organization be the sole supplier of a certain type of labor, that is collusion, a cartel, and anti-competitive?
If employers refuse to negotiate with employees individually, and set a fixed maximum price for labour, that is clearly unlawful, collusive, cartel behaviour. If they enforced this by refusing to honour their contracts and refusing to pay employees or give them work, this would also be unlawful.
If employees do the same then the left pretends it is normal.
Note that unions had to be made legal by legislative fiat. At common law, unions were illegal associations in restraint of trade.
Words - what do they mean? Maybe your comments are a collusive act. Maybe you and I have formed a cartel together. I don't know. If only there were some way to learn what how words are commonly used. Words? Words? What are words?
> If employers refuse to negotiate with employees individually, and set a fixed maximum price for labour, that is clearly unlawful, collusive, cartel behaviour.
Even if we accept your (cringe?) example, you must surely notice that you are using "employer" here to mean a collective, abstract economic entity, and not the people in the company who can make decisions about the employees in the company.
If the managers at the same company set a fixed maximum price for labor, and refuse to negotiate with employees individually, that's considered standard practice.
By your logic then, if employees at the same company set a fixed maximum price for labor, and refuse to negotiate with employers individually, that should also be fine.
So your complaint isn't about unions per se, but about multi-corporation unions.
In any case, if unions are "clearly unlawful", what law do they break?
While we can point to the law Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe broke in their illegal non-compete collusion.
If you can't point to a law being broken, it's not unlawful. (That's one of those cringe definition things, I know.)
> "The left pretends it is normal"
How do you know they are pretending? Do you pretend that women suffrage is normal?
How long does it take for something to become normal? Recognized, legal unions in the US have been around for longer than the nationwide right for women to vote.
What does left/right have to do with it? When President Reagan, famed for not being on the left, declare:
"By outlawing Solidarity, a free trade organization to which an overwhelming majority of Polish workers and farmers belong, they have made it clear that they never had any intention of restoring one of the most elemental human rights — the right to belong to a free trade union."
was he pretending too? If he meant it, when did the right start pretending?
> Note that unions had to be made legal by legislative fiat.
Let's examine this proposition, and set aside for now the cringe question of what "fiat" means.
Corporations were made legal by legislative fiat. You don't seem to have a problem with incorporated corporations, or with limited liability, so why would you have a problem with unions?
What legislative fiat do you refer to? In the US, the intrinsic legality of unions under the Constitution was established by Commonwealth v. Hunt (1842), which would be from the judicial system, not legislative.
That case directly addresses common law, and points out how earlier cases usually involved a union doing something illegal, like The King v. Journeymen Tailors of Cambridge, 8 Mod. 10 where the tailors wanted to raise "wages above the rate fixed by a general act of parliament. It was therefore a conspiracy to violate a general statute law".
It give a working definition of conspiracy (how cringe!)
"Without attempting to review and reconcile all the cases, we are of opinion, that as a general description, though perhaps not a precise and accurate definition, a conspiracy must be a combination of two or more persons, by some concerted action, to accomplish some criminal or unlawful purpose, or to accomplish some purpose, not in itself criminal or unlawful, by criminal or unlawful means. We use the terms criminal or unlawful, because it is manifest that many acts are unlawful, which are not punishable by indictment or other public prosecution; and yet there is no doubt, we think, that a combination by numbers to do them would be an unlawful conspiracy, and punishable by indictment."
and later concludes that unions are legal, so long as they use legal methods:
"We think, therefore, that associations may be entered into, the object of which is to adopt measures that may have a tendency to impoverish another, that is, to diminish his gains and profits, and yet so far from being criminal or unlawful, the object may be highly meritorious and public spirited. The legality of such an association will therefore depend upon the means to be used for its accomplishment. If it is to be carried into effect by fair or honorable and lawful means, it is, to say the least, innocent; if by falsehood or force, it may be stamped with the character of conspiracy."
You'll note the strong contrast between that legal decision and the viewpoint you espouse.
I imagine you might now claim that unions were made legal through judicial fiat. Shrug. Then your issue is with how laws are created, not unions. You like laws which protect capital, but not ones which protect labor. Got it.
None of your bizarre rant has anything to do with what we were discussing. As always, people like you drag out discussions on minor asides and random disputes about word choices rather than focusing on the actual issue being discussed.
If you cannot see that unions are price-fixing conspiracies then you can only be described as wilfully blind. Where you claim that it is just the same as multiple hiring managers working for the same firm.. It just boggles the mind.
Maybe it needs to be spelt out really simply for you: a union is not a firm. You don't hire a union. You hire employees. Unions do not want you to hire non-union employees and would make doing so illegal if they could. Unions want to "represent" an entire industry. They do not want competition.
So don't go round claiming it is just like a firm with multiple employees. That is nonsense.
We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines. Please don't do that!
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Usually we warn people before banning them, and often many times, but sometimes an account has been breaking the site guidelines so badly and so frequently that we just ban them. When I scrolled through your comment history I saw so many cases of this that you fell into the latter category.
> If you cannot see that unions are price-fixing conspiracies
Of course I do not. It doesn't meet the definition of conspiracy, and back in 1842 Commonwealth v. Hunt established that unions were not a conspiracy, in the context of common law, and even addressed and dismissed your "price-fixing" argument - in text I already quoted. The courts since then have never determined that unions are a conspiracy, and that's with judges from the left and right.
My "bizarre rant" contains the materials to support my answer to exactly the topic you addressed.
I don't know why you willfully ignore the last 180 years of history.
You are the one who eschews definitions, but that doesn't mean you can redefine well-understood terms without expecting general confusion.
The claim that unions couldn't exist without active government intervention is a claim I've only heard from ill-informed libertarians who view everything through a very ideological lens. Your responses are not dissuading me that you fall into that category.
You have yet to point to any external source which supports your arguments. I have pointed to primary sources demonstrating that your specific claims are invalid and your understanding suspect.
You make other claims like "the left pretends it is normal" without attempting to explain why your ideologically extreme viewpoint is correct, or meaningful, much less explain how the right - start with Reagan - is any different.
> So don't go round claiming it is just like a firm with multiple employees. That is nonsense.
I did not. Are you referring to my comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37274569 were I wrote "If it makes you feel better, think of the union as a co-op owned labor provider who made a multi-year contract with a company as the exclusive provider of a certain type of labor. Would that be "collusion"?"
That was meant to show how union "collusion" could be implemented in a corporation model, leading to similar economic results for the co-op owners, but demonstrably not seen as a collusion when done by companies like Adecco.
I did claim that you confused the abstract concept of "employer" with the concrete concept of "employee", leading to a failure in your analogy. It means you see a company as a distinct economic entity (created by government fiat) from the managers who make employer decisions. By analogy, a union is a distinct economic entity (yes, supported by government fiat) from the employees.
A union is not a firm, and claiming so would be counter to centuries of history dating back to the medieval guild era.
Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collusion_(disambiguation) : "Collusion is an agreement, usually secretive, which occurs between two or more persons to deceive, mislead, or defraud others of legal rights."
Quoting https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/collusion "A secret agreement for an illegal purpose; conspiracy."
Unions, in general, do not fit this definition.
Perhaps there is a technical use I'm not aware of, but this is not a specialized forum where that would be clear.