<story><title>Apple has reached its first-ever union contract with store employees in Maryland</title><url>https://apnews.com/article/apple-union-contract-maryland-store-f9884d978bf3129c37726dd7978392a5</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mrangle</author><text>Nonsense. Ultimately, it&amp;#x27;s a zero sum game and therefore there can not be shared interest between business owners and Unions.&lt;p&gt;You may have detente or even just a laid back employee base.&lt;p&gt;But you&amp;#x27;re only pro-Union insofar as you are financially and personally comfortable with what the Union demands at the penalty of consequences.&lt;p&gt;Unless there is some kind of non-standard relationship between yourself and the Union, then there isn&amp;#x27;t a direct connection between what they will eventually demand and what you are willing to give at the cost of your business.&lt;p&gt;Your pro-Union stance can only be solely due to lack of personal stakes, and therefore it is only a matter of time or a change in labor circumstances. Unless your vision for your company is as a total cooperative.</text></item><item><author>doctorpangloss</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m a business owner. I am &amp;quot;pro-union.&amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>JKCalhoun</author><text>&amp;gt; I know this site is pretty pro-union&lt;p&gt;If this site is primarily workers (as opposed to business owners) then I am not surprised.</text></item><item><author>guywithahat</author><text>This is a single retail location in Maryland. There&amp;#x27;s probably a reason they let them unionize without a lot of fighting, and I&amp;#x27;m guessing it&amp;#x27;s because they will shut the store down if the union becomes a problem.&lt;p&gt;I know this site is pretty pro-union, but if I were them I would not have wanted to unionize at all. Apple has decent salaries for what it is, and it&amp;#x27;s probably cheaper to close the store than hire a McKinsey consultant to renegotiate union contracts.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Aloisius</author><text>It isn’t a zero sum game. It’s commerce which is a positive sum game.&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, the customer (the business) values the labor it’s buying more than money it costs and the vendor (the employees) value the money received more than the labor sold. Both sides end up with more value then they started with - positive sum.&lt;p&gt;If that was not the case, neither side would agree to the transaction.</text></comment>
<story><title>Apple has reached its first-ever union contract with store employees in Maryland</title><url>https://apnews.com/article/apple-union-contract-maryland-store-f9884d978bf3129c37726dd7978392a5</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mrangle</author><text>Nonsense. Ultimately, it&amp;#x27;s a zero sum game and therefore there can not be shared interest between business owners and Unions.&lt;p&gt;You may have detente or even just a laid back employee base.&lt;p&gt;But you&amp;#x27;re only pro-Union insofar as you are financially and personally comfortable with what the Union demands at the penalty of consequences.&lt;p&gt;Unless there is some kind of non-standard relationship between yourself and the Union, then there isn&amp;#x27;t a direct connection between what they will eventually demand and what you are willing to give at the cost of your business.&lt;p&gt;Your pro-Union stance can only be solely due to lack of personal stakes, and therefore it is only a matter of time or a change in labor circumstances. Unless your vision for your company is as a total cooperative.</text></item><item><author>doctorpangloss</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m a business owner. I am &amp;quot;pro-union.&amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>JKCalhoun</author><text>&amp;gt; I know this site is pretty pro-union&lt;p&gt;If this site is primarily workers (as opposed to business owners) then I am not surprised.</text></item><item><author>guywithahat</author><text>This is a single retail location in Maryland. There&amp;#x27;s probably a reason they let them unionize without a lot of fighting, and I&amp;#x27;m guessing it&amp;#x27;s because they will shut the store down if the union becomes a problem.&lt;p&gt;I know this site is pretty pro-union, but if I were them I would not have wanted to unionize at all. Apple has decent salaries for what it is, and it&amp;#x27;s probably cheaper to close the store than hire a McKinsey consultant to renegotiate union contracts.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>BobaFloutist</author><text>Zero-sum games get more complicated when you care about the other players.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;there can not be shared interest between business owners and Unions.&lt;p&gt;There absolutely can. The point of a zero-sum game is that one party cannot win &lt;i&gt;more&lt;/i&gt; without the other winning &lt;i&gt;less&lt;/i&gt;. This is only a problem if all parties care exclusively about winning the most, rather than about winning enough sustainably. If you value your workers and care about them and want them to have happy, good lives, then you can absolutely find an alliance with a union.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not like a criminal justice case where one side has to win and the other has to lose, it&amp;#x27;s like a divorce where if everyone maintains a level head and allows the existence of humanity in the other side, everyone can come out happy. It only becomes adversarial when one side decides to make it that way.</text></comment>